Ghote, peering down at the little prince who had hovered at the end of his quest, found that he could not produce the least fraction of that well-springing of joy that ought to have burst from him. Only a very slight feeling of disgust manifested itself at the sight of the repulsive object moving mutely on the messy floor of the bunker.
But this was Pidku. And the paramount thing was to complete his rescue.
Ghote leant well forward into the bunker, ignoring the rancid smell that entered his nostrils like dagger thrusts.
‘It is a friend,’ he whispered. ‘I am going to take you quickly to your Pitaji.’
But there was hardly anything that could be seen as a delighted reaction from the scrawny, apathetic captive at the bottom of the bunker.
‘Up we come,’ Ghote said, putting all the reassurance he could muster into the words, as he leant further in and slipped his right arm round the boy’s terribly small chest.
He lifted him – the burden was disconcertingly light and insubstantial – up and out of the bunker and thankfully closed its heavy lid.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘we must be quiet while we go. It is only over a few walls and along a passage, and then we will be safe.’
Putting his feather-light, precious, dirt-encrusted and offensively smelling burden across his shoulder, he turned and prepared to clamber across the wall beside him.
And it was then that he saw, across the intervening walls, just emerging from the passageway, a big, bearded man who in the moment that he glimpsed him appeared to have no hands.
17
The glimpse Ghote had of the bearded man as he looked at him across the gardens between them was extraordinarily clear. And it put into his mind at once and absolutely the conviction that he could be none other than the driver of the car that had taken Haribhai Desai and Pidku, the man Haribhai had described as having no hands.
For a long-seeming moment Ghote stood stock-still, his scrawny burden reversed over his shoulder. And in that instant he was able to work out that, of course, the bearded man was not handless. But he was one-handed. And from the angle he had seen him his one good hand had been hidden, as it must have been too when Haribhai had been briefly in the kidnappers’ car.
So the garbled description Haribhai had given in the nursery of the penthouse had unexpectedly served its turn in providing a necessary warning. Ghote quietly and slowly knelt down till he himself and his precious burden were safely concealed under the shelter of the garden wall.
Was this fellow – he would be the Muslim one: Shah had used his name: yes, Mohamed Israil – was he coming to warn the others that a search party was near again? Hardly. The searchers would have got much further than this from the Holitints factory now. No, more likely he was coming to help them whisk their captive to the new hiding place. Or, would it be to help them to escape leaving the captive to be found dead? In any case before very long he would be in the yard here.
Should he make a bid for escape while there was still a little time? But the chances of getting clear were nil. The Muslim could easily outpace him hampered as he would be by Pidku and would be bound to recognize what his burden was. Could he go forward and dodge past him? The passageway, and the safety of the crowds beyond it, was not so far away. Or could he surprise the fellow and put him out of action?
Possibly, if he was on his own. With Pidku over his shoulder, there was not a hope.
So there was only one thing for it.
‘Listen,’ he hissed at Pidku, swinging him round and trying to suppress the anxiety he felt. ‘Listen, for a little I am going to put you back where you were. But do not worry. Soon we will go.’
It seemed that a faint light of understanding did show in that filthy and sore-blotched face, though the boy said nothing.
Ghote carefully raised his head and saw that the Muslim was busy crossing a wall. With quiet speed he re-opened the bunker and lifted Pidku gently into it. Still the boy did not make a sound.
To lower the heavy lid was quick agony. The thought of darkness closing in again on the captive was almost too much to bear. But it had to be done.
After it, Ghote gave a quick look over towards the Muslim, but it was plain the fellow had spotted nothing amiss. So he hurtled himself into the narrow space between the side of the bunker and the yard wall, which he had seen in a flash as a hiding-place and crouched there fighting to control his breathing.
He was not well concealed. He was hardly concealed at all. But provided the Muslim swung himself over the wall here in the same fashion as he had done with the wall he had been getting across before, then he ought not to see him.
Unless the fellow chose to linger in the yard.
But if he did not, if it passed off safely, what then? If the Muslim went into the house, would it be safe to get Pidku out again and risk making a getaway? How long would it be before the grey-moustached traffic constable got a message to Superintendent Karandikar?
It surely would be some time yet. So if the Muslim did go right into the house – Ghote tensed like a twang-hidden spring as he came over the wall, mercifully bending away from the bunker and with his handless arm swinging high – then he would take the risk and try to make a dash for it with Pidku.
And, yes, he had walked straight over to the door into the house, which lay a little recessed from the wall against which the bunker had been built. The sound of a knocking. Evidently the door must be locked. Tap, tap, tap. Tap, tap. It sounded like a code signal.
Now the door was being opened. That must be the shriek of a tight bolt.
He would give a lot to be able to see exactly what was happening. But he did not dare even peer above the top of the bunker. The house door was not very far back from the wall behind him and the Muslim might easily have stepped away from it to a position from which he could see the bunker itself.
‘Ah, it is you, Mohamed.’
The flat voice of the man on the telephone. He was more relaxed here, but there was no mistaking him.
‘Yes, it is me. Who else did you think it would be?’
‘The car is there?’
‘Ready and waiting.’
‘I will tell Sudhir. Did you get through to the great Mr Shah this time?’
‘They said he was not answering his telephone.’
‘Then we will not wait. I will bring Sudhir. We will deal with the boy and then go. After that we can telephone to that paper and tell them where to look for the body.’
‘Okay, okay. But hurry.’
Crouching between the side of the bunker and the crumbling garden wall with every muscle taut, Ghote did not need to consider the conversation he had heard. It was all too clear. The three of them were about to make their escape clear away from the danger area, happy that the hunt seemed to have passed them by. They had decided that they would never now get their twenty lakhs from the proprietor of Trust-X and they were going brutally to kill Pidku so as to soften up the parents of a new victim.
And, crouching still, Ghote found that he did not need either to consider what he himself was going to do. He was going to make a fight for it.
He eased himself up centimetre by centimetre, ready to leap clear if he heard the slightest indication that the one-handed Muslim was standing far enough back to see him. But, if he could get fully to his feet unseen, he might perhaps be able to tackle this one antagonist and put him out before the other two got back.
Perhaps then he would stand a chance of getting out of this alive.
He was under no illusion that it was indeed his life that he was about to risk. To take on these men at the very moment they were about to kill for their own profit was, quite simply, courting death or at best being left for dead.
Well, at least it seemed the Muslim must be standing close to the door in a position where he could be taken by surprise.
But the chances of success were minimal still, he knew. Unarmed, to launch himself on to men each of whom was likely to be carrying a weapon and none of whom would hesitate
to use it: it was tantamount to flinging himself down a well in suicide.
But it had to be done. He could not sneak away and leave that scrawny, stinking, soiled boy to die.
Because Pidku was the future. He was unproven. He might rise to anything. While he himself had undergone the tests. And he had been proved, like most others in the world, to be mixed metal. There was no choice.
One. Two. Three.
Noiselessly he propelled himself in the direction of the hidden door. If only the big Muslim would turn out to have his back …
He checked himself in blank amazement as the door came in sight. There was nobody there.
Immediately the explanation came to him. Simple enough, the Muslim had not waited but had strolled in through the open door. No doubt he had thought the other two had been taking too much time.
What to do? Too risky to try to make a getaway with Pidku. That bunker lid was noisy.
Hide flat up against the wall beside the door so as to gain maximum surprise? That would pay best.
He went quickly over.
From inside the house he could hear muffled voices now. They seemed to be disputing over something. Was one of the other two having last-second doubts? Was he the one who ‘still had some heart left’?
Dare he himself risk going for Pidku after all?
No. Footsteps. Hurrying, heavy footsteps.
He braced himself.
And then, out into the sunlight of the little, cluttered yard in swift, tiger-like strides there came Superintendent Karandikar.
‘No,’ he called back loudly. ‘No one making off this way.’
He swung round to re-enter the house.
‘Sir,’ said Inspector Ghote.
‘Ghote? What are you doing here, man?’
‘You did not get my message, Superintendent sahib?’
‘Message? What message?’
‘I sent a message by a traffic constable, Superintendent. To say I had discovered where they were keeping Pidku, keeping the kidnapped boy, Superintendent. But I did not think you would be able to get here so soon.’
‘I know nothing about any of that, Inspector. And I am none too certain I like your presence here. I was conducting a personal second check on every doubtful building in the area, and the men we found in the back of the house here started to cut up rough. So I knew we had struck gold.’
He swung away and called back into the house again.
‘You have found the boy? No harm done, eh?’
‘He is here, Superintendent sahib,’ Ghote said. ‘In here.’
He went over to the bunker and lifted the heavy lid. Superintendent Karandikar came over and peered in beside him at the small, uneasily moving figure down at the bottom.
‘Hm,’ he grunted dubiously.
He straightened up and took a pace back.
‘You had better go and find a telephone and get hold of a police ambulance, Inspector,’ he said. ‘We will have to get him taken to hospital, if only to see he gets a thorough wash.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Ghote.
He put his arm down into the bunker and once more pulled out the scrawny, feather light, unprepossessing bundle that was little Pidku.
‘Now everything is all right again,’ he said to him.
The boy blinked but did not speak. His face was withdrawn and all his tears had been exhausted long ago.
‘Put him down, Inspector, and hurry along,’ Superintendent Karandikar said.
‘Yes, sir,’ Ghote answered. ‘Where shall I put?’
The superintendent looked irritatedly from side to side as if expecting a police matron to materialize because he needed her.
‘Oh, find somewhere, man,’ he said. ‘Find somewhere and get to that telephone. We want immediate medical evidence if we are going to make the best case we can in court.’
‘Yes, Superintendent.’
Ghote hoisted the silent Pidku on to his shoulder as he had done before and walked in at the back door of the paan-shop. This time, however, he felt a tiny frog-paw of a hand clutching weakly at his shoulder. The faint, feeble sensation warmed him.
But was it only a last flicker of a dying inner fire? Had the kidnappers after all done their worst to little, maimed Pidku, frozen his heart for ever?
Sick with the beginnings of this new fear, he looked round for somebody with whom he could leave the little living enigma he was carrying. But there seemed to be nobody. On one side of the back room of the shop the proprietor, his wife and grownup daughters were standing in heavy police custody while on the other side the three kidnappers were lined up with their faces to the wall, handcuffs linking wrist to wrist. And, yes, Ghote noted one of the two he had not seen till this moment was wearing a red checked shirt.
He went through to the open-fronted shop itself. A pressing crowd had already collected in the lane outside and two burly constables were keeping them back. He looked at the panorama of faces out there hoping to find one that seemed as if it belonged to a person he could ask to come inside and nurse his terrified-to-numbness charge. But every face showed only avid curiosity.
No doubt, he thought, there are really mothers among them who would warmly enwrap little Pidku, were they taken out of their surroundings now and told his story. Or there would be young girls who would be as kind. Or fathers, or indulgent uncles. But at this moment they were all submerged in that common, hating, sharp desire to know and to crow.
He glanced hurriedly round the shop, spotted a dark, out-of-the-way corner behind the counter and rested little dumb Pidku there, beside a dangling sheet of beaten silver foil hanging down to make wrappings for the occasional luxury paans a shop like this might be asked for.
‘Back in a minute,’ he said, crouching in front of the little inert body and smiling hard.
Fear-frozen eyes stared back. Not a flicker of response showed in them. Would any ever show?
Ghote heaved himself to his feet and made up his mind simply to be as quick in carrying out Superintendent Karandikar’s orders as he could be.
He went past the two guard constables and pushed his way, not without a couple of spurts of petty brutality, through the watching crowd. But then, as he turned to look up and down Bawoodji Lane to see if he could spot a shop that might have a telephone, he saw about a hundred and fifty yards away at the distant road junction a vendor with a barrow of toys from which there grew like a bunch of bright flowers a bundle of gas-filled balloons.
He ran at full pelt up the street, and quickly as he could bought the brightest and best of the balloon bunch, a pear-shaped red one that almost said aloud ‘Happiness’. He ran equally fast back with it to the shop, barging his way through the crowd, holding his bright offering high above his head and calling out sharply, ‘Police, Police.’
In the shop he hurried over to the corner where he had left Pidku. The boy did not seem even to have moved a leg. He was sitting propped beside the sheet of silver foil where he had left him, staring straight ahead.
Ghote squatted in front of him.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look.’
He jigged the lustrous red balloon up and down on its string. Pidku’s eyes, as if he were hypnotized, went to the bright globe and moved up and down as Ghote jerked on the string.
‘Yours,’ he said. ‘Yours. Take. Take.’
But the tiny, dirt-covered hands lay still on the boy’s naked, soiled lap.
‘Take,’ Ghote said again, leaning forward and urgently crooning the word.
But still five-year-old Pidku made no move, though his eyes were fixed on the balloon where it caught the light pouring in from the sun-filled street. Carefully Ghote put the string into Pidku’s uninjured left hand and closed thin, curling fingers round it. But still the boy made no move.
‘Now I must go for some minutes more,’ Ghote said.
He got up reluctantly but hurried out again, more than a little anxious in case Superintendent Karandikar came out into the shop and found his orders not being instantly obeyed.
Again he pushed through the avid crowd and again looked for a shop from which to telephone. He had in the end to go along to the top of the lane and round the corner before he found anywhere. Then his call took a terribly long time to go through and there were various difficulties to be overcome at the far end before he obtained a firm promise that an ambulance would be sent out at once.
‘Tell the driver to report to Superintendent Karandikar in person,’ he concluded, recalling with a jet of bitterness the last time he had given a similar instruction – to the laboratory technicians when he had sent the kidnappers’ packet for examination despite the superintendent’s scorn and had provided, looking back, one of the main clues that had broken the case.
He put down the telephone receiver thoughtfully. And then, as he was about to pay, leave and hurry back to the paan-shop as ordered, another thought came to him.
‘No, I will make one more call,’ he said to the shop owner.
He began dialling the number of Manibhai Desai’s penthouse.
It needed, he found, a little resolution to complete the dialling and listen to the ringing at the far end. The last words he had had from the proprietor of Trust-X had been chill indeed.But no one else could find Pidku’s father quickly, and, he had decided, the tailor had to be told about Pidku and to see him with the least possible delay.
But still the idea of talking to Mr Desai and, worse, of having to persuade him to send for the tailor was not pleasant. Yet the tailor had to be told that Pidku had been found. No more than that yet, that Pidku had been found.
The phone rang and rang. He entertained the idea of putting down the receiver and finding someone else to make the call. Would that perhaps be a more effective way even of gaining Manibhai Desai’s assistance?
Then abruptly the ringing ceased and the far receiver was picked up.
‘Hello.’
It was the proprietor of Trust-X himself. And he sounded angry.
Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart Page 19
