Inspector Ghote's Good Crusade Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  INSPECTOR GHOTE’S GOOD CRUSADE

  H. R. F. Keating

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain in 1966 by Collins Crime Club.

  This eBook edition first published in 2020 by Severn House Digital,

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited.

  Copyright © 1966 by H. R. F. Keating.

  The right of H. R. F. Keating to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0388-5 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  ONE

  Inspector Ganesh Ghote came quickly down the wide, well-lit steps of Bombay C.I.D. headquarters. Quickly, but not too quickly. His business was urgent enough. It could hardly be more urgent. But he wanted time to think about it, to hold it in his mind and just a bit to gloat.

  So he made himself pause on the bottom step and, before going over to the blue Dodge truck waiting with its engine throbbing, he dug his hand into his pocket, took out his loose change, selected with care the smallest coin and placed it in the ever-ready hand of the broken-legged beggar whose privilege it was even at this hour to occupy this post.

  The beggar, without in the least altering his note of monotonous entreaty, darted his dirt-encrusted claw deep into the recesses of the seamy rag round his waist and then turned his head from side to side once more to assess the prospects around him.

  Inspector Ghote crossed the broad pavement and clambered into the waiting truck.

  ‘Go to the Masters Foundation, Wodehouse Road,’ he said to the driver, a new and anxious-looking young constable he had not seen before.

  ‘Very good, Inspector sahib.’

  The young man let in his clutch with a joyous roar. He had been scared stiff at the possibility that he would be ordered to an address he did not know. But this was easy. Everyone had heard of the Frank Masters Foundation for the Care of Juvenile Vagrants. There had been no need for the inspector to say Wodehouse Road. He knew where it was all right.

  He swung the Dodge roaringly towards a coolie crossing the wide road with a great bundle of firewood on his head. The man scuttled to safety in a satisfying scamper of long, bare legs under the light of the tall, craning street-lamps.

  ‘Watch out, you fool,’ Ghote said almost automatically.

  He had hardly noticed what had happened. His thoughts were miles away. Seeing a succession of newspaper photographs of a young, serious-looking American, shaking Ministers by the hand, peering down intently at foundation stones, purposefully snipping lengths of ribbon with large pairs of scissors. Frank Masters, the philanthropist. A long, thin-cheeked face with a jutting American jaw and heavy, dark-rimmed spectacles on either side of a long, inquiring nose.

  Now dead.

  Murdered, if what Deputy Superintendent Naik had told him turned out to be the true state of affairs. Symptoms of arsenical poisoning, the report had said.

  Inspector Ghote bit the inside of his lower lip in momentary vexation. He wished he had had time to make a thorough check on arsenic and its effects. He remembered little enough of the single detective-school lecture devoted to poisons, various. And even his trusted Gross’s Criminal Investigation, snatched up from its place of honour on top of his private filing cabinet, had for once let him down. Not a single index reference.

  He frowned.

  In the ordinary way it would hardly have mattered. If among the dozens of First Information Reports coming into the office on any one day there had been a suspected case of arsenic poisoning in any ordinary home, he would have been quite happy to let the local uniformed inspector keep an eye on things while he took a quiet half-hour or so to freshen up his store of knowledge. And then he would have descended on the scene and straightaway snapped out those few questions that mark out the C.I.D. man.

  But this was no ordinary home he was hurrying towards through the night streets. This was the Masters Foundation. And the victim of the arsenic was Frank Masters, the American millionaire every citizen of Bombay delighted to honour.

  The case was going to attract a great deal of attention. The papers would be full of it. There might well be questions in the State Assembly. ‘To ask the Minister for Police Affairs what steps are being taken in the case of …’ ‘One of the Department’s most able inspectors is in charge and I can confidently …’

  Ghote checked himself. He must not think such thoughts. The case would be far from easy. Days might pass with nothing to report, and the affair was the sort of thing that would be talked about at the Centre. The Americar Ambassador expressing anxiety. All Delhi buzzing with talk of loans being held up. The telephone lines down to Bombay hot with urgent inquiries. And every one of them coming back to him.

  ‘Inspector Ghote, may I ask exactly what progress …?’

  ‘Inspector Ghote, the Minister has requested …’

  ‘Inspector Ghote, I give you just twenty-four hours …’

  A sweat broke out on his forehead.

  It was a warm night. The clear, brilliant weather of winter had ended with its accustomed abruptness more than a week before and now the sluggish day-heat persisted well into the hours of darkness.

  The inspector pulled out a handkerchief and patted at his face.

  As the truck was halted for a moment by a tangle of late traffic jockeying its way round the huge, dark, domed block of the Prince of Wales Museum, he forced himself to think rationally about the case. Frank Masters. That was the starting point. What exactly did he know about him? What ought he to know?

  He was a millionaire. Or was he? Certainly that was the impression left after reading in the papers about his innumerable benefactions all over the city. But was it exactly true? Was he still a millionaire? What was wanted now were the exact facts.

  Well, the Masters Foundation was a fact. It was the crown of Frank Masters’s charitable activities. The Masters Foundation for the Care of Juvenile Vagrants.

  Its founder could hardly have chosen a more pressing problem.

  Ghote looked out into the garishly lighted streets. Sure enough, his glance fell at once on a pack of half a dozen boys, the eldest no more than ten, roa
ming up and down, clustering round any passerby with arms held out for money, voices clamouring, eyes darting up and down looking for trouble.

  And there were hundreds of them. Some homeless altogether, others who had run away or been chased out. All beggars, almost all petty thieves, many ready to turn to any other form of crime that came to hand.

  Frank Masters had taken up a formidable challenge. But then he was the sort of person to do that, or so it seemed. A man determined to do good. Ready to spend all his millions, and himself, in doing it.

  And now he was dead. Killed by arsenic poisoning. How had it happened? D.S.P. Naik had had few facts to tell. Just that someone from the Masters Foundation had telephoned and had insisted on speaking to the most senior officer available. They had then reported that Frank Masters was dead, and the word ‘arsenic’ had been mentioned. That was all.

  The D.S.P. had summoned him almost at once. He had taken his orders. He had gone back to his office and rung down for a truck, had paused for just that moment to glance at the familiar, comforting, blue, mildew-stained volume of Gross and then had hurried out for the short trip through the still busy night streets.

  Had hurried, but had not rushed. This was a case of such importance that he had felt entitled to savour a little the fact that he had been picked to handle it.

  ‘You wanna know who killed him, mister?’

  Ghote jumped in his seat.

  He almost answered ‘Yes.’

  The challenge so exactly matched his very thoughts at the moment the Dodge had pulled up outside the tall front door of the Foundation building.

  He looked in fury at the face thrust in at the truck’s open window.

  Only to be utterly disconcerted. The head at the window was the head of a twelve-year-old boy: the face was the face of a man of sixty.

  The startling effect was due, he realized a moment later, to the spread of some sort of infection which had crinkled the skin of the boy’s face into a thousand etched and tortuous lines. They gave him a look of extraordinary knowingness.

  He was dressed in a ripped and tattered jacket of black plastic hanging open over a bare chest. Ghote could smell the sharp tang of his unwashed body.

  ‘Get down, be off, get away,’ he shouted.

  He pushed hard at the truck door and the boy leapt lightly off the running board and stood dancing on the balls of his feet in the driveway. At the end of an indefinite blur of light coming from above the tall front door of the big, sprawling bungalow, two or three other shapes of children of about the same age loomed indistinctly up.

  ‘Be off, the lot of you,’ Ghote said sharply. ‘What are you doing here? This is private house.’

  The crinkle-faced boy in the tatterdemalion jacket bounced half a step nearer. His eyes were shining with bright malice.

  ‘Live here, mister,’ he said. ‘This our private house. You come to visit, eh?’

  Immediately Ghote realized who the boys must be. They were obviously some of the vagrants the Foundation catered for. A spurt of anger shot up in his mind at the thought that he had nearly let himself be caught out by that silly remark the boy in the jacket had shouted. He controlled himself sharply before he spoke again.

  ‘You live here, do you?’ he said to the wrinkled-faced urchin. ‘And I suppose you are allowed to go prowling about at such an hour of the night?’

  The boy grinned cheerfully back.

  ‘Mister, if they had one half idea there’d be plenty trouble,’ he said in a fantastic parody of an American accent.

  ‘Then you had better get back to your beds before I am telling,’ Ghote said.

  The boy sidled swiftly up to him.

  ‘You don’t want to know who bumped off Masters sahib?’ he asked.

  And Ghote hesitated.

  Such impudence ought to be dealt with by a quick cuff. Yet the boy knew already that Frank Masters had been murdered. And that was something which had only come through to the Police Department in the last quarter of an hour. It might well be worth getting hold of a possible witness like this before any interested parties found out what he knew and imposed their own views.

  He leant forward and looked hard at the dancing boy in the dim light from the window above the door.

  ‘How are you knowing Mr Masters is dead?’ he said.

  The boy spat on the gravel of the driveway within inches of Ghote’s well-polished brown shoes.

  ‘We got ways of knowing things,’ he said. ‘We ain’t gonna last very long if we don’t know what goes on.’

  Into the words he contrived to inject another slaughterously powerful dose of American accent.

  Ghote decided that his claim was quite likely to be true. An urchin of this sort did indeed need to know everything that was going on in order to survive. There was nothing like gutter life for sharpening the wits.

  Though there ought to be.

  ‘All right,’ Ghote said. ‘You have been looking where you had no business. This time I would not take any action. But you must tell me what you saw. Everything.’

  The boy grinned at him more widely than ever.

  ‘Oh, mister,’ he said. ‘If we had been doing bad, maybe is better we are not saying anything.’

  Ghote took a furious step towards him.

  But the boy hopped back out of range. All the inspector could see now in the darkness beyond the light was the white of grinning teeth.

  He stood still for a moment and worked things out. He could always call up some assistance, and perhaps with some difficulty catch this slippery customer. But that would reduce the boy to total silence. He could always simply turn away and ring at the bell beside the tall front door.

  And yet …

  After all, the boy at least knew that Frank Masters had been poisoned. A little advance information about the circumstances would make up for knowing so few facts about Masters himself and about the effects of arsenical poisoning. The trouble was worth taking.

  He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out a shining nickel twenty-five naie paise bit. He held it up between the tips of his fingers so that it caught the light.

  As he had expected, in the pale area lit by the fanlight under the front porch the black-jacketed boy swiftly appeared.

  ‘Now,’ Ghote said, ‘let us talk business. You told you knew why Masters sahib had been murdered. You say, and this is yours.’

  ‘Oh, mister, mister.’

  The wrinkled face shook sadly from side to side.

  ‘Oh, mister. You don’t think I would be telling for money?’

  The boy stepped right up to Ghote and looked at him with an expression of total seriousness.

  ‘Listen, mister,’ he said, ‘you know what Masters sahib done for us? You know what life we live before he come along with his pick-up truck and bring us here? You know what is like being pavement sleeper in monsoon time? Oh, mister, if we tell who kill him, is not for money. Oh, never, no.’

  Slowly Ghote let his hand fall to his side, still holding the despised coin.

  ‘All right,’ he said quietly, ‘you just tell me everything you know.’

  ‘Mister, it was all those women. All those gay girls.’

  And in an instant the boy had snatched the coin from Ghote’s limp hand and had danced back into the half-light.

  ‘What women? What gay girls?’ Ghote shouted.

  He advanced a step and then thought better of it. Without help he would never catch a boy who so obviously knew his way about the garden, doubly dark under the shade of faintly seen trees, just as well as he knew his way round the crowded city streets in broad daylight.

  ‘All right,’ he said in a loud voice, ‘I should have known better.’

  He swung on his heel on the loose gravel of the drive and marched up to the front door.

  His manoeuvre proved completely successful. Before he had even begun to put out his hand to the bell button the black-jacketed, crinkle-faced boy was standing beside him.

  ‘Listen,’ he said, a lop-
sided grin sending the wrinkles twisting in a new direction, ‘listen, Masters sahib is millionaire. Isn’t it?’

  Without turning from the door Ghote replied.

  ‘All right, he is millionaire.’

  ‘Then he must have gay girls. It stands to reason, isn’t it?’

  ‘That is all you have to tell?’

  Ghote rang at the bell. Loud and long.

  ‘No, sir. No, sir. That was just story. You wanna hear truth? Whole bag o’ tricks? This time I tell. Honest, I tell.’

  Ghote did not answer.

  The boy was obviously an incurable liar. Not a word he said could be relied on. There was absolutely no point in. … And yet. And yet he had known about Frank Masters being dead. And this time he had promised to tell the whole story.

  Ghote turned and walked down the steps to the driveway again. He waited in silence. One by one the whole gang came up. At last Ghote judged it the moment to speak.

  ‘Listen to me, all of you,’ he said. ‘If any of you knows anything at all about the death of Mr Masters, it is your duty to tell. Your duty.’

  He got a startling enough answer.

  TWO

  Out of the half-circle gathered in the patch of light from the house door one of the boys stepped suddenly forward. Without a word, he jumped high into the air, flung up his legs with a quick, strong jerk of his naked torso and stood in front of Inspector Ghote upside down.

  It was a good comment on his exhortation to them to tell what they knew about Frank Masters. Perfectly clear, and dramatically expressed.

  Do our duty? In our world this duty of yours looks pretty different.

  And Ghote could not in his inmost mind deny it. It might be his job in life to see that citizens did their duty and to bring to justice those who failed to. But he had eyes in his head. He knew the sort of conditions the poorest people of the city lived in, the pavement dwellers, the beggars, the homeless like this boy. And he recognized that for them there was only one duty: to stay alive.

  Behind him the big door of the bungalow opened abruptly. A swathe of sharp light spread out. The boys in the driveway vanished in front of it like so many sweepings.