The Iciest Sin Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Epigraph

  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

  THE ICIEST SIN

  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 1990 by Hutchinson.

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

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited.

  Copyright © 1990 by H. R. F. Keating.

  Introduction copyright © 2020 by Vaseem Khan.

  The right of H. R. F. Keating to be identified as the author of this work and the right of Vaseem Khan to be identified as the author of the introduction 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: 978-1-4483-0400-4 (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

  INTRODUCTION

  Sitting on my bookshelf in my east London study is a twenty-year-old and somewhat dog-eared copy of The Perfect Murder. Some of the pages are marked by my own all but illegible scribbles, others are crinkled by a combination of damp and rainwater; not just any rain, mind you, but honest-to-goodness monsoon rain. I bought the book from a roadside seller while living in Mumbai in my twenties, the sort of grinning, roadside sprite that is as much in evidence in H.R.F. Keating’s 1960s vision of India as he was in the India I found myself in. I’d gone there in 1997 to work as a management consultant, and ended up spending ten wonderful years ‘in-country’. My parents hailed from the subcontinent but I’d grown up in Thatcher’s Britain – all I knew of India came from hazy memories handed down to me by my father (he’d been unceremoniously shunted across the newly-created border to Pakistan as a child during Partition) and bits and pieces I’d gleaned from Bollywood movies.

  The India that I discovered was a nation on the cusp of transformation, a country beginning the journey from a semi-industrialised agrarian economy – the post-colonial India that Keating introduced to us decades earlier and that had largely stagnated since – to the status, today, of superpower-in-waiting. A country of swamis and snake charmers – as it had always been – but now, increasingly, a country of call-centres and coffee shops, of shopping malls and software firms, of MTV and McDonald’s. A country that Inspector Ghote would find both recognisable and wholly beyond his imagining.

  By the time I returned to the UK, a decade later, I had already decided that I would encapsulate those incredible memories of India into a novel. The result was The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, the first in my Baby Ganesh Agency series. These crime stories, featuring a policeman forced into early retirement from the Mumbai police service and subsequently compelled to ‘adopt’ a one-year-old baby elephant, are my attempt to chronicle the tumultuous landscape of the India that I observed first-hand. Five novels and two novellas in the series later, I can admit that these tales of the subcontinent owe a debt to H.R.F. Keating’s Inspector Ghote series.

  Back when I was casting around for a suitable template upon which to base The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra, my eye alighted on that old copy of The Perfect Murder. I had already had the idea of a policeman who inherits a baby elephant, but I was seeking inspiration that such a work – a crime novel set on the subcontinent – might find an audience. The modern publishing industry was not prone to experimentation, or so my investigations at the time informed me.

  As I reread Keating’s novel and recalled the success that his series had enjoyed, I was emboldened. Two years later I completed my manuscript and whizzed it off to a small selection of agents. The rest, as they say, is history.

  My protagonist, Inspector Ashwin Chopra, could not be more different to Inspector Ghote. Whereas Ghote is a timid, sometimes obsequious fellow, often forced to bend to the prevailing winds of authority, Chopra is a rigid, bristly-moustachioed man, unfailingly honest, and intractably unyielding. And yet in their DNA we find a common gene – an unwavering commitment to that dark flame that flickers so elusively on the subcontinent – justice. For India is a place where justice is often at the mercy of those with wealth and power. This did not sit well with Ghote, and neither does it sit well with Chopra.

  Both Keating and I set out to bring to life these two policemen and the city that they inhabit – Bombay/Mumbai – India’s city of dreams. Yet the respective roads that we travelled to do so could not have been more different. I spent ten years living and working in India; Keating only visited India for the first time a decade after The Perfect Murder was published.

  That being the case, one might rightly ask why he chose the subcontinent as his muse in the first place? The answer: he picked up an atlas, flicked through it, and randomly chanced upon a map of India. From such moments of serendipity are legends born.

  The novel that Keating subsequently wrote was published in 1964 and entitled The Perfect Murder. It featured Inspector Ganesh Ghote (pronounced Goh-té) of what was then known as the Bombay crime branch, a detective of considerable resourcefulness and tenacity. Ghote is not your typical western policeman. There is little of the maverick about him, no melodrama, no bitter divorces in his past (he is dedicated to his wife Protima), no hard-charging, hard-drinking machismo. He is a minor cog within a vast engine of bureaucracy and at the same time accepts this and chafes against it. He is set above the common man – by virtue of his uniform – and yet condemned to forever belong to the lower echelons of that vast stratified populace that gives India such colour and depth. Time and again in these immensely readable novels we see Ghote at the mercy of bombastic senior officers, villainous landlords and wealthy industrialists. In the face of abuse, obstacles and evil machinations, Ghote remains undeterred, finding his way to resolution in every case through a combination of understated intellect and quiet bloody-mindedness. When asked about the genesis of his seminal character, Keating would later reply, ‘Inspector Ghote came to me in a single flash: I pictured him exactly as he was, transposed as it were by some magic arc from Bombay to London. It was a tremendous piece of luck really, because I don’t think Inspector Ghote will now ever die. At least he’ll live as long as I do.’

  Prophetic words. The Perfect Murder has met with enduring success. Upon publication it won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger in the UK and claimed an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Keating was on
his way. And after twenty-five wonderful books and a short story collection, Inspector Ghote has joined the pantheon of great sleuths: Holmes, Poirot, Maigret. In his own way, Ghote has that shimmering of Golden Age stardust about him.

  The first Ghote arrived more than half a century ago. The world has changed since then and literary sensibilities have moved with the times. Today, controversies abound under the banner of ‘cultural appropriation’, some justified, others perhaps trumpeted beyond the merits of the case by vested interests. Seasoned literary commentators and social media trolls alike are quick to pronounce judgment on writers they feel have not earned the right to depict a particular lived experience. No doubt they would make much of the fact that H.R.F. Keating, by his own admission, knew very little about India when he began researching these novels. His portrayals of India and Indians might offend some, an example of what they might term post-colonial hubris.

  I think this is missing the point. That was a different era, with different dynamics at work. Yes, there will be some who find offence merely in the fact that a middle-aged white man who had never been to India should achieve literary acclaim for novels set in the country. Personally, I believe that writers must have the licence to write that which inspires them. Whilst diversity and cultural authenticity in publishing is something I fervently believe in – for obvious reasons – I will also stand by the right of authors to be authors, that is, to journey on those fantastical oceans of the imagination that make writing such an enjoyable endeavour. For me the key to all such quasi-moral quandaries is whether or not an author has treated his subject matter with respect and empathy. And in his treatment of the subcontinent and its people Keating did more than simply create a series of intriguing crime novels. He brought the India of that time – in all its grit and glory – to the attention of the wider world.

  We only have to look at how appreciative Indian readers themselves were of his portrayal.

  In a 1981 article for India Today (updated in 2014), Sunil Sethi tells the story of Keating’s third visit to Bombay. He is mildly astonished when a young woman, a fan of his books, approaches him to express her admiration. Keating, Sethi tells us, can’t quite believe the reception he received in India: ‘There you are quietly writing away at your desk, and you produce this little book. Your wife likes it, but she’s an interested party. Your agent approves, but he’s also an interested party. Then you come 5,000 miles from home, and people stop you on street-corners to tell you how much they love reading your books. Isn’t it wonderful?’

  Of course, the country has changed dramatically since then. I wonder what Keating would make of this modern India? And what would modern Indians make of him and his work? More importantly, how would Ghote fare? I have a feeling that the inspector, a beacon of decency in a sometimes indecent world, would find himself quite at home as India continues its struggle to undo millennia of entrenched social attitudes: corruption, inequality, nepotism, and the debilitating effects of the caste system.

  Ultimately, as a lifelong crime reader and now a relatively seasoned writer in the genre, I believe that there is nothing so likeable in the annals of crime fiction as an honourable detective. And in Ghote we find just such a man, a man for the times in which we live.

  Vaseem Khan

  London, 2020

  Blackmail is the iciest sin.

  —Rebecca West

  ONE

  Tell me, Inspector, who is the most dangerous woman in Bombay?”

  Inspector Ghote felt a green wave of coldness swirl up in him.

  The most dangerous woman in Bombay? He did not know at all. There were plenty of women he had encountered in his years as a police officer who could be called dangerous. The mistresses of notorious antisocials, smugglers of drugs, madams of brothels. But the most dangerous? It seemed to him an unanswerable question.

  Yet, no getting round it, an answer was being demanded of him. And by none other than Mr. Z. R. Mistry, Additional Secretary in the Department for Home, a man who held in the palm of his hand the careers of every police officer in the city.

  He looked at the lean, large-nosed face implacably regarding him, chin forcefully jutting prowlike, eyes behind the heavy spectacles blinking and blinking.

  Despite the urgent need to find some plausible name to put forward, Ghote’s mind went back, magnet-drawn, to when, earlier that day, the Assistant Commissioner, Crime Branch, had told him Mr. Mistry wished to see him “on a private matter.”

  “A strictly private matter, Inspector. Understand? I know nothing about it, nor am I wishing to know.”

  And then there had been the error he had made when he had arrived at Mr. Mistry’s residence at the exact appointed hour, seven in the evening. The servant, a morose-looking individual in a floppy white uniform, dusting cloth over his shoulder, and with a truly terrible squint disfiguring his face, had opened the door to his ring at the bell. And immediately he had said to him—that appalling squint had shunted everything else from his head—“Inspector Ghote to see Mr. Z. R. Mistry.” While all along as he had made his way to the flat’s block, Marzban Apartments up on Malabar Hill, high above the sweating city, he had kept telling himself that, since this was so insistently “a private matter,” whatever he did he must not mention his police rank.

  And now, to pile new embarrassment on old, there was this unanswerable question: “Tell me, Inspector, who is the most dangerous woman in Bombay?”

  “Sir, I do not think that I am able to say.”

  It was a bad beginning. But there seemed to be nothing for it but the bald truth.

  “No, Inspector? Well, I am not altogether surprised. The lady—her name is Miss Dolly Daruwala—conducts her affairs in a distinctly clandestine manner. She resides even, I am sorry to have to tell you, in this very building. Up on the twentieth floor, the penthouse apartment, one quite beyond my own means.”

  Mr. Mistry stared gloomily down at the floor at his feet.

  Ghote, waiting to be told more, thought that however dangerous this Miss Dolly Daruwala was, her name in fact meant nothing at all to him, beyond that like Mr. Z. R. Mistry’s own it must be from the Parsi community. That extraordinary band of people had long ago come to India from Persia and had eventually established themselves in all sorts of key positions in Bombay. But why was this lady dangerous?

  Mr. Mistry, however, seemed to have gone into an almost permanent trance of deep thought, looking down at the beautifully polished black shoes he wore with his traditional Parsi garb—Ghote had been a little surprised to find him in it—of white, shirtlike dugla with bows in place of buttons and loose white trousers.

  “Sir,” Ghote ventured at last, “please, what for exactly are you dubbing this lady as dangerous?”

  “Blackmail, Inspector,” Mr. Mistry shot out, coming back from his reverie with a small start. “Blackmail. Miss Dolly Daruwala may well be the most practiced blackmailer Bombay has ever seen.”

  He gave Ghote a somber look from behind his heavy spectacles.

  “Blackmail,” he said. “Perhaps the most hateful crime, short of murder, that is to be found. I once read of it described as the iciest sin, Inspector, and I think that puts it very well.”

  The iciest sin. Yes, Ghote thought, it did put it well. To seize on some crime or misdemeanor, an indiscretion even, and to threaten the person who had committed it with exposure unless they paid and paid, it was something that required an icily cold mind to conceive and persist in. An icily cold mind.

  But Mr. Mistry could not have summoned him here simply to tell him the name of this blackmailing lady. If he wanted action taken against her, he did not need to call an officer of Crime Branch to come and see him. The Commissioner himself—it was well-known—had a meeting every week with the Additional Secretary. Then, too, there were the Assistant Commissioner’s ominous mysterious words at his briefing: A strictly private matter—I know nothing, nor am I wishing to know. What had he been summoned here to be told then? What?

  Waiting agai
n, patiently as he could, till the powerful figure who had summoned him to his private address at this unorthodox hour chose to enlighten him, Ghote took a discreet look around. For all that Mr. Mistry had implied that his flat was much less opulent than the penthouse above occupied by Miss Dolly Daruwala, the room that he had been shown into by that squinting servant was loomingly impressive. Tall-backed armchairs of dark rosewood were grouped here and there with little intricately carved heavy tables beside them. Against the walls large glass-fronted cabinets in the same heavy wood glinted with pieces of delicate china and silver. High above them dark oil portraits of Parsis of bygone days, dressed like Mr. Mistry in traditional white duglas but wearing as well old-style glossy, black-lacquered Parsi hats, puggrees, looked down with high-toned disdain. In a corner a nearly life-size statue of a half-naked man bent under the weight of the round world on his shoulder had set into that burden a clock gravely ticking away the hours.

  At last Ghote tried a little questioning cough.

  But it served only to produce from the Additional Secretary a long, almost dreamy spate of casting-back reminiscence which, as it wound onward, simply added to Ghote’s bewilderment.

  “You know, Inspector, I had the happiness myself to be brought up in a household that practiced to the full all the traditions of our community. The regular visits to the temple, the proper prayers said at the proper times, the navjote ceremony that initiated me into our faith, declaring my allegiance to the cutting short of quarrels, dedicating myself to the self that is holy, the wearing of the dugla, as I wear it now, and the sacred kusti. You know what that is, the kusti, Inspector?”

  Ghote did know, and was quick to say so.

  “It is a small ceremonial garment, yes? Worn round the waist?”

  “Made always from lamb’s wool, Inspector. Hand spun. In seventy-two separate strands. I can see my grandmother now twirling her spindle, letting the thread slowly drop as it ran from the hank of wool in her hand, turning her wrist rhythmically to and fro. One is invested with the kusti at one’s navjote, you know, a ceremony which in my case was attended, so I have been told, by no fewer than two thousand members of our community, all afterward our guests.”