Under a Monsoon Cloud: an Inspector Ghote Mystery Read online

  ‘No, no. I have not at all heard.’

  ‘It is S.M. Motabhoy, Deputy Commissioner. Right at the end of his service. Toeing the safe-line policy, busy making up to the politicians hoping for some sinecure retirement job. He will do his level best to get a conviction.’

  But Ghote, strung up to a pitch of nervousness in any case, found he was unable to feel any gloomier. Perhaps, he told himself, this is only P.U.C.L. prejudices speaking.

  He nodded once, and side by side they marched up the building’s dark stone staircase, along a tall corridor lined with the photographs of past Inspectors-General, many of the frames slightly crooked, and entered the Inquiry room.

  At a long table facing the tall windows the five uniformed officers of the Board were already sitting. In the middle was S.M. Motabhoy, a tall, plumpish Parsi, round face impassive behind a pair of moon-like spectacles, belying beneath the well-fitting khaki uniform with its rows of bright medal ribbons the still athletic body of a former fast bowler cricketer.

  So this was the man on whom his whole fate would depend, Ghote thought. What if Mrs Ahmed was right and because this distant-looking figure was seeking a soft job his own life would be tumbled to ruin like one of the rain-soaked tenements in the crowded quarters?

  Setting his mouth in a grim line, he marched up to the long table, saluted and gave his name.

  S.M. Motabhoy coughed softly.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘So it seems we are now all present. There is one minute still, I believe, before our official starting time, but I see no reason why we should not begin.’

  He gave Ghote a long look from behind his moony, pale framed spectacles.

  ‘You may be seated, Inspector,’ he said.

  Ghote looked round, saw a chair evidently meant for the accused and went and sat himself on its edge. Mrs Ahmed made her way to a table behind him and set down her heavy bag on the floor with a decided thump.

  Ghote felt it as an act of defiance, and welcomed it.

  S.M. Motabhoy coughed again.

  ‘Let me state at the outset,’ he said, ‘that I see no reason, despite Inspector Ghote having chosen to be legally represented with the consequence that the questions I myself would have put will be asked by a representative of the civil establishment, I see no reason why we should be constrained by the procedures of the civil courts. This is an Inquiry, no more than that. And no less. Let us conduct it in whatever way seems most likely to elicit the truth.’

  Ghote, perched on his wooden chair, felt himself prey to mixed emotions.

  Was this really the approach of a man determined on getting a sharply disciplinary verdict? It did not altogether seem so. And if Mrs Ahmed was wrong about him, had he himself been right to entrust his case to her? But then there were those concluding words: to elicit the truth. What if the Inquiry did, after all, elicit the truth, the factual truth, of what had happened on that night of June 24 a year ago?

  And did he, in his heart of hearts, actually want it to?

  From outside there came a deep sustained rumble of thunder and, looking towards the windows, he saw against the dark purple of the rainclouds and the tossing heads of the tall royal palms surrounding the Maidan a long jagged fork of lightning descend from sky to earth.

  The disquieting omen was followed at once by something more prosaic but perhaps even more daunting. At S.M. Motabhoy’s invitation the lawyer presenting the case against rose to his feet from behind a papers-covered table at the opposite end of the big room.

  Until that moment Ghote had not seen who it was who had been chosen to counterbalance his own insistence on having the services of a barrister. But when S.M. Motabhoy had called on ‘Mr Sankar’ a premonition had run through him, and now he saw that the tall, white-haired figure, dressed in a severely elegant black atchkan, twenty-one silver buttons down its length, was indeed R.K. Sankar.

  In his late seventies now, ‘R.K.’, as he was invariably called, had been in the British days a leading fighter for nationalism. But he had not been by any means a champion of non-violence. Instead, marching at the head of avowedly aggressive demonstrations, he had been thrown into gaol time and again. He had been charged with conspiracy to derail trains, to burn Government property, to rob local treasuries and had gloried in not denying the charges. But then had come Independence and, rejected for any official position because of the unfashionableness of his views during the struggle, he had taken up a hitherto neglected career at the Bar. And had seemed to be an utterly different man. Rage apparently exhausted, he had become known up and down the country for the cold logic with which he won his cases and for his unblinking calm when he met his rare defeats. In police circles his name had become a byword as a cross-examiner it was laceration to come up against.

  Ghote’s spirits sank.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ R.K. began now, in a voice that carried quietly clear from one end of the big room to the other. ‘The question before you today is a simple one. What we have to ask is no more than this: on the night of June the 24th and 25th last year was Inspector G.V. Ghote, here before you now, derelict in his duty at Vigatpore Police Station in that he assisted the late Additional Deputy Inspector-General of Police B.N. Kelkar in disposing of the body of one Police Sergeant S.R. Desai, unlawfully killed by the said A.D.I.G. Kelkar?’

  Transfixed almost as a rabbit under the following silk-smooth laying out of the case against himself, Ghote sat listening to R.K.’s clearly articulating voice as if it was outlining events that had occurred to someone quite other than himself. Someone patently guilty of what was being alleged.

  And when, after more than an hour, R.K. sat down and took a single sip of water from the net covered glass on the table beside his papers, he realized that the sum of all that had been said was close enough to the actual events of that night of June 24 to be almost the exact truth.

  Yes, he had done all that had been alleged against him. With Tiger Kelkar he had carried the heavily slumped body of that idiot Desai out of the police station at Vigatpore, down in the sheeting rain past the bicycle stable – there R.K.’s reconstruction had been out: he had had them going straight to the stable – and, once the body was balanced floppily on the machine, the two of them had gone through the edge of the town and down to the muddy shore of Lake Helena. And, yes, he himself had found a boat there, had helped Tiger heave into it the now undressed body with its head wound battered into disguise, and with him had paddled laboriously through the dark to somewhere out near the middle of the lake and there they had lowered the body into the black water. Where face-down it had floated obscenely.

  Yes, all that he had actually done. And R.K. in his calm, dispassionate tones had told the Inquiry of it, as if he had been, a hovering spirit from the icy Himalayas, witness of every hurried, snatched-at move.

  How had so much been found out about what he alone, now that Tiger was dead, could know? It was almost unbelievable. It was frightening.

  He hardly heard S.M. Motabhoy say that he thought there would be no harm in taking a luncheon adjournment rather early at this point. Mrs Ahmed had, in fact, to tap him smartly on the shoulder to rouse him.

  ‘I have some business to see to in the lunch period,’ she said. ‘There are some slum dwellers out at Worli whose huts were washed away and some of them have been arrested for sleeping in the stairways of a block of exclusive flats opposite. But I will be back well before the adjournment is over.’

  ‘Oh. Oh, yes. Yes. Thank you.’

  Mrs Ahmed, slinging her bag on her shoulder, turned to go.

  ‘Wait. Please. Please, wait. I am wanting to – To ask …’

  ‘Yes? What is it? Other people are depending on me besides yourself, you know.’

  Ghote licked at his lips.

  ‘All I am wanting to know,’ he said miserably, ‘is should I after all say I am guilty? There seems to be so much evidence against me.’

  Mrs Ahmed’s eyes lit with anger.

  ‘Evidence?’ she said. ‘Nonsense. Up to no
w, Inspector, as you should know, they have not produced one jot or tittle of evidence. Let R.K. bring his witnesses, and then let me put them to the proof. After that we shall see.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ghote. ‘Yes, of course. Thank you.’

  He was aware that he had sounded feeble. But, for all the battlesome reassurance Mrs Ahmed had given him, he knew that he had indeed done almost everything the great R.K. had said that he had done. So how could he truly claim he was not guilty? That he was, as he had allowed Mrs Ahmed to believe, only the destined scapegoat for a senior officer’s inadmissable wrongdoing.

  He rode despondently home for his lunch through the steadily pouring rain, past the slow tides and counter-tides of black umbrellas. Forcing down the special meal Protima had prepared, his favourite monsoon mushrooms and potato, he scarcely spoke a word.

  11

  Back at the Inquiry, Ghote found that he had arrived a little early. Mrs Ahmed, too, had managed to return from her visit to the rained-out slum dwellers at Worli before the start of the day’s second session. Ghote felt he ought to take the opportunity of asking her how matters had gone. He owed it to her to be interested after the way she had rebuked him for demanding her full attention for himself earlier. And, besides, it would do no harm to gain more of the sympathies of his formidable defender.

  He turned from his chair.

  ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I trust your visit to Worli was one hundred per cent successful.’

  ‘No, Inspector, it was not.’

  No trace of the answering pleasure he had hoped for on her solid countenance.

  ‘Oh. Oh, well, I am most sorry to hear.’

  He turned away. Further details of what had aroused Mrs Ahmed’s wrath were perhaps best avoided.

  ‘No, Inspector,’ her voice came from behind him, ‘I regret to tell you that your colleagues at the police station there were altogether as unyielding as I had expected.’

  Reluctantly Ghote turned back to her.

  ‘Well, nevertheless,’ he said, ‘perhaps they were having some quantity of right on their side. Not each and every slum dweller is a first-class saint, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I am not needing you to tell me that, Inspector. I have met more slum dwellers myself, I believe, than you have seen even.’

  Ghote felt a little offended.

  ‘Madam, a police officer is often and often having to deal with the lowest types of humanity.’

  ‘Stop, stop, Inspector. A typical policewalla’s attitude is there. Just because a man or woman is poor of the poorest you are always thinking they are bound to be criminal also.’

  ‘Madam, not at all, not at all.’

  ‘Yes, Inspector.’

  Ghote felt an uprush of indignation at this implacable answer. Of indignation divided equally between himself and her. Indignation with her because her attitude was, he felt, typical too, typical of a P.U.C.L.-walli. Indignation with himself because his plan to please his defender seemed to have brought about, disastrously, the exactly opposite result.

  ‘Madam, I am saying, we in the police are not at all having such attitudes.’

  He knew the all-embracing claim was false even as he made it, but he could produce no other response.

  ‘Very well, Inspector, if that is what you are believing, then I suggest you come out with me to Worli this evening when once more I have to go to see these poor people. At that place you will learn for yourself.’

  There was nothing he wanted to do less. By the end of the day, he knew, having listened to the first of the long parade of witnesses R.K. Sankar would call against him, he would want only to get back as soon as he could through the rain and the tides of black umbrella-weaving crowds to the safety and sanity of his own home. But Mrs Ahmed’s challenge had been issued, and for the honour of the good there was in the police service he could do no other than take it up.

  ‘Very well, madam,’ he said, ‘I shall be very much pleased to accompany when proceedings here are over.’

  The first witness R.K. Sankar called provided no evidence for Mrs Ahmed to object to. He was no more significant a person than Tiger Kelkar’s former orderly, who had had the unfortunate experience of finding Tiger’s body, hand still grasping the heavy Service revolver. Thus he had been the first to see the note Tiger had left. Once this had been identified and sworn to, his part in the Inquiry was ended. Mrs Ahmed let him go unquestioned.

  S.M. Motabhoy undertook to read the note aloud himself.

  With a lurch of dismay, Ghote saw, as it was taken across to the Board table, Tiger’s familiar handwriting on the sheets of buff official notepaper, as vigorous and spiky as the man himself.

  Tiger, he thought, I wanted you to be able to go on being that strong cleansing self. And I wanted to try to become such a fiery force for good myself. And I still will become that force.

  If I get out of this.

  He listened unswervingly as the words of Tiger’s confession, unheard by him till now, fell into the silent attentive room, with only the steady swishing of the rain outside as background. And though the words were delivered not in Tiger’s sharp bark but in S.M. Motabhoy’s rounded, fruity tones, he felt as he heard them that Tiger, indeed, was there present.

  An encouraging ghost.

  And certainly Tiger had done his best to omit his helper’s part in the events of that disastrous night.

  ‘… found that the man Desai had expired … I realize now … decided to dispose of the body as best I could … conveying it with considerable difficulty on my own … placed the garments in the Muddamal Room at the station, intending at a later time … would like to express my deep regret …’

  As soon as the reading was over R.K. rose to his feet.

  ‘It will be my case, of course,’ he said, ‘that the account which you have just heard is incorrect in one substantial particular. A.D.I.G. Kelkar did not, as he stated, carry out this illegal action unaided.’

  Yes, Ghote thought, that is so.

  But, with Tiger’s fire-breathing presence still hovering, he felt more determined than he had yet been that he would fight it out. As he could. As he could. Only he himself and dead Tiger knew for certain what had taken place that night. All the guesswork R.K. had embarked on, or had had constructed for him, was no more than a series of clever suppositions.

  No one besides himself knew the truth, and he had only to do one thing: cling hard to his determination not to let that truth out.

  R.K.’s next witnesses did not test his resolution to any great extent. They were the personnel from Vigatpore Police Station whom, on that distant night, he had one by one sent off duty. He saw why R.K. was bringing them in, one after the other. Their successive evidence showed simply but with a completeness which from a professional standpoint he could only applaud that by 11 p.m. that night the station had been deserted except for the sentry outside, the peon Shinde, Tiger Kelkar, himself and Sergeant Desai.

  Mrs Ahmed shot to her feet more than once while the procession of witnesses went by. But Ghote soon realized that her interventions were no more than tiny skirmishes in the war she and he were fighting. Yet he did not feel disheartened. Skirmishes they might be, but each was a sign that the war was being fought. There would be no surrender.

  The afternoon wore on. Outside, the slapping rain slackened to a drizzle, then came down with renewed intensity, then slackened again. Once or twice, lulled by its sound when it was at its least noisy, Ghote actually found himself dropping into a near-doze.

  And once, when through the tall windows he saw in the distance out over the sea somewhere a delicate tracery of lightning flicker down, his mind wandered so far from the proceedings as to recall and linger over a piece of poetry he had learnt as a boy. He had learnt it not at school but from that best friend of his, the son of the village pandit, the boy with the tremendous temper, Ram. Ram had heard it somewhere and because it was ‘dirty’ had eagerly passed it on. It was from an ancient poet of the uninhibited days, from the sixth century or so
, if he remembered rightly, Subandhu. ‘Lightning like a row of nail marks left upon the cloud by its lover, the departing day.’

  With a jerk he was roused from that reverie by the sound of a name deeply familiar to him, a name from his past, though a more recent past than those boyhood days of his swapping pieces of possibly dirty poetry with Ram Bhaskar.

  ‘… would like next to call Inspector G.P. Nadkarni, former Inspector Nadkarni, I should say.’

  The icily articulating voice of R.K.

  And the witness he was intending to call: Inspector Nadkarni, now long retired, once his mentor when he had first joined the C.I.D., the man from whom he had learnt so much that was truly useful. The little things that no lectures at Detective School could teach nor any textbooks, not even that of the great Dr Hans Gross, adapted by John Adam, Crown and Public Prosecutor, Madras, still reposing as ever in his Headquarters cabin.

  Old Nadkarni, his mentor.

  Why was R.K. calling him? But, no sooner had he asked himself the question, than the answer came to him. Nadkarni was being called because at the period years before when he himself had had most to do with Tiger, when he had first developed the admiration he felt for him, Nadkarni had been working with them both. So he could testify, better than anyone, to that admiration, that hero-worship.

  And if R.K. could show convincingly how deeply he had admired Tiger then, he would have established that he had a very good motive for having aided and assisted him in Vigatpore.

  He felt a new quiver of apprehension.

  Whoever had prepared the case against him for R.K. had done his work with fearful thoroughness. What else unexpected would he have found evidence of?

  But S.M. Motabhoy, impassive in the middle of the Board table, gave now a resounding, fruity cough of interruption.

  ‘Mr Sankar,’ he said, ‘I have been looking at my watch. It is high time. I think we had better adjourn before you call this next witness.’

  ‘As you please,’ R.K. murmured.

  So, with no further formality, all of them in the big, high-ceilinged room packed up their papers, rose to their feet, here and there stretched discreetly and left – the first day’s proceedings ended.