The Iciest Sin Read online

  “Yes, sir,” Ghote said, though he felt his words lacked the enthusiasm Mr. Mistry must expect.

  But when were they going to get down to business?

  “Yes, our traditions and ceremonies have always meant a great deal to me. For what they symbolize, Inspector. The life that our community dedicated itself to from the time we arrived in India, and our mobed, our high priest, proved by slipping a jeweled ring into a pitcher of milk, proffered to demonstrate how crowded the kingdom was, that we would enrich the land but occupy little of its space. For, too, that prayer we offer in front of the sacred fire in our temples: ‘O God, we praise Thee by offering good thoughts, good words, good deeds.’”

  Yes, yes, Ghote thought. You Parsis have been fine fellows always. But when am I to learn what it is I have been brought here for?

  And Mr. Mistry had not finished yet.

  “Yes, Inspector, and I think I can say that good deeds are what we have offered to India from the very start. Why else are so many of Bombay’s finest thoroughfares named after Parsis: Dr. Dadabhai Naoroji Road, Dr. Cawasjee Hormusjee Street, Sir Jamshedji Jeejibhai Road, Madam Cama Road, Jamshedji Tata Road? You know the first Indian to be knighted by the British was a Parsi? And the first Indian Fellow of the Royal Society was another? And the first Indian, too, to be appointed to the High Court?”

  Yes, Ghote thought again, but what is all this leading to?

  He realized then that the stream of reminiscence had at last dried up. Mr. Mistry was once more contemplating his polished black shoes.

  Then he lifted his head and looked at Ghote with his ever-blinking, weak Parsi eyes.

  “However,” he said, “I fear I have been somewhat led astray. The point I was attempting to make was that when a community has so much to be proud of, such fine and ancient traditions, anything that would tarnish that name is, if it is at all possible, to be avoided.”

  The eyes behind the heavy spectacles ceased their blinking and gave Ghote a glance of shrewd assessment.

  “You understand, of course, Inspector, I will never connive at anything that grossly transgresses the law as it stands.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course, sir.”

  “But, nevertheless, there may be occasions …”

  Again he shot Ghote a sharp glance.

  “Inspector,” he said, “I have a relative, a distant cousin …”

  Once more he fell silent. And once more began again.

  “Well, I realize I cannot withhold his name from you, though I must insist that anything I tell you goes no further. No further at all in any circumstances.”

  “Oh, yes, sir,” Ghote hastened to put in. “You can be sure to one hundred percent that whatsoever you are saying will remain altogether locked inside my breast.”

  “Very good. Well, this relation of mine, a distant cousin only, you understand, but a cousin nevertheless, is one by name Burjor Pipewalla, by profession a tax consultant.”

  Now Ghote thought he was beginning to understand. Mr. Mistry had taken pains to tell him about “the most dangerous woman in Bombay,” the blackmailer who had the penthouse flat at the top of this very building, and now—at last—he was adding that he had a relative who was a tax consultant. And a tax consultant more often than not was, simply, a man who made a good deal of money out of showing people with even more money how to get out of paying the taxes that they properly owed. And that was a field wide open to blackmailing.

  “Yes, sir?” he asked as neutrally as he could.

  “Well, some weeks ago this young man came to me and told me that—that certain papers from his office had been made away with by this Miss Dolly Daruwala I was telling you of. She had pretended to consult him about her financial affairs over the course of a number of visits, and during the last one she had abstracted these papers. I do not know exactly what they are, and I have been careful not to ask. But I understand from young Burjor that, should they fall into the hands of the income tax authorities, the consequences might be very grave.”

  Mr. Mistry gave a little tight cough.

  “Now, the point is,” he went on, his voice slowing with every word, “that Burjor, rather foolishly, has been paying Miss Daruwala over the months various sums of money in the expectation of receiving those papers again. An expectation, as you will no doubt not be surprised to hear, in which he has been deceived. Now at last he has come to me, knowing my work is largely concerned with the police, to ask if there is anything I can do discreetly to put an end to Miss Daruwala’s activities.”

  “Well, sir,” Ghote said, “the procedure in such cases is clear. Any person willing to stand witness against a blackmailer is granted the protection of being named in court only as Shri X or Shrimati Y, as the case may be.”

  “Yes, yes, Inspector. All that is well-known to me. But have I, in such approaches as I have been able to make, been able to secure one single person willing to take on the role of, as you say, Mr. X or Mrs. Y? I have not.”

  “Except only your cousin, Mr. Pipewalla?”

  Mr. Mistry sighed.

  “That is what I was endeavoring to put to you earlier, Inspector,” he said. “It is out of the question that any member of our community should appear in court in a matter of this sort if it can at all be avoided. Out of the question. Whatever precautions are taken, something may leak out and the name of the Parsi community be irretrievably blackened.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Little point in saying to such a person as Mr. Z. R. Mistry that this was a risk that ought to be taken.

  “So, Inspector, it is here that you come in.”

  “Myself, sir?”

  For all that he had come to realize that it was for this that he had been summoned to the Additional Secretary’s residence at this unofficial hour, Ghote felt abruptly as if iron manacles had been clamped on to him. He was at a loss to know what exact services he was going to be required to undertake. But all too plainly there was some plan Mr. Mistry had in mind for him. And whatever it was, it could only mean trouble of the deepest sort.

  “Yes, Inspector,” Mr. Mistry went on, his eyes momentarily ceasing to blink and his prow chin jutting forward another quarter of an inch. “I have given the matter considerable thought, and I have arrived at what I believe is the only possible solution.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Inspector, Miss Daruwala is accustomed to conducting her insalubrious affairs in her flat. And here, in a few days’ time, my young cousin is due to go to pay her another large sum, and to plead with her once again for the final return of those documents which could do him so much harm. I have decided that this meeting must be witnessed, in secret, by a reliable police officer.”

  “But, sir, if there is no possibility of the complainant coming to court …”

  “No, no, Inspector. I have told you, that is out of the question. However, the lady, for all her nefarious activities, is by no means well versed in the law and its ramifications. She is of comparatively humble origin. I do not suppose she even went as far as to pass Junior Cambridge. So I am altogether certain that if she was to find her dealings with young Burjor had been witnessed by a police officer, and one who would resist any attempt at bribery, she would thereafter agree, were it suggested to her, to leave India forever.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ghote said.

  What Mr. Mistry had told him was probably true, he reflected. A woman without much knowledge of the law, if such a conversation as she was likely to have with this tax consultant had been overheard by a police officer, could be frightened into leaving the country altogether. But—

  But that would be blackmail. Nothing less.

  The thought, as he arrived at it, seemed to empty his mind of everything else. How had this come about? How was it that he was suddenly being asked to connive at that exact icy sin that Mr. Z. R. Mistry himself had only minutes earlier condemned so wholeheartedly? Could that be right? And yet, in a way, it did seem right. It was, after all, the means by which a blackmailer, one with no d
oubt many other victims also under her grasp, was to be defeated.

  So ought he to agree to it?

  At once he realized that there was no question of agreeing or not agreeing. Not really. He was being given orders by the Additional Secretary in the Department for Home. And, though those orders concerned “a private matter,” it was altogether clear that he was expected to obey. And if he should refuse? If here and now he stated that he could not be a party to any attempt at blackmail? Well then, at the least, he would find himself swiftly posted away out of Bombay. Into the Armed Police perhaps, or to some hundred percent backwood. There to spend the remaining years of his service.

  He suppressed the groan that rose up in him.

  “Sir,” he said, “what is it exactly that I am to do?”

  TWO

  What Mr. Z. R. Mistry said that he wanted done redoubled Ghote’s fears and doubts.

  He wanted Ghote to get keys made to Dolly Daruwala’s flat from impressions in soap which, he said, Burjor Pipewalla had obtained on the last occasion he had gone there. Then he required Ghote to enter the flat surreptitiously before the time of his cousin’s next blackmail payment, to conceal himself somewhere and at the right moment emerge and confront Dolly Daruwala.

  “But, sir …” Ghote said. “Sir, entering that flat in the manner you have mentioned is H.B. only. It would be an offense against Indian Penal Code.”

  “Yes, Inspector,” Mr. Mistry replied urbanely. “You are right. It is housebreaking, of course, technically a criminal offense. Nevertheless I am asking you to commit it.”

  “But, sir, I am a police officer. I cannot do it.”

  Mr. Mistry’s eyes behind his spectacles blinked yet faster.

  “Inspector,” he said, “you were represented to me as being an officer who could be relied upon in the situation we have in front of us.”

  “Well, yes, sir, I am happy to hear. But—but, sir, was it understood that I was to be asked to commit an offense?”

  Mr. Mistry regarded him bleakly. In the silence of the big, darkly furnished room, the slow ticking of the clock in the round ball of the world on the statue’s shoulder seemed to take on the ominous note of a bomb waiting to explode.

  “No, Inspector,” Mr. Mistry said at last, his voice chill. “Naturally, when it was a matter of such confidentiality, precise details were not mentioned. However, what I understood from my sources was that you were—how shall I put it?—an officer who would not make trouble, who was not in a position to make trouble.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ghote said.

  He knew now his worst fears were being justified. He had been picked to go to the Additional Secretary, that figure of power, on this “private matter” not because of any special talents or qualities he might have. He had been selected because someone had judged him to be in too weak a position to object to whatever he might be asked to do.

  And their judgment was right. How on earth could he resist this pressure? To do so would be to ensure he got that posting to the depths of the mofussil, where there would be no school for his son to go to now that he was past simple reading, writing, and arithmetic, where his wife would languish, away from the life of the big city she was used to. There, too, he himself would be on a minimal pay scale, only to be enhanced by accepting such bribes as were going. And that he would not do. And, perhaps worst of all, he would no longer be a member of Crime Branch, an officer dedicated to the uncovering of serious wrongdoing, the task he had believed from his earliest days was his dharma in this life. Instead he would be little more than a mere administrator. At best the putter-down of occasional riots, at worst only someone who, against all odds, would strive to maintain good order and discipline in some forgotten police thana.

  “So I can take it, Inspector, that you will not, in fact, make trouble?”

  “No, sir. No, I will not.”

  Well, he thought, now I have succumbed to some blackmail myself. Or if it is not blackmail to one hundred percent, it is something not far off from it. I have been made to do what in the inmost middle of my heart I know I should not do, and I have been made to do it by a threat.

  And the fact that it is in one good cause does not at all make it easier to bear.

  He arrived home some half an hour later, leaden-hearted. But as he tapped on the door to have it unbolted, he heard a joyous shout from inside. It was Ved. “Dada is back. Dada is back.” Big though the boy is now, he thought, he is still at heart a child only. Pleased to see his father. Delighted with simple pleasures.

  The bolt was scraped back, the door flung open.

  “Dada, Dada. Where have you been? I have something to ask. Important-important.”

  Ghote felt the weight of his gloom lifting.

  He smiled.

  “Well, what is this that is so important? Some problem with homeworks, no?”

  “No, no, Dada. Homeworks are not at all a headache. You are knowing I am standing first in almost every subject. No, this is much, much more vital.”

  “Vital? All right then, tell me.”

  “Sit, sit, Dadaji. You must be paying full attention.”

  Ghote sank into his chair and kicked off his shoes, already feeling that life was not quite so terrible as it had seemed while he was riding his motor scooter home.

  “Well, I am listening.”

  “Dada, what I am wanting most of all in the world is home computer.”

  “Home computer?”

  Ghote experienced a sense of swirling bewilderment. Was this the boy who, not months before it seemed, had been able just only to master the multiplication table? And now he was saying he wanted a computer? How could he know how to work such a thing? It was something far beyond his own capacities. And how could he even think of getting something that no doubt was appallingly costly?

  That last question was soon answered.

  “Listen, Dadaji, they are selling home computers, smuggled, on the footpath at Flora Fountain. But you know what Aii is always saying about she is hating smuggling, and she has forbidden me to go there, although I have saved and saved enough of money. Nearly.”

  Ghote sat up straighter.

  “Well, if your mother has forbidden,” he said, “then that is end of matter.”

  He felt relieved. Somehow he did not relish having a son who owned that mysterious, modern-age thing, a computer. And now, thanks to Protima’s prejudice against smuggled goods, which after all was a sensible and proper attitude, there would be no question of this plunge into the twenty-first century taking place within his own home.

  Ved was looking furious, misty-eyed almost with tears. But he would get over it.

  “But, Dadaji, you must tell Aii that-all is nonsense only. Or, better-better, you must tell her the home computer I will get is not at all smuggled.”

  “Well, beta, that is out of question. I do not know for how little they are selling such things at Flora Fountain, but certainly in any pukka shop they will be costing altogether more.”

  “Yes, yes. That I am knowing. But what it is you must do is pretend smuggled home computer is properly imported one.”

  “Oh, yes?” Ghote could not restrain a smile at the wild suggestion. “And why should I do a thing like that? Deceiving my own wife, isn’t it?”

  Ved, kneeling in boyish supplication in front of him, took on a sudden look of intransigent determination.

  “Because,” he said, his voice low and urgent, “if you are not helping, then I would tell Aii that our TV, which you were letting her believe had been bought properly from Vision Radio and Computer Service, when it was Vision Radio Service only, was also one smuggled article.”

  Ghote felt a sharp sinking of dismay. It was true that when he had at last agreed to the acquiring of a television set, he had, when one of his fellow officers had told him he could get a smuggled item at less than half price, succumbed to temptation. And, worse, one day he had jokingly boasted to young Ved about the little piece of deception.

  Then a swirl of outrage
rose up in him.

  “My son,” he said, directing to Ved all the ferocity he was capable of, “never let me hear you try to obtain something in that manner ever again. You know what they are calling it? They are calling it blackmail. Blackmail. That is the iciest sin. The iciest sin. And there is one only way to deal with same. It is what one damn fine Englishman, Duke Wellington by name, was saying to a lady when she was threatening to write in some book his naughty doings. He was saying, ‘Madam, publish and be damned.’ And that is what anyone who is asked to cow down to blackmail must be saying also.”

  His ferocity had the desired effect. Young Ved’s face at his knee went pale.

  “Yes, Dadaji,” he said, and, scrambling up, he raced out of the room.

  And Ghote sat there thinking that not an hour earlier he had altogether failed to say to Mr. Additional Secretary Mistry “Publish and be damned.”

  Standing in his uniform outside the towering white block of Marzban Apartments, waiting till the chowkidar guarding the entrance should be distracted long enough for him to get past unobserved, Ghote felt burning in his pocket the set of false keys he now possessed to Dolly Daruwala’s penthouse flat.

  At length one of the residents emerged with his wife from the lift inside, and the chowkidar hurried over to where their driver had brought their car and opened its door. Ghote left the patch of deep shadow in which he had been lurking and slipped into the building. He took the stairs rather than the lift, anxious at all costs to avoid being seen.

  But it was a long, long climb.

  And, when he neared that twentieth-floor flat at last, he thought, would his keys turn out to be the right ones? He had been doubtful from the very moment when Burjor Pipewalla in the somber surroundings of the library at the Parsi Ripon Club had handed him the piece of soap into which he claimed he had pressed both the flat’s door keys.