Under a Monsoon Cloud: an Inspector Ghote Mystery Read online

  ‘Right,’ he snapped. ‘Which way do we go with him?’

  ‘By the back entrance,’ Ghote said. ‘It looks on to the police lines of course, but after such a beehive activity as you have been making today, sir, no one would be in any way awake.’

  Tiger smiled then. A short grim smile, but a smile.

  ‘Right. Make sure the coast outside here’s clear and we’ll have a bloody good try.’

  Ghote walked round the lifeless thing between himself and the door and stepped out. The peon’s bench immediately opposite was still unoccupied. Plainly poor Shinde had had to go far in the sheeting rain to find that cigarette Desai had so high-handedly sent him to buy. Or perhaps like a sensible fellow he had taken shelter.

  He went quietly along to the entrance hall. There was not a sound nor a sign of anyone having unexpectedly come in.

  So all seemed to be well.

  He turned back to tell Tiger.

  And as he reached the office door the full enormity of what he was doing came upon him. Desai was dead. He who had been living, a living, breathing fool, was now no more. Lifeless flesh. But that flesh had been a man, a man born of woman. With a wife. But, no. No, he remembered, Desai mercifully had managed to remain unmarried. But he might well have a mother still alive. A mother deprived in one instant of her son, and perhaps a father now with no one to perform his funeral rites. And that son, that man, had been unlawfully killed. And he, an officer of police, was busy condoning the killing.

  Caught up as he had been in the sudden opening out of his plan, he had let it run on and on. Seeing suddenly a way he could render his admired superior the greatest possible assistance in his hour of greatest need, he had without thought put forward addition after addition to his first idea. And now there seemed to be no going back. Tiger had seized on the plan the way a hungry dog might snatch a haunch of juicy meat and run off, and there was no stopping him any more.

  He felt sick.

  For a moment he held on to the post of the door. A thick and greasy sweat broke out down his spine and over his shoulders and neck.

  But there could indeed be no going back. He had put his plan to Tiger and he was being carried along now like a floating piece of stick in a rain-filled nullah, swirled and jerked and tossed onwards and onwards.

  And one half of him did not want to go back. His plan might yet save Tiger, and Tiger was worth saving. He was worth saving if anyone in the whole police service was worth saving. He had years in front of him yet, years in which, with his vigour and his scorching anger, he would drive the service into ever better achievements. Tiger was a good man. An example. And it had been given to himself to erase the one terrible moment of fury and its single unforeseeable consequence that otherwise would end Tiger’s career for ever.

  He drew in a breath, harsh and sucking, opened the door and slipped back in.

  ‘All clear, sir,’ he said.

  In the time he had been out of the room, hardly more than two minutes, it was plain that Tiger had regained much of his old spirit. His shoulders were straight again, the look of unflagging determination was back on his blade-sharp face. He had even thought to pass a hand over his hair.

  ‘Right,’ he said, ‘I’ve mopped up those spots of blood and ink on the floor, so we can go right away. You take the shoulders. I’ll take the legs. Jump to it, man.’

  Ghote had hesitated, a wave of his appalled feelings briefly returning at Tiger’s unsparing references to the body on the floor. But the very decisiveness of the last words banished all doubts.

  He stooped, slipped his hands under Desai’s inert back and up through the armpits. Tiger at the same time grasped the legs beneath the knees.

  ‘Right. Up.’

  Ghote heaved. The weight of the body was somehow much more than he had expected. He blew out a snort of air from puffed cheeks. His whole chest strained and expanded. There came a tiny ripping sound and he knew that one of the buttons on his over-tight best uniform had popped.

  He heard it tinkle and roll as it struck the floor.

  ‘Right,’ Tiger barked.

  Moving awkwardly backwards, Ghote steered their heavy burden through the door and began staggering along the passage outside, dank and echoing in the silence of the deserted building.

  They arrived at the rear door and Ghote, managing to keep the body off the floor with one arm and his hip, got it open and peered out into the darkness.

  There was nothing there but the unending sploshing of the rain and, accompanying it, the incessant tweet-tweet-tweet of cicadas everywhere, like so many ever-ringing tiny telephones.

  ‘Nobody to be seen, sir,’ he grunted, turning his head back towards Tiger.

  They lurched out into the warm downpour. The ground was already puddled and slidy. Ghote had taken only some six or seven steps when his right foot slipped under him and the heavy body, already streaming with rainwater, almost escaped his grasp. He came to a halt.

  ‘Get on, man, get on,’ Tiger snapped.

  Grimly, sweating at every pore, Ghote resumed his backwards march. The rain beat down on his head and soon there was not a dry inch of clothing on him.

  He found himself, as step by step he went along, recalling bitterly the start of the monsoon in his childhood days when the coming of the rain had seemed sudden sheer bliss. Then they had all rushed out into it, rejoicing in the coolness sluicing down on them and in the fragrant odours rising up almost at once from the parched earth. The smallest children, often entirely naked, would fling themselves flat in the rapidly forming puddles and kick up their little legs in delight, and even the staidest of the elders would run out, lift arms high to the streaming water and shout with the best ‘Ho, ho, ho, ho.’ In those days, too, he had even believed the unending telephone-shrill noise of the cicadas was the sound coming from the high-above diamond-twinkling stars.

  How different it all was now.

  They staggered on. Desai’s body seemed to get heavier with every awkward back-pacing step.

  How far was it to the lake? In that first dazzling moment of hope he had told Tiger it was not all that distant. He had felt then it was not. But it was. It must be at least half a mile.

  ‘Sir,’ he forced out, between gasps for breath, ‘I do not think we can do this. It is still a long, long way.’

  ‘Nonsense, man,’ Tiger responded at once. ‘The job’s got to be done, and we’re the only ones to do it.’

  There was anger fizzing in every syllable.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Ghote said.

  For a little he contrived to move onwards, even going at a slightly better pace. But the weight of the body tugging at his hands and the ever-increasing wetness of Desai’s cotton uniform was making the burden slip nearer and nearer the slimy, puddle-pocked ground.

  At last Tiger must have seen what was happening.

  ‘Stop, man, and put him down,’ he snapped. ‘Take a better grip. Put some guts into it.’

  Ghote let Desai’s bulk slide the last few inches to the ground and straightened his already aching back.

  But Tiger’s taunt had not discouraged him. Instead it had made him think. Hard.

  ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I believe we must take some transportation.’

  ‘Trans – ’

  Crackling fury was in the half-uttered word.

  But, before Tiger could let forth the yet more ferocious firing that was plainly on the way, Ghote’s whirring brain produced a concrete suggestion.

  ‘Sir, we have just only passed the bicycle stable. Sir, we could take a bicycle and use that.’

  A tiny pause in the rain-splattering darkness.

  ‘Good man. Good. Is the place locked?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Regulations, A.D.I.G. Sahib. But I can be getting the key in one jiffy.’

  ‘Then what are you waiting for? At the double, man. At the double.’

  Ghote pelted off, slithering and sliding, back to the station, went in and ran along to the key-board, seized the bicycle stable key from its labe
lled hook – he had seen to it in his first week that all the labels were renewed and each key put in its proper place – and hurried back.

  Ahead on the stone floor of the passage he saw the wet marks his feet had made coming in. For a moment a fear entered his mind that somehow they would betray what was happening. But he dismissed the thought at once. Long before anyone, except perhaps the faithful Shinde, came this way any marks would have dried into nothingness.

  He ran out into the rain again, made his way to the stable, heaved a heavy regulation bicycle from its stand and pushed it hurriedly along to where Tiger was waiting.

  ‘Good man.’

  Together they hoisted Desai’s awkward bulk up on to the machine and got it more or less into place, the stomach drooping down on either side of the saddle, the top of the chest across the handlebars, one arm dangling at each side.

  It was not an easy matter to get moving. But after a trial or two they managed to hit on a system that enabled them to make reasonable progress. Ghote went first, one hand behind him grasping the bicycle’s handlebar at its centre underneath Desai’s throat. Spreading his fingers as wide as he could, he was able, just, to keep the front wheel of the machine straight. Tiger at the rear provided the motive power.

  But it was still a long way to the lake, and part of the journey of necessity would take them through the outskirts of the town.

  4

  At least after they had struggled along on their miserable, muscle-straining journey for some ten minutes more the rain began to slacken. Aware that he was now able to see further ahead, Ghote looked upwards and found that the unbroken cloud had thinned and a full moon, orangey and dim, was just visible.

  But they had reached the part of the town which they could not avoid going through, a scatter of large houses with views over the lake a quarter of a mile or so away.

  And almost at once there came from in front of one of the first of the houses a shrill whistle-blast from the chowkidar on guard there. The long, plaintive note was answered by another from the next watchman where the houseowner had invested in such a precaution. And then, one by one, half a dozen others took up the signal, more and more faintly each time, and back in answer eventually came the rattle of bamboo lathis on the ironwork of gates.

  Ghote shivered with dismay. He had thought that on such a night the chowkidars would be huddled away out of the wet, out of sight and in all probability safely dozing. But evidently the slackening-off in the rain had roused the first of them and now he had woken all the others along the road ahead.

  Tiger, at the first sound, had ceased to push their cumbersome burden. Ghote stood now looking almost desperately from side to side.

  And at last he saw what he hoped he might find.

  ‘Sir,’ he whispered, ‘there is a back-lane just there. I think we must be taking it. It would be longer but safer also.’

  ‘Lead on, Inspector. This is your territory.’

  Ghote felt then a glimmer of pride. Yes, this was his territory, short though the time had been since he had acquired it. But at least he knew enough about it to be able to help Tiger, his hero.

  ‘Push, please,’ he whispered.

  Moving yet more awkwardly they succeeded in turning the heavy bicycle and its yet heavier burden and making their way into the entrance to the lane. The ground under their feet now was even more slippery than it had been when they were on the road, and their progress, squelching and sliding, became yet slower, especially as the high walls of the compounds on either side made it almost impossible to see where they were going.

  Head down, grunting with effort, Ghote plunged on.

  Then at last he was able to make out, scarcely lighter than the walls to either side, the sky ahead where the lane came to an end and, a couple of hundred yards further on, lay the lake.

  He plunged his head down once more and forced his legs to stride out.

  The droning buzz of some heavy flying insect, brought into activity by the wetness, sounded out in the still air.

  And, a couple of minutes later, the faintly glimmering black water of the lake was in front of them, its surface now hardly disturbed by the rain which had become little more than a drizzle.

  ‘Good man,’ said Tiger Kelkar once more.

  And once more Ghote felt a warm surge of pride. Yes, he was helping Tiger. He had already helped him more than a little. And if what it was that he had to do in order to save him entirely was a desecration which he would never have believed himself capable of, well, the cause was as good as it could be. Should they manage to complete this business as well as they had begun it, Tiger tomorrow and for the rest of his career would be the dynamic, fierily fuelled police officer that the force needed, that the whole of society needed.

  ‘Right,’ came Tiger’s voice in the dark, sharper now that they were clear of the houses, ‘we’ll have to get it out into decently deep water.’

  For a moment then Ghote’s revulsion came flooding back. It. It. That was what had become of Desai, boasting idiot though he had been. It. That son of a mother. That man.

  ‘Wake yourself up,’ Tiger snapped. ‘Is there anywhere nearby where the water is deep at the lake’s edge?’

  With a jerk Ghote brought himself back to the present.

  ‘No, sir, no,’ he answered. ‘I am not thinking there is. Naturally I have not had time in my stay here for many saunterings by the side of these waters, but from what I have seen all the banks slope as gently as here.’

  He looked down at his feet. It was possible, just, to make out in the diffused moonlight that this was a spot which people visited in some numbers, either to bathe or to wash clothes. The hollows their feet had made long before in the mud had not been entirely obliterated by the beating rain of one night.

  ‘Well, man, are there no boats? Look alive. Scout along the shore and see what you can find.’

  Impelled by the force behind the order, Ghote set off, slipping and sliding in the dark.

  Oh God, he thought, what if I should tread on a snake? They always come out when the monsoon starts. If I get bitten, that will put an end to the whole thing. And it will look worse if they see Tiger was trying to cover up what he had done.

  But almost at once he glimpsed, looming out of the moon-diffused darkness, the shape of a fisherman’s boat.

  He hurried forward. The craft had been pulled up on to the bank and secured by a rope tied to a tree root. There were, of course, no oars. But he thought that between them they ought to be able to propel the vessel far enough out for Tiger’s purposes.

  With chilled, almost useless fingers he tackled the knot in the sodden rope.

  When he got back to where he had left Tiger, dragging the boat after him through the water without actually having to walk in it himself, he came to an appalled halt. Tiger was kneeling beside the recumbent mass of Desai’s body and with something heavy in his right hand was delivering blow after blow to the head.

  For a moment Ghote thought that, under the strain of events, Tiger had actually gone mad, that the anger which had always fuelled him had burst uncontrollably out. But almost at once he realized what it was that he was doing, and Tiger’s words as soon as he stepped forward confirmed his guess.

  ‘Right, I’ve just pretty well disguised the wound by giving it a few good biffs. But we’ve got to do a bit more than that.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘If we’re going to make it look at all as if the chap drowned, we’re going to have to get some water into him somehow. You remember the Police Manual. First thing to check in a case of suspected drowning, water in the lungs and internal cavities.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I am well remembering.’

  ‘Good. Well, what we’ll have to use, I think, is the pump from the bicycle. It’s by no means ideal. But if we can provide some sort of evidence it will have to do. With any luck the body will be pretty well decomposed before it’s discovered.’

  Ghote swallowed. And it was thanks to him, he thought, that the bicycl
e he had taken had got a pump on it. When he had inspected the bicycle stable during his first days at the station he had seen that hardly any of the machines were properly equipped and he had issued an order that all deficiencies were to be made good.

  He took the pump from its clips, went down to the water’s edge and filled it.

  ‘Good,’ said Tiger. ‘Now I’ll work the arms to expand the lungs and you can squirt in. At least that’ll get some water in somewhere.’

  The business – Ghote had to refill the pump five or six times – took a full quarter of an hour and was appallingly miserable to carry out. Flies by the hundred had scented out the dead flesh, or perhaps just the living sweat, and they buzzed and whined round, settling time and again on perspiration-soaked forehead and neck, on face and lips. Even when Tiger was at last satisfied that the maximum effect had been achieved he still found more to do.

  ‘Got to get the fellow stripped. He wouldn’t go swimming, even in this weather, in uniform.’

  So, heaving and tugging, they pulled the clothes off the big body until they were down to the undershorts. Then they lifted it up once more, yet harder to handle now that it was naked and slippery, and carried it down to the fisherman’s boat. At last they were able to push the frail craft out and scramble in, one at each end. Their combined weight brought the lake water to within two or three inches of the sides. But Tiger was undismayed.

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Paddle.’

  With no more motive power than their cupped hands they set off. It was very still. The rain had now ceased altogether, although thin cloud covered the sky. Slowly the shoreline disappeared, and it became impossible to tell how fast or how slowly they were progressing.

  Somewhere in the distance a jackal barked, harshly, once.

  Ghote, momentarily mistaking the sound for an angry exclamation from Tiger behind him, redoubled his rate of paddling.

  ‘Steady, you fool,’ Tiger snapped.