Читать книгу The Sheriff of Bombay - H. R. F Keating - Страница 7

From the very beginning Inspector Ghote had no doubt about the identity of the killer. His anxieties and embarrassment arose only from the thought of making the arrest and the outcry it was bound to bring.

And the worst of it, he thought when he looked back from the height of his troubles, was that he had been sitting at his desk before it had all started worrying that of the full number of major crimes recently committed among the seven million inhabitants of Greater Bombay not one had been allocated by the Assistant Commissioner, Crime Branch, to himself.

Did the A.C.P. believe he could not cope up with a difficult investigation? Was that why he had been landed with this unending and unsatisfactory business of the chain-snatching case at City Light Cinema? Dammit, it was a matter for the men out at Matunga only. If the victim, lured to a dark corner by the promise of a black-market ticket when the ‘House Full’ boards were up, had not been the son of a Major-General in the Army the theft of his neck chain, even though it was platinum and worth Rupees 6,000, would never have come to CID Headquarters at all.

And he himself would never have been faced with hours of troublesome investigation, just as prolonged, just as detailed, as if it was a first-class murder affair, and with little chance, as everyone knew, of final success. A gang of chain-snatchers, once they had got hold of a prize like that, would make off fast and lie low, perhaps in their native place hundreds of miles out of Bombay. But despite this, because the victim was the son of a man with a high position in society — why, the matter might go up to the Legislative Assembly even — every possible witness had to be hunted out and questioned.

Arre, it was almost more work even than a murder case.

He had actually been about to hoist himself up from his chair and go off again to Matunga and that little lane behind the City Light Cinema to try once more to dig out a decent witness when his telephone had rung.

‘Ghote.’

‘A.C.P. here. Come up, Ghote. I’ve got something for you. Something I’d take on myself only I’m tied to this bloody desk all day.’

‘Yes, A.C.P. Sahib. Straightaway, A.C.P. Sahib.’

Something so important that the A.C.P. would like to be handling it himself? What could it be? A major inquiry. Definitely a major inquiry. Perhaps he had all along been being kept in reserve for a major inquiry.

He leapt to his feet, gave one swift glance to the small square of mirror that hung on the far wall of his cabin, brushed a somewhat sweaty hand over his hair, pulled his shirt a little straighter and left almost at a trot.

Only at once to encounter Inspector D’Sa.

Grizzled, long-serving Inspector D’Sa, one of the last of the breed of Anglo-Indian and Indian Catholic officers who long ago at the time of the British Raj as well as in the years afterwards had been the backbone of the Bombay force. Inspector D’Sa, on the verge of retirement, stuffed deep and spilling over with memories of days gone past and liking nothing better than to pour them out over anyone he could manoeuvre into listening. Inspector D’Sa, his own particular bugbear.

‘Ah, it is you, young Ghote.’

‘Yes, yes, D’Sa Sahib. But I am very much in a hurry. A.C.P. Sahib —’

‘You remember I was telling you only yesterday, man, about how things used to be in Bombay? About how high moral standards were, even among the natives. Begging your pardon, young Ghote.’

‘That is quite all right, D’Sa Sahib. I am very much allowing for the way you were taught in your community in the old days. But, please, I must —’

‘I won’t keep you a minute, man. My God, have you youngsters got no politeness nowadays?’

‘But — But a very important task is —’

‘I just want to show you one thing, Ghote. Something that proves my point right up to the hilt.’

‘Well, yes. Then what is it only?’

‘Look, man. Look at this.’

From the top pocket of his plain-colour bush shirt D’Sa took a small flat object. He held it out in the palm of his hand.

Ghote looked down. It was a picture, a tiny, crudely coloured picture of a woman, a Western woman it looked like, dressed in a short red skirt and a bright blue blouse.

‘Well,’ he said, after a while, ‘I am not seeing anything altogether proving what you are saying about old-days morals, D’Sa Sahib. A picture of a girl only. And now I must —’

‘No, look. Look, man, look.’

D’Sa twisted his upraised palm to and fro.

‘Now do you see?’ he asked.

Ghote saw.

The picture was evidently one of those trick ones covered with clear plastic strips in such a way that you saw one thing looking from one angle, something different looking from another. In this case the slight shifting in D’Sa’s palm had simply stripped the girl of all her clothes.

‘Well, yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose such a picture would not have been seen in Bombay when you first came into the service, Inspector.’

‘No, it would not. And where do you think I got hold of this, man?’

‘I am having no idea whatsoever. But, D’Sa Sahib, the A.C.P. himself —’

‘A boy was selling them, Inspector, selling such displays of flesh and obscenity on the footpath in Hornby Road, not one hundred yards from this headquarters.’

Ghote experienced a momentary impulse to point out to Inspector D’Sa that the name of the street had long ago been changed to Dadabhai Naoroji Road and that nowadays almost everybody called it D.N. Road, and to add as well that measures in yards had been officially replaced by metres many years ago. But he knew that to do so would only get him embroiled in yet other arguments.

‘Well,’ he said instead, ‘that is not really so terrible, Inspector. In Hutatma Chowk they are selling on the footpath sex-casettes, from England also. And, so they tell, in them you are made to hear all the sounds of intercourse taking place.’

‘The vendors should be whipped, Inspector,’ D’Sa broke out. ‘Whipped in the open maidan.’

He gave a sharp, reminiscent laugh.

‘At least my toe connected with the backside of that boy in Hornby Road,’ he said. ‘And sent every one of his filthy pictures into the roadway except the specimen I kept to show you, man.’

Ghote thought of the boy’s little stock of merchandise brought to sudden ruin. But again he checked a comment.

‘Yes, yes, but I must be going to the A.C.P.,’ he said, turning away.

‘Quite right, Inspector. Never keep a superior officer waiting. That’s the way I was brought up in the days when the police service was the police service.’

But Ghote was already at the entrance to the winding stone stairway leading up to the veranda outside the A.C.P.’s office.

Just as he was about to step into its coolness he heard D’Sa call out again.

‘Oh, Ghote. One thing more. The Police Vegetable and Flower Show, I would want some help —’

He poked his head back into the sun.

‘Sorry, Inspector,’ he called. ‘Too much of work-load now.’

Let old D’Sa organize the Vegetable and Flower Show on his own. That was about all he was fit for these days.

He took the winding stone stairs at a run, hurried along to the A.C.P.’s door, paused one instant to draw breath, looked in through the glass panel in the door, saw that the A.C.P. was unoccupied, knocked once and went in.

‘Ah, Ghote. Good man.’

Ghote clicked his heels to attention in front of the A.C.P.’s wide semi-circular desk.

What was the task he was about to be assigned? The task that the A.C.P. himself would have liked to have taken up?

‘The swashbuckler, Inspector. That mean anything to you?’

The swashbuckler. The swashbuckler. Had he misheard? What could the A.C.P. be talking about? The only Swashbuckler he had ever known of, and that had been long ago in his teenage days, had been a British film star, called then by all his friends, who did not fail to see each and every one of his pictures, invariably the Svashbuckler. But Swashbuckler or Svashbuckler, the A.C.P. could not possibly be referring to that figure of old.

‘A film star, Inspector. British film star. I should have thought you’d have at least heard of him. I’d have hoped you’d have had the guts to bunk the class in those days and go and see his films.’

‘Yes, sir. Film star, sir. The Svashbuckler, sir.’

He had had the guts, once or twice, when he should have been in class to pass through the classic-arch entrance of the old Edward Cinema and sit, feet tucked comfortably under him, watching hypnotized the Svashbuckler’s daring feats until the moment came when, with the tension suddenly released, he in common with almost all the young audience felt impelled to jump up on his seat and cheer. But he could hardly claim still to have those guts.

‘The fellow’s here, Ghote.’

‘Here, sir?’

He actually took a quick look round the A.C.P.’s big, airy office to see if this mythical figure was somewhere in the room, concealed perhaps behind the screen that hid the cot on which in times of emergency the A.C.P. slept? Or sitting quietly, unnoticed till now, in the shadow of the big standing fan underneath the huge wall map of Bombay and its police districts?

‘Not here, Inspector. Not in this room. In the city. Here in the city. Camping at the Oberoi-Sheraton.’

‘Yes, sir. Of course, A.C.P. Sahib. At the Oberoi-Sheraton Hotel.’

Of course a big star, a real hero, like that would be at the Oberoi. Or shouldn’t he rather be at the Taj? Wasn’t a hotel like the Taj Mahal, built in the British days, somehow more in keeping? But no doubt he had chosen the newer, more modern, more American place for some good reason.

‘We’ve been asked by the Minister of State for Home to show him round Bombay, Inspector. Before he goes off for shikar somewhere.’

‘Oh yes, sir.’

Going off to shoot game was much more the idea of the man he had in his mind. Once it would have been tiger. Hadn’t he gone after a wounded tiger single-handed in one of his films? But those days were long gone. The tiger was a protected national asset now. Yet no wonder the A.C.P. wanted to take on this duty himself. Such a famous star. To show him all the best of Bombay. It was hardly a first-class murder inquiry, but it was an honour all the same.

‘Chap wants to see the Cages, Inspector.’

The Cages. The notorious brothels that were at once Bombay’s boast and its shame. Of course, they were a tourist attraction. Guidewallas who got hold of innocent visitors always made a point of taking them there. But all the same. For the Svashbuckler to be taken to see them. For such a hero. Such a White Man. Such a god. It was not at all the right thing.

‘But, sir — But, A.C.P. Sahib —’

‘Yes? Yes, what is it?’

‘Well, sir, are the Cages only a proper place for such a gentleman to be seeing?’

‘Good God, Ghote, are you embarrassed to do it? What is there to be embarrassed? I myself — Well, as I was telling, I am one hundred per cent desk-bound. But the fellow wants to see the Cages, and see them he will.’

‘Very good, sir. I would do it to my level best.’

‘I should hope so. Simple enough duty. And if you don’t know your way round in Kamatipura the fellows in Vigilance Branch tell me there’s a Dr Framrose with a dispensary in Falkland Road. He looks after the girls there, and is always ready to be helpful. Get him to take you to the best place.’

The A.C.P. gave a quick frown and a twitch of his moustache.

‘That is to say the most decent place, Ghote. The most decent place.’

‘Yes, sir. Yes, A.C.P. Sahib.’

Inspector Ghote beat a hasty retreat.

But the embarrassment he felt was as nothing to what he was to feel, dizzily dismaying, before his visit to the Cages with the Svashbuckler, that star of old, was over.