Читать книгу The Sheriff of Bombay - H. R. F Keating - Страница 8

Embarrassments and complications seemed to pile up from the very start of Inspector Ghote’s tour of Bombay’s most notorious area as guide to Douglas Kerr, known to countless former small boys the world over as the Swashbuckler — and to former small boys in India as the Svashbuckler. Yet all were to pale into ridiculous insignificance before what came as the climax to the evening.

First there was the fact that in the Oberoi-Sheraton lobby, under its great lines of hugely elaborate twelve-foot-tall chandeliers, Ghote entirely failed to recognize the famous film star, his teenage idol. The Britisher who stepped out of one of the smoothly whirring lifts and stood looking round him among the lengthy rows of aligned black leather sofas had longish grey hair in place of the dazzlingly fair short-back-and-sides that had singled out the Svashbuckler in his days of glory. His sagging, heavily flushed cheeks and thickened neck were related only remotely to the clean-cut good looks that had been the model and envy of all those boys of — was it? — twenty years before. And the nose, though straight and Greek god-like as ever, was red. Even purple.

At last, however, Ghote had been driven to realize that the semi-wreck standing there looking about him must be his once-upon-a-time hero and had successfully introduced himself and led his charge out to the police vehicle and its patiently waiting driver. But conversation as they made their way through the still thick late-evening traffic towards the Kamatipura area was mined with unexpected difficulties.

‘Is it you are pleased to be back once more in India, Mr Douglas Kerr?’

‘Prefer to be called Carr, if you don’t mind, old boy.’

‘But, please, your name is being spelt K-E-R-R, isn’t it?’

‘Pronounced Carr. Surprised you don’t know that, if you’re as much of a fan of my work as you said you were.’

‘Oh yes, indeed, Mr Douglas Ker- Mr Carr. I was always a very, very great admirer of your many feats.’

‘Only two, old boy.’

‘Only two feats? But I am thinking —’

‘Feet. Feet, old boy. Things you have on the end of your legs, don’t you know.’

In a moment, or a little longer, Ghote had got the joke. He laughed.

‘Oh, jolly good.’

A silence fell. Their driver honked viciously on the car’s horn and squeezed up beside a long red double-decker bus and trailer. As they drew level a blast of searing fumes from its diesel exhaust came through the open window beside the Svashbuckler.

He flung himself half over Ghote on the rear seat beside him.

‘Christ, what was that?’

‘It is some exhaust fumes only. But, you see, if we are putting up the glasses next to us it would become altogether too hot inside.’

The Svashbuckler resumed his upright, though slumped, position.

‘I knew India wouldn’t be exactly cool,’ he muttered. ‘But they told me this was the best time of year.’

‘Well, so it is, Mr Douglas — Mr Douglas Carr. November is the finest month in Bombay. But surely you must be remembering that?’

‘Remembering? Why should I, old boy?’

‘From your films. There were three of them picturized in India I am recalling, The Svashbuckler Meets the Evil Kali, The Svashbuckler’s Jungle Adventure and The Svashbuckler Meets the Evil Kali Again.’

‘Made in England, old boy. You don’t think we’d come all the way out here just to shoot a few location sequences, do you?’

‘But the tiger? When you went after the wounded tiger, single-handed only?’

‘Few pots of plants in the old Denham studios, so far as I remember. Plus a bit of stock of some snarling brute or other. Magic of the movies, old son.’

‘Yes. Yes, I am seeing.’

Ghote leant forward and rasped into the driver’s ear.

‘For God’s sake, get a move on. Do you think we are in a funeral procession only?’

But complications were not over for him even when they reached Falkland Road and abandoned the car to make their way on foot through the thickly drifting crowds of prospective customers eyeing the girls who lounged against door-posts or, garishly dressed and thickly made-up, were looking out of the thin blue-painted protecting bars of the full-length, street-level windows, origin of the much-vaunted name of Cages. As they pushed past the gawpers and the vendors of food, balloons, pictures of the gods and a score of other things, suddenly above the tumult of the calls of the rowdier would-be customers and the insults flung back from the balconies of the battered wooden, slogan-daubed, advertisement-pocked old houses, above the blare of filmi music from the narrow little restaurants, above the squeaking of the vendors’ bleating balloons, there came a shriller screaming cutting its way above everything. It drew Ghote’s attention, and the Svashbuckler’s.

There, outside one of the houses, was a Western woman of some considerable age, her short stringy body nondescriptly clothed in a cotton blouse and bleached-looking flowered skirt. She was holding open in front of her a large reporter’s notebook, and from the balcony above, accompanied by that extra loud shriek of abuse, one of the girls had flung at her a bucket of water. Of water, or worse.

Ghote looked round, hoping that a patrolling constable might be there to sort out the trouble. There was not one anywhere in sight. He decided it was his duty to go to the rescue, little guessing that this chance encounter and the advice he was about to give would lead before very many days had passed almost directly to sudden death.

‘Ek moment, please,’ he said to the Svashbuckler. ‘I must just find out what that Western lady is doing in this locality. She appears to be altogether in a soup.’

‘But — But, I say, old man, is it — Well, isn’t it asking for trouble? I mean, those girls up there look pretty rough customers.’

‘Nevertheless,’ Ghote said, ‘the lady is a visitor to India only, and a lady also.’

He had hardly time to reflect that the Svashbuckler’s attitude was scarcely that of the man he had watched, long ago, entering bars in tough New Orleans, in wicked Surinam, in frozen Alaska to mop up whole roomfuls of sailors insulting his heroines before he had pushed his way through the bystanders and reached the lady with the notebook and, he saw, a well-soaked skirt.

‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I am a police officer and you are seeming to be in grave troubles. May I ask what it is you are doing here? This is a very, very notorious area.’

‘I should hope it is,’ the girl’s victim replied in a strongly accented American voice. ‘That’s what I’m here for.’

‘But, madam,’ Ghote said. ‘Madam, the only class of women in this locality are — They are gay girls only, madam.’

‘Gay girls? Gay girls? Boy, I’ve heard whores called by any number of substitute terms since I landed in this country: “magdalenes” and “members of the ignoble profession” and “crossers of the moral barrier” and “women of doubtful character”. But that I do believe is the worst yet.’

From behind his shoulder Ghote heard the Svashbuckler break out into a great bray of laughter.

‘Nevertheless, madam,’ he said, determinedly addressing the lady with the notebook, ‘it remains true that this is an area devoted to prostitution only. It is not at all proper that you should be here.’

She gave a sprightly look round about.

‘Seems to me there are plenty of people here just to rubberneck,’ she said. ‘Just because all of them are males, doesn’t seem any good reason why I shouldn’t come too. Specially as I’m here for strictly scientific reasons.’

‘For scientific reasons, madam?’

Again Ghote heard a bellow of laughter from the aging British film star.

‘I am a sociologist, I’d have you know, Officer. Dr Dorothy Ringelnatz, North Adams State. And I’m in Bombay to make a study of behavioural attitudes among Third World prostitutes. Tonight I was carrying out a little preliminary field-work — only the subjects seemed to object.’

She looked down at her bleached old skirt, patched with a large area of wetness. Ghote confirmed through his sense of smell that what had been flung at this extraordinary visitor was not water.

‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I would most strongly advise for you to secure the company of some Indian sociologist if you are wanting to make further visits to this area. But now, please, let me find for you a taxi. In what posh hotel are you staying, please?’

‘Well, I guess you’re right, Officer. I can’t say I’ve made much effective contact here tonight.’

Dr Ringelnatz closed her notebook with a definitive snap.

Ghote, to his great relief, spotted the yellow roof of a taxi halted to set down a pair of prospecting customers not far along the street. He shouted and waved and managed to catch the driver’s attention.

‘Well,’ came the Svashbuckler’s loud tones as at last the cab’s door closed on the rescued American, ‘I’ll be able to dine out on that lady when I get back home, never mind the night that lies ahead.’

The night that lies ahead. Ghote’s heart sank. Was his hero of old really intending to do more than just look at the Cages and their occupants? And, if he was, what should his own attitude be? Would he actually have to stay there and wait for the girls’ notable client in case, a fairly unlikely event in fact, he was robbed? And what about the rather more likely event of him catching an infection? What could he do about that?

But perhaps this Dr Framrose whom the A.C.P. had suggested as a knowledgeable and reliable informant would be able to persuade the Svashbuckler to behave with discretion.

He set off along the crowded street in search of the doctor’s dispensary, ignoring the shouted invitations from the blue-painted barred windows and dark doorways and hoping that the Svashbuckler was proof at least against the cheap allurements of the more blatant of the girls thrusting forward half-naked bosoms or turning to flick up short skirts — like the one worn by the girl in Inspector D’Sa’s trick picture — to display cheeky behinds.

Tea-boys with their newspaper cones of snacks and glasses of milky liquid clutched in strong fingers dodged away in front of them. Squatting circles of card-playing pimps and hangers-on glanced up angrily when they chanced to brush against their backs. Slow rivers of male humanity, young and old, the bare-chested and the well-dressed, mill-hands and briefcase-clutching babus, flowing in counter-currents along the narrow thoroughfare, jostled them and swerved to either side to let them pass.

Then at last, just beyond the big Olympia Café, he spotted a painted sign on the wall proclaiming Dr Falli Framrose, Sexologist, FRSH (UK), Sex Diseases, Sex Changes. He pushed his way towards the place, a wooden house as narrow and dilapidated as any other in the street, and no cleaner. But inside light shone brightly, and it looked as if the doctor was at least there.

Could he be relied upon to issue a sufficiently stern warning about the dangers of frequenting the houses of his neighbours?

Ghote stepped up into the barely furnished front room of the narrow house, the ex-film star at his heels.

Dr Falli Framrose was not a person whose outward appearance immediately impressed. To begin with, his face and narrow bald skull were blotched all over with the dark patches of leucodermia, the skin disease that inbred Parsis often suffer from. Then he was, as well, fearfully thin, the very opposite of the picture of well-fed healthiness that a hundred film idols had established as the peak of desirability. Finally the large horn-rim spectacles he wore had slipped almost halfway down his long droopy Parsi nose in a manner which hardly gave the impression of high efficiency.

Ghote introduced himself and his distinguished visitor.

‘Ah yes. Come to see the sights, eh?’ Dr Framrose said in a high-pitched, erratic voice. ‘Come to see the coupling and the copulating going full swing. You know what it all means to me? I’ll tell you. Buboes and itches, sores and syphilis. That’s what it all amounts to in the end, see it from my point of view.’

Ghote took a quick look at the Svashbuckler. Yes, an expression of apprehension had appeared on the face that once had smilingly confronted any danger the magic of the cinema screen could produce. Well and good.

‘My Vigilance Branch colleagues are telling that you would be the best guide to a decent brothel, Doctor Sahib,’ he said. ‘If you are able to take the time I would be very, very grateful.’

‘Yes, yes. I’ll lead you to my good friend Heera’s. She’s as typical a gharwali, a madam, as you’ll ever see.’

He gave a cackle of laughter.

‘That’s to say,’ he added, ‘as rapacious, unfeeling and self-seeking a woman as you could find. Come along, come along.’

From a nail on one of the pale green, decidedly scabby walls he plucked an old black umbrella and hung it down his back from his ridge-like left shoulder. But at the door he darted back in again.

‘Drugs cupboard, drugs cupboard,’ he said. ‘Must make sure that’s locked. They’d break in here and take every blessed thing out of it, poisons and all, if they thought they could get that open. You know that every man jack on this street is a thief, don’t you?’

Ghote did not feel the need to confirm or deny the statement to his British companion. He watched the doctor plunge into an inner room and saw him test vigorously the doors of a strong-looking steel cupboard attached to its far wall.

Well, at least he seemed to have a good sense of responsibility. And he had put a first-class scare into the Svashbuckler.

‘Now, sir,’ Dr Framrose said, scuttling back into the room and addressing the film star, “you are a foreigner in a strange land. So let me tell you what we in India do for our filles de joie, of which shortly you will be seeing some prime specimens.’

He pushed his slipped spectacles back up his long nose with a thin sliding finger and turned to Ghote.

‘You are acquainted with that excellent work The Ten Princes, Inspector?’ he asked.

‘It is a film only?’ Ghote inquired. ‘I am not seeing many films nowadays, I regret.’

His answer seemed to please Dr Framrose, at least to judge by the vigour of his cackling laugh.

‘Work of prose, Inspector,’ he said at last. ‘Work of prose from the seventh century, one of the glories of our Indian heritage. Now, sir …’

Out in the street, amid the raucous blare of two or three different filmi tunes emanating from the open-fronted restaurants on either side, with the sound of quarrels and the whistlings and croonings of feminine enticement, with the tea vendors’ cries of ‘Chai … Biscoot’ loud in their ears, the doctor seized the Svashbuckler by the elbow and, hurrying him along, retailed the ancient wisdom in a voice that swooped and soared as high and low as the massed violins and cascading silvery jal-tarangs of the music all around.

‘The duties of the mother of a courtesan, sir. As told by the sage of old. One, to provide nourishment from the earliest age to develop stateliness, vigour, complexion and intelligence while at the same time harmonizing the gastric calefactions and the secretions. Then, instruction from the fifth year in the arts of flirtation, major and minor. A conversational acquaintance with grammar — most important, that — and profound skill in moneymaking, in sport, in betting on fighting cocks and games of chess. Next, obtaining wide advertisement for her charms and beauty through astrologers and others, and finally, raising her price to the highest when she has become an object of general desire.’

They came to a halt in front of a house no more dilapidated than the others, its doorway no darker, the girls behind the bars of the ground-floor room as brazen.

‘Now, sir,’ said the doctor loudly. ‘Take note, all this at street level is of no concern to our good gharwali Heera. She operates on the floor above. A much more select establishment. There you will be able to observe the gastric calefactions and the secretions at their most charming, and I myself shall take the place of the astrologer in praising their particular beauties and skills.’

Ghote began rapidly to alter his opinion of Dr Framrose. Was he not positively encouraging his distinguished visitor to debauchery now? To dangerous debauchery?

As they were about to enter the narrow doorway, where on a bench under the light of a paper-garlanded, flyblown electric bulb, sat three girls from the establishment above, one of the whores from behind the bars reached out and caught at Ghote’s arm.

‘Ten rupees only,’ she cooed.

He shook her off and began to follow the doctor and the big shambling Britisher inside.

‘Eight rupees,’ the whore called out after him more loudly. ‘Six. Four. Two. Four rupees on the cot, two only on the mat.’

Ahead there was a narrow flight of ill-lit stairs, deep almost as a ladder. In the wake of the others he set foot on them. It was when he was nearly at the top that there occurred the incident that was almost completely to overwhelm him with the perplexities it brought in its train.

There was a passageway straight in front with three flimsy partition doors off it. Only the weak light coming through a window behind them illuminated it, and his view was partially blocked by the tall figure of Dr Framrose and the bulkier one of the Svashbuckler. But, as his head had come level with the bare boards of the floor, his attention had been attracted by a sharp scuffling at the far end.

Stepping up higher, he had seen, or half-seen, in the gloom two people. One of them, the nearer one to him, was a woman, a huge fat creature dressed in a gaudy red sari with a wide gold border. And the other, beyond her and all but hidden by her, was a man.

There was something furtive about the pair of them, hurried and furtive, that kept his attention fixed, the unconscious reaction of a trained police officer. The fat woman was pushing the man energetically in front of her and he was in part, it seemed, yielding to her and in part playfully resisting.

It was only at the last second, before the two of them disappeared round the far corner, that, in a stray beam of light coming from a gap at the top of the furthest closed door, he saw for one instant, clearly as if caught in a torch ray, the man’s face.

And it was a face he knew, knew well though he had seen it only in photographs. But that face had been photographed many, many times. It was the face of one of the city’s most prominent people, the man who was currently the Sheriff of Bombay.