Читать книгу Inspector Ghote's First Case - H. R. F Keating - Страница 7

There had come a knock at the door of the flat. A thumping knock.

‘What? What?’ Ghote all but shouted.

Somehow he felt on this day of all days, at this hour of all hours, a knock should not come banging on the door of the flat that he was about to leave for ever. I am right, too, he thought. No one should be knocking. I am not on duty here. Even if the order for my posting has not yet come through to the duty-room below, I am not available. No one should be knocking at the door at this time. With thumpings also.

‘Well,’ Protima said sharply, ‘you are going to answer, yes? Or is it you must be having one quarter-hour to decide to do it?’

‘No, no. I am answering. I am answering. It was just only …’

One of the jawans from the duty-room was there, stiffly at attention, brass belt-buckle shining – Number 23900 – brass whistle-chain bright across his chest.

Ghote looked at him, with the small stir of anger Protima’s jibe had roused in him still hot in his eyes.

‘Yes, yes? What it is? What for are you knocking and knocking at this hour only?’

‘AI, Sahib. It is just only afternoon.’

With a little jolt of surprise, Ghote realised that out in the compound down below it was plainly full daylight. Somehow the rush of expectations aroused by the letter the postwallah had brought scarcely a quarter of an hour ago had made him think he had read those astonishing words w.e.f. today’s date you are appointed … at a time already long past.

The jawan’s name had totally escaped him, though, now he came to think, he had as short a time ago as when he had inspected the ranks that morning looked at him standing to attention, crowd-control bamboo lathi held rigidly at his side. Now he was holding out a thin sheet of paper.

He took it from his hand.

‘Very good. Dismiss.’

Looking down, he saw the sheet was one torn from an official pad of memo forms.

To: Inspector Ghote. Message per telephone from Assistant Commissioner Divekar, Crime Branch.

Yes. Yes, my dream has come fully into open day. That is my boss now, the head of Crime Branch at Police Headquarters in the very heart of Bombay, and he has sent me a message, per telephone.

To Inspector Ghote, at Dadar PS. Yes, I am now Inspector Ghote. And, yes also, it is true I am, if just only now, at Dadar PS. Soon, soon I will be at Crawford Market, at Crime Branch itself.

He dropped his eyes to the short message beneath.

You are to visit asap Sir Rustom Engineer at his home, 20 Marzban Apartments.

And that was all.

Of course, the name of Sir Rustom Engineer is well known to me. The first Indian to hold the post of Commissioner of the Bombay Police. Appointed by the British two years before Independence. Now, naturally, retired. Given, almost as the last act of the departing British, the title of Sir. But why am I to see him, Sir Engineer? And asap. As soon as possible? And how soon is that?

Protima was standing just behind him, her face bright with impatient curiosity.

He thrust the message out to her.

She seemed to have read it all almost before she had flipped the thin sheet open.

‘No,’ she said. ‘First you must put on your Number One uniform.’

For a moment, disconcerted by the way Protima’s thought processes had leapt to this decision over half a dozen intervening obstacles, he could only reply, ‘But this uniform I am having on was clean this morning only.’

‘And you have been wearing all day.’

‘And have I put even one mark?’ He stopped himself. ‘But I have not at all decided why it is I am to see Sir Engineer asap. You are knowing that is as soon as possible?’

‘Of course, of course. And I am knowing also what that is saying. It is saying Now.’

‘Well, I suppose I had better perhaps go. But—’

An idea came to him. One that would at least give him a little more time to consider what the implications of the message might be, time to prepare himself.

‘But what about Hamlet?’ he said. ‘That film is on at Eros One Week Only. If we are missing it tonight, who can say when another opportunity will ever be arising?’

And now Protima did seem to be halted in her tracks.

But not for long, though it was on an unexpected note that she began again.

‘No, this is just like you, my good husband. It is just like your thoughtfulness only to remember I am so much wanting to see what Mr Olivier is meaning by the story of a man who cannot make up his mind. But, no. No, you have been asked by Head of Crime Branch itself to visit this Sir Something Engineer, and—’

‘But it is Sir Rustom. He is one famous man. First Indian – though of course he must be a Parsi – to be heading Bombay Police. After so many English sirs before him.’

‘Yes, yes. I am knowing all that. And that is why you must go, in best uniform also, to see him now. This evening. As soon as possible. No, I am sorry if I am not to see Hamlet tonight, but there may be another chance before end of week. So, no, you must go at once, my good husband, the good father of this child who will be here in six-eight weeks only.’

‘But Marzban Apartments, where is that? I am not at all knowing.’

‘Oh, must be one of those big new blocks they are putting up everywhere now at last Independence has come. You can easily find out. It would be somewhere up on Malabar Hill.’

Marzban Apartments was there on Malabar Hill, that coolest of places in always humid and sometimes unbearably hot Bombay. It stood there, a sky-reaching, shiningly new building, blessed, high above the stewing city, by whatever whisks of breeze might come.

Ghote, scarcely an hour later, stiff in the Number One best uniform Protima had insisted on, stood for a moment looking upwards at it.

Yes, this is right. It is right that here such a man as Sir Rustom Engineer should stay. Perhaps the finest new building in entire Bombay. No doubt built, with that name Marzban, by and for Parsis, Sir Engineer among the most outstanding of them.

And I am to visit Sir Engineer. As soon as possible. Well, here I am, and almost as soon as I could possibly come. After all, it would have been altogether wrong to have set out before Protima had hurried to iron my Number One uniform. But why am I here? That is altogether a different matter. Why has Sir Engineer requested me to come? How did he ever get to know of me, when until just now I was no more than a simple Assistant Inspector at Dadar PS? And all I know about him is what I was reading in the newspapers when he was made head of the Bombay Police and then also again when he was retiring.

So, how is it I am here myself? Now?

One only way to find out.

Ghote braced his too bony shoulders, strode up to the glass entrance doors, pushed at them – are they resisting me? No, it is their heavy weight only – marched past the massively uniformed chowkidar, saw ahead a lift and its smartly white-clothed liftman, and made straight towards him along the length of the gleaming foyer, head held high.

‘Flat Number 20,’ he said. ‘I am wishing to see Sir Engineer.’

‘Sir Rustom,’ the man answered. ‘It is top floor itself.’

Ghote stepped into the smooth-walled softly shining box. The liftman pressed the button for Flats 20 and 21. They began their ascent. Nothing here of the anxiety-causing jerkiness of every other Bombay lift he had ever stood inside. Here it was difficult even to realise they were moving at all, save for the changing numbers on the small electric panel above the doors.

But then as the numbers reached nearer and nearer to 20–21 a terrible thought came. The liftman, what had he answered when I was saying Sir Engineer? Yes, it was Sir Rustom. And had there been on his unmoving face just a hint of mocking? So ought I to have said Sir Rustom, if I was not saying full-out Sir Rustom Engineer? Was I trying then to show I am knowing that distinguished man? What a mistake. And to be corrected by a liftman only.

The lift came quietly to the end of its upward journey. Its doors, as the liftman touched a button, slid quietly open.

Ghote stepped out.

And rapidly stepped back in again.

He slid his fingers into the right-hand stiffly tight trouser pocket of his fiercely ironed uniform, and found the small handful of coins he had put there. He gripped one, held it for a moment, decided to let it go, managed to grip two others together, hauled them out, thrust them into the hand somehow there waiting to receive them.

The right thing. I was doing it now. So I must be calling Sir Engineer as Sir Rustom. Good. Right. And, yes, Sir Rustom has said he is wanting me to see him.

Two separate large dark teak doors stood on the far wall of the narrow lobby in which he had found himself. In bright brass figures they proclaimed 20 and 21. Unhesitatingly now he went over and put a firm finger on the shining white bell button beside the number 20.

Almost at once the door was drawn back.

Ghote saw a servant in white jacket and white half-pant, neatly checked blue and white dusting-cloth across his right shoulder.

‘I have been asked to come to see Sir Rustom Engineer. I am’ – the most minimal of secretly triumphal pauses – ‘Inspector Ghote.’

The man looked at him steadily.

‘Regret, Inspector, Sir Rustom is not available.’

Of all the possibilities Ghote had entertained, this was one that had never for a moment entered his head.

‘Not-not—’ he stammered.

Then, recovering, he succeeded in asking, ‘But, Sir Rustom, he is out of station? Or-or will he be soon returning back? If that would not be too long, perhaps I can be waiting. It is important that I am seeing Sir Rustom as soon as possible.’

The man assumed a look of muted sadness, echoing whatever his master would have offered had he been there.

‘No, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Sir Rustom would not be available at all this evening. He has just only gone to see film Hamlet.’