Bemused from the deep sleep he had been in, Inspector Ghote absorbed the words which the urbane Dr Patil had dropped into the pool of his tranquillity.
The Swami was dying. If the medical men said so, there could be little doubt about it. It had always been obvious that for a man of his age going without food day after day put him constantly in danger of death. And now it was coming. Plainly some symptom must have manifested itself that indicated that, without emergency measures of some sort to introduce some nourishment to that fast-eroded frame, death would supervene very soon.
And when that death came … When he himself by his own stubborn insistence on carrying out his investigation had been responsible for the death of this venerated figure, then all hell would break loose. It would break loose earlier than that in fact. It would break loose as soon as the news that the Swami was coming to the end of his life got about the town.
Ghote groped for his watch and held it close to his still bleary eyes to find out what time it was.
Not yet half past midnight. Thank God for that. Though rumours might begin to spread and people might get out of their beds to voice their fury, it should mean that until daylight came there would not be too much trouble.
His thoughts turned to Hemu Adhikari. Should he go back to him at once and somehow force out of him what he knew?
He looked up, blinking, at the Medical Superintendent.
‘It was good of you to come and tell me this, Doctor,’ he said. ‘Do you know if the news is yet common knowledge?’
‘It can only be a matter of time,’ Dr Patil replied, his blandly smooth face expressing a dignified anxiety. ‘My doctors cannot conceal the true state of affairs from the Swami’s disciples. And they will talk. They will consider it their duty to talk.’
‘Thank you, thank you,’ Ghote said, still confused.
‘I will keep in touch, both with my men at the temple and with you,’ Dr Patil replied. ‘But now I will bid you good night.’
‘Yes, yes. Thank you again.’
Ghote began pacing about Inspector Popatkar’s little office trying to make up his mind what to do. On the one hand there was this new and great urgency, but on the other hand he had carefully calculated that the right treatment for Adhikari just now, if he was to crack the wall of silence the fellow had thrown round himself, was to leave him profoundly alone for a good long stretch of time.
He paced and thought.
In a little the night sergeant came back from seeing Dr Patil out into the midnight street.
‘Inspector, you are wanting the prisoner for more questioning?’ he asked.
Ghote found his mind was made up.
‘No,’ he said. ‘He must be left to stew. No one is to see him, Sergeant.’
‘Very good, Inspector,’ the sergeant said.
But his tone left it in no doubt that he wished his orders had been different.
*
Ghote went back to his temporary bed again, but not to sleep. He ached with tiredness, in his knees and the small of his back. But he achieved no more than uneasy dozing, do what he might. His head buzzed a little too, and he took aspirin for it at some stage of the night. But even this did not let him sleep and it was only just before dawn that he did at last succeed in getting deeply off for a few minutes, and what woke him then was the sound of shouting in the street outside.
He knew what it was even before he had ceased dreaming. It was the start of the protests.
He got up, showered to try to make himself feel fresh, dressed for want of anything else in the same mud-stained clothes he had worn all the day before and went to see what the situation was.
It could have been worse. There were only twenty or thirty people in the street outside and they were doing nothing to get past the four constables drawn up behind the whitewashed iron-piping barrier of the police-station forecourt. But this was still only just after dawn. What would the protests grow to as the day wore on?
A new sergeant was on duty at the desk and Ghote asked him if they had any news of the Swami.
‘Oh yes, Inspector. We are sending a man out to the temple every half-hour – while we still can.’
‘And there is nothing new?’ Ghote asked, knowing what the answer would be.
‘Nothing new, Inspector.’
Ghote went to secure himself some breakfast before going down to see how a night’s lonely thought had affected Hemu Adhikari. He did not feel hungry but he knew it was his duty to eat while he could. In the course of the day ahead there might not be all that many opportunities for food.
Then, feeling his last hurriedly masticated, deplorably un-crisp puri descending slowly towards his stomach like a piece of wet leather, he went to tackle the drink-wrecked pathologist.
He decided to interrogate him where he was, in the single solitary detention cell, feeling it important to avoid the least chance of interruption. If he was to get the drink-sodden hulk talking it would probably be a hair-balance delicate operation and the shortest of breaks at the wrong time might well spoil the whole interrogation.
He took the key from the constable on duty and let himself into the cell. Hemu Adhikari was awake. He was sitting up on the cell bench, which was a good sign. But on the other hand he took no notice of the door opening and he was muttering to himself.
‘Taken by mouth in all forms is readily absorbed – excreted in urine – fulminating poisoning may occur …’
It sounded like his arsenic phobia again. And that was not too good a sign. This alertness could well be the herald of another attack of DTs.
‘Good morning, Mr Adhikari,’ Ghote said loudly and clearly.
At last the bloodshot eyes rested on him briefly.
‘Have you eaten?’ Ghote asked in the same bright tone. ‘Shall I send out for food? What would you like?’
‘No food,’ the slack-bellied alcoholic muttered, turning away.
Ghote wondered if he should not send for a reviving dose of rum straight away. But its effect was almost bound to dissipate the pangs of conscience which the lonely night had been intended to establish in the drunk’s sodden mind.
Ghote went and sat down beside him.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘I want you to tell everything that happened when you performed the autopsy on Mrs Sarojini Savarkar.’
‘I cannot think of it.’
This was better than the day before. It was not a blank refusal.
‘But, my friend, you have been thinking of it, isn’t it? You have been thinking all the night?’
Hemu Adhikari answered only by a groan. But it was clearly an affirmative groan.
‘Come, something went wrong, did it not?’
‘Do not ask.’
So, Ghote thought, I am not going to get it just yet.
He settled himself down to do just what Hemu Adhikari had requested him not to do: to ask. He asked in various ways. He suggested different reasons for the pathologist telling him everything. He grew tougher. He relapsed into more extravagant friendship.
And he watched his man. He watched closely every minute, while taking great care not to let him see he was so interested.
Two factors emerged. The first was that the pathologist was plainly caught in a dilemma: he wanted to talk and he wanted as passionately not to have to. And the second was that with every passing quarter of an hour the fellow was getting nearer an attack of the DTs.
He grew increasingly restless, sliding himself awkwardly to and fro on the narrow bench worn smooth by a thousand criminals’ haunches. His attacks of tremors increased until by half-way through the morning they were visible as a continuous shivering all over the grey stubbled cheeks and in the slack half-open lips. Cold sweats broke out too from time to time and then subsided, adding a new ingredient to the pungent smell from his sprawling body.
Nor was the smell helped by the increasing heat in the little cell. Ghote would have liked to have had the door propped open – there was not the least chance of this wreck being able to escape – but he feared the temptations to interruption from outside that this would bring and steeled himself to endure the odours within, however unpleasant. It would have helped had there been any showers of rain to bring down the outside temperature, but there were no signs of any now that he wanted them.
Rain would have had another useful effect, too. It would have quieted the protests outside the police-station. Although he had no direct reports, Ghote was afraid these were still going on. Indeed, at about the time the old pathologist’s attacks of trembling became united into one continuous shiver Ghote thought he detected even in the seclusion of the cell outbursts of sound coming from the front of the station. Or perhaps from the rear.
Which would mean that the agitation had gone beyond the protest stage and that they were under attack once more.
But at least the Swami must be still alive. If they had news of the death, Ghote was certain, they would have come and interrupted him no matter what.
‘Listen,’ he said to the smelly figure beside him, laying his hand on an arm which he could feel trembling hard beneath its dirty shirt. ‘Listen, I know almost everything. I need only a little more to have proof against him. I know his wife died with all the symptoms of arsenical poisoning. I know that he was the man who had most opportunity to administer arsenic. I know that he took active steps to secure the destruction of the evidence in the body. But to make the greater part of my case iron-hard I need actual evidence that arsenic was in the organs. And you have that, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’
‘Nagaland,’ the hulk beside him replied.
‘Yes,’ Ghote said. ‘He was responsible for you being posted away to Nagaland. He believes that you died there. You can come back from the dead to see justice done.’
‘The monkeys there, terrible, awful,’ Hemu Adhikari muttered.
‘Yes, yes, but the organs. What happened when you had removed them from the body? You did that I know.’
‘Monkeys. Monkeys are here too. There, there.’
A wildly shaking hand pointed quaveringly to the far corner of the cell.
‘No, no. There are no monkeys here. Look, I will go over to the corner and show you there is nothing.’
Patiently Ghote went through the business of crossing to the far corner of the little cell and routing round there to show there was not the least sign of animal life. Hemu Adhikari appeared reassured. He sat up a little more straightly.
But for how long would it be possible to go on convincing him such hallucinations were not real, Ghote wondered.
He went quickly back to the bench and resumed his cajoling talk.
It was a little after noon by the watch on his wrist, which he permitted himself to consult surreptitiously from time to time, when he thought he had at last succeeded in breaking one more barrier.
Quite suddenly the old drunk had turned to him and clutched him hard by the front of his shirt. A wave of disgusting breath, prescient of appalling vomit not far away, swirled out over him. He had to make a strong mental effort to fight back a desire to be sick himself.
‘If I told,’ the drunk said slobberingly, ‘if I told, what would you do for me?’
It was the first time that the old wreck had seriously brought himself to consider the possibility of a confession.
And then, coming briskly and inexorably along the stone-floored corridor outside, there was the sound of footsteps.
Ghote willed them not to exist.
But the sound grew louder.
The Swami, Ghote thought. He has chosen this moment to die.
He thrust his face a quarter of an inch nearer Hemu Adhikari’s.
‘We will protect you,’ he said with all the force of conviction he could muster. ‘I give you my personal guarantee of protection.’
This would bring untold difficulties later, he knew. But he could not let this chance slip by. He would have to extract a promise of aid from the Eminent Figure and make sure somehow it was kept. When all this was over – and it might be so soon – and he himself was safely back in Bombay.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘tell me, where are those removed organs?’
‘Raw egg broken in two – white allowed to escape – passing yolk from one half of shell to other …’
They were back to that.
A sharp knocking came on the door of the cell.
Ghote got up, stiff with weariness, crossed over to the door and opened it.
The duty sergeant from the outer office was there.
‘Excuse me, Inspector,’ he said. ‘I did not want to interrupt you but –’
‘The Swami? He has gone?’ Ghote broke in.
‘No, no, Inspector. Still alive as far as we know. But we can no longer get over to the temple. Pretty bad outside there now.’
‘Then what in heaven’s name is it?’
‘There is a telephone call for you, Inspector. From Bombay. They would not give name, but I could tell it was someone bloody high up, Inspector, and I did not dare leave it.’
Ghote sighed.
‘You were quite right, Sergeant.’
He looked over at Hemu Adhikari. And to his astonishment he saw that the slumped figure was actually making movements as if he wanted to come across to him. The eyes were wide, and inarticulate noises were emerging.
Could it be that he wanted to confess? Now? At this moment?
‘Sergeant,’ Ghote said in a hurried whisper, ‘go back and tell them that you have my own personal instructions to take a message. Say that something that might put the crown on my whole case is happening now, at this very moment. Say I cannot come.’
The sergeant, excellent fellow, needed no more telling. He left at once and Ghote almost threw himself across the cell to the drunken pathologist.
‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Yes? What is it? Tell.’
Hemu Adhikari clasped his hand in his trembling yet tight grasp.
‘It was not right,’ he said. ‘I did not do my duty.’
Abruptly he ceased speaking and seemed to become more rigid.
‘At the autopsy?’ Ghote said. ‘You did not do your duty at the autopsy? How did you neglect it? In what way?’
‘I will tell,’ the pathetic figure murmured. ‘In a little. I must get my strength.’
Ghote gently released the grip on his hand and resumed his seat beside Adhikari. He put an arm reassuringly across the shivering shoulders and waited.
It was on the point of coming, the fact that would put the crown on his case. He felt certain of it.
After about five minutes during which twice the old drunk made visible efforts to begin speaking, Ghote again tried urging him.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘you can tell now. Remember I know most of it. It is confirmation only I am needing. So, now, you were performing the autopsy, and you did something against your duty, isn’t it? What was that thing?’
‘He made me,’ Adhikari said, speaking more clearly than at any time hitherto. ‘He sent goondas. Already they broke one of my toes. And they said they would do worse. I promised.’
A colossal shudder shook the whole slobbery frame.
‘Yes?’ Ghote almost whispered. ‘What did you promise to do?’
‘I promised that when I had removed the organs – They have to be sent to the Chemical Examiner. In Bombay. We have not the facilities here. The town is small and often I have complained …’
‘Yes, yes. I know the organs have to be sent to Bombay. But what did you do with them?’
‘Nothing. No. Yes. No, I will tell. I was ordered –’
And at that moment a rain of knocks on the cell door battering obscurely at Ghote’s ear for some time, finally penetrated. They seemed at that climax to have penetrated the foggy mind of Hemu Adhikari as well because he stopped dead in his narrative and looked at the door with an expression of pure consternation.
Ghote leapt up and flung the door open.
The sergeant was there.
‘Inspector, I thought you had been attacked. I knocked and knocked.’
‘Go away. Go now.’
Ghote swung round to the pathologist.
‘Inspector,’ the sergeant went on behind him, ‘Inspector, I took the message but afterwards he insisted. He told me he would get me sacked from the force. He would get me gaoled. Inspector, I believe him. The call is in Inspector Popatkar’s office. You must come.’
Ghote looked at the pathologist, who had been severely disconcerted by the interruption and was absolutely unlikely to pick up again from where he had got to. He turned back to the sergeant.
‘All right, I understand,’ he said. ‘I will go.’
He ran all the way along to Inspector Popatkar’s office.
There on the desk beside the waiting telephone receiver was a long and detailed message in the sergeant’s clear but laborious handwriting. Ghote subjected this to one frizzling look to make sure it dealt with all his inquiries and then seized the receiver from the desk surface.
‘Ghote here,’ he barked, careless of all security.
‘Ah, at last,’ came the familiar, querulous, detestable voice of the Eminent Figure: ‘Inspector, I cannot really be expected to give messages to underlings. This is a highly confidential matter, I would remind you.’
Able here in Inspector Popatkar’s office to hear a great deal more clearly the shouting and the crashing of hurled stones from the rioters outside, Ghote had a short answer to this.
‘Sir the matter is by no means confidential here, I would assure you.’
‘That is as may be, Inspector. But I am not accustomed to deal with the lower echelons.’
‘Sir, I am in middle of a crucial phase of an interrogation. Did the sergeant tell that?’
‘Ah, yes, Inspector, what interrogation is this? The man said it was an alcoholic you were interrogating. What possible significance can such a person have to your inquiry?’
‘Sir, any minute of delay now may mean hours more work. And, sir, the Swami here is dying. Already there is rioting in the streets. If he dies, sir, and I have found out nothing I do not think I will succeed ever.’
‘That is all very well, but what progress exactly are you making? I must be kept informed.’
‘I am making progress, sir, but –’
‘Inspector, you will tell me now exactly what you are doing. I wish to hear a concrete example.’
Blackening rage erupted in Ghote’s head.
‘Oh, if you wish that,’ he shouted, ‘I can tell that I have found out that the Chairman is the true son of an outcaste woman from Nagpur side. But that is not getting the inquiry anywhere.’
‘What is this? What is this?’
The distant voice had lost every trace of the querulous.
‘I am saying, sir, that subject in question has as matter of fact been misrepresenting his origins of birth. An investigation of this sort does not go on without making discoveries.’
‘You have proof of this, Inspector?’ the voice excitedly asked.
‘I can produce the mother, sir, but –’
‘Then you may return to Bombay as soon as you like.’