Above the jabber of talk from the onward-pressing shoppers – what crowd in Bombay ever passed up the chance of talk and chatter? – Ghote distinctly heard the sound of a train, that must have pulled into the station almost at the same moment that the truck had hit him, noisily starting off again.
Ganesha’s gift thrown away.
But, no, he thought. No, my life is not ruled by Ganesha’s whims, useful to me or not useful. I rule my life.
He set off at a fierce walk, despite the pain that at once shot up again in his side.
If Atul, he told himself, has really gone to meet somebody somewhere in the Fort area, not at all far from the cabin at Crime Branch where I should at this moment be patiently sitting, I may really have lost him altogether. But if that train was, after all, a northbound one, then Atul could still be inside the station.
He forced himself into a lumbering run.
Hurrying at last into the station itself, he saw at once there was a packed crowd waiting for a southbound train. And, yes, Atul’s head, crowned by its tangled mass of black uncombed hair, was there among the press of people.
He felt a leap of delight. Immediately, there followed a thud of dismay, impossible to reject. Not thirty or forty yards away from me there is a stick-at-nothing goonda, powerful enough to have cut off Bikram’s head, if not with a single stroke of cleaver or sword, at least with the four vicious hacks I saw when Protima and I made our examination all that long night. How can I ever manage to take him?
But I must. I must. A glance to the right to make sure no train heading for Churchgate was in the distance. No, nothing. Nothing yet.
Very well, now I must get near enough to Atul to be able to slip into the carriage next to whichever one he enters, where I will be unseen by that hulking figure. After all, it is only my guess that he will stay on the train till we are reaching Bombay Central. He may be going to meet whoever it is he has in mind at any of the – let me see – yes, ten stations between here and Churchgate.
A bare two minutes later, clearly to be heard above the ear-dinning chatter of the crowd he was thrusting his way through, came the first wail, warning of the near approach of the train.
At once Ghote began yet more urgently slipping and sliding through the crowd of would-be passengers, cunningly as any seller of balloons or bangles aiming illegally to squeeze themselves on board. At every moment he kept fixed in view Atul’s head, still easily to be seen. Once or twice even glimpsing, or so he thought, the projecting crocodile teeth.
But, no, damn it, he said to himself, although I had more than one good look at the fellow, even from my watching-place just only fifteen-twenty minutes ago, he has seen me only once, when behind the dyers’ hut in Rekha’s slum I found him leaning against that half-dead palm tree. And he may not then even have taken in who I was, for all that he at once hurried away. Really he no more knows there is a Crime Branch inspector on his heels than he is knowing my name.
Yes, I could probably, if I wanted, place myself in the same carriage now, standing at his elbow, and he would have no idea who was there. But I will not. Somehow I feel he might sense that an enemy was breathing the very same stale-smelling rail-carriage air as himself. No, the air in the next coach, equally thick with the sweat-smell and paan-chewing breaths of its four or five hundred crammed passengers, will be fine for me.
The powerful engine of the incoming train, steam squirting from a dozen different places, passed slowly in front of him now, its heat sending out hotter-than-hot waves that, for a moment, even dried the sweat on his face.
In half a minute more the whole train came to a full halt. At the held-apart sliding doors all along its length the waiting passengers began their frenzied assaults, barely letting anyone alight and forcing back those staying inside, determined to make room where there might seem to be none. Even women, he saw, were attempting almost as fiercely to secure places in the Ladies Only coach.
Just in a second’s quick glance, before adding his weight to the forward-thrusting people in front, he was able to make sure he had positioned himself so that Atul – matted-hair head clearly visible – was in the next carriage.
Then, pushing hard past the books-bag of a student lounging well clear of the carriage interior so as to catch the breeze as the train once more sped along, convenient handrail hard-clenched in his left hand, Ghote registered with a trickle of pleasure that, safely on board now, he would soon be able to lean out himself as they came to each station on the way to see if the tall goonda was alighting.
As, with a mournful departing hoot, the train began to pull away, he added his own hand to that of the student still clutching at the rail. He found at once it was almost too hot to hold.
The precautions Ghote had taken proved, in fact, unnecessary. At none of the ten stations on the route was there any sign of Atul leaping out from the next carriage. It was not until at last they were pulling into Bombay Central that, pushing his way towards the window at the end of the carriage against the tide of his fellow passengers moving forcefully towards the nearest doors to get out, he was able to catch a reassuring glimpse of Atul also beginning to barge his way forwards.
Quickly he started to push, almost as ruthlessly as Atul himself, to get to a point where, as the train slowed to a halt, he could, like half a hundred other over-urgent passengers, jump down to the platform below and run forward a few paces till he was sure of his footing. Atul, he reckoned, would almost certainly be only just behind him. In a few seconds the big badmash would be likely to overtake, as he heads for wherever it is he wants to go.
That was exactly what happened – if his plan was somewhat spoilt when Atul, in his stop-at-nothing race away, brushed, as he passed, so roughly against him that a new jab of pain shot up his side from when the too-ambitious truck driver on the road to Matunga Station had attempted to get past the bullock cart.
He gritted his teeth and, despite the pain, increased his pace. Atul, he saw, had unashamedly sent sprawling aside a man, by the look of him a clerk, who had been making his way to whatever office waited to swallow him up.
Yes, he said to himself, risk or no risk, I will have to get yet nearer if the fellow keeps on at this care-for-nobody pace.
Breaking for a minute into a trot, he closed the gap until, like the two generously fleshed Muslim women who had blocked his view on the way to Matunga Station, he was swept completely into the tall goonda’s wake as they crossed the black-and-white tiles of the station entrance.
Oh, how I would like, he thought, to be wearing at this moment one head-to-foot burkha, Government issue for the purpose of disguise.
But, burkha-wearing or in simple shirt-pant, he found it not too difficult, in spite of the pace Atul continued to set, to hang no more than a few yards behind. Until he realised, with a dart of uneasiness, that they were hardly any distance from Police Headquarters.
Surely, surely, the fellow cannot be making for the buildings surrounding the compound that my cabin itself looks out on? All right, Atul would be safe from recognition there. His name and photo will hardly appear on any Headquarters Bad Character roll. If they are anywhere, it will be on the roll at Matunga PS. So can he actually be going to meet someone in Crime Branch itself? No, even if it was an officer there who spotted the document or letter that had suggested Nathumal Moolchand was worth investigating, they would never agree to meet a fellow like Atul inside the building. And even if, across so many miles of humanity-packed Bombay, he does have a link to some peon at Headquarters he would never dare meet him in such a dangerous place. Even in the days when Jyoti was working as a Headquarters sweeper in the early mornings, much earlier than I was taking my seat there, Atul would never have contacted her there, if indeed he had ever needed to.
I was taking my seat there … The thought interrupted his hurried reasoning. Ought I to be at this very moment keeping warm that seat in case I am given at least some work, even if I am not to have the explanation from the ACP that I was meant to be waiting for? Perhaps now he will even be wanting to put me on some simple case just come in?
But, whether I ought to be sitting there or not, there is no question at this moment of going back into my cabin. I am following Atul – yes, this is Waudby Road – to see who it may be, in this top-of-the-tree part of the city, he is, surely, hurrying to meet. To meet, and to put out his big fist for the first half of a sum of supari money – it really could be – with instructions to eliminate yet another awkward figure standing in some rich man’s path.
Then – his attention had actually wandered for a moment – he just glimpsed Atul’s crown of tangled black hair as he plunged into the side turning beside, yes, that glittering sari shop on the ground floor of the rabbit warren of a building hiding in its depths the Beauty Bar.
He realised at once that this must be where Atul had been drinking when he had made himself a false friend to Bikram before luring him to wherever it was he killed him.
So, will I go into the place again, now myself? Atul will be there, little doubt about that. And if … if someone else is there with him, someone like – it is not impossible – Nathumal Moolchand’s Mr Kanjilal, then, if I can manage to get a look inside, I will have one more good reason to believe Moolchand is the man who employed Atul, both to put Bikram out of the way and earlier to rid his cherished daughter of a husband she no longer wanted. But …
But inside there I must – yes, my task, my duty – arrest Atul. And he will be no pushover.
All right, I have got, bulging my trouser pocket, the handcuffs I have imagined myself snapping on his wrists. But that was in imagination only. How exactly, in a few minutes’ time, will I in reality bring about a situation where Atul’s wrists, thick as they are, will be just where handcuffs can click round them?
I cannot see how. Not at all. And yet I must go in there, where Atul may be leaning across one of those round wooden tables, listening to some person opposite, whether Kanjilal or a different supari messenger. Atul, the man who was able to catch hold of poor Bikram in this very place and lead him away, a goat to the slaughter, taking him where, like a temple executioner of sacrificial animals, he could behead him. Atul of – never mind those crocodile teeth – of those tree-branch arms, of those streetfighter’s tricks and treacheries.
What to do?
Then an idea, born of desperation, came to him.
Yes, there is one person, perhaps, perhaps, I could ask for help. I could ask Sgt Chavan. No longer, as when we went to investigate the murder in the house on Cumballa Hill, a solid mass of surliness, full of resentment at ACP Divekar giving him the task of spying on this new inspector. Now, thanks to the moment I was able, by asking him straight out if he had been ordered to report on me, to win a smile from that sombre face, hopefully thereafter I have had him as something of a friend.
A moment to decide. Yes, Atul’s business with whoever he is meeting inside there will not last just only five minutes. A delicate negotiation like the one he will be making may easily take half an hour, more even with drink having to be offered, drunk down, offered again. So … so, yes, almost certainly there will be time.
He turned round and set off, at a pelting run, for Crime Branch. In less than ten minutes he was there. Completely ignoring his own cabin – what if phone is ringing, Mr Divekar on the other end? – he hurried to the room where the Branch’s sergeants wait to be allocated tasks, remembered from the day Superintendent Ghorpade had shown him round the building.
And there he found Chavan.
I am in luck, truly in luck, he told himself. Chavan might have been out on an investigation anywhere in the city. But he is not. And, better and better, there is a smile on his face as he is seeing my head round the door.
He beckoned to him.
‘Listen,’ he whispered when he came out, ‘there is something urgent I want your help with.’
‘Inspector.’ A grin. ‘At your service.’
Little more than ten minutes later, standing outside the narrow side door of the Waudby Road building, Ghote, who had not risked any delay by explaining earlier the situation in the Beauty Bar, put Chavan fully into the picture.
‘It is my chance to arrest a first-class goonda, one Atul. A killer even. You know the Beauty Bar inside here?’
‘Jee, Inspector. Almost every Other Ranker in Crime Branch knows that place. Five-six arrests I have made there myself. It is what they are calling one den of thieves. And you are saying Atul is there? Atul himself? Well I am knowing him. I was coming to Crime Branch from Matunga PS, you know. Even in those days Atul had one hell of a reputation for streetfighting. And worse.’
‘Right. So, unless in the past fifteen-twenty minutes he has left, he is in there now, in the Beauty Bar. And, I suspect, about to receive supari money.’
‘Yes. Yes, that work he does also.’
‘He does. He took supari, I am strongly believing, to do that job we investigated up in Cumballa Hill.’
‘Achchha. If we can arrest him now, clearing up that Number One killing would be a first-class feather in your cap, Inspector. In mine also.’
Ghote let that pass.
Every bit as cautiously as once before he had peered in at the half-opened door of the Beauty Bar, Ghote tried now its closed handle.
It began to slide round.
At least not locked, he thought. Almost I was expecting it would be. If Atul is conducting the sort of business inside that I believe he is, he might quite likely have ordered that absurd curly-curly moustache bartender to lock the door in case of some chance customer.
Gently easing the door just half an inch open, he put his eye to the crack of pale light at its edge. And, yes. Yes, yes, yes. There is Atul sitting, in my full sight at the only occupied table. He is leaning forward and talking – no, not to froggy Mr Kanjilal – but to a stout suited-and-booted man. Some other seth’s secret messenger? Very likely.
So now? Now I have got to, yes, go in there and … and take Atul.
No. No, first make sure of my backup. I am likely to need all the help available. Absurd to see myself as if I am that American comic-paper hero, the one who goes wherever he wants, up, down, outside, inside, and thanks to superhuman powers can do in a minute whatever is needed to bring an evildoer to justice.
He pulled the door closed, turned and went very quietly along to the far end of the long, echoey corridor to where he had stationed Chavan. There he whispered to him to move up to a doorway within easy reach of the Beauty Bar.
‘Be ready,’ he hissed. ‘Ready for anything. Atul may get past me somehow. If he does, stop him.’
Chavan smiled.
‘It would be one pleasure,’ he said.
Creeping back to the door again, Ghote thought Surprise must be the one advantage I will have. Will it be enough?
Ek, do, teen. He flung the door wide.
Atul, he realised at once, had in an instant guessed who he was, long though it had been since that single silent encounter behind the dyers’ hut. In one instant he had sent crashing to the floor the little table he had been sitting at. His suited-booted companion scurried, in a fat man’s buttocks-shaking run, for the narrow door behind the bar to vanish, together with the bartender. And then Atul was crouching, ready for battle like Krishna in the Mahabharata.
Battle came all too soon.
Ghote, before he could even begin to shoot out the kick that he had in half a second planned to direct at Atul’s groin, found himself lifted from his feet.
Oh, God, the thought swept through his mind, why didn’t I take Chavan in with me? Absurd ambition to make the arrest myself alone.
But tree-branch arms had gripped him. They were lifting him high and then they flung him back against the half-open door behind. It crashed closed. His head, jerked backwards, struck it with a thunderous crack. For a moment he saw nothing.
Then, as Atul, between two bear-like hands, lifted him up again, sight began swimmingly to return.
His eyes, it seemed, directed themselves of their own volition to Atul’s waist and a broad leather sheath there with at its top the heavy handle of a long knife.
Atul standing, legs widely planted, dropped him to the floor now, thumpingly as a sack stuffed with ground turmeric. And he saw, blurred though his vision still was, a bear-wide hand fasten itself round the handle of that knife. And in a moment pull out a broad-bladed dagger almost as long as a small sword.
So this … that was … The thought came into Ghote’s confused mind So that was what he used on Bikram.
Behind him he heard the door given a full-shouldered thump. Chavan. Chavan just in time.
But Atul must have heard Chavan’s hard-running steps every bit as soon as they had come muffledly to his own ears. The long knife clattered to the floor. The legs-straddled body above him flung itself forward. And then, clearly as a single plucked note from a sitar, there came the sound of a key being snapped round in the door’s lock.
Quick, the knife. Must reach it before Atul. Take hold of it. Or knock it to the far corner.
But, no. No, not possible. Too battered to do more than think. To see myself, clearly-clearly, heaving round, stretching out towards the glinting blade at the very edge of vision. But it is nothing more than seeing myself. My arms and legs lie where they have been dropped, soft lengths of floppy tubing. All connection to the brain altogether lost.
As if in a curious upside-down film, he saw now Atul moving slowly into view above him, watched him reach lazily down. Saw him pick up the heavy glinting knife.
This is The End.
The thought, like one of the bordered captions in the village cinema tent, occupied every inch of his mind. The End.
Move, he instructed himself. Move. Move away somehow. Move away from that knife. Before it comes sweeping down. But the instruction was ignored. The message, not even a single one of the urgent cries within it, got to where it would be acted upon.
Inert. He lay inert.
He saw, half-saw, the knife lifted high. He saw Atul’s crocodile teeth grimacing in triumph.
Then one of his five senses, all in a moment, came back to life. He heard. He was able to hear. He had heard, he knew then, the locked door somewhere behind and above him burst open to a shoulder charge far heavier than the one Chavan had managed before. A full long run up a side corridor? Must have been. And …
And there is Atul, caught off guard, staggering helplessly back under Chavan’s burly weight, banging into another of the heavy little tables and tumbling to the floor.
Senseless? Yes.
As Ghote managed now painfully to raise his head an inch or so, he saw that Atul had indeed been knocked fully as unconscious as, till this moment, he had been himself. Chavan, once Mr Divekar’s sullen spy, was on top of him, grinning like a maniac.
Filled in a moment with energy, Ghote put a hand to his back pocket and, careless of the blasting pain all his new bruises sent through him, managed to extract the handcuffs. Then, at a painful crawl, he went over towards Chavan. Still half-kneeling, he at last got the cuffs one by one round each of Atul’s thick wrists.
Click. Click.