Inspector Ghote Caught in Meshes, page 5
He did not feel at all happy. Not only was he venturing into unknown territory where all his familiar and trusted links with his fellow policemen would no longer hold, but the whole business of Hector Strongbow’s death had now taken on dimensions entirely beyond him. DSP Samant had not helped. Beyond giving Ghote the address he was to go to, he had done no more than extend a vague assurance of providing any help needed. When Ghote had ventured a question he had told him that he would find out all he needed to know from Colonel Mehta.
Ghote paused for a moment at the turn of the stairs and wondered how long it would be before he even got up to where the colonel was supposed to work. Resignedly he set off again. Ten stairs up, turn, ten stairs up, another turn.
His feelings of dissatisfaction crystallised into the thought that he was going somehow to be prevented from probing the American’s death to the bottom. This business of his having paid that unofficial visit to the Atomic Energy Establishment out at Trombay smelt plainly nasty. Was it all going to end with an order to let the case simply drop? When someone was murdered he wanted to know who had done it and to get them firmly behind bars just as quickly as possible. That was what he was for. It was his job. And now it might be pulled from under his feet.
The walls beside him grew progressively shabbier as he climbed. The patches where the distemper had peeled away got larger. The stains where passers-by had spat out bright red betel juice grew older and dustier. His doubts about what lay ahead increased.
What sort of an organisation could possibly have its offices in such sad and petty surroundings?
And at last, right at the top of the interminable stairs, there was the door he was looking for. It did nothing to relieve his pessimism. Its last coat of paint had been applied long ago. A layer of dust lay undisturbed along the bottom of each of its panels. The only thing that indicated life of any sort was a small black-painted board on which the words “Special Investigations Agency” had been superimposed on the half-obliterated traces of innumerable former tenants.
Ghote stepped up to the door and briskly knocked.
“Come,” a voice called.
Cautiously the inspector opened the dusty door. He found himself in a small outer office. It was totally bare. A large, smooth-surfaced, faceless safe was embedded in one of the walls, but otherwise there was no furniture of any sort. Even the ubiquitous trade calendars, which have to be hung somewhere, were entirely absent. There was only another door facing him, every bit as dusty as the first and standing slightly ajar.
“Inspector Ghote,” the sharp voice said from behind it. “Come in, man, when you’re told.”
Ghote felt a sudden inward sinking. His name already known. His arrival expected.
He pushed at the second door. The office that he now found himself in was furnished to some extent. Bang in the middle of the bare floor there was a table with a telephone on it. Placed at it was a small, hard chair. Sitting in a slightly larger chair on the far side of the table was a man of about forty-five, whom Ghote supposed must be Colonel Mehta. But otherwise the room was as bare as the outer office. Not a cupboard, not a filing cabinet, not even a scrap of paper.
“At ease, Inspector, at ease,” said Colonel Mehta. “Take a pew.”
With a brief economical gesture he indicated the hard chair in front of his table. Ghote pulled it out and sat down with his knees neatly together.
He looked at Colonel Mehta.
The soldier in mufti. It was written all over him: his neat, discreetly checked suit and firmly knotted striped tie; the hard-trimmed, vigorously bristling moustache above the stern line of an unsmiling mouth; the square set of the shoulders and the habitual, utter straightness of the back.
Ghote prickled. Soldiers were people he had had little to do with, creatures from an alien, different world with other and different standards.
“Well, Inspector,” the colonel said, “no doubt you’re wondering just what the bloody set-up is.”
“DSP Samant said you would inform, sir.”
“Did he indeed? Well, don’t you be too sure. The less anyone knows about me and my work the better I’m pleased. Never forget that.”
He glanced sharply round the bare room.
“That’s why I sit in a place like this all day,” he went on. “I don’t surround myself with clerks and orderlies and all the rest of it. I don’t go filling in yards and yards of bumpf. Too many people are full of an appalling urge to make out reports on everything in sight. And what happens next, eh? They have to stick by what they’ve written. Slows ’em up, bogs ’em down. Damn’ bad idea.”
“Yes, sir,” Ghote said shortly.
“Ha,” said Colonel Mehta. “All this isn’t telling you what the Special Investigations Agency is, is it?”
“No, sir.”
“Yes. Saw you thinking just that. Not all that much gets past me, you know.”
“No, sir.”
“All right then. What shall we say about Special Investigations?”
Abruptly the colonel got to his feet and began pacing up and down the bare floor of his cramped office.
“In every modern country, Inspector,” he said, “whether it likes it or not there has to be an organisation like mine. Every country has secrets. And when you’ve got secrets you have to have someone to make damn’ sure they stay secret.”
He swung round and stared hard at Ghote, sitting neatly on his hard chair.
“Now I know there are all sorts of bloody organisations that might be called on to deal with protecting secrets,” he went on. “There’s the Intelligence Bureau up in Delhi for organised, major crime. Or there’s the Special Police Establishment wallahs. They might have a finger in the pie if corruption was involved, as it almost always is. But people like that are too big. They’re open to pressure. They’re in danger from leaks. No, what you’ve got to have is a small, highly efficient outfit that reports straight to the top and keeps itself pretty much to itself. Well, you can give it what name you like. We happen to call ourselves Special Investigations Agency.”
He stood for a moment tautly considering whether he had said all he had meant to.
“Let me tell you one thing more,” he added at last. “And that’s this: the Special Investigations Agency has never lacked work.”
He strode abruptly back to his bare table, pulled out his chair and sat down.
“Now,” he said, “about this particular matter.”
Ghote leant forward.
“You may have thought, Inspector, that you were dealing with nothing more than a piece of damned dacoity. Let me assure you that you couldn’t be more wrong. Hector Strongbow was shot dead as a deliberate act. And I can tell you precisely who ordered that act.”
A fierce jet of satisfaction went through Ghote. So he was going to find out after all who had killed the American.
“I can tell you who ordered the death,” Colonel Mehta said. “But I cannot give you one single name.”
With an effort Ghote kept his face impassive. But his thoughts were bitter. He was going to be cheated. He was going to be prevented from doing the thing he existed for.
“I said just now that my outfit was kept pretty busy,” Colonel Mehta went on. “Well, a good many of our activities are concerned with one organisation. They’re a body you won’t ever have heard of. And yet one day, if things go their way, every man jack of them will have their names in the papers week in week out as rulers of this country.”
For an instant Ghote wondered whether the trim figure sitting in front of him, elbows on the table, might not be someone he was dreaming about. Every word seemed to be leading more and more rapidly away from reality.
“Inspector.”
Colonel Mehta barked it out like an order.
“Inspector, you think all this is a lot of ruddy fantasy, don’t you?”
“No, sir. That is, sir— Sir, it is hard to believe.”
“Yes, Inspector, it’s hard to believe. Though I should have thought the body of Hector Strongbow would have convinced you. That was real enough, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, it was real. But all the same, a group that may one day rule this country and yet no one has heard of it …”
“Exactly, Inspector. That’s precisely its strength. It has a name but scarcely anything else that you can lay your hands on. It’s called ‘India First’ and it consists of one small group of leaders plus a considerable number of agents. Now, hardly one of those agents knows more than two of the others, just the chap he gets his orders from and the chap he passes orders to. So there’s nowhere you can get at them. And yet, when India First thinks its time has come, it will spring into life and, in a couple of hours even, you won’t be able to move an inch without bumping up against one of its men.”
He leant back a little in his heavy chair.
“You know what I sometimes call India First, Inspector? I call it a revolution in embryo. It’s there. It’s tiny. But given the right conditions it will change overnight from a little group of outcasts into the lawful government of this country. And who’ll be the traitors then, eh?”
He sat looking at the inspector in silence. It was a good while before Ghote ventured to speak.
“And it is India First that you suspect of killing Mr. Hector Strongbow?” he said.
“I bloody well don’t suspect them. I know. It’s stamped with their hallmark, sheer bloody efficiency. I’ve thought for a long time that they had a man inside at Trombay. With the boys there producing plutonium as all the world knows they do, they were bound to try to infiltrate. You can see what happened. This chappie spotted Hector Strongbow sneaking round, realised a little later from the bloody paper that he was a trained physicist and a nuclear disarming fanatic and put in a report, pretty sharp. Then his masters acted.”
The colonel paused to let Ghote absorb this train of events. But a very different thought had entered the inspector’s head. He sat rigidly on his hard chair and voiced it.
“Sir,” he said, “if Mr. Hector Strongbow had found out something at Trombay that was meant to be secret, was it not just as much in the interests of Special Investigations Agency that he should not broadcast it to all the world?”
Colonel Mehta’s neat eyebrows rose.
“Yes, Inspector,” he said, “it was. Our interests are identical. India First wants India’s secrets to stay secret just as much as we do.”
“Sir,” Ghote said, “I read the newspapers. I know what goes on in other countries. In some places, sir, if a foreigner came across a secret to do with atomic energy their Secret Service would not let him live.”
Colonel Mehta grunted.
“You’re quite right, Inspector,” he said. “I can’t pretend I’m crying any tears for Mr. Strongbow. But there are strict orders for a case like that. We have to bring the chappie in for trial. For trial in camera if necessary, but fair and honest trial.”
“Sir, if you are not crying tears for Mr. Strongbow, I am. He was killed, Colonel. You say it was on the orders of the leaders of India First. Very well, it becomes my duty to find those men and charge them with conspiracy to murder.”
Colonel Mehta laughed.
“If they ever let us catch them alive,” he said, “we’ll charge them with a sight more than the murder of one American tourist. But your brief is rather different, Inspector. It isn’t concerned with Hector Strongbow. It’s concerned with his brother.”
“His brother? With Professor Gregory Strongbow?”
“Yes, Inspector. You see, the situation there is rather tricky. According to my information, the professor had left for a visit to Poona before his brother got back from Trombay. It looks as if Hector was hurrying over to Poona to consult his brother when he was killed. But the question arises: had he in the twenty-four hours between his visit to Trombay and his death managed to give his brother just a hint of what he knew?”
“You mean he might have telephoned him?” Ghote asked.
“Telephoned? Don’t be a bloody fool, man. You don’t put information like that on an open telephone wire in any circumstances. Even Hector would want to keep it strictly to himself till he blew the gaff. That’s just first principles.”
Ghote sat in silence. The colonel’s reasoning, now he came to look at it, was perfectly correct. In this new world he had stumbled into, a world of distrust in every direction, everyday reactions no longer applied.
But he would have preferred not to have been called a bloody fool to his face.
“Right,” said the colonel. “Now if it turns out that Professor Strongbow did get a message of some sort from his brother, India First is going to get to know. You can bet your boots they’re working full out on that this very minute.”
Ghote risked a question.
“How would they do this, sir?”
“Oh, a dozen ways. They’ll have men making casual inquiries at his hotel. I dare say they’ll contrive to search his baggage. It wouldn’t be too difficult.”
“No, sir.”
“They won’t want to kill a second American visitor unless they have to. But if they do find out he knows something, they’ll risk raising double hell all right to stop him talking. And double hell they’ll get. I hear your professor saw the American Consul this afternoon. If there’s a second death, we’ll be forced to kick up such a shindy nothing else will matter. So, if only for that, I need to know just what the situation is before India First does. And that’s where you come in.”
“Me, sir?”
“You, Inspector. If the professor does know something, he’ll very likely decide to play his cards pretty close to his chest till he gets back to America. So it’s up to you to gain his confidence. You’ll have every opportunity. You can go on carrying out your investigation, outwardly. But remember, your real objective is quite different. You’re there for one thing: to find out just how much Professor Strongbow knows.”
Inspector Ghote approached the Queen’s Imperial Grand Hotel in a state of inner tempestuousness echoed ironically by the churning anger of the sea in the great sweep of the bay on to which the hotel looked. A strong wind, which had sprung up with the suddenness usual at this time of year, was sweeping across the broad boulevard of Marine Drive. Even in the darkness of early evening the crashing of the waves beyond was disturbingly evident.
The inspector felt his worst forebodings had been fulfilled. He had been violently uprooted from the familiar network of his everyday activities. He had been deprived of the sense of support they gave him in whatever difficulties he might encounter. And he had been abruptly left to float in a stormy darkness.
A task had been imposed on him which he knew he had to carry out however much it went against the grain. He had to discover from this American in the hour of his bereavement whether his brother had succeeded in confiding anything to him before he had been killed, and what it was that had been said. And one thing was plain. The American would not be ready to tell him. If he had been the sort of person to pour out his troubles to any sympathetic listener, everything would have come out already.
But now confidences would have to be prised out of him. It was a hateful duty. In the short time he had known Gregory Strongbow he had come to have a strong feeling of respect for him. And together they had joined in the chase of the bullock driver and had brought it to a successful conclusion. They had shared that and it had made them, if only a little, friends.
And now it had become a duty to use that friendship to extract from the American something he would prefer to keep secret. Worse, he would have to pass on what he had learnt without letting the American know he was doing it.
It might not have been so bad, if he was not feeling so strongly the tug of his proper calling. He ought not to be tricking secrets out of innocent foreigners. He ought to be finding out who had killed Hector Strongbow. And, to add to it, he had been ordered to pretend he was doing exactly this. He would have to carry out all the stages of a murder investigation, and yet stop himself thinking of it as the thing he was doing. The temptation would be there all the time. The familiar procedures would have to be merely gone through, a series of meaningless rituals. And at every moment they would tempt him to give them his full allegiance.
But he would not succumb. If worming a secret out of Gregory Strongbow was to be his task, he would do it.
He climbed the spread of marble steps, traced over by a web of black cracks, and entered the huge, ultra-decorated pile of the hotel.
He was not, however, to have his unwanted meeting with Gregory Strongbow as soon as he had expected.
In the hotel foyer, a deserted area of chequered tiles where four or five isolated groups of wicker chairs clustered round stumpy, dust-covered palms in squat wooden tubs, a tall figure hastened towards him. He wore a dark, flapping, European-style suit, much creased and ink-stained, and walked with curious, erratic, over-long strides. Ghote had recognised him at once. He was a journalist, writer of a daily column, a man called Dharmadhikar, known to everybody by his initials, V.V.
“Inspector, Inspector.”
V.V. began to speak, in a loud, insistent voice, well before he had reached his target. Although the big foyer was temporarily deserted except for the hotel receptionist distantly at work behind her big counter, Ghote experienced a violent desire to put a finger to his lips and shush down this strident noise.
“Inspector Ghote, the very fellow I was wanting to see.”
“Good evening,” Ghote said. “But I regret I have important business.”
V.V. caught hold of his elbow with a large, bony hand.
“Ah ha,” he said. “It is no doubt business with Professor Gregory Strongbow?”
Ghote had half-admitted it before his sense of discretion caught up with him.
“It is police matters,” he eventually said with a jerk of stiffness.
“Yes, yes, indeed,” V.V. replied. “Police matters, of course. The killing of Hector Strongbow is a police matter most certainly. But, Inspector Ghote, ask yourself whether it is not more. Ask yourself whether it is not a public matter also.”
“I did not say it was the murder of Mr. Strongbow.”
