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H . R . F . KEATING

Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart

Preface by ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH

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Contents

Preface by ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH

Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart

PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS

Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart

H. R. F. KEATING was born at St Leonards-on-Sea, Sussex, in 1926. He went to Merchant Taylors, leaving early to work in the engineering department of the BBC. After a period of service in the army, which he describes as ‘totally undistinguished’, he went to Trinity College, Dublin, where he became a scholar in modern literature. He was also the crime fiction reviewer for The Times for fifteen years. His first novel about Inspector Ghote, The Perfect Murder, won the Crime Writers’ Association’s Gold Dagger and an Edgar Allen Poe Special Award. He lives in London with his wife, the actress Sheila Mitchell, and has three sons and a daughter.

ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH is the author of several series of novels and is best known as the creator of The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency books.

Preface

A perfectly loveable inspector

I went to Bombay, as Mumbai then was, as an incidental literary pilgrim. I was an incidental pilgrim in the sense that I had to pass through the city on my way elsewhere, but even so I was aware from the moment my plane landed that I was on hallowed turf: I was in the city of Inspector Ganesh Ghote of the Bombay C.I.D. Others feel the same way, no doubt, when they first set foot on the pavements of Baker Street, or find themselves outside one of the houses associated with Jane Austen. Pilgrims, of course, may go to the places of their pilgrimage in awe, but must be ready for a let-down. Bombay, though, did not disappoint: there were the Ambassador cars in which Ghote might travel; there were the street characters; there were the buildings and alleyways into which some suspicious character – some goonda perhaps, a thoroughly bad hat – might vanish. The whole intriguing world of this remarkable city, so brilliantly caught in Keating’s little gems, was there for the savouring. And yet, we might remind ourselves, the first nine Inspector Ghote novels were written before the author had actually visited India.

H. R. F. Keating began work on the Ghote novels as a deliberate attempt to give his fiction a more international tone. The Perfect Murder, the first of the series, was intended to broaden the appeal of his work, particularly in the United States. Something his earlier crime novels had failed to do, being considered ‘too British’ to appeal to American taste. And it would not have been surprising if novels set in a country the author had never visited ended up reflecting the author’s culture, rather than that of the country in which they are set. Yet in Keating’s case this did not happen. These books are not embarrassing portrayals of an idealized India; they have an authenticity that has been recognized, even in India. As such they fall into that small – very small – category of novels: those that are works of pure imagination but that nonetheless convey a valid sense of place and culture.

It would be easy, of course, to dismiss these novels as being classic examples of post-colonial assumption of voice, and no doubt there is a body of critical writing that does just that. Such criticism, however, is not only somewhat predictable, but misses the point that an accomplished piece of fiction can perfectly easily transcend the circumstances of its creation. It does not matter who wrote it and what the author’s personal credentials are: the story can soar above all that, revealing truths about what it is to be human. So the fact that Keating, at the beginning, had no direct experience of India matters not one whit. If he could make his books feel Indian; if he could step into the shoes of an Indian detective inspector and make it sound credible, or at least highly enjoyable, then that was merely testimony to a rich and creative imagination, a tribute to his ability as a novelist. After all, historical novelists do this all the time: they write about places they have never been and cultures of which they cannot, by definition, have personal experience. If one wants the contemporary blood and sinew of Mumbai, then one can read Vikram Chandra’s magnificent epic, Sacred Games; if one wants something more picaresque, something lighter and more comic, something that has the elusive quality of fable to it, then Inspector Ghote can be called to hand.

The real charm of the Inspector Ghote novels lies in the characters who populate them. Ghote himself is one of the great creations of detective fiction. Unlike many fictional detectives, who are often outsiders, possessed in many cases of difficult personal demons, Ghote is utterly loveable. His rank gives him some status, but not very much. He has his own office, with some personal furniture and effects, but we are always aware of his superiors, and of the barely disguised contempt that many of them have for him. In Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart, for instance, not only is there the coldly dismissive Superintendent Karandikar, known as ‘the Tiger’, who is only too happy to belittle a mere inspector, but we also meet the Commissioner of Police himself, a being so elevated as to inspire quite understandable awe in Ghote’s breast. What visitor to India over the last few decades – although less so now – will not have caught a glance of the chauffeur-driven cream or white Ambassador cars of such personages – complete with flags and curtains to exclude the common gaze?

Ghote, then, is the small man, the man who has made enough of himself to be given a position of responsibility, but who is always at the mercy of those more powerful than he is himself. If one were to read these books with no knowledge of India, one would conclude that it is a society of egregious inequality. And that, alas, is the reality of modern India, in spite of vastly increased wealth and the rise of a much larger middle class. Keating has an intuitive understanding of this feature of Indian society, and of the way in which the rich and powerful work. The wealthy Mr Desai, in Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart, is typical of the rich businessmen who crop up in the novels. He has made his money and is not at all apologetic about the comfort and power it brings. He is surrounded by servants, just as is Mr Lala Varde in The Perfect Murder, and these servants are treated with a haughty lack of consideration, not as people with feelings. Overstated? If one were to be tempted to say that the master–servant relationship in the Ghote novels is unrealistic, then one might simply read that remarkable fictional portrayal of exactly that issue in Aravind Adiga’s Booker Prize-winning The White Tiger. Keating, it seems, has got it spot-on.

Ghote’s dignified acceptance of his perilous status makes us want so much for him. We want him to remain on the case when influential people further up use every weapon they possess to have him taken off. We want him to be heard when he is ignored or deliberately silenced. We want him to find domestic contentment, and we want happiness for his wife, Protima, and his son, Ved. They deserve it so much more than the spoiled and over-indulged families with whom Ghote comes into contact. The picture of the ghastly child, Haribhai Desai, in Inspector Ghote Trusts the Heart is utterly toe-curling and, one fears, very realistic. I remember once visiting a cloyingly luxurious safari lodge in East Africa and meeting fellow guests, a very rich Indian family (surely related to Keating’s Mr Desai). Their young son was with them – a pampered and overfed child dressed in a beautifully cut miniature safari suit. How the rich so obligingly set themselves up to be preserved in aspic by the novelist, and how skilfully, and with what relish, does Keating perform this task!

But it is not just finely pitched social observation that makes these novels so good, it is also Keating’s engagement with issues of corruption and integrity. Keating has often expressed his interest in broad philosophical issues, and his writing, although entertaining and amusing, frequently engages us in an examination of how we understand the world and work within it. This, perhaps, is the single quality that gives to the Ghote novels their timelessness. They are about how the good man, the honest man – the man who is sufficiently self-aware to allow himself a lot of room for self-doubt – preserves his integrity in a world of false values, greed and rampant injustice. Ghote’s struggles, like the struggles of the powerless and downtrodden people whom he sees in his day-to-day work, are universally recognizable. In these books they are presented in such a way as to engage and amuse us; that is Keating’s skill. That is what confers on these vivid and lovely little books their status as classics of detective fiction. That is what gives these novels their lasting appeal.

Keating’s overall contribution to crime fiction has been a major one, but we should be particularly grateful to him for what he has given us in his marvellous creation of Inspector Ganesh Ghote, Bombay C.I.D, solver of mysteries, agent of such justice as an imperfect world can muster, or expect.

Alexander McCall Smith, 2011

1

Inspector Ganesh Ghote looked quickly over his shoulder. No one. As far as he could tell there was no one in sight who knew him. This would be the moment.

‘Sahib, sahib,’ the new young beggar on the far side of the gateway into Bombay C.I.D Headquarters called again. ‘You are my father and mother. All I have is you. Give, sahib, give.’

And, despite the pleading tone, there was an underlying note of cockiness. Of happy certainty.

Ghote crossed the five yards of pavement in front of the gate and stood close beside the boy. Looking down at him as he sat he could see every detail of the withered right leg stretched out on the dust-engrained paving-stones. It was like the small branch of a dead tree, shiny with many careless brushings-by. A thing of no account.

‘Why should I give?’ he said to the upturned face beneath him. ‘Many are giving to you already, and it is the start of the day only.’

‘Sahib, none give, none. You are my father and –’

‘Nonsense. I can see there are coins under where you are sitting.’

Abruptly the boy grinned, quite unabashed, his eyes sparkling with dancing, cascading enjoyment.

Ghote pushed his hand into his trouser pocket and gripped with sweat-sticky fingers the wavy-edged two-paise coin he had marked out for just this purpose when he had taken up his money as he had dressed. It was the life in the boy that got him, as it had done every day for the past six weeks, ever since the lad had come to this pitch when its former occupant had died. He pulled out the two-paise piece and pressed it hastily, stealthily, into the boy’s thin-fleshed, hard, little, expectant hand.

There. It was done.

Freed of a burden, he swung sharply away and prepared to enter the compound at a brisk walk.

‘Ah. It is Ghote. Inspector Ghote.’

A cold lurch of dismay froze him into stillness. Spotted. Found out. A hard-headed inspector of the Bombay C.I.D seen falling for the totally transparent wiles of a mere boy of a beggar.

Slowly he turned round.

And it was worse, far worse, than anything he could have imagined. There standing on the pavement just beyond the beggar boy and looking across at him with a cold, authoritative gaze was none other than the Commissioner himself.

Behind him, drawn up to the kerb, was the quietly magnificent car that is the privilege of the man who heads the Greater Bombay police force. Its driver sat, dark-capped and bolt upright, at the wheel. Its engine was purring softly as the workings of time itself.

‘Yes, Inspector Ghote,’ the Commissioner said, as if he was coming quietly and decisively to a conclusion. ‘You don’t look very much like a policeman.’

Ghote felt the phrase as being the final condemnation. And he saw that it was just, down to the last syllable. No, he did not look at all like a policeman. And could there be anything worse? It was his whole aim to be a policeman. And the Commissioner, there on the broad pavement barely three yards from him, standing with feet just apart, balanced, calm, was the very idea of the policeman carried to its highest point. The link that had been between them had in a flash become a yawning gap.

‘Right,’ said the Commissioner with quick authority.

This would be the sentence. Permanently condemned to work in Records? Sent away to the Traffic Department?

‘Now listen carefully, Inspector. There’s not a great deal of time. I’ve just had a most urgent telephone call from a personal friend of mine, Mr Manibhai Desai. His small son has been the subject of a kidnapping attempt. Thank God the men took the wrong child, the son of a tailor. But it looks as if they don’t know they did, and in the note they left they threatened to kill the boy if Mr Desai got in touch with the police. But we must have a man in the house for when they make telephone contact, someone who doesn’t have “Police” stamped all over him. So, Ghote, you’re just the fellow.’

*

Less than two minutes later Inspector Ghote was sitting, small and crouching, alone in the back of the Commissioner’s car. Ahead the enmeshed morning traffic of Bombay seemed to melt away before the high gleam of their polished radiator. In Ghote’s ears the Commissioner’s final words still rang. He had told him to take the car and had said that he himself would make arrangements for him to be relieved of all other work. And then, as he had ushered him in, holding the door open himself, he had made a swift parting comment.

‘Inspector, this is a job that may well require the utmost tact. It needs a man of feeling. I saw you giving to that beggar boy as I drove up: I’m glad to find at least one of my officers hasn’t let his duties rub away all the heart in him.’

A glow lit Ghote up from the inside like a warm lantern hung in the dark night.

But what of the task that awaited him when the big car’s driver had brought him to the Cumballa Hill home of Mr Manibhai Desai?

He leant yet further forward and pushed to one side the smooth-sliding heavy glass panel that separated him from the driver.

‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘do you know Mr Desai? Does the Commissioner visit him often?’

‘Not very often, Inspector sahib,’ the driver answered. ‘I think I must have taken him about three times only in the past year. It is more a friendship of the memsahibs, I am thinking.’

Ghote thought he understood now why the Commissioner had come driving down to Headquarters. When a man is urged on by his wife, even if he is the Commissioner of Police for Greater Bombay himself, it is likely that he will go to extravagant lengths to appear to be doing what he is asked.

‘And Mr Desai?’ he said to the driver. ‘What do you know about him himself?’

‘He is the man who is making Trust-X,’ said the driver simply.

It was all he had to say. Everybody knew about Trust-X Tonic Tablets. Trust-X was ‘the tonic you owe to your loved ones’; everybody knew this from the big advertisements on the screaming hoardings, on the radio and in all the newspapers. And everybody, it sometimes seemed, acted on that call that could not be ignored and paid out for the sheets of tablets with those days of the months printed in scalding red against the pocket for each pill. Ghote bought them himself for his Protima. They cost him rather more than he liked paying and there were times when he dared to doubt that she really was less tired for taking them. But when one month’s supply neared its end he always sent away for a new one, and if the solid, white, foursquare envelope – ‘Trust-X comes to you under plain cover’: what unspoken promises of sexual renewal – did not arrive in good time he always worried.

No wonder they were heading for Cumballa Hill and its great blocks of new luxury flats, centrally air-conditioned, surrounded by greenery, looking out over the blue stretches of the Arabian Sea. The man who had invented Trust-X was bound to be living in such conditions.

What were the other circumstances of his home life?

Ghote leant forward again on the firmly sprung seat of the Commissioner’s car and addressed the driver once more.

‘Mr Desai has many children?’ he asked.

‘The one boy only, sahib. He is aged about four. The mother died in giving birth, and two years ago Mr Desai married again. I believe the second Mrs Desai is younger than her husband. The burra memsahib is often saying Mrs Desai is like a daughter to her.’

‘I see,’ said Ghote.

Inwardly he felt a growing hollowness. Heavier burden than working directly for the Commissioner, it seemed he would be working directly for the Commissioner’s wife.

‘Did the Commissioner tell you any details about what happened at Mr Desai’s?’ he asked.

‘No, sahib. Commissioner sahib told only that I would be taking an officer to Desai sahib. I am to stop some distance from the block, and not to say a bloody word to anybody whatsoever, sahib.’

‘Quite right,’ said Ghote. ‘A business like this is invariably the work of a gang. It is well possible that they have a man, or more than one even, watching for signs of police activity. They threatened to harm the boy if any such steps are taken.’

‘And the tailor’s son,’ the driver asked, ‘would they harm him instead?’

Ghote had already thought about this, and he found that all he could say was that he did not know. What would ruthless kidnappers do when they discovered they had got the wrong victim? Would they just push him out somewhere to join the four thousand children lost in Bombay each year? Push him into the streets, like a fisherman who has caught a fish too small for anyone to eat? Or would they kill him?

They might. They all too easily might, if they believed he would be able to give them away. Because they would know that, once they had lost the hold that the possession of the son of a rich and popular man gave them, then the full might of the forces of the law would be out against them. One thing is vital in police work when a case of kidnapping occurs: to show that it does not pay. The actual taking of a child is seldom really difficult, so that, once the notion gets about that the much more complicated business of getting a ransom sum and remaining undetected can be achieved, then there will almost certainly be a spreading outbreak of this cruellest of crimes. So that it is a matter of the utmost importance to apprehend with speed any set of criminals who embark on the business. And such men would well know this.

Which meant that the chances for the little son of the tailor must be slim. But, on the other hand, kidnappers soon realize that it is bound to blunt the hunt afterwards if they keep strictly to their share of a bargain and return the victim promptly in exchange for the stipulated sum. And this means that they take every precaution to prevent that victim while he is in their possession from being able to tell where he is hidden.

If these men felt that they had taken sufficient precautions, perhaps the chances for the tailor’s boy would be reasonable.

‘I think this would be a good place to set you down, sahib,’ the driver said. ‘It is the penthouse in the next-after-this block of flats. Mount Greatest it is called.’

*

Stepping out of the steel-walled express lift that had swept him to the fifteenth floor of the upthrusting, pink-hued luxury block, Mount Greatest, Inspector Ghote hurried across a wide and well-cared-for marble floor to the front door of the penthouse, a rich span of glossy oiled teak. He put his finger on the bell-push that occupied its dead centre above a wide stainless-steel letter-box.

The door opened startlingly at almost the instant he touched the button. Ghote found himself confronted by a tall, broad-shouldered man with striking features, deep-set eyes, a wide mouth slightly parted to reveal large and even teeth, a crisply pointed, jutting chin and, most prominent of all, a thrusting, stallion-nostrilled prow of a nose. Only a touch of grey in the well-groomed, wavy hair and a thickening at the waist showed this was not a vigorous thirty-year-old but a man into his fifties. He wore European clothes, a silk suit cut with evident dash, a dazzlingly white shirt and a broad, flowing and colourful handprinted silk necktie.

And he grasped in a thrust-forward right hand a large revolver.

‘Mr Desai,’ Ghote said quickly, in no doubt this was the opulent, benefit-conferring inventor and manufacturer of Trust-X. ‘Mr Desai, I am police.’

Manibhai Desai kept the big revolver pointing still at Ghote’s stomach.

‘What is your name?’ he demanded.

‘Ghote. It is Ghote. Inspector Ghote, C.I.D.’

Abruptly the revolver swung round beckoning Ghote in. He stepped across the threshold and the proprietor of Trust-X promptly slammed the wide teak door behind him.

‘It is as well for you I had your name already,’ he said. ‘If I had thought you were one of the swine that tried to take my Haribhai I would have shot you down like a dog.’

‘But it is possible you would have shot some harmless visitor only,’ Ghote said.

‘They must not stand in my way,’ Manibhai Desai declared, his stallion nostrils flaring.

Ghote mustered all his authority.

‘Please, at least to put the gun in your pocket,’ he said. ‘It is most important at the present juncture to pay the utmost attention to any telephone calls incoming. And if there is a danger of firearms discharging that would not be possible.’

Mr Desai pushed the big revolver into the pocket of his dashingly cut suit as if it were red hot.

‘Please,’ Ghote said in alarm, ‘you must apply the safetycatch. Otherwise you would be in considerable danger.’

As vigorously as he had jammed the revolver into his pocket Mr Desai now yanked it out and feverishly examined it.

‘Perhaps you are not greatly acquainted with the use of firearms,’ Ghote suggested. ‘Kindly allow me.’

He reached forward and succeeded in removing the big pistol from Mr Desai’s dangerous grasp. He glanced at it. It was an Enfield .380. Not much to his surprise he saw that the catch had all along been in the safe position.

‘Why should I be a first-class expert on guns?’ Mr Desai demanded aggressively. ‘I am not a goonda. I am a businessman. I have worked my way in the world by providing fine quality service to my fellow men, not by shooting and killing and inflicting severe flesh wounds.’

‘No, no, of course you would not be expert,’ Ghote answered. ‘But perhaps, as you are not, it would be better if I were to retain this weapon while I am here on the premises.’

‘Yes, yes,’ agreed Mr Desai. ‘But if those damned swine show their faces, you will kill them, yes?’

‘You can trust me, sir,’ Ghote said, putting every bit of emphasis at his command into the double-sided declaration. ‘But please also show me at once where is your telephone. It is of the utmost importance I hear what these anti-socials have to say.’

‘There is a phone here,’ Mr Desai answered. ‘But there are others too everywhere in the flat. Will you listen on one extension while I am speaking on another?’

‘No,’ Ghote said. ‘I do not think that would do. It is important that I am beside you to give advice. We will have to act to our level best to make them supply details in full. The greater the extent of our knowledge, the better police would be able to deal with the fellows.’

Instantly at the mention of the kidnappers Manibhai Desai’s deep-set eyes blazed again.

‘The dogs and sons of dogs,’ he shouted. ‘They must be caught. Hung by the neck. To dare to try to take from me my Haribhai. To dare.’

‘They will not be caught unless I am hearing full details,’ Ghote said a little sharply.

The tall manufacturer of Trust-X subdued himself with an effort.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will tell. Everything took place first thing this morning. Every day my Haribhai goes down early to the garden beside the block to play. He loves to be in the open air. He loves to run.’

He jumped round with total suddenness and strode over to a far door, thumping on it sharply with his fist.

‘My Haribhai, my Haribhai,’ he called out with strident anxiety. ‘He is there? He is safe?’

A woman’s voice answered. Ghote could not catch what it was she said because of the thickness of the door between them. But, whatever it was, it seemed to reassure Haribhai’s father. He came back and flung himself down on to a round, squabby, modern-looking chair upholstered in a bright orange, that stood beside the table on which, Ghote saw, the telephone rested.

‘Today,’ Manibhai Desai resumed, ‘the tailor was here. We need new curtains. New curtains everywhere. The sun bleaches them so up here.’

Ghote glanced across at the large window of the hall through which indeed the morning sun was streaming, fresh and brilliant up at this height above the dust of the city. The curtains were of a rich, golden-yellow velvet. He was unable to see much sign of bleaching.

‘The tailor,’ he asked, ‘it is his son that they have taken?’

‘Yes, yes,’ Mr Desai answered, with a wave of his large hand. ‘That is the boy. The tailor, you must understand, visits often. There is a great deal to be done always. My wife is most insistent to keep right up-to-date. The most modern, straightaway. So very often it is necessary to have the tailor here. And he is a widower or something, I do not know. But in any case he has the habit of bringing his boy, who is aged about five, with him.’

‘The two little ones became friendly?’ Ghote asked.

‘No, no, no, not at all. Not at all. My son to be a friend for the son of a tailor only? It is not possible.’

‘But they were together when it happened?’

‘Yes, yes. Playing together. They were playing together.’

‘I see.’

‘No, no. You do not at all see. You do not understand what happened.’

‘But then what did occur, please?’ Ghote asked, blinking a little.

‘That is the bloody part about it. The two of them had changed clothes. When my son came screaming back to his ayah in the garden to say that some men in a car had driven away with Pidku he was dressed in Pidku’s clothes. I have had to have them burnt.’

‘Burnt? But they might have been of help.’

‘You can never tell with the clothes of the poor. There might have been disease, insects, anything. They had to be burnt ek dum.’

‘I see,’ Ghote said. ‘But tell me more, if you please, about exactly what happened. Your son had gone down to the garden to play under the charge of his ayah, and the tailor’s son was with him also. How did the boys come to change clothes?’

‘I do not know, I do not know. My little Haribhai would not want to wear poor clothes like that. An old T-shirt only, no doubt secondhand or even worse, with a picture of a ship at sea on it, and trousers that were torn in the back part. Always he has the best clothes, latest fashion, straight from the shops as soon as they come in.’

Ghote thought it was plain enough why rich little Haribhai had wanted to wear the T-shirt with a picture of a ship on it. In a few minutes he would have to get a description of the ‘latest fashion’ clothes that Pidku, the tailor’s son, had been wearing when he was taken. But Haribhai’s father would not be the one to ask for that. For a really meticulous description the ayah would be the one to approach.

‘The ayah?’ he asked now. ‘Why was she not watching your son? She has been questioned?’

‘Questioned she has been and tears she has wept. But she will say only the boys went a little way away as often they did. She is locked up now, and my chauffeur is guarding.’

There was a note of firm satisfaction in Mr Desai’s voice. Ghote decided that, with the telephone perhaps about to ring at any instant with the call from the kidnappers, the ayah could be left in her unofficial, and illegal, imprisonment for a little longer.

‘Did she say why she was not watching?’ he asked.

‘She says she was talking with the ayah of the Mehta family,’ Mr Desai answered. ‘They live in one of the flats down below. They have three little girls only.’

‘I see. And so the two boys wandered away. No doubt, if as a sort of joke they decided to change clothes, they would want to go somewhere where they could not be seen. Where was it that they went?’

‘There are bushes,’ Mr Desai said with dark gloom. ‘I will insist they are chopped down. Today.’

‘And your son? Has he been able to tell what happened?’

‘Yes, yes. He is a talker among talkers, my Haribhai. You should hear him order the servants. What a voice. I could not do better myself.’

‘And he said what?’ Ghote asked, with a touch of sharpness.

‘That two men came and offered sweetmeats from their car. My Haribhai went. I suppose because that little devil of a tailor’s boy was going. The men then offered ride in car, and again the same thing. Only a short way along the service lane at the back they stopped car and pushed my son out. Then they drove away. Top speed. And it might have been my Haribhai that –’

And then the telephone rang.

2

Ghote gave a convulsive start and flung himself on the telephone where it stood, a softly gleaming white instrument, on its table. He lifted the receiver and clapped a hand across its mouthpiece.

‘Say “Hello” only,’ he instructed Manibhai Desai, now sitting upright on the edge of his orange tub chair as if his tall body had been injected suddenly with a frame of steel.

Ghote held the receiver towards the manufacturer of Trust-X and carefully raised his palm from the mouthpiece. Mr Desai swallowed.

‘Hello,’ he said, hardly succeeding in choking the word out.

Ghote snapped back his protective hand. The two of them listened like hovering kites.

‘Is that you, Manibhai?’

The voice was unmistakable: the Commissioner.

Ghote handed the receiver over to Mr Desai and stood respectfully back. A sharp inquiry spluttered from the far end of the line.

‘Yes, yes, he is here. We are waiting for those swine to ring up –’

Another splutter from the far end.

‘Yes, yes. I will try. I will do my utmost to keep quite calm, but when I think –’

Splutter, splutter.

‘Yes, he is here beside me. I am handing over.’

Ghote took the receiver.

‘Inspector Ghote here, sir.’

‘Well, what do you make of it?’

It was almost a man-to-man inquiry. Ghote straightened his stooping back.

‘Here in the flat, Commissioner sahib, it is a question only of waiting for them to ring us. Everything must wait for that. But I have been worried by the problem of witnesses at the scene of the crime, sir.’

‘What’s the trouble there?’

‘Sir, the kidnappers’ approach appears to have been made via a back lane adjacent to the garden of the flats here. It is very much possible that there were witnesses to some stages of the proceedings at the very least. But it would be a matter of deploying a considerable number of personnel to locate such witnesses, and you can see the danger there, sir.’

‘Policemen all over the place, yes. No, Ghote, we must avoid that for the time being certainly.’

‘On the other hand, Commissioner sahib, witnesses will forget, and they will also add to what they remember with every quarter-hour that passes.’

‘True enough, true enough. But it is a risk we must take. My wife – I myself will not hear of Mr Desai’s boy being put in jeopardy if it can in any way be helped. You may say that you had my authority.’

‘Very good, Commissioner sahib. Thank you, sir. I will ring off now in case those fellows are wanting to call.’

‘Quite right, quite right.’

Ghote replaced the white telephone receiver on its rest with a sense of holy awe.

‘Well,’ he said to Mr Desai, ‘we must only wait and wait. But you have more to tell. There is, for instance, the note the miscreants left. Where is that?’

‘It is here, here.’

Manibhai Desai plunged his hand into his jacket pocket and produced a single sheet of coarse-looking, yellowy-white paper.

‘It has been in your pocket all the time?’ Ghote asked. ‘You have put it in and out? Have others handled the sheet also? Was there an envelope? Where is that?’

As the implications struck him he felt a growing sense of shock. This was evidence, solid fingerprint evidence perhaps, that had been so carelessly handled. Manibhai Desai’s answer to his blurted questions confirmed his worst fears.

‘If there was envelope it has been thrown away. What good is envelope? It is what they have written here, here, that matters.’

And a long forefinger jabbed and jabbed again at the coarse sheet, adding no doubt two more well-defined, obliterating fingerprints to those already there.

‘How many others have read besides yourself?’ Ghote asked hollowly.

‘But many. Of course, many. Do you think my wife would not want to see what the swine have written? Do you not think that all those in this household who love my little Haribhai would not want?’

‘Then since the sheet is covered already with fingerprints,’ Ghote said, ‘I might as well just take also.’

‘Fingerprints, fingerprints,’ Mr Desai said, suddenly horror-struck. ‘Will they be saying I rubbed out the fingerprints of those sons of dogs?’