LITMIR.BIZ

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There was a Section three-oh-two affair yesterday in a shop near Kemp’s Corner. Young man beaten to death by, it seems, the shop owner. Place called the Tick Tock Watchworks. Now, of course that ought to be a matter simply for the local station, where it seems to have been dealt with in a perfectly satisfactory manner. The culprit made a confession, and though he has to make it again, of course, in the presence of a magistrate, as far as I’m concerned, the whole affair has been properly wrapped up.”

      “Yes, sir,” Ghote put in, quietly respectful.

      The D.G.P. looked up at him. A tiny spasm of rage contorted his face.

      “Unfortunately, Inspector,” he said, making Ghote feel as if somehow, whatever the unfortunate circumstance was, he himself was responsible for it. “Unfortunately, the young culprit, though of the poorer classes, happens to be a cousin of the Dhunjeebhoy brothers.”

      Ghote began to understand.

      The Dhunjeebhoy brothers were one of Bombay’s great names, Parsi industrialists with a score of different concerns under their control, next in importance perhaps only to the Tata family, of the new Titan watches amid much else. So, from a small-time watchmaker who for some reason had committed a brutal murder, this cousin of the Dhunjeebhoys had leaped in an instant to become a person of influence, even if at secondhand.

      In consequence Crime Branch at headquarters was being called in, as it usually was when an offense that ought to be investigated by one of Bombay’s forty-five local police stations turned out to have social or political complications. Yet that could not be the whole of it. If in the ordinary way such a case had been brought to the D.G.P.’s notice, he would have simply passed it over to the Assistant Commissioner, Crime Branch. So why now had he himself been directly summoned?

      “Both brothers are coming to see me this morning,” the D.G.P. continued, with just the merest hint of uneasiness. “They are due”—he glanced once more at his Titan Exacto—“in precisely six minutes.”

      Ghote swallowed.

      “Yes, sir?” he said.

      “I can only suppose, er, Ghote, that they intend to claim that the young man’s confession was extorted from him by force.”

      Ghote wondered what to reply. Confessions were beaten out of culprits when an investigating officer was certain he had the right man. It was often the only way to achieve a result. Yet it was not a method endorsed by the Criminal Procedure Code. So should he produce an exclamation of shocked disapproval?

      On the other hand, the D.G.P., who must have risen all the way from Probationary Sub-Inspector to his present topmost rank, could not be ignorant of the way things were done.

      “Yes, sir,” he said eventually, attempting to get an absolute lack of meaning into the words.

      The D.G.P. looked at his watch again.

      How many seconds of those six minutes had already gone? And how much more needed to be said before the powerfully influential Dhunjeebhoy brothers appeared?

      “In the ordinary way, Inspector, hm, Ghote, I would have dealt with the Dhunjeebhoys myself, given them some reassurances and so forth. But …”

      The D.G.P. paused long and long, in search apparently of a way to put some delicate point to an officer altogether too junior to be entrusted with such matters.

      Ghote thought of the new seconds that had ticked away.

      “Yes, sir?” he ventured.

      “Inspector, there is one damn difficulty.”

      Another pause.

      “You see, er, Ghote, the victim of the murder was a certain—”

      One of the telephones on the D.G.P.’s huge, wide desk, the pink one, buzzed in sudden urgency.

      The D.G.P.’s mouth tightened in sharp displeasure. He consulted his Exacto once more, then reached across and picked up the pink receiver.

      “Yes?”

      An anxious voice quacked at the other end.

      The D.G.P. groaned out an infuriated sigh.

      “Send them up, then,” he said. “Send them up.”

      He turned to Ghote, putting the receiver down.

      “Early,” he said. “Damn it, four minutes and twenty seconds early.”

      But already there was a clatter of footsteps on the stone stairs outside. Then a discreet knock.

      “Come in,” the D.G.P. called.

      He drew the sleeve of his shirt firmly across the face of his new Tata Titan Exacto.

      The two visitors ushered in by the D.G.P.’s peon were not in appearance the powerful industrialists Ghote had expected to see. Dynamism was not written all over them. Diffidence was.

      Both were tall and inclined to stoop. But, though clearly there was a family resemblance in their pale tobacco-leaf complexions, their deep-set saddish eyes, and fine hooked noses, they seemed in fact to differ considerably. The older one, who introduced himself almost shyly as Homi Dhunjeebhoy, was so fleshlessly thin as to make Ghote at once wonder how he continued to keep himself alive. The younger, bouncily adding that he was Bomi Dhunjeebhoy and at once appearing to regret the forwardness, though almost as lean as his brother possessed a little rounded paunch, which alone gave him an air of happy good living.

      The D.G.P. had jumped up from his wide desk as soon as they were shown in and, with much shaking of hands, smiling, and gesturing and offers of cold drinks, tea, and coffee, had got them seated in two of the sprawling leather armchairs that marked out his office as that of a very senior man. Ghote, standing discreetly in the background, he introduced almost with a single word.

      Then, back behind his desk, fingers steepled, he asked, “Now, gentlemen, how can I help you?”

      Homi Dhunjeebhoy leaned forward in his wide armchair like a delicate question mark.

      “Mr. Director General,” he said, “my brother and I are anxious not to take up any more of your valuable time than we have to—”

      “No, no, that’s just it,” Bomi Dhunjeebhoy broke in, almost hopping in his huge chair. “Time. We know yours is valuable, sir. We do not wish to take up more than one second of it that we do not need to. But—but—”

      “But,” said his brother, cutting sharply in, “we regard this as a matter, quite simply, of life and death.”

      “Yes, yes. Life and death. Exactly that. I mean, you see, after all, if—if this terrible business should result in—in—”

      “A verdict of guilty,” Homi Dhunjeebhoy declared hollowly from beside his brother, “then it would indeed be a matter of death. Of death by hanging for poor young Rustom Fardoomji, who is, after all, our cousin.”

      “Though we must admit that of late we have hardly seen the boy,” Bomi bounced in. “Remiss of us. Remiss. Family ties. We ought …”

      He came to a halt, sadly contemplating, it seemed, the lack of family contact.

      His brother sonorously took up the tale.

      “Rustom must be held partly responsible,” he said. “The boy has no interest in family affairs. Otherwise—”

      “Yes, yes. Otherwise we would have made sure we saw him from time to time. Entertained. Inquired. Looked after. But—but—well, the poor fellow was obsessed. Not too strong a word, I think?” Bomi looked across at the scraped-thin question-mark shape of his brother.

      “Obsessed,” Homi gravely concurred. “With timepieces, Mr. Director General. Timepieces. He—”

      “Yes, yes.” Bomi hopped forward. “The young fellow can think of nothing else. Nothing but his watches and his clocks. Of tick and tock. If what makes the things go and what makes them—”

      “Stop.”

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