LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

votes in his pocket.”

      Then Ghote realized what the D.G.P.’s complications were. The headman of a village with so many votes at his command, whose word, deep in the mofussils, would be law to hundreds and hundreds of illiterate petty tenants and landless laborers, was in a different way every bit as influential as the Dhunjeebhoy brothers. They might have vast wealth, but this Bhagwantrao Pendke would have something as precious in today’s India: votes that could turn a politician into a minister.

      But surely the mere fact that the Patil of Dharbani was the murder victim’s grandfather could not be the whole of the complication. Bhagwantrao Pendke was unlikely to be offended even if it should turn out that the officer who had extracted that swift confession had been—the scathing words of Dr. Hans Gross, whose Criminal Investigation had for so long been Ghote’s holy writ, came back to him—too much of an “expeditious investigator.” So long as whoever had killed the Patil’s grandson was brought to justice in the end, surely he would be content.

      Yet …

      “Superintendent Verma, in charge of District Ramkhed under which Dharbani falls, happens to be an old colleague of mine from Police Training School days,” the D.G.P. went on. “And, as soon as the news reached him that young Ramrao Pendke had been killed, he got on to me with some private information.”

      From behind his wide, papers-strewn desk he looked at Ghote sharply.

      “Private information, Inspector,” he said. “Information not a hint of which is to go beyond these four walls. Understand?”

      “Yes, sir,” Ghote said.

      And he could not fight away a feeling of sinking dismay.

      “It appears that in the event of Ramrao Pendke’s death—something which, incidentally, nearly took place already a few weeks ago—the next in line to the Patil’s lands and influence would be the boy’s cousin-brother, one Ganpatrao by name. And that particular gentleman, not to mince words, is a damn bad hat.”

      Ghote felt another massy beam lowered into place in the weighty structure being heaved onto his shoulders. If Ganpatrao Pendke was such a damn bad hat, it was very possible that he had murdered the cousin who stood between him and power, wealth, and influence. But this murderer, if murderer he was, was also a grandson of the Patil of Dharbani. How content would that influential man be if it was proved that his other grandson was the killer? Or, worse, if it was half proved? And by him himself?

      “S.P. Verma,” the D.G.P. was going on, “not knowing that the watch-shop murder had been satisfactorily dealt with here, any more than I did myself at the time, thought fit to give me a private tip that this fellow Ganpatrao was a man perfectly capable of doing someone to death. And you know the old saying about paternal cousins, Inspector? Kautilya Chanakya, 250 B.C.?”

      Ghote, who thought he probably did know the saying, more or less, had sense enough to say, “No, sir.”

      “‘Paternal cousin is a naturally envious person,’ Inspector. That’s the wisdom of old Kautilya Chanakya, and I’ve no reason to doubt it still holds good.”

      “Yes, sir. And you were telling also, no, that the victim in question nearly died some weeks ago? Did the said Ganpatrao make some attack on him at that time?”

      “No, no, not at all. No, you see, the whole reason young Ramrao was in Bombay was that he was very seriously ill. So serious that his death was, so to speak, assured. But then an America-returned surgeon who’s just set up a clinic here in Bombay, name of Yadekar, I think—something like that—succeeded in giving him some sort of transplant. And from being on the point of expiring, though a patient still at the clinic, he was to all intents and purposes alive and well again.”

      “And Ganpatrao’s hopes to become heir to all those lands had vanished,” Ghote said. “So, yes, sir, I see he then had very much more of motive. But, sir, was S.P. Verma telling that the said Ganpatrao was in Bombay itself yesterday at the time of the crime?”

      For a moment the D.G.P. looked a little disconcerted.

      “Well,” he said, “there you’ve put your finger on it, Inspector. My old friend, Verma, is in a somewhat difficult position. After all, the Patil of Dharbani is by far and away the most important individual in his whole district. The fellow may choose to stay in a village, but he is due a great deal more respect than the Chairman of the Municipal Council in Ramkhed, or anybody else. So Verma is not particularly anxious to go poking his nose into the family’s affairs. Why prod the cobra’s nest, as they say?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Look at it this way, Inspector. Ganpatrao Pendke may be a thoroughly dirty dog, but whatever he’s done to come to police notice hitherto has invariably been allowed to lie in the dormant file. At the particular request of his grandfather.”

      “I see, sir,” Ghote said.

      The cloud of despondency that had hovered over him ever since he had heard the words private information, with their hint of things that ought to be made public being kept neatly under cover, descended fully onto him now. Damp and chilling.

      It had begun to be altogether clear that if the D.G.P.’s friend, Superintendent Verma, felt himself debarred from conducting any investigation out at Village Dharbani, that tricky task was going to be given to Inspector Ghote. But a flicker of hope sprang up.

      “Sir,” he said, “even if Mr. Ganpatrao Pendke is responsible for the death of his paternal cousin, surely it would not be necessary to go to his native place to find out if he had left for Bombay before the murder. Sir, he could all the time have hired some goonda to do his dirty works.”

      “No, no, Inspector,” the D.G.P. said, whisking the idea away with a dismissive hand. “Do you think a man like this Ganpatrao would entrust a secret that could cost him his life to a sopari he had hired? Or at the least lay himself open to lifelong blackmail? No, no. Ridiculous.”

      “Yes, sir,” Ghote said, realizing the D.G.P. was almost certainly right.

      If Ganpatrao Pendke had killed his cousin he was bound to have come to Bombay for the purpose. Which meant that he in turn would have to go out to Village Dharbani and conduct the investigation which S.P. Verma was too much of a bootlicker to conduct himself, to find whether Ganpatrao had or had not been in Bombay at the time in question.

      “So what I want you to do, Inspector,” the D.G.P. went on, hammering Ghote’s last hopes into the ground, “is to get yourself out there and, without disclosing your identity as a police officer and thereby bringing trouble down on poor Verma’s head, quietly ascertain just exactly where Ganpatrao Pendke was yesterday morning.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      The D.G.P. leaned back in his tall desk chair, a burden off his mind.

      “In any case, er, Ghote,” he said with sudden affability, “I daresay the whole Ramkhed end of the business is no more than a mare’s nest. The investigation here is under one Assistant Inspector Lobo, a chap I’ve had my eye on for some time. Thoroughly keen and reliable. A tiptop officer. He won’t have gone far wrong, take my word for it.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      Ghote could not help asking himself briefly how it was that a fellow of assistant inspector rank only could have got himself so well into the D.G.P.’s good books. He would have his promotions accelerated no doubt. Yet he himself was so little known to higher authority that for almost all this interview the D.G.P. had had difficulty remembering his name.

      And then something else was borne in on him. That he had in fact been picked out for the task that had been thrust upon him because, if his investigation should somehow earn the displeasure of the votes-rich Patil, any ensuing trouble could conveniently be visited on his own head and no one else’s.

      For a moment more the D.G.P. appeared still to be reflecting pleasurably on Assistant Inspector Lobo and the rapidity with which he had obtained a confession in the case. Then he rubbed his hands briskly together once more, pulled

Скачать книгу