‘Cut-price—’ The big Englishman suddenly sagged. ‘Yes, you’re right,’ he said. ‘How did you know?’
A hollowly anxious note had replaced the bluster.
‘A great deal of information comes into Headquarters here and is duly circulated,’ Ghote replied. ‘For some time we have been hearing about these false clubs that are set up to tempt people to pay only about half the fare Air India or BOAC charges. When someone is putting themselves outside the law in this way there is scope for many varieties of fraud, as you have found.’
‘Aye, that’s true enough,’ agreed Joe Harper mournfully. ‘I’ll have to ask the British Consul or somebody to stake me my fare home, and heaven knows where I’ll find the money to pay them back. I’m right cleaned out.’
‘Well, is there anything more you have to tell me now?’ Ghote asked more gently. ‘Let me assure you, the full truth can only be helpful to you.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ the big Englishman answered. ‘There’s not much more I can tell you, and that’s a fact. You were right about one thing, though. It wasn’t fishing I came here for. It was what the advert called a glimpse of the Erotic East, that place beginning with K. Blessed if I can get my tongue round it yet. Only when we got to Bombay, I found I’d somehow lost heart.’
He looked across at Ghote, his face wrinkled like a deflating balloon with this painful effort to get to the bottom of things.
‘You come to know it in the end,’ he went on. ‘That it won’t make all that much of a difference, even if you do go off where nobody knows who you are. Well, any road, that’s what I got to thinkin’ when I decided to follow that Golightly out of the airport.’ He brightened a little. ‘But you should have seen his face,’ he said, ‘when he realised I was going with him. A right crosspatch. And no wonder, I suppose.’
He gave a rueful grunt of a laugh, as if he had seen his situation clearly for perhaps the first time.
‘He told me he had to go and phone his old mother,’ he said. ‘I suppose it was just to get rid of me. What a reason.’
His eyes dropped to where the shirt stretched across his great floppy belly was patched with dark sweat.
‘Do you know,’ he said, ‘I believed him at the time. He seemed sincere like. It made me think, what if my mother could see me now? Aye, I thought that. I did truly.’
He looked up at Ghote as if seeking, despite all odds, some sort of assurance that he had not been too foolish. But Ghote was busy with a large yellow and white volume that had on its front cover a purple advertisement for Nirodh family planning requisites.
In a moment he slammed its pages together, quickly picked up his telephone and dialled a number.
In the stuffy heat of the little office the sound of the distant ringing could be heard clearly. Joe Harper shifted his bulk on the hard chair.
‘Hello? Golightly here.’
Inspector Ghote put his hand on the mouthpiece.
‘It looks as if the news is good for you,’ he said to the erstwhile Budleigh Regis fly fisherman. ‘If there was only a single one of that unusual name in the Bombay Telephone Directory, it was certain to be your man’s mother.’
He gave the Englishman an almost timid smile.
‘You could be saying,’ he ventured, ‘that we have got your fish on the end of our line.’
1973
FOUR
The River Man
Deputy Superintendent Samant looked at Inspector Ghote with a starkly obvious effort to keep under control the terrier sharpness of his usual manner.
‘I think I have only to say to you,’ he uttered, almost pushing the words back down his own throat, ‘to say one name, that of Dr P. R. Kumaramangalam.’
Total blankness abruptly occupied the whole of Ghote’s mind. Above him in the Deputy Superintendent’s office in Bombay CID Headquarters the big ceiling fan whirred with an insistent drone that seemed to blot out every coherent thought.
At last he forced himself to reply, licking his parched lips.
‘Dr P. R. Kumaramangalam, DSP sahib?’
With audible relief the DSP allowed a quick spurt of rage to escape him.
‘Yes, yes, man, Dr P. R. Kumaramangalam. Are you going to tell me you have never heard of him? The newly-appointed head of the All-India College of Surgeons? Inspector, do you never read books? Do you never browse even through the pages of Times of India Who’s Who?’
‘Yes—. No, sir. Not the Who’s Who, sir.’
With joy, DSP Samant let loose a single cutting blast of sarcasm.
‘Then you can take it from me, Inspector, the day will never come when you feature in those pages. Never. Never in one hundred years.’
‘No, sir.’
It was a comfort to be able to agree without reservation. Even the DSP seemed to lose some of his bottled impatience. He leant back in his heavy wooden armchair and surveyed Ghote across his desk with something like calm.
‘Dr Kumaramangalam, Inspector,’ he said, ‘besides being the head of the All-India College is also a close personal friend of the Commissioner.’
His voice rose to an incisive peak on those last two words and Ghote irradiated his face with a look of proper awe.
‘Yes, sir,’ he said.
‘And the Commissioner, Inspector, has asked me, me personally, to undertake a certain assignment on behalf of Dr Kumaramangalam. An assignment not strictly official, Inspector, and one requiring the utmost discretion.’
The pouncing sharpness was building up again under the effort to speak of the matter with a calm equal to the discretion it required. The DSP’s hands were holding hard on to the arms of his chair.
‘The utmost bloody discretion, man,’ he repeated.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Ghote.
Deep down a little flicker of delight began to play inside him. A matter requiring utmost discretion, and he had been summoned by the DSP to be told about it. No doubt to take part in whatever inquiries were necessary.
‘It seems, Inspector,’ the DSP said, once more making an effort to regain a fitting calm, ‘that some weeks ago our friends the Customswallahs were chasing some gold smugglers in a boat up the mouth of a certain river not a hundred miles from Bombay, and in the course of the chase they came upon an aged Englishman living, all on his own and in conditions of considerable destitution, on a tiny island in the river mouth.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Ghote put in with caution.
‘Yes, Inspector. Now, in the course of inquiries the Customswallahs heard mention in connection with this individual – generally known to the fisherfolk in the vicinity only as the River Man – of another name.’
The DSP paused.
Another name, thought Ghote. And he had already betrayed a lamentable ignorance over Dr Kumaramangalam. Please, oh please, let him get this one right.
‘The name Valsingham Doctor, Inspector.’
‘Valsingham Doctor. But, DSP … But, sir, that name is known to me. It—’
‘Of course it is known to you, man. Have I not heard it from your own lips? And more than once. Much more than once. For what other reason did you think I was requiring your assistance, Inspector? Because you are renowned for your ability to handle a matter requiring discretion?’
DSP Samant