Doing Wrong (Inspector Ghote) by Keating H. R. F

Author:Keating, H. R. F. [Keating, H. R. F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PFD Books
Published: 2013-10-27T00:00:00+00:00

When it came to it H. K. Verma stood for almost an hour at the top of the great square bowl of the Serpent Well, his mind swaying this way and that. He stared, hardly seeing what was in front of his eyes, at the immense grey stone walls plunging downwards and the narrow stone steps creeping up their sides. At the bottom, far down, he contemplated the square of water, black in the dazzling sunlight, flower offerings dotting its surface in minute coloured specks. At its edge white-clad widows squatted in prayer, working through their last days in holy Kashi. A handful of pilgrims toiled up the steps on the opposite side cradling little glinting brass vessels filled with doubly sacred water from the well.

There he stood while the battle raged within. At times the forces of evil – yes, they are forces of evil, admit it – almost won. The idea that it was his right, that it was the right and only course for him, to send some of Krishnakanta’s wrestlers to the Hotel Relax and have this rat from Bombay put out of the way. For ever.

Then, at the last moment, the forces of good would fight back.

What has come upon me that I should even be contemplating such an act of wrong-doing? Myself, who from boyhood and always has striven and striven to do right? How can I even think of so much as going to talk to those goondas? Asking, in return for whatever sum they would demand, to have the policewalla blotted out? However necessary it may be.

But the battle was not decided there looking down far, far below to that black square of sacred water.

At last, moving almost as a sleep-walker, he made his way to the wrestling pit that had hovered in his mind, a vision of evil.

I am not committing myself to anything. Not even to speaking to one of those fellows. But it would be stupid, when I have come all this way, not at least to look. See what sort of goondas they are there. The sensible course. The right way to set about it.

I have not made up my mind. To do it. To . . .

Very well, say it. To add one more death to that death I brought about in Bombay. But this would be a truly necessary death. If that little rat has got his teeth into the truth somehow, then he has to be made to let go. Even by blows.

And this is the way to make certain. To use one of these fellows. Krishnakanta has done it. I am sure of that, however much he will not say so out aloud. But strikers have been killed. In riotings, they were saying it in the papers. And if a striker, who is committing violence himself, has to be killed, why not equally a stinking little rat from Bombay?

He found himself standing just outside the pit, by a shrine to God Shiva. A conical lingam painted in stripes of ochre and red inside a barred cage.

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