Inspector Ghote, His Life and Crimes by H. R. F. Keating

Author:H. R. F. Keating [H. R. F. Keating]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2020-04-09T16:00:00+00:00

SEVEN

The Cruel Inspector Ghote

Inspector Ghote stood deep in thought. He was in a dilemma. It was the matter of the Hashambhai son, young Musa. Undoubtedly the young fellow was the one responsible for the theft of rupees one lakh from his own parents. But no doubt either about two other things. The first was that those hundred thousand rupees were almost certainly ‘black money’, the hidden-away unbankable accumulation of cash payments not entered in the books of Mr Hashambhai’s watch-making business, one of the most prosperous in all Bombay. The second was that Mr Hashambhai was a person of ‘influence’. He had friends in high places. Doing anything that displeased Mr Hashambhai, like getting the Hashambhai name in the papers, would bring trouble. A word in the Commissioner’s ear. Something like that only.

But nonetheless, young Musa Hashambhai had stolen that money. He himself had all the evidence necessary. He ought to arrest the boy, no matter how indulgent about the whole matter his father might be. Even, he owed it to the boy himself. One big shock now, when he was seventeen-eighteen years of age, and he might behave himself well for the rest of his life.

On the other hand, Mr Hashambhai did have that influence and might well use it. Nor did he perhaps deserve to get back that tainted money.

Suddenly Ghote realised something. While he had been standing stock-still in thought here on the pavement beside Churchgate Station he had been witnessing a crime, witnessing it without taking it in at all.

Never mind that it was not the most serious crime in the Indian Penal Code. It was a crime. Never mind that the perpetrator was no more than a child, a chubby little boy of eight or so with an air of bouncy joyfulness about him, what he was doing there on the opposite pavement at this very moment was a crime.

Only, as the little devil was on the pavement opposite and half the roadway betweeen them was blocked by one of Bombay’s most curious sights, there was nothing that he himself could do to stop that crime taking place. But he could probably prevent the criminal getting away.

What the boy was doing was slitting with a razor blade stuck into an old cork the underneath of a big blue leather handbag on the arm of a rather plump European lady in a boldly flower-patterned dress, who stood peering into the view-finder of her camera recording Bombay’s curiosity, the dabbawallas.

The dabbawallas, who were occupying the roadway and blocking him off from his quarry, were very much worth photographing for a foreign tourist, Ghote thought. Each morning of Bombay’s working week they collected up from homes in the suburbs home-cooked tiffin for husbands working in offices in the heart of the city. Each lunch was placed in four round cans fitting neatly one on top of the other into their carrier marked in red paint with its code numbers. The dabbawallas took them to the nearest suburban rail station and went with them to the Churchgate terminus.

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