The Sheriff of Bombay by H. R. F. Keating

Author:H. R. F. Keating [H. R. F. Keating]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House
Published: 2020-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

TEN

Carefully pulling to the broken door of Shammo’s room, Ghote looked quickly along the corridor towards the archway leading down to the brothel’s hall. No one appeared to be coming up. He listened hard. There were murmurs of talk from behind the curtains of the cubicles, an occasional muffled laugh, a squeak of feigned pleasure or dismay. But, as far as he could make out, none of the customers was on the point of emerging.

Quickly, but quietly as he could, he made his way towards the cubicle where, Shammo had said, Munni had taken her all-night client.

He made up his mind as he went that, whatever might seem to be going on behind Munni’s curtain, he was going to walk in and get hold of her. Her customer might always turn out to be aggressive, but he doubted if he would be. Most people caught in such circumstances were likely to slide away as quickly as they could.

At the cubicle curtain he did for a moment, however, stand and listen. He heard a low, insistently muttering male voice. Then a sharp instruction in Bombay Hindi: ‘Behave properly.’

Was that Munni? It could be.

He swished back the curtain.

A man was sitting on the edge of the bed, still dressed in pure white kurta and many-folded dhoti, still even with his white Gandhi cap on his almost bald head above two thick coils of neck fat. And the girl on the bed, who had apparently resented some particularly extraordinary proposal, was not Munni.

‘Munni?’ Ghote barked out, balked rage flooding through him. ‘Where is she? Why isn’t she here?’

The girl on the bed looked at him without rancour.

‘Oh, she has gone,’ she said.

‘Gone? Gone? Where gone?’

‘I do not know. All I know is Saroja went to her just a little time ago and made her come away. The customer was very angry, but Saroja said he need not pay. Saroja said that, even. And then Ragu, who keeps out the police and diseased men at the door, took Munni with him.’

‘Where to? Where to?’

‘I am not knowing. Saroja was whispering only.’

Ghote let the cubicle’s curtain fall. As he went towards the stairs leading into the hall he heard the girl saying to her disturbed client in English, ‘No, no, nothing to mind. Just be happy go lucky. Just be happy go lucky.’

Then abruptly the eunuch madam appeared at the foot of the stairway. Ghote acted at once.

In a moment he was facing him, placing himself squarely so that the creature had his back to the wall.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘you have sent away Munni. Where have you sent?’

The hard-faced man-woman looked back at him, expression quite unchanged despite the fierceness of the challenge. Again he was assailed by a strong sweet whiff of almond oil.

‘Who is Munni?’ the hijra said.

‘No. That would not do. You know full well who is the girl. She has been here for the past ten days, ever since Heera in Falkland Road sent her to you.’

‘Heera? What Heera is that?’

‘Listen, I know that Munni has been here.

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