The Body in the Billiard Room. H. R. f. Keating
Colour TV right from the beginning. Video also. Foreign liquor like buffalo milk only to you fellows.’
‘No,’ Ghote exploded. ‘No, no, I am telling you.’
‘Oh, with me there is no need to hide, man. I am doing all right myself. But it is the opportunities that you have I am envying. All those criminals needing to keep you sweet, and all the money-punny in Bombay. Crime capital of India, isn’t that what they are calling?’
‘Well, criminals we have I am not denying. And, yes, bribes are offered and bribes are taken also, that again I am not denying. But officers who will not take are there. That also I am stating.’
Inspector Meenakshisundaram gave a rich laugh.
‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘it is taking all sorts to make one world, that is the old British saying, isn’t it? But you, I am sure, Inspector, you are not standing back when there are chances put at your feet.’
Ghote’s immediate reaction was hotly to deny the specific suggestion. But at once it occurred to him that he needed to be on friendly terms with this fellow. He needed to find out man to man, with nothing held back or concealed, the full strength of the dacoity explanation of the murder. He would hardly succeed in doing that if Meenakshisundaram regarded him with contempt.
So he wagged his head ambiguously once more and produced a little smile which he hoped looked somehow sly.
‘But tell me, man,’ he said quickly before the subject of bribes and bribe-taking could go any further, ‘what is this I am hearing that the murder in the Ooty Club was not at all a dacoity?’
Meenakshisundaram gave a deep belly laugh.
‘You have been talking-palking to that Surinder Mehta fellow, I see,’ he said. ‘Crackpot-whackpot if ever I saw. He was telling, isn’t it, that the billiards wallah was victim of blackmail attempt that was coming unstuck? That one of those sahibs at the Club is secret-weekret murderer? I ask you, man, what more of nonsense could be there?’
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