The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown (10 page)

It was Rangwalla's turn to shake his head. ‘How do men like Rao live with themselves? Where do they leave their consciences each morning? Sometimes it makes me think there is no hope for this country of ours.'

Chopra frowned. ‘“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”'

Rangwalla stared at him. ‘I suppose Gandhiji said that.'

Chopra coloured. His obsession with the great statesman was well known to his subordinates. Not everyone, he knew, appreciated Gandhi's homespun wisdom.

His phone suddenly exploded in his pocket, sending out the rousing chorus of the national song, ‘Vande Mataram'. It was a message from Poppy.
Do not forget to go to the school. The appointment with Principal Lobo is at 4 p.m. P.S. Did you take your pills?

Chopra cursed. The appointment! He had completely forgotten. He looked at his watch. It was a quarter to four. He was going to be late.

‘Come on,' he said, standing up with such haste that his napkin fluttered to the floor.

‘Where are we going?'

‘To the St Xavier Catholic School for Boys.'

The St Xavier Catholic School for Boys, located in the posh suburb of Juhu, had only recently celebrated its centenary and in so doing consecrated a glorious legacy of pedagogical and charitable endeavour in India's most factious city. Chopra had recently become acquainted with the renowned institution's colourful history, which came back to him now as he walked through its wrought iron gates.

Exactly one hundred years ago the Bishop of Bombay had invited a band of Portuguese missionaries to the subcontinent in the hope of making headway in the divine mission of converting the heathen. Astounded by the universal poverty and suffering that confronted them, the zealous Catholics had set about building an orphanage, which had later been converted into a school. The hope was that the school might be employed to bring the Word to the masses when they were at a more malleable age, that is, an age at which they would not take umbrage at being told that their seven-thousand-year-old faith was pagan nonsense and they would burn in eternal hellfire should they not immediately see the error of their ways.

The school had swiftly become a Mumbai institution.

Now it was one of the city's most sought-after educational establishments, with parents willing to pay extortionate sums to enrol their future Tatas and Ambanis on its hallowed roster. The school continued to stay true to its roots, attempting to inculcate in each of its wards a sense of civic responsibility and charitable endeavour. One did not have to be a Christian to attend the school, but one was expected to imbibe the Christian virtues of decency, honesty and goodwill to one's fellow man.

Chopra hoped that his wife was taking notes.

When Poppy had first told him that she had taken up the post of Drama and Dance teacher at St Xavier, he had thought she was making a joke.

But Poppy had been deadly serious.

After twenty-four years she had finally decided to join the rat race, as she had put it.

Chopra knew that Poppy had struggled for years with the fact of their childlessness. It saddened him too, though he had taken care to mask his disappointment lest Poppy mistake it for recrimination. He knew too that Poppy had never understood his steadfast refusal to adopt. He was not sure if he understood it himself. But each time he thought about taking on a child that was not his own he had somehow balked. Not because he believed that he could not love a child he had not fathered himself, but because of a strange sense that the child might not believe in
him
. In his authenticity as a parent.

After all, what qualifications did he have to be a father? For thirty years he had known only how to be a policeman. How to work long hours for little pay; how to deal with rapists and murderers; with cheats and thugs; with thieves and scam-artists. In what way did these endeavours qualify him to raise a young life?

But often, in the quiet of an evening, he would reflect that perhaps he had been selfish, and that his wife had paid for his selfishness.

Poppy loved children and they loved her. This was one reason why he had not protested when she had told him about her new job.

Chopra considered himself a traditionalist, but not old-fashioned. He had no objection to Poppy working, but he worried for her. He did not think that his wife quite understood what she was letting herself in for.

When he later discovered that Poppy had had an ulterior motive in pursuing this sudden career change it had come as no surprise. Over the years he had become accustomed to her personal crusades, which, like solar flares, burst forth with predictable regularity, usually incinerating everything in their path, but just as quickly running their course.

Poppy had learned that in the one hundred years of its history the St Xavier Catholic School for Boys had never hired a woman. This single explosive fact had seemed to her to encapsulate the entrenched attitudes that conspired to hold back the Modern Indian Woman. She had decided there and then that this scandalous state of affairs could not remain unchallenged.

And so began her campaign of guerrilla warfare.

She had hounded the school's Board of Trustees for months, relentlessly haranguing them with threatening letters whilst simultaneously firing off countless articles to the local newspapers, one of which had been published under the incendiary headline ‘FÊTED SCHOOL INVITES WOMEN TO SWAB ITS FLOORS BUT NOT TO INSTRUCT ITS PUPILS'. Worst of all, she had organised a
petition
.

The St Xavier trustees, a roll call of octogenarians accustomed to dozing through the annual board meeting in readiness for the eight-course banquet that marked the end of another successful year, had felt as if an invading army had arrived at the gates.

Finally, hollow-eyed with terror at the prospect of yet another visit from Poppy, they had hoisted the white flag of surrender. A resolution had been passed unanimously agreeing that it would be an excellent idea to hire a woman and why the devil hadn't anyone thought of it before?

Poppy had then proposed that
she
be considered for the position.

The trustees had exchanged looks and then fallen over each other in their haste to be the first to congratulate her.

Poppy had suggested that perhaps they should interview her first, just to ensure that she was the most deserving candidate. The trustees, a sheen of perspiration on their wrinkled brows, had assured her that no interview was necessary. They were more than impressed with her non-existent credentials… and by the way, what exactly would she be teaching? At this point Poppy had smiled sweetly. ‘I have one or two ideas,' she had announced.

And so, after one hundred years of not realising that it needed them, St Xavier had begun to teach its cadets the essential skills of acting and Bharatanatyam dance.

And, as far as Chopra had heard, his wife had been a big hit.

He felt a sense of trepidation gathering inside his stomach as he approached the frosted glass door of the principal's office. It reminded him of his own schooling in the single-roomed village school in Jarul presided over by his father, Premkumar Chopra, who everyone affectionately called Masterji.

Back then Chopra had not been a keen student. He was easily distracted. It did not help that the tin-roofed schoolroom was hot as hell, that flies buzzed continuously about his head, that chickens wandered in to peck at his toes, and that the occasional bullock coming back from the river would poke its head through the open window to see what all the fuss was about.

A dark-skinned man in spectacles and a flowing white cassock was waiting for them outside the office. He introduced himself as Brother Noel Machado, assistant to the principal.

‘I am so glad you have come,' Machado said. ‘He has been beside himself. I shudder to think what he will do if you cannot help us.'

‘We will do our best,' promised Chopra, though he still had no idea why Poppy had asked him here. She had been suspiciously close-mouthed on the subject.

They entered the office to find a tall, vulpine, elderly man also in a white cassock pacing the flagstoned floor behind a battered wooden desk. Hard grey eyes looked out from below great winged eyebrows. A beaked nose curved down towards a hard-set mouth that moved in wordless anger above a jowly chin.

Brother Augustus Lobo, principal of St Xavier, was something of a Mumbai legend.

The principal was approaching his ninetieth year but looked no older than a man in his late sixties. Lobo had once declared that he owed his enduring youth to the fact that he had, for the past fifty years, taken a daily dose of his ‘own water', following in the footsteps of his hero, former Prime Minister of India Morarji Desai, who had advocated ‘urine therapy' as the perfect solution for the millions of Indians who could not afford medical treatment for the panoply of ills that plagued them.

Lobo stopped pacing and swivelled to face his visitors with a glare that had turned many a future captain of Indian industry to jelly. Chopra heard Rangwalla shuffle behind him. Rangwalla's schooling, he knew, had been rudimentary. He had no doubt the former sub-inspector was reliving the many beatings he had earned as a boy, beatings that were now personified in the minatory form of Augustus Lobo.

‘Hooliganism, Chopra! Damned hooliganism!'

‘Sir?'

‘I blame this modern culture of yours,' growled the principal. ‘Disrespect is the fashion, nowadays. Loutishness is in, sir. A nation of degenerates, that is where we are headed… And what can we do about it? Those spineless goons in New Delhi have tied our hands. Do you know that I am no longer allowed to beat these young goondas? Do you think Father Rodrigues spared the rod when I was a boy? Why, Gandhi himself was roundly beaten as a young man, and a power of good it did him. And St Xavier positively welcomed a good thrashing from those villainous Portuguese soldiers who had turned from the faith down in Goa.'

‘Sir, may I ask why you have called me here today?'

Lobo gaped at him. ‘Didn't your wife tell you?'

‘No, sir.'

‘A heinous crime has been perpetrated, Chopra.'

‘What crime, sir?'

‘Think of the worst crime imaginable.'

Chopra's expression was quizzical. ‘Someone has been murdered?'

‘Worse!' roared Lobo.

‘A crime worse than murder? Forgive me, sir, but it would be simpler if you just told me.'

‘They have taken our beloved Father Gonsalves!'

‘There has been a kidnapping?' Chopra was astonished. ‘If this is the case, sir, then you must inform the police immediately.'

Lobo's eyebrows met like duelling caterpillars. ‘It is better if I show you. Come with me.'

The school's assembly hall looked out onto the school grounds through a succession of triumphant stained-glass windows depicting pivotal scenes from the life of St Xavier, as well as images of the Blessed Virgin and the Bom Jesus. The hall was lined with a succession of worn pews, inscribed with a hundred years' worth of juvenile graffiti as young minds were subjected to the purgatory of daily Mass, Vespers and interminable speechmaking.

At least this was how Chopra viewed the depressing chamber.

Chopra was not a religious man, though he believed that everyone had the right to believe whatever he or she wished. In his experience religion and tolerance rarely went hand in hand. In the history of humankind more murders had been committed in the name of religion than in the pursuit of money, sex and power combined. This was particularly true on the subcontinent, which had seen regular convulsions and conquests in the name of one faith or another. It bothered him greatly whenever he saw the minds of children being filled with the belief that one form of connection to the Great Mystery was somehow superior to another.

They followed Principal Lobo up a flight of short steps to the stage. A pulpit-style lectern was positioned at the front. Directly behind it, at the rear of the stage, was a marble column on which stood an empty plinth.

Lobo flung a hand at the plinth. ‘There!'

Chopra stared. ‘There is nothing there.'