The Guru (An inspector Kelly Mystery)

“What is this I hear from Reverand Althrop about you not believing in God?”, asked Kelly’s mother, in a concerned voice, whilst using silver serving tongs to place two large slices of bacon onto his breakfast plate.

“Mother”, said Kelly, irritably defensive, throwing down his napkin, “I’m a detective. I spend my life looking for evidence; trying to prove things based purely upon deductive reasoning. I can’t do that every day; see that it works and then just abandon that part of my brain when it comes to looking at everything else in life. It wouldn’t be. Well, it wouldn’t be rational or honest in my opinion”.

“But aren’t there clairvoyants and mediums who help the police to solve cases; find missing people?”, asked his mother, sitting down again in her chair at the other end of the kitchen table, “They don’t use evidence”.

“The simple answer is ‘No’ mother. There are not. There are only those who make false claims to have successfully helped solve criminal cases but, in truth, have been no help whatsoever to the police and simply use cases, serious incidents which involve terrible suffering and loss, to publicize themselves just as they unscrupulously exploit vulnerable grieving people”, said Kelly with a tone of disgust when he thought of those charlatans he had encountered.

“Well what do you think happens when we die?”, asked his mother, “What happens to the souls of all those murder victims who you have to examine”.

“To be honest mother”, said Kelly, “The more I see of the horrific and brutal acts which men perpetrate against each other, the less I am convinced that man is the possessor of some magical immortal soul and the more I am convinced that he is simply an animal; in fact worse than most animals. Furthermore, if God really exists and, if he is a moral god, then why doesn’t he just intervene and help me solve every case; why does he let evil people get away with terrible crimes?”.

“I don’t know”, said his mother, the worry in her tone increasing, “Is that why you don’t believe in god because of the stress of your job? Seeing all those harrowing things”.

“My lack of faith is not a symptom of anything, mother”, said Kelly, feeling that he was not even being taken seriously, “All my job has done is to bring me closer to the world as it actually is and not how we would like it to be”.

Just then, however, the inspectors sea-grey eyes became more distant and inward as he remembered something.

“Mother”, he said, “Let me tell you about a particularly odd case that I had a few years back. The suspect in this case was a man very much like your mediums and mystics; a guru in fact, except that he wasn’t indian but was white and spoke with a cockney accent and his followers congregated with him in a flat in Kentish town but they were all of them utterly convinced, not only of his innocence, but that he possessed super human, in fact supernatural powers. The moment I entered the flat I was mobbed by these very earnest and I’m sure very genuine people wearing flower garlands, who assured me, firstly, that their Guru was incapable of committing any crime but also that he could read minds, levitate and even, would you believe it, be in two places at once.

‘His spirit can leave his body whilst he is meditating’, said one woman clasping my hand firmly as if trying to impart something of the strength of her conviction through the firmness of her grip.

“Good lord”, I thought, “If that’s true then it will make disproving his alibi impossible”.

Apparently, you see, mother, this Guru meditated nearly 18 hours a day in full view of his congregation, sitting absolutely motionless except for the rising and falling of his chest as he breathed slowly in and out and this is what his followers all claimed he was doing during the time when the victim, a young female member of this group who we believed he had been having some kind of “non-spiritual” relationship with, was found murdered near her home.

Now, firstly, it is hard when you are faced with a group of people who believe that another person is some kind of god and would willingly do anything to protect him; even lie for him, to know exactly how reliable they are as witnesses.

Secondly, there is a kind of haziness within the eyes and voices of these kinds of people, almost as if they had imbibed upon some kind of narcotic or been woken from a trance like state which makes you doubt their powers of observation or their ability to clearly remember things.

But anyway, there were so many of them that I could not simply discount their testimonies and so I had to find a way that this Guru might have faked his alibi by deceiving these people.

Now, I will not go into all the boring detail about how I arrived at my conclusion because that would take far too much time and I doubt you could bear to listen to it all.

But I will tell you about the ultimate confrontation that I had with this man who I had asked to come into my office for questioning, threatening that, if he failed to appear for questioning I would have to arrest him and take him by force.

Now when he arrived at Scotland yard and entered my office, he was confronted by me sitting cross legged and motionless upon the floor; my desk and other things cleared away into a corner.

“Ahhh”, he said in his thick east end accent as, smiling, he got down upon the floor and assumed a similar position, “I see you have taken up meditation, inspector”.

“Yes”, said a young constable who I had instructed to answer the Guru’s questions upon my behalf, “The inspector wished to conduct a sort of experiment, if you don’t mind, a sort of psychic questioning if you will. He will sit there and concentrate and try to penetrate your mind to find the answers that he is seeking”.

“Well”, said the Guru, smiling, “Your inspector is a more enlightened man than I had given him credit for. I will try to make my mind as open and receptive as possible to his psychic probing”.

And so the Guru sat there and gazed into space for almost a full half hour while the man in front of him did the same, both of us breathing deeply, in and out”.

“And did it work?”, asked his mother, becoming excited at the possibility that her son had the power to read minds.

“Well one things for certain”, replied Kelly, “He got an awful shock when he saw me, 40 minutes later, walking in through the door of the office and sitting down, apparently, next to myself”.

“What is this?”, he asked, his tone becoming far less tranquil than it had previously been, “Some sort of trick?”.

“Well, perhaps it is a case of spiritual projection similar to the ones described by your followers”, I said, “Or perhaps simply a very well-crafted life size dummy with a bellows inside its chest which gives the sound and appearance of it breathing. A very simple trick to pull off for someone who isn’t expected to do anything but sit still for several hours a day”.

The guru sprang to his feet, angrily, “This is a great insult”, he said, turning to walk out of the office, “And I won’t stay here to be insulted”.

At which point the young constable pinned the man’s arms behind his back and, placing a pair of steel handcuffs firmly round his wrists, he was led to a police cell where he was held for suspicion of murder.

Needless to say, he did not use any of his divine magical powers to escape from the handcuffs or the cell; nor has he been able to magically transport himself from the prison cell in which he was eventually locked up although I hear that his followers make a regular pilgrimage to the prison to hear his sage contemplations, still convinced that he is their spiritual saviour”.

“Well”, said the inspectors mother, dismissively, “What does all that prove?”.

“It means, mother”, replied the detective, “That in this world you can’t even trust your own eyes and ears, let alone the words of priests and mediums or ancient books and so you had better be very careful what you believe and the best way to be careful; the best way not to be conned is to demand reasonable evidence”.