Wilt on High

by Tom Sharpe

  ‘I am not an insomniac,’ snapped the Inspector. They drove on in silence broken only by the bleeps coming from Wilt’s car. They were louder now. Ten minutes later the van was parked at the bottom of Perry Road and Wilt’s car was announcing its presence from Oakhurst Avenue.

  ‘You’ve got to hand it to the little sod,’ said Hodge. ‘I mean you’d never dream to look at him he could drive like that. Just shows you can never tell.’

  *

  An hour later Sergeant Runk stumbled out of his van and walked up Perry Road. ‘It’s not there,’ he said when he got back.

  ‘Not there? It’s bloody well got to be,’ said the Inspector, ‘it’s still coming over loud and clear.’

  ‘That’s as may be,’ said Runk. ‘For all I care the little shit’s tucked up in bed with the fucking transmitters but what I do know is that it’s not outside his house.’

  ‘What about the garage?’ Runk snorted.

  ‘The garage? Have you ever had a dekko in that garage? It’s a ruddy furniture depository, that garage is. Stuffed to the roof with junk when I saw it and if you’re telling me he’s spent the last two days shifting it all out into the back garden so as he could get his car in there …’

  ‘We’ll soon see about that,’ said Hodge and presently the van was driving slowly past 45 Oakhurst Avenue and the Sergeant had been proved right.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ he said. ‘I said he hadn’t put it in the garage.’

  ‘What you didn’t say was he’d parked the thing there,’ said Hodge, pointing through the windscreen at the mud-stained Escort which the Corporal, who hadn’t been prepared to waste time checking house numbers in the middle of the night, had left outside Number 65.

  ‘Well I’m buggered,’ said Runk. ‘Why’d he want to do a thing like that?’

  ‘We’ll see if that tape has anything to tell us,’ said the Inspector. ‘You hop out here and we’ll go on round the corner.’

  But for once Sergeant Runk wasn’t to be budged. ‘If you want that bloody tape you go and get it,’ he said. ‘A bloke like this Wilt doesn’t leave his car down the road without a good reason and I’m not learning too bleeding late what that reason is, and that’s final.’

  In the end it was Hodge who approached the car warily and had just started to grope under the front seat when Mrs Willoughby’s Great Dane gave tongue inside the house.

  ‘What did I tell you?’ said Runk as the Inspector clambered in beside him puffing frantically. ‘I knew there was a trap there somewhere but you wouldn’t listen.’

  Inspector Hodge was too preoccupied to listen to him even now. In his mind’s ear he could still hear the baying of that dreadful dog and the sound of its terrible paws on the front door of the Willoughbys’ house.

  He was still shaken by the experience when they arrived back at the station. ‘I’ll get him, I’ll get him,’ he muttered as he made his way wearily up the steps. But the threat lacked substance. He had been outwitted yet again and for the first time he appreciated Sergeant Runk’s need for sleep. Perhaps after a few hours his mind would come up with a new plan.

  *

  In Wilt’s case the need for sleep was paramount too. The effects of Agent Incapacitating on a body already weakened by the administration of Dr Kores’ sexual cordial had reduced him to a state in which he hardly knew who he was and was quite incapable of answering questions. He vaguely remembred escaping from a cubicle, or rather of being locked in one, but for the rest his mind was a jumble of images, the sum total of which made no sense at all. Men with masks, guns, being dragged, thrown into a jeep, driven, more dragging, lights in a bare room and a man shouting dementedly at him, all formed kaleidoscopic patterns which constantly rearranged themselves in his mind and made no sense at all. They just happened or were happening or even, because the man shouting at him still seemed somehow remote, had happened to him in some previous existence and one he would prefer not to relive. And even when Wilt tried to explain that things, whatever they were, were not what they seemed, the shouting man wasn’t prepared to listen.

  It was hardly surprising. The strange noises Wilt was in fact making hardly came into the category of utterances and certainly weren’t explanations.

  ‘Scrambled,’ said the doctor Glaushof had summoned to try and inject some sense into Wilt’s communications system. ‘That’s what you get with AI Two. You’ll be lucky if he ever talks sense again.’

  ‘AI Two? We used standard issue Agent Incapaciting,’ said Glaushof. ‘Nobody’s been throwing AI Two around. That’s reserved for Soviet suicide squads.’

  ‘Sure,’ said the doctor, ‘I’m just telling you what I diagnose. You’d better check the canisters out.’

  ‘I’ll check that lunatic Harah out too,’ said Glaushof and hurried from the room. When he returned Wilt had assumed a foetal position and was fast asleep.

  ‘AI Two,’ Glaushof admitted lugubriously. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘I’ve done what I can,’ said the doctor, ‘dispensing with two hypodermics. ‘Loaded him with enough Antidote AI to keep him out of the official brain-death category …’

  ‘Brain-death category? But I’ve got to interrogate the bastard. I can’t have him cabbaging on me. He’s some sort of infiltrating fucking agent and I got to find out where he’s from.’

  ‘Major Glaushof,’ said the doctor wearily, ‘it is now like zero three hundred hours and there’s eight women, three men, one lieutenant and this …’ he pointed at Wilt ‘and all of them suffering from nerve-gas toxicity and you think I can save any of them from chemically induced psychosis I’ll do it but I’m not putting a suspected terrorist wearing a scrotal guard at the head of my list of priorities. If you want to interrogate him you’ll have to wait. And pray. Oh yes, and if he doesn’t come out of coma in eight hours let me know, maybe we can use him for spare-part surgery.’

  ‘Hold it there, doctor,’ he said. ‘One word out of any of these people about there being –’

  ‘Gassed?’ said the doctor incredulously. ‘I don’t think you realize what you’ve done, Major. They’re not going to remember a thing.’

  ‘There being an agent here,’ shouted Glaushof. ‘Of course they’ve been gassed. Lieutenant Harah did that.’

  ‘If you say so,’ said the doctor. ‘My business is physical welfare not base security and I guess you’ll be able to explain Mrs Ofrey’s condition to the General. Just don’t call on me to say she and seven other women are naturally psychotic.’

  Glaushof considered the implications of this request and found them decidedly awkward. On the other hand there was always Lieutenant Harah … ‘Tell me, doc,’ he said, ‘just how sick is Harah?’

  ‘About as sick as a man who’s been kicked in the groin and inhaled AI Two can be,’ said the doctor. ‘And that’s not taking his mental condition beforehand into account either. He should have been wearing one of these.’ He held up the box.

  Glaushof looked at it speculatively and then glanced at Wilt. ‘What would a terrorist want with one of those things?’ he asked.

  ‘Could be he expected what Lieutenant Harah got,’ said the doctor, and left the room.

  Glaushof followed him into the next office and sent for Captain Clodiak. ‘Take a seat, Captain,’ he said. ‘Now I want a breakdown of exactly what happened in there tonight.’

  ‘What happened in there? You think I know? There’s this maniac Harah …’

  Glaushof held up a hand. ‘I think you should know that Lieutenant Harah is an extremely sick man right now.’

  ‘What’s with the now?’ said Clodiak. ‘He always was. Sick in the head.’

  ‘It’s not his head I’m thinking about.’

  Captain Clodiak chewed gum. ‘So he’s got balls where his brain should be. Do I care?’

  ‘I’d advise you to,’ said Glaushof. ‘Assaulting a junior officer carries a very heavy penalty.’

  ‘Yea, well the same goes for sexually assaulting a senior one.’

  ‘Cou
ld be,’ said Glaushof, ‘but I think you’re going to have a hard time proving it.’

  ‘Are you telling me I’m a liar?’ demanded the Captain.

  ‘No. Definitely not. I believe you but what I’m asking is, will anyone else?’

  ‘I’ve got witnesses.’

  ‘Had,’ said Glaushof. ‘From what the doctors tell me they’re not going to be very reliable. In fact I’d go so far as to say they don’t even come into the category of witnesses any longer. Agent Incapacitating does things to the memory. I think you ought to know that. And Lieutenant Harah’s injuries have been medically documented. I don’t think you’re going to be in a position to dispute them. Doesn’t mean you have to, but I’d advise you to co-operate with this department.’

  Captain Clodiak studied his face. It wasn’t a pleasant face but there was no disputing the fact that her situation wasn’t one which allowed her too many options. ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked.

  ‘I want to hear what this Wilt said and all. In his lectures. Did he give any indications he was a communist?’

  ‘Not that I knew,’ said the Captain. ‘I’d have reported it if he had.’

  ‘So what did he say?’

  ‘Mostly talked about things like parliament and voting patterns and how people in England see things.’

  ‘See things?’ said Glaushof, trying to think why an attractive woman like Ms Clodiak would want to go to lectures he’d have paid money to avoid. ‘What sort of things?’

  ‘Religion and marriage and … just things.’

  At the end of an hour, Glaushof had learnt nothing.

  16

  Eva sat in the kitchen and looked at the clock again. It was five o’clock in the morning and she had been up since two indulging herself in the luxury of a great many emotions. Her first reaction when going to bed had been one of annoyance. ‘He’s been to the pub again and got drunk,’ she had thought. ‘Well, he won’t get any sympathy from me if he has a hangover.’ Then she had lain awake getting angrier by the minute until one o’clock when worry had taken over. It wasn’t like Henry to stay out that late. Perhaps something had happened to him. She went over various possibilities, ranging from car crashes to his getting arrested for being drunk and disorderly, and finally worked herself up to the point where she knew that something terrible had been done to him at the prison. After all he was teaching that dreadful murderer McCullum and when he’d come home on Monday night he’d been looking very peculiar. Of course he’d been drinking but all the same she remembered saying … No, that hadn’t been Monday night because she’d been asleep when he got back. It must have been Tuesday morning. Yes, that was it. She’d said he looked peculiar and come to think of it what she really thought was that he had looked scared. And he’d said he’d left the car in a car park and when he’d come home in the evening he’d kept looking out the front window in the strangest way. He’d had an accident with the car too and while at the time she had just put that down to his usual absent-mindedness now that she came to think about it … At that point Eva had turned the light on and got out of bed. Something terrible had been going on and she hadn’t even known it.

  Which brought her round to anger again. Henry should have told her but he never did tell her really important things. He thought she was too stupid and perhaps she wasn’t very clever when it came to arguing about books and saying the right things at parties but at least she was practical and nobody could say that the quads weren’t getting a good education.

  So the night passed. Eva sat in the kitchen and made cups of tea and worried and was angry and then blamed herself and wondered who to telephone and then decided it was best not to call anyone because they’d only be cross at being woken in the middle of the night and anyway there might be a perfectly natural explanation like the car had broken down or he’d gone to the Braintrees for a drink and had had to stay there because of the police and the breathalyser which would have been the sensible thing to do and so perhaps she ought to go back to bed and get some sleep … And always beside this bustle of conflicting thoughts and feelings there was the sense of guilt and the knowledge that she had been stupid to have listened to Mavis or to have gone anywhere near Dr Kores. Anyway, what did Mavis know about sex? She’d never really said what went on between her and Patrick in bed – it wasn’t one of those things Eva would have dreamt of asking and even if she had Mavis wouldn’t have told her – and all she’d ever heard was that Patrick was having affairs with other women. There might be good reasons for that too. Perhaps Mavis was frigid or wanted to be too dominant or masculine or wasn’t very clean or something. Whatever the reason it was quite wrong of her to give Patrick those horrid steroid things or hormones and turn him into a sleepy fat person – well, you could hardly call him a man any longer could you? – who sat in front of the telly every night and couldn’t get on with his work properly. Besides, Henry wasn’t a bad husband. It was just that he was absent-minded and was always thinking about something or other that had no connection at all with what he was supposed to be doing. Like the time he’d been peeling the potatoes for Sunday lunch and he’d suddenly said the Vicar made Polonius sound like a bloody genius and there’d been no reason to say that because they hadn’t been to church for two Sundays running and she’d wanted to know who Polonius was and he wasn’t anyone at all, just some character in a play.

  No, you couldn’t expect Henry to be practical and she didn’t. And of course they’d had their tiffs and disagreements, particularly about the quads. Why couldn’t he see they were special? Well, he did, but not in the right way, and calling them ‘clones’ wasn’t helpful. Eva could think of other things he’d said that weren’t nice either. And then there was that dreadful business the other night with the cake icer. Goodness only knew what effect that had had on the girls’ ideas about men. And that really was the trouble with Henry, he didn’t know what romantic meant. Eva got up from the kitchen table and was presently calming her nerves by cleaning out the pantry. She was interrupted at six-thirty by Emmeline in her pyjamas.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she asked so unnecessarily that Eva rose to the bait.

  ‘It’s perfectly obvious,’ she snapped. ‘There’s no need to ask stupid questions.’

  ‘It wasn’t obvious to Einstein,’ said Emmeline, using the well-tried technique of luring Eva into a topic about which she knew nothing but which she had to approve.

  ‘What wasn’t?’

  ‘That the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.’

  ‘Well it is, isn’t it?’ said Eva, moving a tin of Epicure marmalade from the shelf with pilchards and tuna fish on it to the jam section where it looked out of place.

  ‘Of course it isn’t. Everyone knows that. It’s a curve. Where’s Daddy?’

  ‘I don’t see how … What do you mean “Where’s Daddy?”’ said Eva, completely thrown by this leap from the inconceivable to the immediate.

  ‘I was asking where he is,’ said Emmeline. ‘He’s not in, is he?’

  ‘No, he isn’t,’ said Eva, torn now between an inclination to give vent to her irritation and the need to keep calm. ‘He’s out.’

  ‘Where’s he gone?’ asked Emmeline.

  ‘He hasn’t gone anywhere,’ said Eva and moved the marmalade back to the pilchard shelf. Tins didn’t look right among the jam-jars. ‘He spent the night at the Braintrees.’

  ‘I suppose he got drunk again,’ said Emmeline. ‘Do you think he’s an alcoholic?’

  Eva clutched a coffee jar dangerously. ‘Don’t you dare talk about your father like that!’ she snapped. ‘Of course he has a drink when he comes home at night. Nearly everyone does. It’s quite normal and I won’t have you saying things about your father.’

  ‘You say things about him,’ said Emmeline, ‘I heard you call him –’

  ‘Never mind what I say,’ said Eva. ‘That’s quite different.’

  ‘It isn’t different,’ Emmeline persisted, ‘not when you say he’s an
alcoholic and anyway I was only asking a question and you’re always telling us to –’

  ‘Go up to your room at once,’ said Eva. ‘You’re not speaking to me in that fashion. I won’t have it.’

  Emmeline retreated and Eva slumped down at the kitchen table again. It was really too trying of Henry not to have instilled some sense of respect in the quads. It was always left to her to be the disciplinarian. He should have more authority. She went back into the larder and saw to it that the packets and jars and tins did exactly what she wanted. By the time she had finished she felt a little better. Finally she chased the quads into dressing quickly.

  ‘We’ll have to catch the bus this morning,’ she announced when they came in to breakfast. ‘Daddy has the car and –’

  ‘He hasn’t,’ said Penelope, ‘Mrs Willoughby has.’

  Eva, who had been pouring tea, spilt it. ‘What did you say?’

  Penelope looked smug. ‘Mrs Willoughby has the car.’

  ‘Mrs Willoughby? Yes, I know I’ve spilt some tea, Samantha. What do you mean, Penny? She can’t have.’

  ‘She has,’ said Penelope looking smugger still. ‘The milkman told me.’

  ‘The milkman? He must have been mistaken,’ said Eva.

  ‘He isn’t. He’s scared stiff of the Hound of Oakhurst Avenue and he only delivers at the gate and that’s where our car is. I went and saw it.’

  ‘And was your father there?’

  ‘No, it was empty.’

  Eva put the teapot down unsteadily and tried to think what this meant. If Henry wasn’t in the car …

  ‘Perhaps Daddy’s been eaten by the Hound,’ suggested Josephine.

  ‘The Hound doesn’t eat people. It just tears their throats out and leaves their bodies on the waste ground at the bottom of the garden,’ said Emmeline.

  ‘It doesn’t. It only barks. It’s quite nice if you give it lamb chops and things,’ said Samantha, unintentionally dragging Eva’s attention away from the frightful possibility that Henry might in his drunken state have mistaken the house and ended up mauled to death by a Great Dane. And then again with Dr Kores’ potion still coursing through his veins …