by Tom Sharpe
‘Gaskell baby,’ she called.
Gaskell opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘What the bell gives?’
‘Like it, baby?’
Gaskell put on his glasses. In spite of himself he did like it. ‘You think you’re going to, wheedle round me, you’re wrong…’
Sally smiled. ‘Conserve the verbiage. You turn me on, bio-degradable baby.’ She moved forward and sat on the bunk beside him.
‘What are you trying to do?’
‘Make it up, babykink. You deserve a cure.’ She fondled him gently. ‘Like the old days. Remember?’
Gaskell remembered and felt weak. Sally leant forward and pressed him down on to the bunk.
‘Surrogate Sally,’ she said and unbuttoned his shirt.
Gaskell squirmed. ‘If you think…’
‘Don’t think, kink,’ said Sally and undid his jeans. ‘Only erect.’
‘Oh God,’ said Gaskell. The perfume, the plastic, the mask of a face and her hands were awakening ancient fantasies. He lay supine on the bunk staring at her while Sally undressed him. Even when she rolled him over on his face and pulled his hands behind his back he made no resistance.
‘Bondage baby,’ she said softly and reached for the silk square.
‘No, Sally, no,’ he said weakly. Sally smiled grimly and tied his hands together, winding the silk between his wrists carefully before tightening it. When she had finished Gaskell whimpered. ‘You’re hurting me.’
Sally rolled him over. ‘You love it,’ she said and kissed him. She sat back and stroked him gently. ‘Harder, baby, real hard. Lift me lover sky high.’
‘Oh Sally.’
‘That’s my baby and now the waterproof.’
‘There’s no need. I like it better without.’
‘But I do, G. I need it to prove you loved me till death did us part.’ She bent over and rolled it down.
Gaskell stared up at her. Something was wrong.
‘And now the cap.’ She reached over and picked up the bathing-cap.
‘The cap?’ said Gaskell. ‘Why the cap? I don’t want that thing on.’
‘Oh but you do, sweetheart It makes you look girlwise.’ She fitted the cap over his head. ‘Now into Sallia inter alia.’ She undid the bikini and lowered herself on to him. Gaskell moaned and stared up at her. She was lovely. It was a long time since she had been so good. But he was still frightened. There was a look in her eyes he hadn’t seen before. ‘Untie me,’ he pleaded, ‘you’re hurting my arm.’
But Sally merely smiled and gyrated. ‘When you’ve come and gone, G baby. When you’ve been.’ She moved her hips. ‘Come, bum, come quick.’
Gaskell shuddered.
‘Finished?’
He nodded. ‘Finished,’ he sighed.
‘For good, baby, for good,’ said Sally. ‘That was it. You’re past the last.’
‘Past the last?’
‘You’ve come and gone, G, come and gone. It’s Styxside for you now.
‘Stickside?’
‘S for Sally, T for Terminal, Y for You and X for Fast. All that’s left is this.’ She reached over and picked up the jug of muddy water. Gaskell turned his head and looked at it.
‘What’s that for?’
‘For you, baby. Mudders milk.’ She moved up his body and sat on his chest. ‘Open your mouth.’
Gaskell Pringsheim stared up at her frantically. He began to writhe ‘You’re mad. You’re crazy.’
‘Now just lie quietly and it won’t hurt. It will soon be over, lover. Natural death by drowning. In bed. You’re making’ history.’
‘You bitch, you murderous bitch.’
‘Cerberuswise,’ said Sally, and poured the water into his mouth. She put the jug down and pulled the cap down over his face.
The Rev St John Froude rowed surprisingly steadily for a man with half a bottle of whisky inside him and a wrath in his heart, and the nearer he got to the contraceptives the greater his wrath became. It wasn’t simply that he had been given a quite unnecessary fright about the state of his liver by the sight of the things (he could see now that he was close to them that they were real), it was rather that he adhered the doctrine of sexual non-intervention. God, in his view had created a perfect world if the book of Genesis was to be believed and it had been going downhill ever since. And the book of Genesis was to be believed or the rest of the Bible made no sense at all. Starting from this fundamentalist premise the Rev St John Froude had progressed erratically by way of Blake, Hawker, Leavis and a number of obscurantist theologians to the conviction that the miracles of modern science were the works of the devil, that salvation lay in eschewing every material advance since the Renaissance, and one or two before, and that nature was infinitely less red in tooth and claw than modern mechanized man. In short he was convinced that the end of the world was at hand in the shape of a nuclear holocaust and that it was his duty as a Christian to announce the fact. His sermons on the subject had been of such a vividly horrendous fervour as to lead to his exile in Waterswick. Now as he rowed up the channel into Eel Stretch he fulminated silently against contraception, abortion and the evils of sexual promiscuity. They were all symptoms and causes and causative symptoms of the moral chaos which life on earth had become. And finally there were trippers. The Rev St John Froude loathed trippers. They fouled the little Eden of his parish with their boats, their transistors and their unabashed enjoyment of the present. And trippers who desecrated the prospect from his study window with inflated contraceptives and meaningless messages were an abomination. By the time he came in sight of the cabin cruiser he was in no mood to be trifled with. He rowed furiously across to the boat, tied up to the rail and, lifting his cassock over his knees, stepped aboard.
In the cabin Sally stared down at the bathing-cap. It deflated and inflated, expanded and was sucked in against Gaskell’s lace and Sally squirmed with pleasure. She was the liberatedest woman in the world, but the liberatedest. Gaskell was dying and she would be free to be with a million dollars in the kitty. And no one would ever know. When he was dead she would take the cap off and untie him and push his body over the side into the water. Gaskell Pringsheim would have died a natural death by drowning. And at that moment the cabin door opened and she looked up at the silhouette of the Rev St John Froude in the cabin doorway.
‘What the hell…’ she muttered and leapt off Gaskell.
The Rev St John Froude hesitated. He had come to say his piece and say it he would but he had clearly intruded on a very naked woman with a horribly made-up face in the act of making love to a man who as far as a quick glance enabled him to tell had no face at all.
‘I…’ he began and stopped. The man on the bunk had rolled on to the floor and was writhing there in the most extraordinary fashion. The Rev St John Froude stared down at him aghast. The man was not only faceless but his hands were tied behind his back.
‘My dear fellow,’ said the Vicar, appalled at the scene and looped up at the naked woman for some sort of explanation.’ She was staring at him demonically and holding a large kitchen knife. The Rev St John Froude stumbled back into the cockpit as the woman advanced towards him holding the knife in front of her with both hands. She was clearly quite demented. So was the man on the floor. He rolled about and dragged his head from side to side. The bathing-cap came off but the Rev St. John Froude was too busy scrambling over the side into his rowing boat to notice. He cast off as the ghastly woman lunged towards him and began to row away his original mission entirely forgotten. In the cockpit Sally stood screaming abuse at him and behind her a shape had appeared in the cabin door. The Vicar was grateful to see that the man had a face now, not a nice face, a positively horrible face but a face for all that, and he was coming up behind the woman with some hideous intention. The next moment the intention was carried out. The man hurled himself at her, the knife dropped onto the deck, the woman scrabbled at the side of the boat and then slid forward into the water. The Rev St John Froude waited no longer. He rowed vigorously
away. Whatever appalling orgy of sexual perversion he had interrupted, he wanted none of it on painted women with knives who called him a motherfucking sort of a cuntsucker, among other things didn’t elicit sympathy when the object of their obscene passions pushed them into the water. And in any case they were Americans. The Rev St John Froude had no time for Americans. They epitomized everything he found offensive about the modern world. Imbued with a new disgust for the present and an urge to hit the whisky he rowed home and tied up at the bottom of the garden.
Behind him in the cabin cruiser Gaskell ceased shouting. The priest who had saved his life had ignored his hoarse pleas for further help and Sally was standing waist-deep in water beside the boat. Well she could stay there. He went back into the cabin, turned so that he could lock the door with his tied hands and then looked around for something to cut the silk scarf with. He was still very frightened.
‘Right,’ said Inspector Flint, ’so what did you do then?’
‘Got up and read the Sunday papers’
‘After that?’
‘I ate a plate of All-Bran and drank some tea.
‘Tea? You sure it was tea? Last time you said coffee.’
‘Which time?’
‘The last time you told it.’
‘I drank tea.’
‘What then?’
‘I gave Clem his breakfast.’
‘What sort?’
‘Chappie.’
‘Last time you said Bonzo.’
‘This time I say Chappie.’
‘Make up your mind. Which sort was it?’
‘What the fuck does it matter which sort it was?’
‘It matters to me.’
‘Chappie.’
‘And when you had fed the dog.’
‘I shaved.’
‘Last time you said you had a bath.’
‘I had a bath and then I shaved. I was trying to save time.’
‘Forget the time, Wilt, we’ve got all the time in the world.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Shut up. What did you do then?’
‘Oh for God’s sake, what does it matter? What’s the point of going over and over the same things?’
‘Shut up.’
‘Right,’ said Wilt, ‘I will.’
‘When you had shaved what did you do?’
Wilt stared at him and said nothing.
‘When you had shaved?’
But Wilt remained silent. Finally Inspector Flint left the room and sent for Sergeant Yates.
‘He’s clammed up,’ he said wearily. ‘So what do we do now?’
‘Try a little physical persuasion?’
Flint shook his head. ‘Gosdyke’s seen him. If he turns up in Court on Monday with so much as a hair out of place, he’ll be all over us for brutality. There’s got to be some other way. He must have a weak spot somewhere but I’m damned if I can find it. How does he do it?’
‘Do what?’
‘Keep talking and saying nothing. Not one bloody useful thing. That sod’s got more opinions on every topic under the flaming sun than I’ve got hair on my head.’
‘If we keep him awake for another forty-eight hours he’s bound to crack up.’
‘He’ll take me with him,’ said Flint.’ We’ll both go into court in straitjackets.’
In the Interview Room Wilt put his head on the table. They would be back in a minute with more questions but a moment’s sleep was better than none. Sleep. If only they would let sleep. ‘What had Flint said? ‘The moment you sign a confession you can have all the sleep you want.’ Wilt considered the remark and its possibilities. A confession. But it would have to be plausible enough to keep them occupied while he got some rest and at the same time so impossible that it would rejected by the court. A delaying tactic to give Eva time to come back and prove his innocence. It would be like Gasfitters Two Shane to read while be sat and thought about putting Eva down the pile shaft. He should be able to think up something complicated that would keep them frantically active. How he had killed them? Beat them to death in the bathroom? Not enough blood. Even Flint had admitted that much. So how? What was a nice gentle way to go? Poor old Pinkerton had chosen a peaceful death when he stuck a tube up the exhaust pipe of his car…That was it. But why? There had to be a motive. Eva was having it off with Dr Pringsheim? With that twit? Not in a month of Sundays. Eva wouldn’t have looked twice at Gaskell. But Flint wasn’t to know that. And what about that bitch Sally? All three having it off together? Well at least it would explain why he killed them all and it would provide the sort of motive Flint would understand. And besides it was right for that kind of party. So he got this pipe…What pipe? There was no need for a pipe. They were in the garage to get away from everyone else. No, that wouldn’t do. It had to be the bathroom. How about Eva and Gaskell doing it in the bath? That was better. He had bust the door down in a fit of jealousy. Much better. Then he had drowned them. And then Sally had come upstairs and he had had to kill her too. That explained the blood. There had been a struggle. He hadn’t meant to kill her but she had fallen in the bath. So far so good. But where had he put them? It had to be something good. Flint wasn’t going to believe anything like the river. Somewhere that made sense of the doll down the hole. Flint had it firmly fixed in his head that the doll had been a diversionary tactic. That meant that time entered into their disposal.
Wilt got up and asked to go to the toilet. As usual the constable came with him and stood outside the door.
‘Do you have to?’ said Wilt. ‘I’m not going to hang myself with the chain.’
‘To see you don’t beat your meat,’ said the constable coarsely.
Wilt sat down. Beat your meat. What a hell of an expression. It called to mind Meat One. Meat One? It was a moment of inspiration. Wilt got up and flushed the toilet. Meat One would keep them busy for a long time. He went back to the pale green room where the light buzzed. Flint was waiting for him.
‘You going to talk now?’ he asked.
Wilt shook his head. They would have to drag it out of him if his confession was to be at all convincing. He would have to hesitate, start to say something, stop, start again, appeal to Flint to stop torturing him, plead and start again. This trout needed tickling. Oh well, it would help to keep him awake.
‘Are you going to start again at the beginning?’ he asked
Inspector Flint smiled horribly. ‘Right at the beginning.’
‘All right,’ said Wilt. ‘have it your own way, just don’t keep asking me if I gave the dog Chappie or Bonzo. I can’t stand all that talk about dog food.’
Inspector Flint rose to the bait. ‘Why not?’
‘It gets on my nerves,’ said Wilt, with a shudder.
The Inspector leant forward. ‘Dog food gets on your nerves?’ he said.
Wilt hesitated pathetically. ‘Don’t go on about it,’ he said. ‘Please don’t go on.’
‘Now then, which was it, Bonzo or Chappie?’ said the Inspector, scenting blood.
Wilt put his head in his hands. ‘I won’t say anything. I won’t. Why must you keep asking me about food? Leave me alone.’ His voice rose hysterically and with it Inspector Flint’s hopes. He knew when he had touched the nerve. He was on to a good thing.
Chapter 18
‘Dear God,’ said Sergeant Yates, ‘but we had pork pies for lunch yesterday. It’s too awful.’
Inspector Flint rinsed his mouth out with black coffee and spat into the washbasin. He had vomited twice and felt like vomiting again.
‘I knew it would be something like that.’ he said with a shudder. ‘I just knew it. A man who could pull that doll-trick had to have something really filthy up his sleeve.’
‘But they may all have been eaten by now,’ said the Sergeant. Flint looked at him balefully.
‘Why the hell do you think he laid that phoney trail?’ he asked. ‘To give them plenty of time to be consumed. His expression “consumed”, not mine. You know what the shelf life of a pork pie is?�
��
Yates shook his head.
‘Five days. Five days. So they went out on Tuesday which leaves us one day to find them or what remains of them. I want every pork pie in East Anglia picked up. I want every fucking sausage and steak and kidney pie that went out of Sweetbreads Meat Factory this week found and brought in. And every tin of dog food.’
‘Dog food?’
‘You heard me,’ said Inspector Flint staggering out of the washroom. ‘And while you’re about it you’d better make it cat food too. You never know with Wilt,’ He’s capable of leading us up the garden path in one important detail.’
‘But if they went into pork pies what’s all this about dog food?’
‘Where the hell do you think he put the odds and ends and I do mean ends?’ Inspector Flint asked savagely. ‘You don’t imagine he was going to have people coming in and complaining they’d found a tooth or a toenail in the Sweetbreads pie they had bought that morning. Not Wilt. That swine thinks of everything. He drowns them in their own bath. He puts them in plastic garbage bags and locks the bags in the garage while he goes home and sticks the doll down that fucking hole. Then on Sunday he goes back and picks them up and spends the day at the meat factory all by himself…Well if you want to know what be did on Sunday you can read all about it in his statement. It’s more than my stomach can stand.’
The Inspector went back hurriedly into the washroom. He’d been living off pork pies since Monday. The statistical chances of his having partaken of Mrs Wilt were extremely high.
When Sweetbreads Meat and Canning Factory opened at eight, Inspector Flint was waiting at the gate. He stormed into the manager’s office and demanded to speak to him.
‘He’s not here yet,’ said the secretary. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’
‘I want a list of every establishment you supply with pork pies, steak and kidney pies, sausages and dog food,’ said the Inspector.
‘I couldn’t possibly give you that information,’ said the secretary. ‘It’s extremely confidential.’
