Wilt on High:

by Tom Sharpe

  They rushed down the passage, but the Chief Warder had yet to be convinced. ‘I gave him the same dose as everyone else. He’s having you on.’

  Even when they had secured the ten warders and were outside the cell door, he delayed matters. ‘I suggest you leave this to us, sir,’ he said. ‘If they take hostages, you ought to be on the outside to conduct negotiations. We’re dealing with three extremely dangerous men, you know.’ The Governor doubted it. Two seemed more probable.

  Chief Warder Blaggs peered into the cell. ‘Could have painted his face with chalk or something,’ he said. ‘He’s a right crafty devil.’

  ‘And pissed himself into the bargain?’

  ‘Never does things by halves, does our Mac,’ said the Chief Warder. ‘All right, stand clear of the door in there. We’re coming in.’ A moment later the cell was filled with prison officers and in the mêlée that followed, the late McCullum received some post mortem injuries which did nothing to improve his appearance. But there was no doubt he was dead. It hardly needed the prison doctor to diagnose death as due to acute barbiturate poisoning.

  *

  ‘Well, how was I to know that the Bull and the Bear were going to give him their cups of cocoa?’ said the Chief Warder plaintively, at a meeting held in the Governor’s office to discuss the crisis.

  ‘That’s something you’re going to have to explain to the Home Office enquiry,’ said the Governor.

  They were interrupted by a prison officer who announced that a cache of drugs had been found in McCullum’s sodden mattress. The Governor looked out at the dawn sky and groaned.

  ‘Oh, and one other thing, sir,’ said the warder. ‘Mr Coven in the office has remembered where he heard that voice on the telephone. He thought he recognized it at the time. Says it was Mr Wilt.’

  ‘Mr Wilt?’ said the Governor. ‘Who the hell’s Mr Wilt?’

  ‘A lecturer from the Tech or somewhere who’s been teaching McCullum English. Comes every Monday.’

  ‘McCullum? Teaching McCullum English? And Coven’s certain he was the one who phoned?’ In spite of his fatigue, the Governor was wide awake now.

  ‘Definitely, sir. Says he thought it was familiar and naturally when he heard “Fireworks” Harry’d snuffed it, he made the connection.’

  So had the Governor. With his career in jeopardy he was prepared to act decisively. ‘Right,’ he said, casting discretion to the draught that blew under the door. ‘McCullum died of food poisoning. That’s the official line. Next …’

  ‘What do you mean, “food poisoning”?’ asked the prison doctor. ‘Death was due to an overdose of phenobarbitone and I’m not going on record as saying –’

  ‘And where was the poison? In his cocoa, of course,’ snapped the Governor. ‘And if cocoa isn’t food, I don’t know what is. So we put it out as food poisoning.’ He paused and looked at the doctor. ‘Unless you want to go down as the doctor who nearly poisoned thirty-six prisoners.’

  ‘Me? I didn’t have anything to do with it. That goon went and dosed the sods.’ He pointed at Chief Warder Blaggs, but the Chief Warder had spotted the out.

  ‘On your instructions,’ he said with a meaningful glance at the Governor. ‘I mean I couldn’t have laid my hands on that stuff if you hadn’t authorized it, could I now? You always keep the drugs cupboard in the dispensary locked, don’t you? Be irresponsible not to, I’d have thought.’

  ‘But I never did …’ the doctor began, but the Governor stopped him.

  ‘I’m afraid Mr Blaggs has a point there,’ he said. ‘Of course if you want to dispute the facts with the Board of Enquiry, that is your privilege. And doubtless the Press would make something of it. PRISON DOCTOR INVOLVED IN POISONING CONVICT would look well in the Sun, don’t you think?’

  ‘If he had drugs in his cell, I suppose we could say he died of an overdose,’ said the doctor.

  8

  ‘There’s no use in saying you didn’t come home late last night because you did,’ said Eva. It was breakfast, and, as usual, Wilt was being cross-examined by his nearest and dearest. On her other days, Eva left it to the quads to make the meal a misery for him by asking questions about computers or biochemistry about which he knew absolutely nothing. But this morning the absence of the car had given her the opportunity to get her own questions in.

  ‘I didn’t say I didn’t come in late,’ said Wilt through a mouthful of muesli. Eva was still into organic foods and her home-made muesli, designed to guarantee and adequate supply of roughage, did just that and more.

  ‘That’s a double negative,’ said Emmeline.

  Wilt looked at her balefully. ‘I know it is,’ he said, and spat out the husk of a sunflower seed.

  ‘Then you weren’t telling the truth,’ Emmeline continued. ‘Two negatives make a positive and you didn’t say you had come in late.’

  ‘And I didn’t say I hadn’t,’ said Wilt, struggling with his daughter’s logic and trying to use his tongue to get the bran off the top of his dentures. The damned stuff seemed to get everywhere.

  ‘There’s no need to mumble,’ said Eva. ‘What I want to know is where the car is.’

  ‘I’ve already told you. I left it in a car park. I’ll get a mechanic to go round and see what’s wrong with the thing.’

  ‘You could have done that last night. How do you expect me to take the girls to school?’

  ‘I suppose they could always walk,’ said Wilt, extracting a raisin from his mouth with his fingers and examining it offensively. ‘It’s an organic form of transportation, you know. Unlike this junior prune which would appear to have led a sedentary life and a sedimentary death. I wonder why it is that health foods so frequently contain objects calculated to kill. Now take this –’

  ‘I am not interested in your comments,’ said Eva. ‘You’re just trying to wriggle out of it and if you expect me to …’

  ‘Walk?’ interrupted Wilt. ‘God forbid. The adipose tissue with which you –’

  ‘Don’t you adipose me, Henry Wilt,’ Eva began, only to be interrupted by Penelope.

  ‘What’s adipose?’

  ‘Mummy is,’ said Wilt. ‘As to the meaning, it means fat, fatty deposits and appertaining to fat.’

  ‘I am not fat,’ said Eva firmly, ‘and if you think I’m spending my precious time walking three miles there and three miles back twice a day you’re wrong.’

  ‘As usual,’ said Wilt. ‘Of course. I was forgetting that the gender arrangements of this household leave me in a minority of one.’

  ‘What are gender arrangements?’ demanded Samantha.

  ‘Sex,’ said Wilt bitterly and got up from the table.

  Behind him Eva snorted. She was never prepared to discuss sex in front of the quads. ‘It’s all very well for you,’ she said, reverting to the question of the car which provided a genuine grievance. ‘All you have to do is –’

  ‘Catch a bus,’ said Wilt, and hurried out of the house before Eva could think of a suitable reply. In fact there was no need. He caught a lift with Chesterton from the Electronics Department and listened to his gripes about financial cuts and why they didn’t make them in Communication Skills and get rid of some of those Liberal Studies deadbeats.

  ‘Oh well, you know how it is,’ said Wilt as he got out of the car at the Tech. ‘We have to make good the inexactitudes of science.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were any,’ said Chesterton.

  ‘The human element,’ said Wilt enigmatically, and went through the library to the lift and his office. The human element was waiting for him.

  ‘You’re late, Henry,’ said the Vice-Principal.

  Wilt looked at him closely. He usually got on rather well with the V-P. ‘You’re looking pretty late yourself,’ he said. ‘In fact, if I hadn’t heard you speak, I’d say you were a standing corpse. Been whooping it up with the wife?’

  The Vice-Principal shuddered. He still hadn’t got over the horror of seeing his first dead body in the flesh, rather than on the box,
and trying to drown the memory in brandy hadn’t helped. ‘Where the hell did you get to last night?’

  ‘Oh, here and there, don’t you know,’ said Wilt. He had no intention of telling the V-P he did extra-mural teaching.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said the V-P. ‘I tried calling your house and all I got was some infernal answering service.’

  ‘That’d be one of the computers,’ said Wilt. ‘The quads have this programme. It runs on tape, I think. Quite useful really. Did it tell you to fuck off?’

  ‘Several times,’ said the Vice-Principal.

  ‘The wonders of science. I’ve just been listening to Chesterton praising –’

  ‘And I’ve just been listening to the Police Inspector,’ cut in the V-P, ‘on the subject of Miss Lynchknowle. He wants to see you.’

  Wilt swallowed. Miss Lynchknowle hadn’t anything to do with the prison. It didn’t make sense. In any case, they couldn’t have got on to him so quickly. Or could they? ‘Miss Lynchknowle? What about her?’

  ‘You mean you haven’t heard?’

  ‘Heard what?’ said Wilt.

  ‘She’s the girl who was in the toilet,’ said the V-P. ‘She was found dead in the boiler-room last night.’

  ‘Oh God,’ said Wilt. ‘How awful.’

  ‘Quite. Anyway, we had the police swarming all over the place last night and this morning there’s a new man here. He wants a word with you.’

  They walked down the corridor to the Principal’s office. Inspector Hodge was waiting there with another policeman. ‘Just a matter of routine, Mr Wilt,’ he said when the Vice-Principal had shut the door. ‘We’ve already interviewed Mrs Bristol and several other members of the staff. Now I understand you taught the late Miss Lynchknowle?’

  Wilt nodded. His previous experience with the police didn’t dispose him to say more than he had to. The sods always chose the most damning interpretation.

  ‘You taught her English?’ continued the Inspector.

  ‘I teach Senior Secretaries Three English, yes,’ said Wilt.

  ‘On Thursday afternoons at 2.15 p.m?’

  Wilt nodded again.

  ‘And did you notice anything odd about her?’

  ‘Odd?’

  ‘Anything to suggest that she might be an addict, sir.’

  Wilt tried to think. Senior Secretaries were all odd as far as he was concerned. Certainly in the context of the Tech. For one thing, they came from ‘better families’ than most of his other students and seemed to have stepped out of the fifties with their perms and their talk about Mummies and Daddies who were all wealthy farmers or something in the Army. ‘I suppose she was a bit different from the other girls in the class,’ he said finally. ‘There was this duck, for instance.’

  ‘Duck?’ said Hodge.

  ‘Yes, she used to bring a duck she called Humphrey with her to class. Bloody nuisance having a duck in a lesson but I suppose it was a comfort to her having a furry thing like that.’

  ‘Furry?’ said Hodge. ‘Ducks aren’t furry. They have feathers.’

  ‘Not this one,’ said Wilt. ‘Like a teddy bear. You know, stuffed. You don’t think I’d have a live duck shitting all over the place in my class, do you?’

  Inspector Hodge said nothing. He was beginning to dislike Wilt.

  ‘Apart from that particular addiction, I can’t think of anything else remarkable about her. I mean, she didn’t twitch or seem unduly pale or even go in for those sudden changes of mood you tend to find with junkies.’

  ‘I see,’ said Hodge, holding back the comment that Mr Wilt seemed exceedingly well-informed on the matter of symptoms. ‘And would you say there was much drug-taking at the College?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge,’ said Wilt. ‘Though, come to think of it, I suppose there must be some with the numbers we’ve got. I wouldn’t know. Not my scene.’

  ‘Quite, sir,’ said the Inspector, simulating respect.

  ‘And now, if you don’t mind,’ said Wilt, ‘I have work to do.’ The Inspector didn’t mind.

  ‘Not much there,’ said the Sergeant when he’d left.

  ‘Never is with the really clever sods,’ said Hodge.

  ‘I still don’t understand why you didn’t ask him about going to the wrong toilet and what the secretary said.’

  Hodge smiled. ‘If you really want to know, it’s because I don’t intend to raise his suspicions one little iota. That’s why. I’ve been checking on Mr Wilt and he’s a canny fellow, he is. Scuppered old Flint, didn’t he? And why? I’ll tell you. Because Flint was fool enough to do what Wilt wanted. He pulled him in and put him through the wringer and Mr Wilt got away with bloody murder. I’m not getting caught the same way.’

  ‘But he never did commit any murder. It was only a fucking inflatable doll he’d buried,’ said the Sergeant.

  ‘Oh, come off it. You don’t think the bugger did that without he had a reason? That’s a load of bull. No, he was pulling some other job and he wanted a cover, him and his missus, so they fly a kite and Flint falls for it. That old fart wouldn’t know a decoy if it was shoved under his bloody snout. He was so busy grilling Wilt about that doll he couldn’t see the wood for the trees.’

  Sergeant Runk fought his way through the mixed metaphors and came out none the wiser. ‘All the same,’ he said finally, ‘I can’t see a lecturer here being into drugs, not pushing anyway. Where’s the lifestyle? No big house and car. No country-club set. He doesn’t fit the bill.’

  ‘And no big salary here either,’ said Hodge. ‘So maybe he’s saving up for his old age. Anyway, we’ll check him out and he won’t ever know.’

  ‘I should have thought there were more likely prospects round about,’ said the Sergeant. ‘What about that Greek restaurant bloke Macropolis or something you’ve been bugging? We know he’s been into heroin. And there’s that fly boy down the Siltown Road with the garage we had for GBH. He was on the needle himself.’

  ‘Yea, well he’s inside, isn’t he? And Mr Macropolis is out of the country right now. Anyway, I’m not saying it is Wilt. She could have been down in London getting it for all we know. In which case, it’s off our patch. All I’m saying is, I’m keeping an open mind and Mr Wilt interests me, that’s all.’

  And Wilt was to interest him still further when they returned to the police station an hour later. ‘Super wants to see you,’ said the Duty Sergeant. ‘He’s got the Prison Governor with him.’

  ‘Prison Governor?’ said Hodge. ‘What’s he want?’

  ‘You,’ said the Sergeant, ‘hopefully.’

  Inspector Hodge ignored the crack and went down the passage to the Superintendent’s office. When he came out half an hour later, his mind was alive with circumstantial evidence, all of which pointed most peculiarly to Wilt. Wilt had been teaching one of the most notorious gangsters in Britain, now thankfully dead of an overdose of one of his own drugs. (The prison authorities had decided to use the presence of so much heroin in McCullum’s mattress as the cause of death, rather than the phenobarb one, much to Chief Warder Blaggs’ relief.) Wilt had been closeted with McCullum at the very time Miss Lynchknowle’s body had been discovered. And, most significantly of all, Wilt, within an hour of leaving the prison and presumably on learning that the police were busy at the Tech, had rung the prison anonymously with a phoney message about a mass break-out and McCullum had promptly taken an overdose.

  If that little lot didn’t add up to something approaching a certainty that Wilt was involved, Hodge didn’t know one. Anyway, add it to what he already knew of Wilt’s past and it was certain. On the other hand, there was still the awkward little matter of proof. It was one of the disadvantages of the English legal system, and one Hodge would happily have dispensed with in his crusade against the underworld, that you had first to persuade the Director of Public Prosecutions that there was a case to be answered, and then go on to present evidence that would convince a senile judge and a jury of do-gooders, half of whom had already been nobbled, that an obvious villain was g
uilty. And Wilt wasn’t an obvious villain. The bastard was as subtle as hell and to send the sod down would require evidence that was as hard as ferro-concrete.

  ‘Listen,’ Hodge said to Sergeant Runk and the small team of plain-clothes policemen who constituted his private crime squad, ‘I don’t want any balls-ups so this has got to be strictly covert and I mean covert. No one, not even the Super, is to know it’s going on, so we’ll code-name it Flint. That way, no one will suspect. Anyone can say Flint round this station and it doesn’t register. That’s one. Two is, I want Mr Wilt tailed twenty-four hours continuous. And another tail on his missus. No messing. I want to know what those people do every moment of the day and night from now on in.’

  ‘Isn’t that going to be a bit difficult?’ asked Sergeant Runk. ‘Day and night. There’s no way we can put a tail in the house and …’

  ‘Bug it is what we’ll do,’ said Hodge. ‘Later. First off we’re going to patternize their lives on a time-schedule basis. Right?’

  ‘Right,’ echoed the team. In their time, they had patternized the lives of a fish-and-chip merchant and his family who Hodge had suspected were into hard-core porn; a retired choirmaster – this time for boys; and a Mr and Mrs Pateli for nothing better than their name. In each case the patternizing had failed to confirm the Inspector’s suspicions, which were in fact wholly groundless, but had established as incontrovertible facts that the fish-and-chip merchant opened his shop at 6 p.m. except Sundays, that the choirmaster was having a happy and vigorous love affair with a wrestler’s wife, and in any case had an aversion amounting almost to an allergy for small boys, and that the Patelis went to the Public Library every Tuesday, that Mr Pateli did full-time unpaid work with the Mentally Handicapped, while Mrs Pateli did Meals on Wheels. Hodge had justified the time and expense by arguing that these were training sessions in preparation for the real thing.

  ‘And this is it,’ continued Hodge. ‘If we can nail this one down before Scotland Yard takes over we’ll be quids in. We’re also going into a surveillance mode at the Tech. I’m going over to see the Principal about it now. In the meantime, Pete and Reg can move into the canteen and the Student’s Common Room and make out they’re mature students chucked out for dope at Essex or some other University.’