by Tom Sharpe
In Hereford Police Station the Chief Superintendent, urged on by Downing Street, hadn’t. He no longer believed Wilt had had anything to do with the torching of Meldrum Manor or the death of the Shadow Minister. He had ordered the police at Oston to find witnesses to Wilt’s journey and to trace his route as far as they could. ‘You know where he stayed each night,’ he told the Inspector there. ‘What I want now is for your men to check where he bought his lunch and get as clear an idea as you can where his walk took him and where it ended and when.’
‘You talk as if I have an army of constables here,’ the Inspector protested. ‘I have precisely seven, and two are extras brought in from the next county. Why don’t you charge this man Wilt?’
‘Because he was the victim of an assault, not the perpetrator of one. And I don’t mean he was just mugged in Ipford. He was bleeding from a head wound when he was in the Leyline Lodge garage and when she drove him down to Ipford. He’s not on the suspect list any more.’
‘So what does it matter where he went?’
‘Because he may have been a witness to the fire and who started it. Why else did this woman take him down there? In any case, he has amnesia. Can’t remember who or what hit him. That’s the official psychiatric report.’
‘What a hell of a case,’ said the Inspector. ‘I’m dashed if I understand it.’
Which was exactly what could be said for Ruth the Ruthless. Deprived of sleep, endlessly cross-examined and made to drink extremely strong coffee, she was desperate and unable to give any coherent answers to the questions being put to her. To make matters worse she had been charged with hindering the course of justice, falsifying a birth certificate and, thanks to Battleby’s seriously damaging allegations, purchasing the paedophile magazines he revelled in. The two so-called journalists Butch Cassidy and the Flashgun Kid had had writs issued in relation to the attacks by Wilfred and Pickles and the media were having a field-day smearing her in the tabloids. Even the broadsheet papers were using her reputation to attack the Opposition.
At 45 Oakhurst Avenue Wilt was having something of a hard time too, convincing Eva that he didn’t know where his walking tour had taken him.
‘You didn’t want to know where you were going? You mean you’ve forgotten?’ she said.
Wilt sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said. It was easier to lie than to try to explain.
‘And you told me you had to work for a course next term on Communism and Castro,’ Eva persisted. ‘I suppose you’ve forgotten that too.’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘So you took those awful books with you?’
Wilt looked miserably at the books on the shelf and had to admit he’d left them behind. ‘I only meant to be away a fortnight.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
Wilt’s sigh was audible this time. It would be impossible to explain his wish to see the English countryside without any literary associations to her. Eva would never understand and almost certainly would suppose there was another woman involved. ‘Suppose’ was too mild a word: she’d be certain. Wilt went on to the offensive.
‘What brought you back so quickly from Wilma? I thought you were going to be over there for six weeks?’ he asked.
Eva hesitated. In her own way she was suffering from self-induced amnesia about the events in Wilma and in any case, coming home to learn her Henry had been mugged and was in hospital and incapable of recognising her had been so traumatic, she hadn’t had a spare second to consider what had caused Uncle Wally to have an infarct and Auntie Joan to turn so nasty and throw her and the quads out of the house. The only answer she could come up with was that their return had been necessitated by Wally Immelmann’s two heart attacks.
‘Couldn’t have happened to a better bloke,’ said Wilt. ‘Mind you, the way he swilled vodka with his steak at the Tavern in the Park and followed it up with that murderous drink he called A Bed of Nails, I’m surprised he’s lived so long.’
And with the happy thought that the ghastly Wally was finally getting his comeuppance he went to his study and made a long and uncomplimentary entry about Mr Immelmann in his diary. He hoped it would be the bastard’s obituary.
37
In the two separate bedrooms which they occupied at 45 Oakhurst Avenue the quads were each compiling dossiers for Miss Sprockett which, had he seen them, would definitely have finished Uncle Wally off. Josephine was concentrating on his sexual relations with Maybelle with emphasis on ‘forced unnatural acts’; Penelope, who had a natural gift for mathematics and statistics, was listing the vastly different rates of pay between whites and blacks at Immelmann Enterprises and other industries in Wilma; Samantha was comparing execution numbers in various states and Wally’s expressed preference for public hangings and floggings to be mandatorily shown on prime-time television instead of less inhumane methods; and finally Emmeline was describing his collection of weapons and their use in language that was calculated to horrify the teachers at the Convent, in particular Wally’s description of flamethrowers and ‘barbecuing Nips’. All in all they were ensuring that the havoc they had caused in Wilma itself would be compounded by the justified disgust their dossiers would provoke among the parents of the girls at the Convent and their friends in Ipford.
*
Down at the police station Inspector Flint was enjoying himself too, berating Hodge and the two men from the US Embassy.
‘Brilliant,’ he said. ‘You come in with Hodge here and refuse to identify yourselves clearly or explain why you’ve come and expect me to kowtow to you. And now you’re back to tell me there’s not a shred of evidence of any drugs in this man Immelmann’s place. Well, let me tell you, this isn’t the Gulf and I’m not an Iraqi.’ By the time he’d finished working off his feelings he was in a good humour. The Americans weren’t but there was nothing they could say. They left and Flint could hear them calling him an arrogant Brit and, best of all, blaming Hodge for misleading them. He went down to the canteen and had a coffee. For the first time he appreciated Wilt’s view of the world. Ruth Rottecombe still maintained, in spite of the pressure brought to bear on her, that she had no idea who, if anyone, had murdered her husband, and the Scotland Yard detectives were at long last beginning to believe her. Harold Rottecombe’s shoe and the sock with the hole in it had been found, the shoe wedged in the stream and the sock on the ground in the field. Much as they wanted a conviction, they were forced to admit that his death might well have been purely accidental.
Wilt’s account of getting drunk on whisky in the wood had been substantiated by the discovery of an empty bottle of Famous Grouse with his fingerprints on it under a tree. His route had been worked out by the police in Oston; there had been a thunderstorm and everything fitted his account exactly. All that remained was to uncover the person who had set fire to the Manor House but that was proving impossible too. Bert Addle had burnt his boots and the clothes he had been wearing, and had washed and scrubbed the pick-up he had borrowed. The friend who owned it and who had been in Ibiza on holiday at the time had no idea it had been used in his absence.
In short, everything added to the mystery. The police had questioned everyone in Meldrum Slocum who had been connected with the Manor and the Battleby family in the hope that they would know of anyone who was in league with ‘Beat Me Bobby’ to torch the place for him. But Battleby was so thoroughly disliked as a boorish drunk that nothing came of that line of questioning. Had anyone a sufficient grudge against the man? Mrs Meadows nervously admitted that he had sacked her but Mr and Mrs Sawlie were adamant they were with her when the fire started and for an hour before she had been in the pub. Above all the Filipino maid was a major suspect because of the pressurised cans of Oriental Splendour and Rose Blossom which had contributed so explosively to the conflagration, but she had the perfect alibi: it had been her day off and she had spent it applying to become a trainee nurse in Hereford. She hadn’t got back to Meldrum Slocum until the following morning because the train had broken down.
Reading the report, Flint could find nothing to explain the arson or the possible murder of the Shadow Minister. The confusion would never be unravelled. For the first time in his long career as a policeman he began to appreciate Henry Wilt’s refusal to see things in terms of good and evil or black and white. There were grey areas in between and the world was dominated by them to a far greater extent than he had ever imagined. It was a revelation to the Inspector and a liberating one. Outside, the sun shone brightly down. Flint got up and went out into that sunshine and walked cheerfully across the park.
In the summer-house in the back garden at Oakhurst Avenue Wilt sat contentedly, stroking Tibby the tail-less cat happy in the knowledge that this was his own version of Old England and that he would always remain a suburban man. Adventures were for the adventurous and he had strayed from his proper role in life as husband to Eva with her multitude of temporary enthusiasms, and as the father of four uncontrollable girls. He would never again venture from the routine of the Tech, his chats over pints of bitter with Peter Braintree at the Duck and Dragon, and Eva’s complaints that he drank too much and had no ambition. Next year they would go to the Lake District for their summer holiday.
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Copyright © Tom Sharpe, 2004
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First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Hutchinson
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