Wilt

Chapter 12

On Eel Stretch–Gaskell’s map-reading had misled him and they were nowhere near Frogwater Reach or Fen Broad–the situation was getting on everyone’s nerves. Gaskell’s attempts to mend the engine had had the opposite effect. The cockpit was flooded with fuel and it was difficult to walk on deck without slipping.

‘Jesus, G, anyone would think to look at you that this was a goddam oil rig,’ said Sally.

‘It was that fucking fuel line,’ said Gaskell, ‘I couldn’t get it back on.’

‘Say why try starting the motor with it off?’

‘To see if it was blocked.’

‘So now you know. What you going to do about it? Sit here till the food runs out? You’ve gotta think of something.’

‘Why me? Why don’t you come up with something?’

‘If you were any sort of a man…’

‘Shit,’ said Gaskell. ‘The voice of the liberated woman. Comes the crunch and all of a sudden I’ve got to be a man. What’s up with you, man-woman? You want us off here, you do it. Don’t ask me to be a man, uppercase M, in an emergency. I’ve forgotten how.’

‘There must be some way of getting help,’ said Sally.

‘Oh sure. You just go up top and take a crowsnest at the scenery. All you’ll get is a beanfeast of bullrushes.’ Saly climbed on top of the cabin and scanned the horizon. It was thirty feet away and consisted of an expanse of reeds.

‘There’s something over there looks like a church tower,’ she said. Gaskell climbed up beside her.

‘It is a church tower. So what?’

‘So if we flashed a light or something someone might see it,’

‘Brilliant. A highly populated place like the top of a church tower there’s bound to be people just wanting for us to flash a light.’

‘Couldn’t we burn something?’ said Sally. ‘Somebody would see the smoke and…’

‘You crazy? You start burning anything with all that fuel oil floating around they’ll see something all right. Like as exploding cruiser with bodies.’

‘We could fill a can with oil and put it over the side and float it away before lighting it.’

‘And set the seedbeds on fire? What the hell do you want? A fucking holocaust?’

‘G baby, you’re just being unhelpful.’

‘I’m using my brains is all,’ said Gaskell. ‘You keep coming up with ‘bright ideas like that you’re going to land us in a worse mess than we’re in already.’

I don’t see why,’ said Sally.

‘I’ll tell you why,’ said Gaskell, ‘because you went and stole this fucking Hesperus. That’s why.’

‘I didn’t steal it. I…’

‘You tell the fuzz that. Just tell them. You start setting fire to reedbeds and they’ll be all over us asking questions. Like whose boat this is and how come you’re sailing someone else’s cruiser…So we got to get out of here without publicity.’

It started to rain.

‘That’s all we need. Rain,’ said Gaskell. Sally went down into the cabin where Eva was tidying up after lunch. ‘God, G’s hopeless. First he lands us on a mudbank in the middle of nowhere, then he gefucks the motor but good and now he says be doesn’t know what to do.’

‘Why doesn’t he go, and get help?’ asked Eva.

‘How? Swimming? G couldn’t swim that far to save his life.’

‘He could take the airbed and paddle down to the open water,’ said Eva. ‘He wouldn’t have to swim.’

‘Airbed? Did I hear you say airbed? What airbed?’

‘The one in the locker with the lifejackets. All you’ve got to do is blow it up and…’

‘Honey you’re the practicallest,’ said Sally, and rushed outside. ‘G, Eva’s found a way for you to go and get help. There’s an airbed in the locker with the lifejackets.’ She rummaged in the locker and took out the airbed.

‘You think I’m going anywhere on that damned thing you’ve got another think coming,’ said Gaskell.

‘What’s wrong with it?’

In this weather? You ever tried to steer one of those things? It’s bad enough on a sunny day with no wind. Right now I’d end up in the reeds and anyhow the rain’s getting on my glasses.’

‘All right, so we wait till the storm blows over. At least we know how to get off here.’

She went back into the cabin and shut the door. Outside Gaskell squatted by the engine and toyed with the wrench. If only he could get the thing to go again.

‘Men,’ said Sally contemptuously, ‘Claim to be the stronger sex but when the chips are down it’s us women who have to bail them out.’

‘Henry’s impractical too,’ said Eva. ‘It’s all he can do to mend a fuse.’ I do hope he isn’t worried about me’

‘He’s having himself a ball,’ said Sally.

‘Not Henry. He wouldn’t know how.’

‘He’s probably having it off with Judy.’

Eva shook her head. ‘He was just drunk, that’s all. He’s never done anything like that before.’

‘How would you know?’

‘Well he is my husband.’

‘Husband hell. He just uses you to wash the dishes and cook and clean up for him. What does he give you? Just tell me that’

Eva struggled with her thoughts inarticulately. Henry didn’t give her anything very much. Not anything she could put into words. ‘He needs me,’ she said finally.

‘So he needs you. Who needs needing? That’s the rhetoric of female feudalism. So you save someone’s life, you’ve got to be grateful to them for letting you? Forget Henry. He’s a jerk.’

Eva bristled. Henry might not be very much but she didn’t like him insulted.

‘Gaskell’s nothing much to write home about,’ she said and went into the kitchen. Behind her Sally lay back on the bunk and opened the centre spread of Playboy. ‘Gaskells got bread,’ she said.

‘Bread?’

‘Money, honey. Greenstuff. ‘The stuff that makes the world go round Cabaretwise. You think I married him for his looks? Oh no. I can smell a cool million when it comes by me and I do mean buy me.’

‘I could never marry a man for his money,’ said Eva primly. ‘I’d have to be in love with him. I really would.’

‘So you’ve seen too many movies. Do you really think Gaskell was in love with me?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose he must have been.’

Sally laughed. ‘Eva baby you are naïve. Let me tell you about G. G’s a plastic freak. He’d fuck a goddam chimpanzee if you dressed it up in plastic’

‘Oh honestly. He wouldn’t’ said Eva. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘You think I put you on the Pill for nothing? You go around in that bikini and Gaskell’s drooling over you all the time if I wasn’t here he’d have raped you’

‘He’d have a hard time.’ said Eva, ‘I took Judo classes.’

‘Well he’d try. Anything in plastic drives him crazy. Why do you think he had that doll?’

‘I wondered about that.’

‘Right. You can stop wondering’ said Sally.

‘I still don’t see what that has to do with you marrying him,’ said Eva.

‘Then let me tell you a little secret. Gaskell was referred to me…’

‘Referred?’

‘By Dr Freeborn. Gaskell had this little problem and he consulted Dr Freeborn and Dr Freeborn sent him to me.’

Eva looked puzzled. ‘But what were you supposed to do?’

‘I was a surrogate,’ said Sally.

‘A surrogate?’

‘Like a sex counsellor’ said Sally. ‘Dr Freeborn used to send me clients and I would help them.’

‘I wouldn’t like that sort of job,’ said Eva, ‘I couldn’t bear to talk to men about sex. Weren’t you embarrassed?’

‘You get used to it and there are worse ways of earning a living. So G comes along with his little problem and I straightened him out but literally and we got married. A business arrangement. Cash on the tail.’

‘You mean you…’

‘I mean I have Gaskell and Gaskell has plastic.’ It’s an elastic relationship. The marriage with the two-way stretch.’

Eva digested this information with difficulty. It didn’t seem right somehow. ‘Didn’t his parents have anything to say about it?’ she asked. ‘I mean did he tell them about you helping him and all that?’

‘Say? What could they say? G told them he’d met me at summer school and Pringsy’s greedy little eyes popped out of his greasy little head. Baby, did that fat little man have penis projection. Sell? He could sell anything. The Rockefeller Centre to Rockefeller. So he accepted me. Old Ma Pringsheim didn’t. She fluffed and she puffed and she blew but this little piggy stayed right where the bank was. G and me went back to California and G graduated in plastic and we’ve been biodegradable ever since.’

‘I’m glad Henry isn’t like that,’ said Eva. ‘I couldn’t live with a man who was queer.’

‘G’s not queer, honey. Like I said he’s a plastic freak.’

‘If that’s not queer I don’t know what is’ said Eva.

Sally lit a cigarillo.

‘All men get turned on by something,’ she said. ‘They’re manipulable. All you’ve got to do is fend the kink. I should know.’

‘Henry’s not like that. I’d know if he was.’

‘So he makes with the doll. That’s how much you know about Henry. You telling me he’s the great lover?’

‘We’ve been married twelve years. It’s only natural we don’t do it as often as we used to. We’re so busy.’

‘Busy lizzie. And while you’re housebound what’s Henry doing?’

‘He’s taking classes at the Tech. He’s there all day and he comes home tired

‘Takes classes takes asses. You’ll be telling me next he’s not a sidewinder.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ said Eva.

‘He has his piece on the side. His secretary knees up on the desk.’

‘He doesn’t have a secretary.’

‘Then students prudence. Screws their grades up. I know. I’ve seen it. I’ve been around colleges too long to be fooled.’

‘I’m sure Henry would never…’

‘That’s what they all say and then bingo, it’s divorce and bobbysex and all you’re left to look forward to is menopause and peeking through the blinds at the man next door and waiting for the Fuller Brush man.’

‘You make it all sound so awful.’ said Eva. ‘You really do.’

‘It is, Eva teats. It is. You’ve got to do something, about it before it’s too late. You’ve got to liberate yourself from Henry. Make the break and share the cake. Otherwise it’s male domination doomside.’

Eva sat on the bunk and thought about the future. It didn’t seem to hold trench for her. They would never have any children now and they wouldn’t ever have much money. They would go on living in Park-dew Avenue and paying off the mortgage and maybe Henry would find someone else and then what would she do? And even if he didn’t, life was passing her by.

‘I wish I knew what to do,’ she said presently. Sally sat up and put her arm round her.

‘Why don’t you come to the States with us in November?’ she said. ‘We could have such fun.’

‘Oh I couldn’t do that,’ said Eva. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to Henry.’

No such qualms bothered Inspector Flint. Wilt’s intransigence under intense questioning merely indicated that he was harder than he looked.

‘We’ve had him under interrogation for thirty-six hours now,’ he told the conference of the Murder Squad in the briefing room at the Police Station, ‘and we’ve got nothing out of him. So this is going to be a long hard job and quite frankly I have my doubts about breaking him.’

‘I told you he was going to be a hard nut to crack,’ said Sergeant Yates.

‘Nut being the operative word,’ said Flint. ‘So it’s got to be concrete evidence.’

There was a snigger which died away quickly. Inspector Flint was not in a humorous mood.

‘Evidence, hard evidence is the only thing that is going to break him. Evidence is the only thing that is going to bring him to trial.’

‘But we’ve got that,’ said Yates. ‘It’s at the bott…’

‘I know exactly where it is, thank you Sergeant. What I am talking about is evidence of multiple murder. Mrs Wilt is accounted for. Dr and Mrs Pringsheim aren’t. Now my guess is that he murdered all three and that the other two bodies are…’ He stopped and opened the file in front of him and hunted through it for Notes on Violence and the Break-Up of Family Life. He studied them for a moment and shook his head. ‘No,’ he muttered, ‘it’s not possible.’

‘What isn’t, sir?’ asked Sergeant Yates. ‘Anything is possible with this bastard.’

But Inspector Flint was not to be drawn. The notion was too awful.

‘As I was saying’ be continued, ‘what we need now is hard evidence. What we have got is purely circumstantial. I want more evidence on the Pringsheims. I want to know what happened at that party, who was there and why it happened and at the rate we’re going with Wilt we aren’t going to get anything out of him. Snell, you go down to the Department of Biochemistry at the University and get what you can on Dr Pringsheim. Find out if any of his colleagues were at that party. Interview them. Get a list of his friends, his hobbies, his girl friends if he had any. Find out if there is any link between him and Mrs Wilt that would suggest a motive. Jackson, you go up to Rossiter Grove and see what you can get on Mrs Pringsheim…’

By the time the conference broke up detectives had been despatched all over town to build up a dossier on the Pringsheims. Even the American Embassy had been contacted to find out what was known about the couple in the States. The murder investigation had begun in earnest.

Inspector Flint walked back to his office with Sergeant Yates and shut the door. ‘Yates,’ he said, ‘this is confidential. I wasn’t going to mention it in there but I’ve a nasty feeling I know why that sod is so bloody cocky. Have you ever known a murderer sit through thirty-six hours of questioning as cool as a cucumber when be knows we’ve got the body of his victim pinpointed to the nearest inch?’

Sergeant Yates shook his head.’I've known some pretty cool customers in my time and particularly since they stopped hanging but this one takes the biscuit If you ask me he’s a raving psychopath.’

Flint dismissed the idea. ‘Psychopaths crack easy,’ he said. ‘They confess to murders they haven’t committed or they confess to, murders they have committed but they confess. This Wilt doesn’t. He sits there and tells me how to run the investigation. Now take a look at this.’ He opened the file and took out Wilt’s notes. ‘Notice anything peculiar?’

Sergeant Yates read the notes through twice.

‘Well, he doesn’t seem to think much of our methods,’ he said finally. ‘And I don’t much like this bit about low level of intelligence of average policeman.’

‘What about Point Two D?’ said the Inspector. ‘Increasing use of sophisticated methods such as diversionary tactics by criminals. Diversionary tactics. Doesn’t that suggest anything to you?’

‘You mean he’s trying to divert our attention away from the real crime to something else?’

Inspector Flint nodded. ‘What I mean is this. I wouldn’t mind betting that when we do get down to the bottom of that fucking pile we’re going to find an inflatable doll dressed up in Mrs Wilt’s clothes and with a vagina. That’s what I think’

‘But that’s insane.’

‘Insane? It’s fucking diabolical,’ said the Inspector. ‘He’s sitting in there like a goddam dummy giving as good as he gets because he knows he’s got us chasing a red herring.’

Sergeant Yates sat down mystified. ‘But why? Why draw attention to the murder in the first place? Why didn’t he just lie low and act normally?’

‘What, and report Mrs Wilt missing? You’re forgetting the Pringsheims. A wife goes missing, so what? Two of her friends go missing and leave their house in a hell of a mess and covered with bloodstains. That needs explaining, that does. So he puts out a false trail…’

‘But that still doesn’t help him,’ objected the Sergeant. ‘We dig up a plastic doll. Doesn’t mean we’re going to halt the investigation.’

‘Maybe not but it gives him a week while the other bodies disintegrate.’

‘You think be used an acid bath like Haigh?’ asked the Sergeant. ‘That’s horrible.’

‘Of course it’s horrible. You think murder’s nice or something? Anyway the only reason they got Haigh was that stupid bugger told them where to look for the sludge. If he’d kept his trap shut for another week they wouldn’t have found anything. The whole lot would have been washed away. Besides I don’t know what Wilt’s used. All I do know is he’s an intellectual, a clever sod and he thinks he’s got it wrapped up. First we take him in for questioning, maybe even get him remanded and when we’ve done that, we go and dig up a plastic inflatable doll. We’re going to look right Charlies going into court with a plastic doll as evidence of murder. We’ll be the laughing stock of the world. So the case gets thrown out of court and what happens when we pick him up a second time for questioning on the real murders? We’d have the Civil Liberties brigade sinking their teeth into our throats like bleeding vampire bats.’

‘I suppose that explains why he doesn’t start shouting for a lawyer,’ said Yates.

‘Of course it does. What does he want with a lawyer now? But pull him in a second time and he’ll have lawyers falling over themselves to help him. They’ll be squawking about police brutality and victimization. You won’t be able to hear yourself speak. His bloody lawyers will have a field day. First plastic dolls and then no bodies at all. He’ll get clean away.’

‘Anyone who can think that little lot up must be a madman,’ said the Sergeant.

‘Or a fucking genius,’ said Flint bitterly. ‘Christ what a case.’ He stubbed out a cigarette resentfully.

‘What do you want me to do? Have another go at him.’

‘No, I’ll do that. You go up to the Tech and chivvy his boss there into saying what he really thinks of Wilt. Get any little bit of dirt on the blighter you can. There’s got to be something in his past we can use.’

He went down the corridor and into the Interview Room. Wilt was sitting at the table making notes on the back of a statement form. Now that he was beginning to feel, if not at home in the Police Station, at least more at ease with his surroundings, his mind had turned to the problem of Eva’s disappearance. He had to admit that he had been worried by the bloodstains in the Pringsheims’ bathroom. To while away the time he had tried to formulate his thoughts on paper and he was still, at it when Inspector Flint came into the room and banged the door.

‘Right, so you’re a clever fellow, Wilt,’ he said, sitting down and pulling the paper towards him. ‘You can read and write and you’ve got a nice logical and inventive mind so let’s just see what you’ve written here. Who’s Ethel?’

‘Eva’s sister,’ said Wilt. ‘She’s married to a market gardener in Luton. Eva sometimes goes over there for a week.’

‘And “Blood in the bath”?’

‘Just wondering how it got there.’

‘And “Evidence of hurried departure”?’

‘I was simply putting down my thoughts about the state of the Pringsheims house, said Wilt.

‘You’re trying to be helpful?’

‘I’m here helping you with your enquiries. That’s the official term isn’t it?’

‘It may be the official term, Wilt, but in this case it doesn’t correspond with the facts.’

‘I don’t suppose it does very often,’ said Wilt. ‘It’s one of those expressions that covers a multitude of sins.’

‘And crimes.’

‘It also happens to ruin a man’s reputation,’ said Wilt. ‘I hope you realize what you’re doing to mine by holding me here like this. It’s bad enough knowing I’m going to spend the rest of my life being pointed out as the man who dressed a plastic doll with a cunt up in his wife’s clothes and dropped it down a pile hole without everyone thinking I’m a bloody murderer as well.’

‘Where you’re going to spend the rest of your life nobody is going to care what you did with that plastic doll,’ said the Inspector.

Wilt seized on the admission.

‘Ah, so, you’ve found it at last,’ he said eagerly. ‘That’s fine. So now I’m free to go.’

‘Sit down and shut up,’ snarled the Inspector. ‘You’re not going anywhere and when you do it will be in a large black van. I haven’t finished with you yet. In fact I’m only just beginning.

‘Here we go again,’ said Wilt. ‘I just knew you’d want to start at the beginning again. You fellows have primary causes on the brain. Cause and effect, cause and effect. Which came first, the chicken or the egg…protoplasm or demiurge? I suppose this time it’s going to be what Eva said when we were dressing to go to the party.’

‘This time.’ said the Inspector, ‘I want you to tell me precisely why you stuck that damned doll down that hole.’

‘Now that is an interesting question.’ said Wilt, and stopped. It didn’t seem a good idea to try to explain to Inspector Flint in the present circumstances just what he had had in mind when he dropped the doll down the shaft. The Inspector didn’t look the sort of person who would understand at all readily that a husband could have fantasies of murdering his wife without actually putting them into effect. It would be better to wait for Eva to put in an appearance in the flesh before venturing into that uncharted territory of the wholly irrational. With Eva present Flint might sympathize with him. Without her he most certainly wouldn’t.

‘Let’s just say I wanted to get rid of the beastly thing,’ he said.

‘Let’s not say anything of the sort,’ said Flint. ‘Let’s just say you had an ulterior motive for putting it there.’

Wilt nodded. ‘I’ll go along with that,’ he said.

Inspector Flint nodded encouragingly. ‘I thought you might. Well, what was it?’

Wilt considered his words carefully. He was getting into deep waters.

‘Let’s just say it was by way of being a rehearsal.’

‘A rehearsal? What sort of rehearsal?’

Wilt thought for a moment.

‘Interesting word “rehearsal”,’ he said. ‘It comes from the old French, rehercer, meaning…’

‘To hell with where it comes from,’ said the Inspector, ‘I want to know where it ends up.’

‘Sounds a bit like a funeral too when you come to think of it.’ said Wilt, continuing his campaign of semantic attrition.

Inspector Flint hurled himself into the trap. ‘Funeral? ‘Whose funeral?’

‘Anyone’s’ said Wilt blithely. ‘Hearse, rehearse.’ You could say that’s what happens when you exhume a body. You rehearse it though I don’t suppose you fellows use hearses.’

‘For God’s sake,’ shouted the Inspector. ‘Can’t you ever stick to the point? You said you were rehearsing something and I want to know what that something was.’

‘An idea, a mere idea,’ said Wilt, ‘one of those ephemera of mental fancy that flit like butterflies across the summer landscape of the mind blown by the breezes of association that come like sudden showers…I rather like that.’

‘I don’t,’ said the Inspector, looking at him bitterly. ‘What I want to know is what you were rehearsing. That’s what I’d like to know.’

‘I’ve told you. An idea,’

‘What sort of idea?’

‘Just an idea,’ said Wilt. ‘A mere…’

‘So help me God, Wilt,’ shouted the Inspector, ‘if you start on these fucking butterflies again I’ll break the unbroken habit of a lifetime and wring your bloody neck.’

‘I wasn’t going to mention butterflies this time,’ said Wilt reproachfully, ‘I was going to say that I had this idea for a book…’

‘A book’ snarled Inspector Flint. ‘What sort of book? A book of poetry or a crime story?’

‘A crime story.’ said Wilt, grateful for the suggestion.

‘I see,’ said the Inspector. ‘So you were going to write a thriller. Well now, just let me guess the outline of the plot. There’s this lecturer at the Tech and he has this wife he hates and he decides to murder her…’

‘Go on!’ said Wilt, ‘you’re doing very well so far.’

‘I thought I might be,’ said Flint delightedly. ‘Well, this lecturer thinks he’s a clever fellow who can hoodwink the police. He doesn’t think much of the police. So he dumps a plastic doll down a hole that’s going to be filled with concrete in the hope that the police will waste their time digging it out and in the meantime he’s buried his wife somewhere else. By the way, where did you bury Mrs Wilt, Henry? Let’s get this over once and for all. Where did you put her? Just tell me that. You’ll feel better when it’s out.’

‘I didn’t put her anywhere. If I’ve told you that once I’ve told you a thousand times. How many more times have I got to tell you I don’t know where she is.’

‘I’ll say this for you, Wilt,’ said the Inspector, when he could bring himself to speak. ‘I’ve known some cool customers in my time but I have to take my hat off to you. You’re the coolest bastard it’s ever been my unfortunate experience to come across.’

Wilt shook his head. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I feel sorry for you, Inspector, I really do. You can’t recognise the truth when it’s staring you in the face.’

Inspector Flint got up and left the room. ‘You there,’ he said to the first detective he could find. ‘Go into that Interview Room and ask that bastard questions and don’t stop till I tell you’

‘What sort of questions?’

‘Any sort. Just any. Keep asking him why he stuffed an inflatable plastic doll down a pile hole. That’s all. Just ask it over and over again. I’m going to break that sod.’

He went down to his office and slumped into his chair and tried to think.