Wilt in Nowhere

Chapter 25

When Wilt opened his eyes again Flint was still in the chair beside the bed. The Inspector had shut his own eyes when the old man in the next bed spat his dentures out for the fifth time and accompanied them with such a quantity of blood that some of it had landed on his trousers. After that he had ceased to be a grotty old man of eighty-one and was a decidedly dead one. Wilt had heard Flint say ‘Fuck’ and various unpleasant noises going on but had kept his eyes firmly shut, only opening them in time to see Flint turn and look at him curiously.

‘Feeling better, Henry?’ Flint asked.

Wilt didn’t reply. The police waiting to take a statement from him weren’t at all to his liking. And in any case Wilt had no idea what had happened to him or what he might have done. It seemed best to have amnesia. Besides, he wasn’t feeling any better. If anything Flint’s presence made him feel decidedly worse. But before the Inspector could make any more inquiries a doctor came up to the bed. This time it was Flint who was questioned.

‘What are you doing here?’ the doctor asked rather nastily, evidently disliking the presence of a police officer in the ward almost as much as Wilt did. Flint wasn’t enjoying being there either.

‘Waiting to take a statement from this patient,’ he said, indicating Wilt.

‘Well, you’re not likely to get one out of him today. He’s suffering from severe concussion and probably amnesia. He may not remember anything. That’s a frequent consequence of a severe blow to the head and subsequent concussion.’

‘And how long does one have to wait before he gets his memory back?’

‘Depends. I’ve known some cases where there’s been no return at all. That’s rare, of course, but it does occasionally happen. Frankly, there’s no saying but in this case I should think he’ll get some memories back in a day or two.’

Wilt listened to the exchange and made it a day or three. He had to find out what he had done first.

Eva returned to 45 Oakhurst Avenue in a state of total exhaustion. The flight had been awful, a drunk had had to be tied down for hitting another passenger and the plane had been diverted to Manchester because of a breakdown in the Flight Control computer. What she found when she finally got home temporarily galvanised her. The house looked as though it had been burgled. Wilt’s ordinary clothes, along with his shoes, were scattered on the floor of the bedroom and to add to her alarm several drawers in the bedroom had obviously been clumsily searched. The same was true of the desk in his study. Finally, and in its own way most alarming of all, the mail had been opened and lay on a side-table beside the front door. While the quads, still relatively subdued, went upstairs she phoned the Tech only to be told by the Secretary that he hadn’t been seen there and there was no saying where he was. Eva put the phone down and tried the Braintrees’ number. They were bound to know where he was. There was no answer. She pressed the button on the answerphone and heard herself repeatedly telling Henry to phone her in Wilma. She went back upstairs and felt in the pockets of Wilt’s clothes but there was nothing to indicate what he had been doing or where he was. The fact that they were lying in a pile on the floor frightened her. She’d trained him to fold them up carefully and he’d got into the habit of hanging them over the back of a chair. From there she went to the wardrobe and checked his other trousers and jackets. None of them were missing. He must have been wearing something when he left the house. He couldn’t have gone out naked. Eva’s thoughts ran wildly to extremes. Ignoring Penelope’s questions she went back downstairs and phoned the police station.

‘I want to report a missing person,’ she said. ‘My name is Mrs Wilt and I’ve just got back from America and my husband is missing.’

‘When you say missing do you mean’

‘I’m saying he has disappeared.’

‘In America?’ asked the girl.

‘Not in America. I left him here and I live at 45 Oakhurst Avenue. I’ve just come back and he isn’t here.’

‘If you’ll just hold the line a moment.’ The telephonist could be heard muttering to someone in the background about some ghastly woman and she could understand why her husband had gone missing. ‘I’ll put you through to someone who may be able to help you,’ she said.

‘You lousy bitch, I heard what you just said!’ yelled Eva.

‘Me? I didn’t say anything. And I’ll have you for using offensive language.’

In the end she was answered by Sergeant Yates. ‘Is that Mrs Eva Wilt of 45 Oakhurst Avenue?’

‘Who else do you think it is?’ Eva snapped back.

‘I’m afraid I have some rather bad news for you, Mrs Wilt. Your husband has been in some sort of accident,’ the Sergeant told her. He obviously didn’t like being snapped at. ‘He’s in the Ipford General Hospital and he’s still unconscious. If you…’

But Eva had already slammed the phone down and, having told the quads in her most menacing manner to behave themselves really well, was on her way to the hospital. She parked and stormed through the crowded waiting room to the reception desk, pushing aside a little man who was already there.

‘You’ll just have to wait your turn,’ the girl told her.

‘But my husband has been injured in a serious accident and he’s unconscious. I’ve got to see him.’

‘You’d better try A&E then.’

‘A&E? What’s that?’ Eva demanded.

‘Accident and Emergency. It’s out the main door. You’ll see a sign,’ said the receptionist and attended to the little man.

Eva hurried out the door and turned left. There was no sign of Accident and Emergency there. Cursing the receptionist she tried to the right. It wasn’t there either. In the end she asked a woman with her arm in a sling and was directed to the other end of the hospital.

‘It’s way past the main door. You can’t miss it. I wouldn’t go in, though. It’s absolutely filthy. Dust everywhere.’

This time Eva did find it. The place was filled with children injured in the coach crash. Eva went back to the main door and found herself in what looked like a shopping mall with a restaurant and adjacent tearoom, a boutique, a parfumerie and a book and magazine stall. For a moment she felt quite mad. Then gathering her wits together she headed down a passage following a sign which read ‘Gynaecology’. There were more signs pointing down other corridors further on. Henry wouldn’t be in a gynaecological ward.

Eva stopped a man in a white coat who was carrying a decidedly sinister-looking plastic bucket with a bloodstained cloth over it.

‘Can’t stop now. I’ve got to get this little tot to the incinerator. We’ve got another starting in twenty minutes.’

‘Another baby? That’s lovely,’ said Eva without getting the implication of ‘the incinerator’.

The nurse put her right. ‘Another bloody foetus,’ he said. ‘Take a dekko if you don’t believe me.’

He removed the bloodstained cloth and Eva glanced into the bucket. As the nurse hurried away she fainted and slid down the wall. Opposite her a door opened and a young doctor, a very young doctor, came out. The fact that he was a Lithuanian and had recently attended a seminar on Obesity and Coronary Infarcts didn’t help. Fat women lying unconscious were his chance to show his expertise. Five minutes later Eva Wilt was in the Emergency Heart Unit, had been stripped to her panties, was being given oxygen and was about to be put on a defibrillator. That didn’t help either. She wasn’t unconscious long. She woke to find a nurse lifting her breasts for a defibrillator pad. Eva promptly hit her and hurled herself off the trolley and grabbed her clothes and was out of the room. She dashed to the toilet and got dressed. She’d come to visit her Henry and nothing was going to stop her. After trying several other wards she traipsed back to Reception. This time she was told that Mr Wilt was in Psychiatry 3.

‘Where’s that?’ Eva asked.

‘On floor 6 at the far end,’ the receptionist told her to get rid of the wretched woman. Eva looked for a lift, failed to find one and had to walk up to floor 6 only to find herself outside Autopsy. Even she knew what an autopsy was. But Henry wasn’t dead. He was in Psychiatry 3. An hour later she found that he wasn’t. In the following two hours she had walked another mile and was furious. So furious in fact that she tackled a senior surgeon and screamed abuse at him. Then because it was getting late she remembered the girls at home. She’d have to go back to see they weren’t up to any mischief and to make supper. In any case she was too exhausted to continue her search for Henry. She’d try again in the morning.