Wilt on High

Chapter 12

By the following evening, it would have been difficult to say what Inspector Hodge was. Since Wilt hadn't emerged from the house, the Inspector had spent the best part of two days tracing Eva's progress to and from the school and round Ipford in the bugged Escort.

'It's good practice,' he told Sergeant Runk, as they followed her in a van Hodge had converted to a listening-post.

'For what?' asked the Sergeant, pinning a mark on the town map to indicate that Eva had now parked behind Sainsbury's. She'd already been to Tesco's and Fine Fare. 'So we learn where to get the best discount on washing powder?'

'For when he decides to move.'

'When,' said Runk. 'So far he hasn't been out of the house all day.'

'He's sent her out to check she hasn't got a tail on her,' said Hodge. 'In the meantime, he's lying low.'

'Which you said was just the thing he wasn't doing,' said Runk. 'I said he was and you said...'

'I know what I said. But that was when he knew he was being followed. It's different now.'

'I'll say,' said Runk. 'So the sod sends us on a tour of shopping centres and we haven't got a clue what's going on.'

They had that night. Runk, who had insisted on having the afternoon off for some shut-eye if he was to work at night, retrieved the tape from under the seat and replaced it with a new one. It was one o'clock in the morning. Half an hour later, Hodge, whose childhood had been spent in a house where sex was never mentioned, was listening to the quads discussing Wilt's condition with a frankness that appalled him. If anything was needed to convince him that Mr and Mrs Wilt were dyed-in-the-wool criminals, it was Emmeline's repeated demand to know why Daddy had been up in the night putting cake icing on his penis. Eva's explanation didn't help either. 'He wasn't feeling very well, dear. He'd had too much beer and he couldn't sleep, so he went down to the kitchen to see if he could ice cake and'

'I wouldn't like the sort of cake he was icing,' interrupted Samantha. 'And anyway, it was face-cream.'

'I know, dear, but he was practising and he spilt it.'

'Up his cock?' demanded Penelope, which gave Eva the opportunity to tell her never to use that word.

'It's not nice,' she said, 'it's not nice to say things like that and you're not going to tell anyone at school.'

'It wasn't very nice of Daddy to use the icing syringe to pump face-cream up his penis,' said Emmeline.

By the time the discussion was over, and Eva had dropped the quads off at the school, Hodge was ashen. Sergeant Runk wasn't feeling very well either.

'I don't believe it, I don't believe a bloody word of it,' muttered the Inspector.

'I wish to God I didn't,' said Runk. 'I've heard some revolting things in my time but that lot takes the cake.'

'Don't mention that word,' Hodge said. 'I still don't believe it. No man in his right mind would do a thing like that. They're having us on.'

'Oh, I don't know. I knew a bloke once who used to butter his wick with strawberry jam and have his missus'

'Shut up,' shouted Hodge, 'if there's one thing I can't stand it's filth and I've had my fill of that for one night.'

'So's Wilt, by the sound of it,' said Runk, 'walking about with his prick in a jug of ice cubes like that. Can't have been just face-cream or icing-sugar he had in that syringe.'

'Dear God,' said Hodge. 'You're not suggesting he was fixing himself with a cake-icing syringe, are you? He'd be bloody dead by now, and anyhow the fucking thing would leak.'

'Not if he mixed the junk with cold cream. That'd explain it, wouldn't it?'

'It might do,' Hodge admitted. 'I suppose if people can sniff the filthy muck, there's no knowing what they can do with it. Not that it helps us much what he does.'

'Of course it does,' said the Sergeant, who had suddenly seen a way of ending the tedium of sitting through the night in the van. 'It means he's got the stuff in the house.'

'Or up his pipe,' said Hodge.

'Wherever. Anyway, there's bound to be enough around to haul him in and give him a good going over.'

But the Inspector has his sights set on more ambitious targets. 'A fat lot of good that's going to do us,' he said, 'even if he did crack, and if you'd read what he did to old Flint you'd know better'

'But this'd be different,' Runk interrupted. 'First off, he'd be cold turkey. Don't have to question him. Leave him in a cell for three days without a fix and he'd be bleating like a fucking baa-lamb.'

'Yes, and I know who for,' said the Inspector. 'His ruddy mouthpiece.'

'Yes, but we'd have his missus too, remember. And anyway this time we'd have hard evidence and it would just be a matter of charging him. He wouldn't get bail on a heroin charge.'

'True,' said Hodge grudgingly, 'if we had hard evidence. "If."'

'Well, there's bound to be with him getting the stuff all over his pyjamas like those kids said. Forensic would have an easy time. Take that cake-icing syringe for a starter. And then there are towels and drying-up cloths. Blimey, the place must be alive with the stuff. Even the fleas on the cat must be addicts the way he's been splashing it round.'

'That's what worries me,' said Hodge. 'Whoever heard of a pusher splashing it round? No way. They're too bloody careful. Especially when the heat's on like it is now. You know what I think?' Sergeant Runk shook his head. In his opinion the Inspector was incapable of thought. 'I think the bastard's trying the old come-on. Wants us to arrest him. He's trying to trap us into it. That explains the whole thing.'

'Doesn't explain anything to me,' said Runk despairingly.

'Listen,' said Hodge, 'what we've heard on that tape just now is too bizarre to be credible, right? Right. You've never heard of a junkie fixing his cock and I haven't either. But apparently, this Wilt does. Not only that, but he makes a fucking mess, does it in the middle of the night and with a cake-icing syringe and makes sure his kids find him in the kitchen doing it. For why? Because he wants the little bitches to shoot their mouths off about it in public and for us to hear about it. That's why. Well, I'm not falling for it. I'm going to take my time and wait for Mr Clever Wilt to lead me to his source. I'm not interested in single pushers, this time I'm going to pull in the whole ruddy network.'

And having satisfied himself with this interpretation of Wilt's extraordinary behaviour, the Inspector sat on, savouring his eventual triumph. In his mind's eye, he could see Wilt in the dock with a dozen big-time criminals, none of whom the likes of Flint had ever suspected. They'd be moneyed men with large houses who played golf and belonged to the best clubs, and after sentencing him, the Judge would compliment Inspector Hodge on his brilliant handling of the case. No one would ever call him inefficient again. He'd be famous and his photograph would be in all the papers.

Wilt's thoughts followed rather similar lines, though with a different emphasis. The effects of Eva's enthusiasm for aphrodisiacs were still making themselves felt and, more disastrously, had given him what appeared to be a permanent erection. 'Of course I'm confined to the bloody house,' he said when Eva complained that she didn't want him wandering about in his dressing-gown on her weekly coffee morning. 'You don't expect me to go back to the Tech with the thing sticking out like a ramrod.'

'Well, I don't want you making an exhibition of yourself in front of Betty and the others like you did with Mavis.'

'Mavis got what she deserved,' said Wilt. 'I didn't ask the woman into the house, she just marched in, and anyway if she hadn't put you on to poisoner Kores I wouldn't be wandering around with a coat-hanger strapped to my waist, would I?'

'What's the coat-hanger for?'

'To keep the flipping dressing-gown off the inflamed thing,' said Wilt. 'If you knew what it felt like to have stuff like a heavy blanket rubbing against the end of a pressurized and highly sensitive'

'I don't want to hear,' said Eva.

'And I don't want to feel,' Wilt retorted. 'Hence the coat-hanger. And what's more, you want to try betiding your knees and leaning forward at the same time every time you have to pee. It's bloody agony. As it is I've banged my head on the wall twice and I haven't had a crap in two days. I can't even sit down to read. It's either flat on my back in bed with the wastepaper basket for protection or up and about with the coat-hanger. And up and about it is. At this rate, they'll have to build a special coffin with a periscope when I cough it.'

Eva looked at him doubtfully. 'Perhaps you ought to go and see a doctor if it's that serious.'

'How?' snapped Wilt. 'If you think I'm going to walk down the road looking like a pregnant sex-change artist, forget it. I'd be arrested before I was half-way there and the local rag would have a field day. TECH TEACHER ON PERMANENT HIGH. And you'd really love it if I got called Pumpkin Penis Percy. So you have your Tupperware Party and I'll stick around upstairs.'

Wilt went carefully up to the bedroom and took refuge under the wastepaper basket. Presently, he heard voices from below. Eva's Community Care Committee had begun to arrive. Wilt wondered how many of them had already heard Mavis' version of the episode in the kitchen and were secretly delighted that Eva was married to a homicidal flasher. Not that they would ever admit as much. No, it would be 'Did you hear about poor Eva's awful husband?' or 'I can't think how she can bring herself to stay in the same house with that frightful Henry,' but in fact the target for their malice would be Eva herself. Which was just as it should be, considering that she'd doctored his beer with whatever poison Dr Kores had given her. Wilt lay back and wondered about the doctor and presently fell into a daydream in which he sued her for some enormous sum on the grounds of...What sort of grounds were there? Invasion of Penisy? Or Deprivation of Scrotal Rights? Or just plain Poisoning. That wouldn't work because Eva had administered the stuff and presumably if you took it in the correct doses it wouldn't have such awful effects. And, of course, the Kores bitch wasn't to know that Eva never did things by halves. In her book, if a little of something was good for you, twice as much was better. Even Charlie, the cat, knew that, and had developed an uncanny knack of disappearing for several days the moment Eva put down a saucer of cream laced with worm powder. But then Charlie was no fool and evidently still remembered the experience of having his innards scoured out by twice the recommended dosage. The poor brute had come limping back into the house after a week in the bushes at the bottom of the garden looking like a tapeworm with fur and had promptly been put on a high-pilchard diet to build him up.

Well, if a cat could learn from experience, there was no excuse for Wilt. On the other hand, Charlie didn't exactly have to live with Eva, but could shove off at the first sign of trouble. 'Lucky blighter,' Wilt muttered and wondered what would happen if he rang up one night and said he wasn't coming home for a week. He could just imagine the explosion on the other end of the line, and if he put the phone down without coming up with a really plausible explanation, he'd never hear the end of it when he did come home. And why? Because the truth was always too insane or incredible. Just about as incredible as the events of the week which had started with that idiot from the Ministry of Education and had gone on through Miss Hare's use of karate in the Ladies' lavatory to McCullum's threats and the men in the car who'd followed him. Add that little lot together with an overdose of Spanish Fly, and you had a truth no one would believe. Anyway, there was no point in lying there speculating about things he couldn't alter.

'Emulate the cat,' said Wilt to himself and went through to the bathroom to check in the mirror how his penis was getting on. It certainly felt better, and when he removed the wastepaper basket, he was delighted to find it had begun to droop. He had a shower and shaved and by the time Eva's little group had broken up, he was able to go downstairs wearing his trousers. 'How did the hen party go?' he asked.

Eva rose to the provocation. 'I see you're back to your normal sexist self. Anyway, it wasn't any sort of party. We're having that next Friday. Here.'

'Here?'

'That's right. It's going to be a fancy-dress party with prizes for the best costume and a raffle to raise money for the Harmony Community Play-Group.'

'Yes, and I'm sending a bill to all the people you're inviting to pay for the insurance in advance. Remember what happened to the Vurkells when Polly Merton sued them for falling downstairs blind drunk.'

'That was quite different,' said Eva. 'It was all Mary's fault for having a loose stair carpet. She never did look after the house properly. It was always a mess.'

'So was Polly Merton when she hit the hall floor. It was a wonder she wasn't killed,' said Wilt. 'Anyway, that's not the point. The Vurkells' house was wrecked and the insurance company wouldn't pay up because he'd been breaking the by-laws by running an illegal casino with that roulette wheel of his.'

'There you are,' said Eva. 'We're not breaking the law by holding a raffle for charity.'

'I'd check it out if I were you, and you can check me out too,' said Wilt. 'I've had enough trouble with my private parts these last two days without wearing that Francis Drake outfit you rigged me out in last Christmas.'

'You looked very nice in it. Even Mr Persner said you deserved a prize.'

'For wearing your grandmother's camiknickers stuffed with straw, I daresay I did, but I certainly didn't feel nice. In any case, I've got my prisoner to teach that night.'

'You could cancel that for once,' said Eva.

'What, just before the exams? Certainly not,' said Wilt. 'You invite a mob of costumed fools to invade the house for the good of charity without consulting me, you mustn't expect me to stop my charitable work.'

'In that case, you'll be going out tonight then?' said Eva. 'Today's Friday and you've got to keep up the good work, haven't you?'

'Good Lord,' said Wilt, who'd lost track of the days. It was Friday and he had forgotten to prepare anything for the lecture to his class at Baconheath. Spurred on by Eva's sarcasm and the knowledge that he'd end up the following Friday in straw-filled camiknickers or even as Puss in Boots in a black leotard which fitted far too tightly, Wilt spent the afternoon working over some old notes on British Culture and Institutions. They were entitled 'The Need For Deference, Paternalism and The Class Structure' and were designed to be provocative.

By six o'clock he had finished his supper, and half an hour later was driving out along the fen roads towards the airbase rather faster than usual. His penis was playing up again and it had only been by strapping it to his lower stomach with a long bandage and a cricket box that he'd been able to make himself comfortable and not provocatively indecent.

Behind him, the two monitoring vans followed his progress and Inspector Hodge was jubilant. 'I knew it. I knew he'd have to move,' he told Sergeant Runk as they listened to the signals coming from the Escort. 'Now we're getting somewhere.'

'If he's as smart as you say he is, it could be up the garden path,' said Runk.

But Hodge was consulting the map. The coast lay ahead. Apart from that, there were only a few villages, the bleak flatness of the fens and...'Any moment he'll switch west,' he predicted. His hopes had turned to certainty. Wilt was heading for the US Airbase at Baconheath and the American connection was complete.

In Ipford prison, Inspector Flint stared into the Bull's face. 'How many years have you still to do?' he asked. 'Twelve?'

'Not with remission,' said the Bull. 'Only eight. I've got good behaviour.'

'Had,' said Flint. 'You lost that when you knocked Mac off.'

'Knocked Mac off? I never did. That's a bloody lie. I never touched him. He'

'That's not what the Bear says,' interrupted Flint, and opened a file. 'He says you'd been saving up those sleeping pills so you could murder Mac and take over from him. Want to read his statement? It's all down in black and white and nicely signed. Here, take a dekko.'

He pushed the paper across the table but the Bull was on his feet. 'You can't pull that fucking one on me,' he shouted and was promptly pushed back into his chair by the Chief Warder.

'Can,' said Flint, leaning forward and staring into the Bull's frightened eyes. 'You wanted to take over from McCullum, didn't you? Jealous of him, weren't you? Got greedy. Thought you'd grab a nice little operation run from inside and you'd come out in eight years with a pension as long as your arm all safely stashed away by your widow.'

'Widow?' The Bull's face was ashen now. 'What you mean, widow?'

Flint smiled. 'Just as I say. Widow. Because you aren't ever going to get out now. Eight years back to twelve and a life stretch for murdering Mac adds up to twenty-seven by my reckoning, and for all those twenty-seven years, you're going to be doing solitary for your own protection. I can't see you making it, can you?'

The Bull stared at him pathetically. 'You're setting me up.'

'I don't want to hear your defence,' said Flint, and got to his feet. 'Save the blarney for the court. Maybe you'll get some nice judge to believe you. Especially with your record. Oh, and I shouldn't count on the missus to help. She's been shacked up with Joe Slavey for six months, or didn't you know?'

He moved towards the door, but the Bull had broken. 'I didn't do it, I swear to God I didn't, Mr Flint. Mac was like a brother to me. I'd never'

Flint put the boot in again. 'Plead insanity is my advice,' he said. 'You'll be better off in Broadmoor. Buggered if I'd want Brady or the Ripper as a neighbour for the rest of my natural.' For a moment he paused by the door. 'Let me know if he wants to make a statement,' he said to the Chief Warder. 'I mean, I suppose he could help...'

There was no need to go on. Even the Bull had got the message. 'What do you want to know?'

It was Flint's turn to think. Take the pressure off too quickly and all he'd get would be garbage. On the other hand, strike while the iron was hot. 'The lot,' he said. 'How the operations work. Who does what. What the links are. You name it, I want it. Every fucking thing!'

The Bull swallowed. 'I don't know everything,' he said, looking unhappily at the Chief Warder.

'Don't mind me,' said Mr Blaggs. 'I'm not here. Just part of the furniture.'

'Start with how Mac got himself junk,' said Flint. It was best to begin with something he already knew. The Bull told him and Flint wrote it all down with a growing sense of satisfaction. He hadn't known about Prison Officer Lane being bent.

'You'll get me slit for this,' said the Bull when he'd finished with Mrs Jardin, the Prison Visitor.

'I don't know why,' said Flint. 'Mr Blaggs here isn't going to say who told him and it doesn't necessarily have to come out at your trial.'

'Christ,' said the Bull. 'You're not still going on with that, are you?'

'You tell me,' said Flint, maintaining the pressure. By the time he left the prison three hours later, Inspector Flint was almost a happy man. True, the Bull hadn't told him everything, but then he hadn't expected him too. In all likelihood, the fool didn't know much more, but he'd given Flint enough names to be going on with. Best of all, he'd grassed too far to back out, even if the threat of a murder charge lost its effect. The Bull would indeed get himself sliced by some other prisoner if the news ever got out. And the Bear was going to be Flint's next target.

'Being a copper's a dirty business sometimes,' he thought as he drove back to the police station. But drugs and violence were dirtier still. Flint went up to his office and began to check out some names.

Ted Lingon's name rang a belltwo bells, when he put his lists together. And Lingon ran a garage. Promising. But who was Annie Mosgrave?