Wilt on High

Chapter 21

'Logic dictates,' said Mr Gosdyke, 'that we should look at this problem rationally. Now I know that's difficult but until we have definite proof that your husband is being held at Baconheath against his will there really isn't any legal action we can take. You do see that?'

Eva gazed into the solicitor's face and saw only that she was wasting time. It had been Mavis' idea that she should consult Mr Gosdyke before she did anything hasty. Eva knew what 'hasty' meant. It meant being afraid of taking real risks and doing something effective.

'After all,' Mavis had said, as they drove back, 'you may be able to apply for a court order or habeas corpus or something. It's best to find out.'

But she didn't need to find out. She'd known all along that Mr Gosdyke wouldn't believe her and would talk about proof and logic. As if life was logical. Eva didn't even know what the word meant, except that it always produced in her mind the image of a railway line with a train running along it with no way of getting off it and going across fields and open countryside like a horse. And anyway when you did reach a station you still had to walk to wherever you really wanted to go. That wasn't the way life worked or people behaved when things were really desperate. It wasn't even the way the Law worked with people being sent to prison when they were old and absent-minded like Mrs Reeman who had walked out of the supermarket without paying for a jar of pickled onions and she never ate pickles. Eva knew that because she'd helped with Meals on Wheels and the old lady had said she never touched vinegar. No, the real reason had been that she'd had a pekinese called Pickles and he'd died a month before. But the Law hadn't seen that, any more than Mr Gosdyke could understand that she already had the proof that Henry was in the airbase because he hadn't been there when the officer's manner had changed so suddenly.

'So there's nothing you can do?' she said and got up.

'Not unless we can obtain proof that your husband really is being held against...' But Eva was already through the door and had cut out the sounds of those ineffectual words. She went down the stairs and out into the street and found Mavis waiting for her in the Mombasa Coffee House.

'Well, did he have any advice?' asked Mavis.

'No,' said Eva, 'he just said there was nothing he could do without proof.'

'Perhaps Henry'll telephone you tonight. Now that he knows you've been out there and they must have told him...'

Eva shook her head. 'Why should they have told him?'

'Look, Eva, I've been thinking,' said Mavis, 'Henry's been deceiving you for six months. Now I know what you're going to say but you can't get away from it.'

'He hasn't been deceiving me the way you mean,' said Eva. 'I know that.'

Mavis sighed. It was so difficult to make Eva understand that men were all the same, even a sexually subnormal one like Wilt. 'He's been going out to Baconheath every Friday evening and all that time he's been telling you he's got this prison job. You've got to admit that, haven't you?'

'I suppose so,' said Eva, and ordered tea. She wasn't in the mood for anything foreign like coffee. Americans drank coffee.

'The question you have to ask yourself is why didn't he tell you where he was going?'

'Because he didn't want me to know,' said Eva.

'And why didn't he want you to know?'

Eva said nothing.

'Because he was doing something you wouldn't like. And we all know what men don't think their wives would like to know, don't we?'

'I know Henry,' said Eva.

'Of course you do but we none of us know what even those closest to us are really like.'

'You knew all about Patrick's chasing other women,' said Eva, fighting back. 'You were always going on about his being unfaithful. That's why you got those steroid pills from that beastly Dr Kores and now all he does is sit in front of the telly.'

'Yes,' said Mavis, cursing herself for ever mentioning the fact. 'All right, but you said Henry was undersexed. Anyway that only goes to prove my point. I don't know what Dr Kores put in the mixture she gave you...'

'Flies,' said Eva.

'Flies?'

'Spanish flies. That's what Henry called them. He said they could have killed him.'

'But they didn't,' said Mavis. 'What I'm trying to get across is that the reason he wasn't performing adequately may have been'

'He's not a dog, you know,' said Eva.

'What's that got to do with it?'

'Performing. You talk as though he were something in a circus.'

'You know perfectly well what I meant.'

They were interrupted by the arrival of the tea. 'All I'm saying,' Mavis continued when the waitress had left, 'is that what you took for Henry's being undersexed'

'I said he wasn't very active. That's what I said,' said Eva.

Mavis stirred her coffee and tried to keep calm. 'He may not have wanted you, dear,' she said finally, 'because for the last six months he has been spending every Friday night in bed with some American servicewoman at that airbase. That's what I've been trying to tell you.'

'If that had been the case,' said Eva, bridling, 'I don't see how he could have come home at ten thirty, not if he was teaching as well. He never left the house until nearly seven and it takes at least three-quarters of an hour to drive out there. Two three-quarters make...'

'One and a half hours,' snapped Mavis. 'That doesn't prove anything. He could have had a class of one.'

'Of one?'

'One person, Eva dear.'

'They're not allowed to have only one person in a class,' said Eva. 'Not at the Tech. If they don't have ten...'

'Well, Baconheath may be different,' said Mavis, 'and anyway they fiddle these things. My bet is that Henry's teaching consisted of taking off his clothes and'

'Which just shows how much you know about him,' interrupted Eva. 'Henry taking his clothes off in front of another woman! That'll be the day. He's too shy.'

'Shy?' said Mavis, and was about to say that he hadn't been so shy with her the other morning. But the dangerous look had come back on to Eva's face and she thought better of it. It was still there ten minutes later when they went out to car park to fetch the quads from school.

'Okay, let's take it from there,' said Colonel Urwin. 'You say you didn't shoot Major Glaushof.'

'Of course I didn't,' said Wilt. 'What would I do a thing like that for? She was trying to blow the lock off the door.'

'That's not the version I've got here,' said the Colonel, referring to a file on the desk in front of him, 'according to which you attempted to rape Mrs Glaushof orally and when she refused to co-operate you bit her leg. Major Glaushof tried to intervene by breaking the door down and you shot him through it.'

'Rape her orally?' said Wilt, 'What the hell does that mean?'

'I prefer not to think,' said the Colonel with a shudder.

'Listen,' said Wilt, 'if anyone was being raped orally I was. I don't know if you've ever been in close proximity to that woman's muff but I have and I can tell you the only way out was to bite the bitch.'

Colonel Urwin tried to erase this awful image. His security classification rated him 'highly heterosexual' but there were limits and Mrs Glaushof's muff was unquestionably off them. 'That doesn't exactly gel with your statement that she was attempting to escape from the room by blowing the lock off with a .38, does it? Would you mind explaining what she was doing that for?'

'I told you she was trying...well, I've told you what she was trying to do and as a way out I bit her. That's when she got mad and went for the gun.'

'It still doesn't explain why the door was locked and she had to blow the lock. Are you saying Major Glaushof had locked you in?'

'She'd thrown the fucking key out of the window,' said Wilt wearily, 'and if you don't believe me go and look for the thing outside.'

'Because she found you so sexually desirable she wanted to rape you...orally?' said the Colonel.

'Because she was drunk.'

Colonel Urwin got up and consulted the sporting print for inspiration. It wasn't easy to find. About the only thing that rang true was that Glaushof's ghastly wife had been drunk. 'What I still don't understand is why you were there in the first place.'

'You think I do?' said Wilt. 'I came out here on Friday night to give a lecture and the next thing I know I've been gassed, injected, dressed up like something that's going to be operated on, driven all over the place with a fucking blanket over my head and asked insane questions about radio transformers in my car'

'Transmitters,' said the Colonel.

'Whatever,' said Wilt. 'And told if I don't confess to being a Russian spy or a fanatical raving Shi'ite Muslim I'm going to have my brains plastered all over the ceiling. And that's just for starters. After that I'm in a horrible bedroom with a woman dressed up like a prostitute who hurls keys out of the window and shoves her dugs in my mouth and then threatens to suffocate me with her cunt. And you're asking me for an explanation?' He sank back in his chair and sighed hopelessly.

'That still doesn't'

'Oh, for God's sake,' said Wilt. 'If you want insanity explained go and ask that homicidal maniac Major. I've had a bellyful.'

The Colonel got up and went out the door. 'What do you make of him?' he asked Captain Fortune who had been sitting with a technician recording the interview.

'I've got to say he convinces me,' said Fortune. 'That Mona Glaushof would screw a fucking skunk if there weren't nothing better to hand.'

'I'll say,' said the technician. 'She's been humping Lieutenant Harah like he's a human vibrator. The guy's been taking mega-vitamins to keep up.'

'Dear God,' said the Colonel, 'and Glaushof's in charge of security. What's he doing letting Mona Messalina loose on this one for?'

'Got a two-way mirror in the bathroom,' said the Captain. 'Could be he gets his thrills through it.'

'A two-way mirror in the bathroom? The bastard's got to be sick watching his wife screwing a guy he thinks is a Russian agent.'

'Maybe he thought the Russkies have got a different technique. Something he could learn,' said the technician.

'I want a check run on that key outside the house,' said the Colonel and went out into the passage.

'Well?' he asked.

'Nothing fits,' said the Captain. 'That Corporal in Electronics is no fool. He's certain the equipment he saw in the car was British classified. Definitely non-Russian. No record of it ever being used by anyone else.'

'Are you suggesting he was under surveillance by British Security?'

'It's a possibility.'

'It would be if he hadn't demanded MI5 attendance the moment Glaushof started putting the heat on,' said Urwin. 'Have you ever heard of a Moscow agent calling for British Intelligence when he's been blown? I haven't.'

'So we go back to your theory that the Brits were running an exercise on base security systems. About the only thing that adds up.'

'Nothing adds up for me. If it had been a routine check they'd have come to his rescue by now. And why has he clammed? No point in sweating it out. Against that we've got those transmitters and the fact that Clodiak says he was nervous and agitated all through the lecture. That indicates he's no expert and I don't believe he ever knew his car was tagged. Where's the sense?'

'You want me to question him?' asked the Captain.

'No, I'll go on. Just keep the tape running. We're going to need some help in this.'

He went back into his office and found Wilt lying on the couch fast asleep. 'Just a few more questions, Mr Wilt,' he said. Wilt stared blearily up at him and sat up.

'What questions?'

The Colonel took a bottle from a cupboard. 'Care for a Scotch?'

'I'd care to go home,' said Wilt.