Wilt on High

Chapter 6

All right, call it off,' said Inspector Flint, helping himself to a plastic cup of coffee from the dispenser and stumping into his office.

'Call it off?' said Sergeant Yates, following him in.

'That's what I said. I knew it was an OD from the start. Obvious. Gave those old windbags a nasty turn all the same, and they could do with a bit of reality. Live in a bloody dream world where everything's nice and hygienic because it's been put into words. That way they don't happen, do they?'

'I hadn't thought of it like that,' said Yates.

The Inspector took a magazine out of the cardboard box and studied a photograph of a threesome grotesquely intertwined. 'Bloody disgusting,' he said.

Sergeant Yates peered over his shoulder. You wouldn't think anyone would have the nerve to be shot doing that, would you?'

Anyone who does that ought to be shot, if you ask me,' said Flint, 'Though mind you they're not really doing it. Can't be. You'd get ruptured or something. Found this little lot in that boiler-room and it didn't do that murky Principal a bit of good. Turned a very queer colour, he did.'

'Not his, are they?' asked Yates.

Flint shut the magazine and dumped it back in the box. 'You never know, my son, you never know. Not with so-called educated people you don't. It's all hidden behind words with them. They look all right from the outside, but it's what goes on in here that's really weird.' Flint tapped his forehead significantly. And that's something else again.'

'I suppose it must be,' said Yates. 'Specially when it's hygienic into the bargain.'

Flint looked at him suspiciously. He never knew if Sergeant Yates was as stupid as he made out. 'You trying to be funny or something?'

'Of course not. Only first you said they lived in a hygienic dream world of words; and then you say they're kinky in the head. I was just putting the two together.'

'Well, don't,' said Flint. 'Don't even try. Just get me Hodge. The Drug Squad can take this mess over, and good luck to them.' The Sergeant went out, leaving Flint studying his pale fingers and thinking weird thoughts of his own about Hodge, the Tech and the possibilities that might result from bringing the Head of the Drug Squad and that infernal institution together. And Wilt. It was an interesting prospect, particularly when he remembered Hodge's request for phone-tapping facilities and his generally conspiratorial air. Kept his cards close to his chest, did Inspector Hodge, and a fat lot of good it had done him so far. Well, two could play at that game, and if ever there was a quicksand of misinformation and inconsequentiality, it had to be the Tech and Wilt. Flint reversed the order. Wilt and the Tech. And Wilt had been vaguely connected with the dead girl, if only by going to the wrong toilet. The word alerted Flint to his own immediate needs. Those bloody pills had struck again.

He hurried down the passage for a pee and as he stood there, standing and staring at the tiled wall and a notice which said, 'Don't drop your cigarette ends in the urinal. It makes them soggy and difficult to light', his disgust changed to inspiration. There was a lesson to be learned from that notice if he could only see it. It had to do with the connection between a reasonable request and an utterly revolting supposition. The word 'inconsequential' came to mind again. Sticking Inspector Bloody Hodge onto Wilt would be like tying two cats together by their tails and seeing which one came out on top. And if Wilt didn't, Flint had sorely misjudged the little shit. And behind Wilt there was Eva and those foul quads and if that frightful combination didn't foul Hodge's career up as effectively as it had wrecked Flint's, the Inspector deserved promotion. With the delightful thought that he'd be getting his own back on Wilt too, he returned to his office and was presently doodling figures of infinite confusion which was exactly what he hoped to initiate.

He was still happily immersed in this daydream of revenge when Yates returned. 'Hodge is out,' he reported. 'Left a message he'd be back shortly.'

'Typical,' said Flint. 'The sod's probably lurking in some coffee bar trying to make up his mind which dolly bird he's going to nail.'

Yates sighed. Ever since Flint had been on those ruddy penis-blockers or whatever they were called, he'd had girls on his mind. 'Why shouldn't he be doing that?' he asked.

'Because that's the way the sod works. A right shoddy copper. Pulls some babe in arms in for smoking pot and then tries to turn her into a supergrass. Been watching too much TV.'

He was interrupted by the preliminary report from the Lab. 'Massive heroin dose,' the technician told him, 'that's for starters. She'd used something else we haven't identified yet. Could be a new product. It's certainly not the usual. Might be "Embalming Fluid" though.'

'Embalming Fluid? What the hell would she be doing with that?' said Flint with a genuine and justified revulsion.

'It's a name for another of these hallucinogens like LSD only worse. Anyway, we'll let you know.'

'Don't,' said Flint. 'Deal direct with Hodge. It's his pigeon now.'

He put the phone down and shook his head sorrowfully. 'Says she fixed herself with heroin and some filth called Embalming Fluid,' he told Yates. 'You wouldn't credit it, would you? Embalming Fluid! I don't know what the world's coming to.'

Fifty miles away, Lord Lynchknowle's dinner had been interrupted by the arrival of a police car and the news of his daughter's death. The fact that it had come between the mackerel pâté and the game pie, and on the wine side, an excellent Montrachet and a Chateau Lafite 1962, several bottles of which he'd opened to impress the Home Secretary and two old friends from the Foreign Office, particularly annoyed him. Not that he intended to let the news spoil his meal by announcing it before he'd finished, but he could foresee an ugly episode with his wife afterwards for no better reason than that he had come back to the table with the rather unfortunate remark that it was nothing important. Of course, he could always excuse himself on the grounds that hospitality came first, and old Freddie was the Home Secretary after all, and he wasn't going to let that Lafite '62 go to waste, but somehow he knew Hilary was going to kick up the devil of a fuss about it afterwards. He sat on over the Stilton in a pensive mood wishing to God he'd never married her. Looking back over the years, he could see that his mother had been right when she'd warned him that there was bad blood in 'that family', the Puckertons.

'You can't breed bad blood out, you know,' she'd said, and as a breeder of bull terriers, she'd known what she was talking about. 'It'll come out in the end, mark my words.'

And it had, in that damned girl Penny. Silly bitch should have stuck to show-jumping instead of getting it into her head she was going to be some sort of intellectual and skiving off to that rotten Tech in Ipford and mixing with the scum there. All Hilary's fault, too, for encouraging the girl. Not that she'd see it that way. All the blame would be on his side. Oh well, he'd have to do something to pacify her. Phone the Chief Constable perhaps and get Charles to put the boot in. His eyes wandered round the table and rested moodily on the Home Secretary. That was it, have a word with Freddie before he left and see that the police got their marching orders from the top.

By the time he was able to get the Home Secretary alone, a process that required him to lurk in the darkness outside the cloakroom and listen to some frank observations about himself by the hired waitresses in the kitchen, Lord Lynchknowle had worked himself up into a state of indignation that was positively public-spirited. 'It's not simply a personal matter, Freddie,' he told the Home Secretary, when the latter was finally convinced Lynchknowle's daughter was dead and that he wasn't indulging that curious taste for which he'd been renowned at school. 'There she was at this bloody awful Tech at the mercy of all these drug pedlars. You've got to put a stop to it.'

'Of course, of course,' said the Home Secretary, backing into a hatstand and a collection of shooting sticks and umbrellas. 'I'm deeply sorry'

'It's no use you damned politicians being sorry,' continued Lynchknowle, forcing him back against a clutter of raincoats, 'I begin to understand the man-in-the-street's disenchantment with the parliamentary process.' (The Home Secretary doubted it.) 'What's more, words'll mend no fences' (the Home Secretary didn't doubt that) 'and I want action.'

'And you'll have it, Percy,' the Home Secretary assured him, 'I guarantee that. I'll get the top men at Scotland Yard onto it tomorrow first thing and no mistake.' He reached for the little notebook he used to appease influential supporters. 'What did you say the name of the place was?'

'Ipford,' said Lord Lynchknowle, still glowering at him. 'And she was at the University there?'

'At the Tech.'

'Really?' said the Home Secretary, with just enough inflexion in his voice to lower Lord Lynchknowle's resolve.

'All her mother's fault,' he said defensively.

'Quite. All the same, if you will allow your daughters to go to Technical Colleges, not that I'm against them you understand, but a man in your position can't be too careful...'

In the hall, Lady Lynchknowle caught the phrase.

'What are you two men doing down there?' she asked shrilly.

'Nothing, dear, nothing,' said Lord Lynchknowle. It was a remark he was to regret an hour later when the guests had gone.

'Nothing?' shrieked Lady Lynchknowle, who had by then recovered from the condolences the Home Secretary had offered so unexpectedly. 'You dare to stand there and call Penny's death nothing?'

'I am not actually standing, my dear,' said Lynchknowle from the depths of an armchair. But his wife was not to be deflected so easily.

'And you sat through dinner knowing she was lying there on a marble slab? I knew you were a callous swine but...'

'What the hell else was I supposed to do?' yelled Lynchknowle, before she could get into her stride. 'Come back to the table and announce that your daughter was a damned junkie? You'd have loved that, wouldn't you? I can just hear you now...'

'You can't,' shrieked his wife, making her fury heard in the servants' quarters. Lynchknowle lumbered to his feet and slammed the door. 'And don't think you're going to'

'Shut up,' he bawled. 'I've spoken to Freddie and he's putting Scotland Yard onto the case and now I'm going to call Charles. As Chief Constable he can'

'And what good is that going to do? He can't bring her back to me!'

'Nobody can, dammit. And if you hadn't put the idea into her empty head that she was capable of earning her own living when it was as clear as daylight she was as thick as two short planks, none of this would have happened.' Lord Lynchknowle picked up the phone and dialled the Chief Constable.

At The Glassblowers' Arms, Wilt was on the phone too. He had spent the time trying to think of some way to circumvent whatever ghastly plans McCullum had in mind for him without revealing his own identity to the prison authorities. It wasn't easy.

After two large whiskies, Wilt had plucked up enough courage to phone the prison, had refused to give his name and had asked for the Governor's home number. It wasn't in the phone book. 'It's ex-directory,' said the warder in the office.

'Quite,' said Wilt. 'That's why I'm asking.'

'And that's why I can't give it to you. If the Governor wanted every criminal in the district to know where he could be subjected to threats, he'd put it there wouldn't he?'

'Yes,' said Wilt. 'On the other hand, when a member of the public is being threatened by some of your inmates, how on earth is he supposed to inform the Governor that there's going to be a mass breakout?'

'Mass breakout? What do you know about plans for a mass breakout?'

'Enough to want to speak to the Governor.' There was a pause while the warder considered this and Wilt fed the phone with another coin.

'Why can't you tell me?' the warder asked finally.

Wilt ignored the question. 'Listen,' he said with a desperate earnestness that sprang from the knowledge that having come so far he couldn't back down, and that if he didn't convince the man that this was a genuine crisis, McCullum's accomplices would shortly be doing something ghastly to his knees, 'I assure you that this is a deeply serious matter. I wish to speak to the Governor privately. I will call back in ten minutes. All right?'

'It may not be possible to reach him in that time, sir,' said the warder, recognizing the voice of genuine desperation. 'If you can give me your number, I'll get him to call you.'

'It's Ipford 23194,' he said, 'and I'm not joking.'

'No, sir,' said the warder. 'I'll be back to you as soon as I can.'

Wilt put the phone down and wandered back to his whisky at the bar uncomfortably aware that he was now committed to a course of action that could have horrendous consequences. He finished his whisky and ordered another to dull the thought that he'd given the warder the phone number of the pub where he was well-known. 'At least it proved to him that I was being serious,' he thought and wondered what it was about the bureaucratic mentality that made communication so difficult. The main thing was to get in touch with the Governor as soon as possible and explain the situation to him. Once McCullum had been transferred to another prison, he'd be off the hook.

At HM Prison Ipford, the information that a mass escape was imminent was already causing repercussions. The Chief Warder, summoned from his bed, had tried to telephone the Governor. 'The blasted man must be out to dinner somewhere,' he said when the phone had rung for several minutes without being answered. 'Are you certain it wasn't a hoax call?'

The warder on duty shook his head. 'Sounded genuine to me,' he said. 'Educated voice and obviously frightened. In fact, I have an idea I recognized it.'

'Recognized it?'

'Couldn't put a name to it but he sounded familiar somehow. Anyway, if it wasn't genuine, why did he give me his phone number so quick?'

The Chief Warder looked at the number and dialled it. The line was engaged. A girl at The Glassblowers' Arms was talking to her boyfriend. 'Why didn't he give his name?'

'Sounded frightened to death like I told you. Said something about being threatened. And with some of the swine we've got in here...'

The Chief Warder didn't need telling. 'Right. We're not taking any chances. Put the emergency plan into action pronto. And keep trying to contact the bloody Governor.'

Half an hour later, the Governor returned home to find the phone in his study ringing. 'Yes, what is it?'

'Mass breakout threatened,' the warder told him, 'a man...' But the Governor wasn't waiting. He'd been living in terror for years that something of this sort was going to happen. 'I'll be right over,' he shouted and dashed for his car. By the time he reached the prison his fears had been turned to panic by the wail of police sirens and the presence on the road of several fire engines travelling at high speed in front of him. As he ran towards the gate, he was stopped by three policemen.

'Where do you think you're going?' a sergeant demanded. The Governor looked at him lividly.

'Since I happen to be the Governor,' he said, 'the Governor of this prison, you understand, I'm going inside. Now if you'll kindly stand aside.'

'Any means of identification, sir?' asked the Sergeant. 'My orders require me to prevent anyone leaving or entering.'

The Governor rummaged through the pockets of his suit and produced a five-pound note and a comb. 'Now look here, officer...' he began, but the Sergeant was already looking. At the five-pound note. He ignored the comb.

'I shouldn't try that one if I were you,' he said.

'Try what one! I don't seem to have anything else on me.'

'You heard that one, Constable,' said the sergeant, 'Attempting to offer a bribe to'

'A bribe...offer a bribe? Who said anything about offering a bribe?' exploded the Governor. 'You asked me for means of identification and when I try to produce some, you start talking about bribes. Ask the warder on the gate to identify me, dammit.' It took another five minutes of protest to get inside the prison and by then his nerves were in no state to deal at all adequately with the situation. 'You've done what?' he screamed at the Chief Warder.

'Moved all the men from the top floors to the cells below, sir. Thought it better in case they got onto the roof. Of course, they're a bit cramped but...'

'Cramped? They were four to a one-man cell already. You mean to say they're eight now? It's a wonder they haven't started rioting already.' He was interrupted by the sound of screams from C Block. As Prison Officer Blaggs hurried away, the Governor tried to find out what was happening. It was almost as difficult as getting into the prison had been. A battle was apparently raging on the third floor of A Wing. 'That'll be due to putting Fidley and Gosling in with Stanforth and Haydow,' the warder in the office said.

'Fidley and...Put two child murderers in with a couple of decent honest-to-God armed bank robbers? Blaggs must be mad. How long did it take them to die?'

'I don't think they're dead yet,' said the warder with rather more disappointment in his voice than the Governor approved. 'Last I heard, they'd managed to stop Haydow from castrating Fidley. That was when Mr Blaggs decided to intervene.'

'You mean the lunatic waited?' asked the Governor.

'Not exactly, sir. You see, there was this fire in D Block'

'Fire in D Block? What fire in D Block?'

'Moore set fire to his mattress, sir, and by the time' But the Governor was no longer listening. He knew now that his career was at stake. All it needed to finish him was for that lunatic Blaggs to have acted as an accessory to murder by packing all the swine in the Top Security Block into one cell. He was just on his way to make quite certain when Chief Warder Blaggs returned. 'Everything's under control, sir,' he said cheerfully.

'Under control?' spluttered the Governor. 'Under control? If you think the Home Secretary's going to think "under control" means having child killers castrated by other prisoners, I can assure you you're not up-to-date with contemporary regulations. Now then, about Top Security.'

'Nothing to worry about there, sir. They're all sleeping like babes.'

'Odd,' said the Governor. 'If there was going to be an attempted breakout you'd think they were bound to be involved. You're sure they're not shamming?'

'Positive, sir,' said Blaggs proudly. 'The first thing I did, sir, by way of a precaution, was to lace their cocoa with that double-strength sleeping stuff.'

'Sweet Jesus,' moaned the Governor, trying to imagine the consequences of the Chief Warder's experiment in preventive sedation if news leaked out to the Howard League for Penal Reform. 'Did you say "double strength"?'

The Chief Warder nodded. 'Same stuff we had to use on Fidley that time he saw the Shirley Temple film and went bananas. Mind you, he's not going to get a hard-on after tonight, not if he's wise.'

'But that was double-strength phenobarb,' squawked the Governor.

'That's right, sir. So I gave them double strength like it said. Went out like lights they did.'

The Governor could well believe it. 'You've gone and given four times the proper dose to those men,' he moaned, 'probably killed the brutes. That stuff's lethal. I never told you to do that.'

Chief Warder Blaggs looked crestfallen. 'I was only doing what I thought best, sir. I mean those swine are a menace to society. Half of them are psychopathic killers.'

'Not the only psychopaths round here,' muttered the Governor.

He was about to order a medical team into the prison to stomach-pump the villains Blaggs had sedated, when the warder by the phone intervened. 'We could always say Wilson poisoned them,' he said, 'I mean, that's what they're terrified of. Remember that time they went on dirty strike and Mr Blaggs here let Wilson do some washing up in the kitchen?'

The Governor did, and would have preferred to forget it. Putting a mass poisoner anywhere near a kitchen had always struck him as insane.

'Did the trick, sir. They came off dirtying their cells double quick.'

'And went on hunger strike instead,' said the Governor.

'And Wilson didn't like it much either, come to that,' said the warder, for whom the incident evidently had pleasant memories. 'Said we'd no right making him wash up in boxing gloves. Proper peeved he was'

'Shut up,' yelled the Governor, trying to get back to a world of comparative sanity, but he was interrupted by the phone.

'It's for you, sir,' said the Chief Warder significantly.

The Governor grabbed it. 'I understand you have some information to give me about an escape plan,' he said, and realized he was talking to the buzz of a pay phone. But before he could ask the Chief Warder how he knew it was for him, the coin dropped. The Governor repeated his statement.

'That's what I'm phoning about,' said the caller. 'Is there any truth in the rumour?'

'Any truth in the...' said the Governor. 'How the devil would I know? You were the one to bring the matter up.'

'News to me,' said the man. 'That is Ipford Prison, isn't it?'

'Of course it's Ipford Prison and what's more, I'm the Governor. Who the hell did you think I was?'

'Nobody,' said the man, now sounding decidely perplexed, 'nobody at all. Well, not nobody exactly but...well...you don't sound like a Prison Governor. Anyway, all I'm trying to find out is if there's been an escape or not.'

'Listen,' said the Governor, beginning to share the caller's doubts about his own identity, 'you phoned earlier in the evening with information about an escape plot and'

'I did? You off your rocker or something? I've been out covering a burst bloody bulkloader on Bliston Road for the last three bloody hours and if you think I've had time to call you, you're bleeding barmy.'

The Governor struggled with the alliteration before realizing something else was wrong. 'And who am I speaking to?' he asked, mustering what little patience he still retained.

'The name's Nailtes,' said the man, 'and I'm from the Ipford Evening News and'

The Governor slammed the phone down and turned on Blaggs. 'A bloody fine mess you've landed us in,' he shouted. 'That was the Evening News wanting to know if there's been an escape.'

Chief Warder Blaggs looked dutifully abashed. 'I'm sorry if there's been some mistake...' he began and brought a fresh torrent of abuse on his head.

'Mistake? Mistake?' yelled the Governor. 'Some maniac rings up with some fucking cock-and-bull story about an escape and you have to poison...' But further discussion was interrupted by news of a fresh crisis. Three safe-breakers, who had been transferred from a cell designed to hold one Victorian convict to another occupied by four Grievous Bodily Harm merchants from Glasgow, known as the Gay Gorbals, had begun to fulfil Wilt's prophesy by escaping and demanding to be closeted with some heterosexual murderers for protection.

The Governor found them arguing their case with warders in B Block. 'We're not going in with a load of arse-bandits and that's a fact,' said the spokesman.

'It's only a temporary move,' said the Governor, himself temporizing. 'In the morning'

'We'll be suffering from AIDS,' said the safebreaker.

'Aids?'

'Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. We want some good, clean murderer, not those filthy swine with anal herpes. A stretch is one thing and so's a bang to rights but not the sort of stretch those Scotch sods would give us and we're fucked if we're going to be banged to wrong. This is supposed to be a prison, not Dotheboys Hall.'

By the time the Governor had pacified them and sent them back to their own cell, he was beginning to have his doubts about the place himself. In his opinion, the prison felt more like a mad-house. His next visit, this time to Top Security, made an even worse impression. A sepulchral silence hung over the floodlit building and, as the Governor passed from cell to cell, he had the illusion of being in a charnel-house. Wherever he looked, men who in other circumstances he would happily have seen dead, looked as though they were. Only the occasional ghastly snore suggested otherwise. For the rest, the inmates hung over the sides of their beds or lay grotesquely supine on the floor in attitudes that seemed to indicate that rigor mortis had already set in.

'Just let me find the swine who started this little lot,' he muttered. 'I'll...I'll...I'll...' He gave up. There was nothing in the book of legal punishments that would fit the crime.