Chapter 28.
By the time they found Geriatrics 3 Wilt hadn"t been in Geriatrics 5 Mavis Mottram had had enough. So had Eva. They headed for the door only to be confronted by a formidable Sister.
"I"m sorry but you can"t see him yet. Dr Soltander is examining him," she said.
"But I"m his wife," squawked Eva.
"Very possibly. But"
Mavis intervened. "Show her your driving licence," she snapped. "That will prove who you are." As Eva rummaged in her handbag Mavis turned on the Sister. "You can check the address. I a.s.sume you know Mr Wilt"s."
"Of course we do. We wouldn"t know who he was if we didn"t."
"In that case why didn"t you phone Mrs Wilt and let her know he was here?"
The Sister gave up and went back into the ward. "His wife and another dreadful woman are demanding to see him," she told the doctor.
Dr Soltander sighed. His was a hard life and he had enough terminally ill old people to attend to without having any interruptions from wives and dreadful women. "Tell them to give me another twenty minutes," he said. "I may be in a better position to make a prognosis by then."
But the Sister wasn"t tackling Mavis Mottram again. "You"d better tell them yourself. They won"t listen to me."
"Very well," muttered the doctor with a dangerous degree of patience and went out into the corridor. He could see at once what the Sister had meant by "two dreadful women". Eva was white-faced and sobbing and demanding to see her Henry. Dr Soltander tried to point out that Wilt was unconscious and in no condition to see anyone and aroused the fury of Mavis Mottram.
"It"s her legal right to visit her husband. You can"t stop her."
The doctor"s expression hardened. "And who may you be?"
"Mrs Wilt"s friend and I"ll repeat that Mrs Wilt has every right to visit her husband."
Dr Soltander"s eyes narrowed. "Not while I"m doing my rounds," he snapped. "She can visit him when I"ve finished."
"And when will that be? In four hours?"
"I"m not here to be cross-examined by you or anyone else. Now kindly take your friend into the Waiting Room while I make sure my absence from the ward hasn"t resulted in any premature deaths."
"Presence more likely," Mavis snapped back and took out her little notebook. "What"s your name? It isn"t Shipman by any chance?"
The remark failed to have the effect she had expected. Two effects to be precise. Eva"s awful wail startled a number of patients several wards down the corridor and even some on the floor above. At the same time Dr Soltander leant forward with a sinister smile until his face was almost touching Mavis Mottram"s.
"Don"t tempt me, my dear," he whispered. "One day I look forward to having you as a patient."
And before Mavis could recover from the shock of being nose to nose with such a sinister man he had turned and stalked back into the ward.
"Now if you"ll just wait in the Visitors" Room I"ll call you just as soon as Dr Soltander is through," the Sister told them and ushered the two women down the corridor. By the time she returned to the ward the doctor had abandoned Wilt and was taking his fury out on Inspector Flint by explaining that his presence was hindering what little treatment he could give the sick and dying, and that in any case Wilt was not in any condition to be questioned.
"How the devil am I supposed to do the job of three doctors minimum with blasted coppers littering the ward? You can b.l.o.o.d.y well go and wait with those two diabolical women. Sister, show him out."
"And my job is to take a statement from this bloke when he comes round," Flint retorted.
"Yes, well the Sister here will let you know when he does."
All the same the Inspector wasn"t sharing the so-called Visitors" Room with Eva and Mavis Mottram. "You can phone me at the police station when he"s awake," he told the Sister and went down to the car park. For ten minutes he sat there thinking. Wilt had been found without trousers? And old Mrs Verney had seen him being hoisted out of a car by a woman. And kicked by some drunken louts. It was all very strange.
At Leyline Lodge Ruth Rottecombe was no longer ruthless. She was frantic. The police had arrived early that morning with a search warrant and had insisted she open the garage doors to allow a number of white-coated and gloved forensic experts to make a detailed examination of the place. Still in her dressing gown Ruth had watched them from the kitchen as they moved Harold"s Jaguar and then paid particular attention to the patch of oil underneath. Ruth retreated to the bedroom and tried to think. She decided to place the blame on Harold. After all the car was his and he"d obviously done a runner which she could now see was to her advantage. With him out of the way she was still in the clear. After all there was no evidence against her.
She was wrong. In the garage the police had found all the evidence they needed, oil mixed with dried blood, strands of hair and best of all a fragment of blue cloth which matched the colour of the jeans they had found in the lane. There was also mud. They placed all these items in plastic bags and took their findings back to the police station.
"Now we"re getting somewhere," said the Superintendent. "If this stuff proves to be what it looks like we"ve got the b.i.t.c.h. Get forensic on to it p.r.o.nto. And get a match of the cloth with the jeans we found in the lane. If they"re the same she"s up s.h.i.t creek without a canoe let alone a paddle. In the mean time see she doesn"t leave the house. I want a watch kept on her all the time. And while you"re about it bring me the file."
He sat back and studied his notes from the previous meeting. A bloke named Wilt, Henry Wilt of 45 Oakhurst Avenue, Ipford, found dumped in the street, apparently mugged and now unconscious in hospital there. And the backpacker who"d stayed at the B&Bs had used the same name. All it required was a DNA check on his blood and that found on the floor of the Rottecombes" garage and the case was beginning to build up. The Superintendent gloated at the prospect before him. If he could get the evidence to prove that Ruth the Ruthless was truly involved, however indirectly, in setting the Manor on fire he would earn the grat.i.tude of the Chief Constable who loathed the b.i.t.c.h. And if the Shadow Minister for Social Enhancement was forced to resign or better still was involved himself, his own future looked very bright. He"d be certain of promotion. The Home Secretary would be delighted. The Shadow Minister would certainly lose his seat in the next election and his own future would be a.s.sured. The Superintendent stared out the window of his shabby office, then picked up the phone and called Ipford Police Station.
Chapter 29.
In Wilma Auntie Joan wasn"t in any mood to gloat. Wally was still in the Coronary Care Unit and she had been a.s.sured he would soon recover which was good news. The bad news was that she was met by two men with Yankee accents who insisted she take a look at the pool behind the house.
"Who are you?" she demanded and was shown their IDs which told her they were Federal Drug Enforcement Agents. Auntie Joan wanted to know why they were at the Starfighter Mansion.
"Come on round the back and you"ll see why."
Auntie Joan went reluctantly and was horrified to find the pool empty except for a dead sniffer dog lying on the bottom. Two other men dressed in protective clothing and wearing gas masks were collecting bits of what had once been a gelatine capsule. Not that it was recognisable as such any more.
"Like to tell us just what was hidden down there?" the man named Palowski asked.
Auntie Joan looked wildly at him. "I don"t know what you"re talking about."
"Like the dog drinks the water and the next moment it dies but fast?"
"What"s that got to do with me? My husband"s in Intensive Care and you"re asking me...Oh, G.o.d!" She turned and headed for the house. She needed a stiff drink and three, at least three, Prozacs and some sleeping pills for good measure. And then the phone rang. She let it. It rang again. And again. Auntie Joanie drank half a tumbler of brandy and took four sleeping tablets. The phone rang another time. She managed to get to it and slurred, "f.u.c.k off," and sat down on the floor and pa.s.sed out.
At Immelmann Enterprises the deputy CEO wished to h.e.l.l he had taken the day off. His morning had been made h.e.l.lish. He"d had calls from all over the country from enraged recipients of the quads" emails.
"He called you what?" he asked the first caller, one of IE"s biggest customers. "There"s got to have been a mistake. Why would he call you that? He"s sick in hospital with a quadruple bypa.s.s."
"And when he comes out he"s going to find out just how sick he is. He"ll need more than a quadruple bypa.s.s by the time I"ve finished with the c.u.n.t-sucker. He wants another million-dollar order from us he ain"t going to get it. He gets no more business out of me and what"s more I"m taking him to court for defamation. A p.e.n.i.s-gobbler, am I? Well, you tell him..."
It was a most appalling call. The fifteen others that came in during the rest of the morning weren"t any better. Cancellation orders poured in accompanied by physical threats. So did obscene hate emails.
The deputy CEO told the secretary to leave the phone off the hook. "And while you"re about it you"d better be looking for another job. I sure as s.h.i.t am. Immelmann"s gone crazy. He"s lost every customer we ever had," he shouted as he dashed out to his car.
In the Sheriff"s office Harry Stallard refused to believe Baxter"s report. "A new sniffer dog died after licking the water in the swimming-pool? Why in the name of G.o.d should they empty the pool? The dog probably fell in and drowned."
But Baxter was adamant. "There was something dissolved down the bottom and they wanted to see what it was."
"Sure. One drowned hound dog."
"All I know is they had special wet suits and masks. And there was this special container to put it in to fly it up to the Chemical Warfare Research Center in Washington for a.n.a.lysis," Baxter told him. "They reckon it could be linked to Al Qaeda it"s that toxic."
"In Wilma? In Wilma? That"s out-of-this-world crazy. Who the h.e.l.l"s going to use a highly toxic substance in a one-horse town like Wilma?"
Baxter pondered the question. "Could be that Saddam Hussein b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Got to test it someplace, I guess," he said finally.
"So why choose Wilma; he"s got all those Kurds he ga.s.sed? You tell me that."
"Or that other guy Ossam been...The one who did the Twin Towers."
"Bin Laden," said the Sheriff. "Sure. So he chooses Wally Immelmann"s swimming-pool and takes out a hound dog? And that makes sense?"
"s.h.i.t, I don"t know. Nothing makes sense. Hooking the toilets and all up to that tanker back of the old drive-in was crazy."
Sheriff Stallard pushed his hat back and wiped the sweat from his face. "I don"t believe what I"m hearing. This isn"t happening. Not in Wilma it"s not. It can"t be. Wally Immelmann"s in with G.o.ddam terrorists. And that ain"t possible, no way, Billy, no way. I mean it"s way out impossible."
Baxter shrugged. "That mega-decibel sound system was impossible too. You heard it. You know."
The Sheriff did know. He was never going to forget it. He sat thinking. Or trying to. In the end he succeeded and the impossible became slightly more possible and his own position less insecure. People did go loco. "Get me Maybelle," he said. "Bring her in. She"s the one who"ll know."
One person who definitely didn"t know was Eva. She had finally been allowed out of the Visitors" Room only to be told that the patient Wilt was still unconscious but she could go and see him provided Mavis Mottram didn"t accompany her. Having been in Eva Wilt"s maudlin company for three hours Mavis had no intention of spending any more time or sympathy on her. She slunk out of the hospital a broken woman, cursing the day she"d met anyone so stupid and mawkishly sentimental. Eva"s feelings about Mavis had changed too. She was all bluff and bravado and a bully to boot and had no staying power.
Through the door of the ward Eva had glimpsed Inspector Flint sitting by the bed, apparently reading a newspaper. In fact he wasn"t reading it at all; he was using it as a shield to hide what was being done to a man who, if appearances were anything to go by, had recently been trepanned or had had an exceedingly nasty accident with some sort of circular saw. Whatever it was Flint didn"t want to see it. He had never been a particularly squeamish man and his experience of mutilated corpses had hardened him to inanimate horrors, but he was less able to cope with those involving modern surgery and in particular found pulsing brains in adult males (babies were different) decidedly unnerving.
"Can"t you put a screen round the bed while you"re doing whatever you are doing to that poor bloke?" he"d asked only to be told he could leave the ward if he was so wimpish and anyway it wasn"t a bloke but a woman and this was a unis.e.x ward.
"You could have fooled me," Flint retorted. "Though come to think of it, I daresay unis.e.x is about right. It"s impossible to tell what s.e.x anyone is in here."
It was not a remark that endeared him to three women nearby who had been under the illusion that they were still relatively attractive and s.e.xy. Flint didn"t care. He tried to interest himself more vicariously in a scandal involving a well-known rugby player who had gone to a ma.s.sage parlour in Swansea only to find his wife working there and had tackled the owner or, as the latter had put it from the witness box, "had gone apes.h.i.t", when he saw Wilt looking at him.
Flint put the paper down and smiled. "h.e.l.lo, Henry. Feeling any better?"
From the pillow Wilt studied that smile and found it difficult to interpret. It wasn"t the sort of smile to give him any confidence. Inspector Flint"s false teeth were too loose for that and besides, he had seen Flint smile maliciously in the past too often to find the sight at all rea.s.suring. He didn"t feel any better.
"Better than what?" he asked.
Flint"s smile disappeared and with it most of his sympathy. He began to doubt whether Wilt"s brain had been affected at all by being mugged. "Well, better than you did before."
"Before what?" said Wilt, fighting for time to find out what was going on. It was obvious he was in hospital and that he had bandages round his head but that was about all that was obvious.
Flint"s hesitation before replying did nothing to give him any confidence in his own innocence. "Before this thing happened," he said finally.
Wilt tried to think. He had no idea what had happened. "I can"t say I do," he replied. It seemed a reasonable answer to a question he didn"t understand.
That wasn"t the way Inspector Flint saw it. He was already beginning to lose the thread of the conversation and as always with Wilt he was being led into a swamp of misunderstanding. The sod never did say anything that was at all clear-cut. "When you say you can"t say you do, just exactly what do you mean?" he enquired and tried to smile again. That didn"t help.
Wilt"s caution went into overdrive. "Just that," he said.
"And "just that" means?"
"What I said. Just that," Wilt said.
Again Flint"s smile vanished. He leant forward. "Listen, Henry, all I want to know is"
He got no further. Wilt had decided on new avoiding tactics. "Who"s Henry?" he asked abruptly.
A new look of doubt came on Flint"s face and his lean forward ground to a halt. "Who"s Henry? You want to know who Henry is?"
"Yes. I don"t know of any Henrys. Except kings and princes of course and I wouldn"t know any of them, would I? Never met one and I"m not likely to. Have you ever met a king or a prince?"
For a second the look on the Inspector"s face had changed from doubt to certainty. Now it swung back again. With Wilt nothing was certain and even that was doubtful in these circ.u.mstances. Wilt was uncertainty personified. "No. I haven"t met a king or a prince and I don"t want to. All I want to know"
"That"s the second time you"ve said that," said Wilt. "And what I want to know is who I am."
At that moment Eva shoved her way into the room. She had waited long enough and she wasn"t spending another two hours in that revoltingly dirty waiting room. She was going to her husband"s side.
"Oh, darling, are you in terrible pain, my pet?"
Wilt opened his eyes with a silent curse. "What"s it got to do with you? And who are you calling "darling"?"
"But...oh, G.o.d! I"m your Eva, your wife."
"Wife? What do you mean? I haven"t got a wife," Wilt moaned. "I"m a...I"m a...I don"t know what I am."
In the background Inspector Flint agreed wholeheartedly. He didn"t know what Wilt was either. Never had and never would. About the nearest he"d ever got to it was that Wilt was the most devious b.a.s.t.a.r.d he"d come across in all the years he"d been in the police force. With Eva, now weeping copiously, you knew precisely where you stood. Or lay. At the bottom of the pile. To that extent Wilt had told the truth. Family first with those ghastly quads; Eva second, along with her material possessionsor, as Wilt"s solicitor had once put it, "like living with a dishwasher c.u.m vacuum cleaner that thinks it thinks"and finally whatever latest fad or so-called philosophical twaddle she had heard about. Even Greenpeace had found her militancy too much. The Keeper of the Seal Culling Station at Worthcombe Bay had, in giving evidence in court against her from his wheelchair, said that if she represented Greenpeace, he shuddered to think what Greenwar would be like. In fact the man"s language had been so filthy that only his injuries prevented the magistrate from holding him in contempt. And finally at the very bottom of the pile was Mr Henry Wilt, lawfully wedded husband of Mrs Eva Wilt, poor b.u.g.g.e.r. No wonder he deliberately refused to recognise her.
He was distracted from these considerations by one last desperate appeal from Eva to her Henry to acknowledge her as his devoted wife and mother of his lovely daughters, and Wilt"s refusal to do anything so utterly insane, as well as his complaint that he was sick and didn"t want to be hara.s.sed by strange women he"d never seen before. The effect of this statement was that the weeping Eva was helped from the ward. Her sobs could be heard from the corridor as she went in search of a doctor.
Inspector Flint seized the opportunity to go back to the bedside and bend over Wilt. "You"re a cunning b.u.g.g.e.r, Henry," he whispered. "Cunning as h.e.l.l but you don"t fool me. I saw the nasty little glint in your eye when your missis took off. I"ve known you too long to be fooled by your tricks. You just remember that."
For a moment he thought Wilt was about to smile but the gormless expression returned and Wilt closed his eyes. Flint gave up. He wasn"t going to get anything useful out of him in these awful circ.u.mstances. And the circ.u.mstances were getting more awful by the minute. The woman with the pulsating skull was having some sort of fit and one of the shaven multi-s.e.xes was protesting to a nurse that he, she or it had already been given a forty-five-minutes oil enema and definitely didn"t need another. The whole thing was a b.l.o.o.d.y nightmare.
In Wilma Sheriff Stallard shared Inspector Flint"s horror though for very different reasons. It wasn"t so much that Maybelle was refusing to give him information about what had been going on at the Starfighter Mansion. She was giving far too much and he"d have preferred not to hear it.
"They asked you what?" he gasped when she told him the quads had asked her how many times a week Wally Immelmann f.u.c.ked her and how many other gays there were in Wilma. "The filthy b.i.t.c.hes. And they used the words "f.u.c.ked" and "a.s.swise"?"
Maybelle nodded. "Yessir, they sure did."