by Tom Sharpe
‘I know it is,’ said Hodge, ‘I’m just trying to get the picture. How did you know his name was Gamer?’
‘Blimey, I’d have to be stone deaf not to, the way she gave it to him, not to mention his wife carrying on something chronic.’
‘So what happened?’
‘This bloke Gamer goes in the door of 43,’ said the detective, ‘and five minutes later he’s out again like a scalded cat with his wife trying to stop him. Dashes round to the Wilts’ and tries to go in the side gate round the back of the house. Grabs the latch on the gate and the next moment he’s flat on his back in the flower bed, twitching like he’s got St Vitus’ dance and his missus is yelling like they’ve killed him.’
‘So what you’re saying is the back gate was electrified?’ said Hodge.
‘I’m not saying it. He did. As soon as he could speak, that is, and had stopped twitching. Mrs Wilt comes out and wants to know what he’s doing in her wallflowers. By the time he’s got to his feet, just, and is yelling that her fucking hellcats – his words, not mine – have tried to murder him by stealing some statuette he’s got in his back garden, and they’ve put in theirs, and wiring up the back gate to the fucking mains. And Mrs Wilt tells him not to be so silly and kindly not to use filthy language in front of her daughters. After that, things got a bit confusing with him wanting his statue and her saying she hadn’t got it, and wouldn’t have it if he gave it to her because it’s dirty.’
‘Dirty?’ muttered Hodge. ‘What’s dirty about it?’
‘It’s one of those ones of a small boy peeing. Got it on his pond. She practically called him a pervert. And all the time his wife is pleading with him to come on home and never mind the ruddy statue, they can always get another one when they’ve sold the house. That got to him. “Sell the house?” he yells, “Who to? Even a raving lunatic wouldn’t buy a house next to the bloody Wilts.” Probably right at that.’
‘And what happened in the end?’ asked Hodge, making a mental note that he’d have an ally in Mr Gamer.
‘She insists he come through the house and see if his statue’s there, because she’s not going to have her girls called thieves.’
‘And he went?’ said Hodge incredulously.
‘Hesitantly,’ said the detective. ‘Came out shaken and swearing he’d definitely seen it there and if she didn’t believe those kids had tried to kill him, why were all the lights in the house on the blink. That had her, and he pointed out there was a piece of wire still tied to the bootscraper outside the back gate.’
‘Interesting,’ said Hodge. ‘And was there?’
‘Must have been, because she got all flustered then, especially when he said it was evidence to show the police.’
‘Naturally, with that bottle of dope still in the house,’ said Hodge. ‘No wonder they’d fixed the back door.’ A new theory had been formulated in his mind. ‘I tell you we’re on to something, this time.’
Even the Superintendent, who shared Flint’s view that Inspector Hodge was a greater menace to the public than half the petty crooks he arrested and would gladly have put the sod on traffic duty, had to admit that for once the Inspector seemed to be on the right track. ‘This fellow Wilt’s got to be guilty of something,’ he muttered as he studied the report of Wilt’s extraordinary movements during his lunch break.
In fact, Wilt had been on the look-out for McCullum’s associates and had almost immediately spotted the two detectives in an unmarked car when he’d walked out of the Tech to pick up the Escort at the back of The Glassblowers’ Arms, and had promptly taken evasive action with an expertise he’d learnt from watching old thrillers on TV. As a result, he’d doubled back down side roads, had disappeared up alleyways, had bought a number of wholly unnecessary items in crowded shops and had even bolted in the front doors of Boots and out the back before heading for the pub.
‘Returned to the Tech car park at 2.15,’ said the Superintendent. ‘Where’d he been?’
‘I’m afraid we lost him,’ said Hodge. ‘The man’s an expert. All we know is he came back driving fast and practically ran for the building.’
Nor had Wilt’s behaviour on leaving the Tech that evening been calculated to inspire confidence in his innocence. Anyone who walked out of the front gate wearing dark glasses, a coat with the collar turned up and a wig (Wilt had borrowed one from the Drama Department) and spent half an hour sitting on a bench by the bowling green on Midway Park, scrutinizing the passing traffic before sneaking back to the Tech car park, had definitely put himself into the category of a prime suspect.
‘Think he was waiting for someone?’ the Superintendent asked.
‘More likely trying to warn them off,’ said Hodge. ‘They’ve probably got a system of signalling. His accomplices drive past and see him sitting there and get the message.’
‘I suppose so,’ said the Superintendent, who couldn’t think of anything else that made sense. ‘So we can expect an early arrest. I’ll tell the Chief Constable.’
‘I wouldn’t say that, sir,’ said Hodge, ‘just that we’ve got a definite lead. If I’m right, this is obviously a highly organized syndicate. I don’t want to rush into an early arrest when this man could lead us to the main source.’
‘There is that,’ said the Superintendent gloomily. He had been hoping that Hodge’s handling of the case would prove so inept that he could call in the Regional Crime Squad. Instead the confounded man seemed to be making a success of it. And after that he’d doubtless apply for promotion and get it. Hopefully somewhere else. If not, the Superintendent would apply for a transfer himself. And there was still a chance Hodge would foul things up.
*
At the Tech, Hodge had. His insistance on putting plainclothes detectives in, masquerading as apprentices or even more unsatisfactorily as Trainee Teachers, was playing havoc with staff morale.
‘I can’t stand it,’ Dr Cox, Head of Science, told the Principal. ‘It’s bad enough trying to teach some of the students we get, without having a man poking about who doesn’t know the difference between a Bunsen burner and a flamethrower. He practically burnt down the lab on the third floor. And as for being any sort of teacher …’
‘He doesn’t have to say anything. After all, they’re only here to observe.’
‘In theory,’ said Dr Cox. ‘In practice, he keeps taking my students into corners and asking them if they can get him some Embalming Fluid. Anyone would think I was running a funeral home.’
The Principal explained the term. ‘God Almighty, no wonder the wretched fellow asked to stay behind last night to check the chemical inventory.’
It was the same in botany. ‘How was I to know she was a policewoman?’ Miss Ryfield complained. ‘And anyway I had no idea students were growing marijuana as pot plants in the greenhouses. She seems to hold me responsible.’ Only Dr Board viewed the situation at all philosophically. Thanks to the fact that none of the policemen spoke French, his department had been spared intrusion.
‘After all, it is 1984,’ he announced to an ad hoc committee in the staff room, ‘and as far as I can tell, discipline has improved enormously.’
‘Not in my department,’ said Mr Spirey of Building. ‘I’ve had five punch-ups in Plasterers and Bricklayers and Mr Gilders is in hospital with bicycle-chain wounds.’
‘Bicycle-chain wounds?’
‘Someone called the young thug from the police station a fucking pig and Mr Gilders tried to intervene.’
‘And I suppose the apprentices were arrested for carrying offensive weapons?’ said Dr Mayfield.
The Head of Building shook his head. ‘No, it was the policeman who had the bicycle chain. Mind you, they made a right mess of him afterwards,’ he added with some satisfaction.
But it was among Senior Secretaries that Hodge’s investigations had been carried out most vigorously. ‘If this goes on much longer, our exam results will be appalling,’ said Miss Dill. ‘You have no idea the effect of having girls taken out of class and interrogated
is having on their typing performance. The impression seems to be that the College is a hotbed of vice.’
‘Would that it were,’ said Dr Board. ‘But, as usual, the papers have got it all wrong. Still, page 3 is something.’ And he produced a copy of the Sun and a photograph of Miss Lynchknowle in the nude, taken in Barbados the previous summer. The caption read DRUG HEIRESS DEAD AT TECH.
‘Of course I’ve seen the papers and the publicity is disgraceful,’ said the Principal to the members of the Education Committee. Originally called to discuss the impending visitation of HMIs, it was now more concerned with the new crisis. ‘The point I am trying to make is that this is an isolated incident and …’
‘It isn’t,’ said Councillor Blighte-Smythe. ‘I have here a list of catastrophes which have bedevilled the College since your appointment. First there was that awful business with the Liberal Studies lecturer who …’
Mrs Chatterway, whose views were indefatigably progressive, intervened. ‘I hardly think there’s anything to be gained by dwelling on the past,’ she said.
‘Why not?’ demanded Mr Squidley. ‘It’s time someone was held accountable for what goes on there. As tax- and rate-payers, we have a right to a decent practical education for our children and …’
‘How many children do you have at the Tech?’ snapped Mrs Chatterway.
Mr Squidley looked at her in disgust. ‘None, thank God,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t let one of my kids anywhere near the place.’
‘If we could just keep to the point,’ said the Chief Education Officer.
‘I am,’ said Mr Squidley, ‘very much to the point, and the point is that as an employer, I’m not paying good money to have apprentices turned into junkies by a lot of fifth-rate academic drop-outs.’
‘I resent that,’ said the Principal. ‘In the first place, Miss Lynchknowle wasn’t an apprentice, and in the second we have some extremely dedicated –’
‘Dangerous nutters,’ said Councillor Blighte-Smythe.
‘I was going to say “dedicated teachers”.’
‘Which doubtless accounts for the fact that the Minister of Education’s secretary is pushing for the appointment of a board of enquiry to investigate the teaching of Marxism-Leninism in the Liberal Studies Department. If that isn’t a clear indication something’s wrong, I don’t know what is.’
‘I object. I object most strongly,’ said Mrs Chatterway. ‘The real cause of the problem lies in spending cuts. If we are to give our young people a proper sense of social responsibility and care and concern –’
‘Oh God, not that again,’ muttered Mr Squidley. ‘If half the louts I have to employ could even read and bloody write …’
The Principal glanced significantly at the Chief Education Officer and felt more comfortable. The Education Committee would come to no sensible conclusions. It never did.
*
At 45 Oakhurst Avenue, Wilt glanced nervously out of the window. Ever since his lunch break and the discovery that he was being followed, he’d been on edge. In fact, he had driven home with his eyes so firmly fixed on the rear-view mirror that he had failed to notice the traffic lights on Nott Road and had banged into the back of the police car which had taken the precaution of tailing him from the front. The resulting exchange with the two plain-clothes men who were fortunately unarmed had done a lot to confirm his view that his life was in danger.
And Eva had hardly been sympathetic. ‘You never do look where you’re going,’ she said, when he explained why the car had a crumpled bumper and radiator. ‘You’re just hopeless.’
‘You’d feel fairly hopeless if you’d had the sort of day I’ve had,’ said Wilt and helped himself to a bottle of home-brew. He took a swig of the stuff and looked at his glass dubiously.
‘Must have left the bloody sugar out, or something,’ he muttered, but Eva quickly switched the conversation to the incident with Mr Gamer. Wilt listened half-heartedly. His beer didn’t usually taste like that and anyway it wasn’t always quite so flat.
‘As if girls their age could lift a horrid statue like that over the fence,’ said Eva, concluding a singularly biased account of the incident.
Wilt dragged his attention away from his beer. ‘Oh, I don’t know. That probably explains what they were doing with Mr Boykins’ block and tackle the other day. I wondered why they’d become so interested in physics.’
‘But to say they’d tried to electrocute him,’ said Eva indignantly.
‘You tell me why the whole damned house was out,’ said Wilt. ‘The main fuse was blown, that’s why. Don’t tell me a mouse got into the toaster again either, because I checked. Anyway, that mouse didn’t blow all the fuses and if I hadn’t objected to having putrefying mouse savoury for breakfast instead of toast and marmalade, you’d never have noticed.’
‘That was quite different,’ said Eva. ‘The poor thing got in there looking for crumbs. That’s why it died.’
‘And Mr Gamer damn near died because he was looking for his ruddy garden ornament,’ said Wilt. ‘And I can tell you who gave your brood that idea, the blooming mouse, that’s who. One of these days they’ll get the hang of the electric chair and I’ll come home and find the Radleys’ boy with a saucepan on his head and a damned great cable running to the cooker plug, as dead as a dodo.’
‘They’d never do anything like that,’ said Eva. ‘They know better. You always look on the worst side of things.’
‘Reality,’ said Wilt, ‘that’s what I look at and what I see is four lethal girls who make Myra Hindley seem like a suitable candidate for a kindergarten teacher.’
‘You’re just being horrid,’ said Eva.
‘So’s this bloody beer,’ said Wilt as he opened another bottle. He took a mouthful and swore, but his words were drowned by the Magimix which Eva had switched on, in part to make an apple and carrot slaw because it was so good for the quads, but also to express her irritation. Henry could never admit the girls were bright and intelligent and good. They were always bad to him.
So was the beer. Eva’s addition of five millilitres of Dr Kores’ sexual stimulant to each bottle of Wilt’s Best Bitter had given the stuff a new edge to it and, besides, it was flat. ‘Must have left the screw top loose on this batch,’ Wilt muttered as the Magimix came to a halt.
‘What did you say?’ Eva asked unpleasantly. She always suspected Wilt of using the cover of the Magimix, or the coffee-grinder to express his true thoughts.
‘Nothing at all,’ said Wilt, preferring to keep off the topic of beer. Eva was always going on about what it did to his liver and for once he believed her. On the other hand, if McCullum’s thugs were going to duff him up, he intended to be drunk when they started, even if the muck did taste peculiar. It was better than nothing.
*
On the other side of Ipford, Inspector Flint sat in front of the telly and gazed abstractedly at a film on the life-cycle of the giant turtle. He didn’t give a damn about turtles or their sex life. About the only thing he found in their favour was that they had the sense not to worry about their offspring and left the little buggers to hatch out on a distant beach or, better still, to get eaten by predators. Anyway, the sods lived two hundred years and presumably didn’t have high blood pressure.
Instead, his thoughts reverted to Hodge and the Lynchknowle girl. Having pointed the Head of the Drug Squad towards the morass of inconsequentiality that was Wilt’s particular forte, it had begun to dawn on him that he might gain some kudos by solving the case himself. For one thing, Wilt wasn’t into drugs. Flint was certain of that. He knew Wilt was up to something – stood to reason – but his copper’s instinct told him that drugs didn’t fit.
So someone else had supplied the girl with the muck that had killed her. With all the slow persistence of a giant turtle swimming in the depths of the Pacific, Flint went over the facts. The girl dead on heroin and PCP: a definite fact. Wilt teaching that bastard McCullum (also dead from drugs): another fact. Wilt making a phone call to the prison: no
t a fact, merely a probability. An interesting probability for all that, and if you subtracted Wilt from the case there was absolutely nothing to go on. Flint picked up the paper and looked at the dead girl’s photo. Taken in Barbados. Smart set and half of them on drugs. If she’d got the stuff in that circle Hodge hadn’t got a hope in hell. They kept their secrets. Anyway, it might be worth checking up on his findings so far. Flint switched off the TV and went into the hall. ‘I’m just going out to stretch my legs,’ he called out to his wife and was answered by a grim silence. Mrs Flint didn’t give a damn what he did with his legs.
Twenty minutes later, he was in his office with the report on the interview with Lord and Lady Lynchknowle in front of him. Naturally, it had never dawned on them that Linda was on drugs. Flint recognized the symptoms and the desire to clear themselves of all blame. ‘About as much parental care as those bloody turtles,’ he muttered and turned to the interview with the girl who’d shared a flat with Miss Lynchknowle.
This time there was something more positive. No, Penny hadn’t been to London for ages. Never went anywhere, in fact, not even home at weekends. Discos occasionally, but generally a longer and had given up her boyfriend at the university before Christmas etcetera. No recent visitors either. Occasionally, she’d go out of an evening to a coffee bar or just wander along by the river. She’d seen her down there twice on her way back from the cinema. Whereabouts exactly? Near the marina. Flint made a note of that, and also of the fact that the Sergeant who’d visited her had asked the right questions. Flint noted the names of some of the coffee bars. There was no point in visiting them, they’d be covered by Hodge and, besides, Flint had no intention of being seen to be interested in the case. Above all, though, he knew he was acting on intuition, the ‘smell’ of the case which came from his long experience and his knowledge that whatever else Wilt was – and the Inspector had his own views on the matter – he wasn’t pushing drugs. All the same, it would be interesting to know if he had made that phone call to the prison on the night McCullum took an overdose. There was something strangely coincidental about that incident, too. It was easy enough to hear the story from Mr Blaggs. Flint had known the Chief Warder for years and had frequently had the pleasure of consigning prisoners to his dubious care.