by Tom Sharpe
‘I don’t suppose it does very often,’ said Wilt. ‘It’s one of those expressions that covers a multitude of sins.’
‘And crimes.’
‘It also happens to ruin a man’s reputation,’ said Wilt. ‘I hope you realize what you’re doing to mine by holding me here like this. It’s bad enough knowing I’m going to spend the rest of my life being pointed out as the man who dressed a plastic doll with a cunt up in his wife’s clothes and dropped it down a pile hole without everyone thinking I’m a bloody murderer as well.’
‘Where you’re going to spend the rest of your life nobody is going to care what you did with that plastic doll,’ said the Inspector.
Wilt seized on the admission.
‘Ah, so, you’ve found it at last,’ he said eagerly. ‘That’s fine. So now I’m free to go.’
‘Sit down and shut up,’ snarled the Inspector. ‘You’re not going anywhere and when you do it will be in a large black van. I haven’t finished with you yet. In fact I’m only just beginning.
‘Here we go again,’ said Wilt. ‘I just knew you’d want to start at the beginning again. You fellows have primary causes on the brain. Cause and effect, cause and effect. Which came first, the chicken or the egg…protoplasm or demiurge? I suppose this time it’s going to be what Eva said when we were dressing to go to the party.’
‘This time.’ said the Inspector, ‘I want you to tell me precisely why you stuck that damned doll down that hole.’
‘Now that is an interesting question.’ said Wilt, and stopped. It didn’t seem a good idea to try to explain to Inspector Flint in the present circumstances just what he had had in mind when he dropped the doll down the shaft. The Inspector didn’t look the sort of person who would understand at all readily that a husband could have fantasies of murdering his wife without actually putting them into effect. It would be better to wait for Eva to put in an appearance in the flesh before venturing into that uncharted territory of the wholly irrational. With Eva present Flint might sympathize with him. Without her he most certainly wouldn’t.
‘Let’s just say I wanted to get rid of the beastly thing,’ he said.
‘Let’s not say anything of the sort,’ said Flint. ‘Let’s just say you had an ulterior motive for putting it there.’
Wilt nodded. ‘I’ll go along with that,’ he said.
Inspector Flint nodded encouragingly. ‘I thought you might. Well, what was it?’
Wilt considered his words carefully. He was getting into deep waters.
‘Let’s just say it was by way of being a rehearsal.’
‘A rehearsal? What sort of rehearsal?’
Wilt thought for a moment.
‘Interesting word “rehearsal”,’ he said. ‘It comes from the old French, rehercer, meaning…’
‘To hell with where it comes from,’ said the Inspector, ‘I want to know where it ends up.’
‘Sounds a bit like a funeral too when you come to think of it.’ said Wilt, continuing his campaign of semantic attrition.
Inspector Flint hurled himself into the trap. ‘Funeral? ‘Whose funeral?’
‘Anyone’s’ said Wilt blithely. ‘Hearse, rehearse.’ You could say that’s what happens when you exhume a body. You rehearse it though I don’t suppose you fellows use hearses.’
‘For God’s sake,’ shouted the Inspector. ‘Can’t you ever stick to the point? You said you were rehearsing something and I want to know what that something was.’
‘An idea, a mere idea,’ said Wilt, ‘one of those ephemera of mental fancy that flit like butterflies across the summer landscape of the mind blown by the breezes of association that come like sudden showers…I rather like that.’
‘I don’t,’ said the Inspector, looking at him bitterly. ‘What I want to know is what you were rehearsing. That’s what I’d like to know.’
‘I’ve told you. An idea,’
‘What sort of idea?’
‘Just an idea,’ said Wilt. ‘A mere…’
‘So help me God, Wilt,’ shouted the Inspector, ‘if you start on these fucking butterflies again I’ll break the unbroken habit of a lifetime and wring your bloody neck.’
‘I wasn’t going to mention butterflies this time,’ said Wilt reproachfully, ‘I was going to say that I had this idea for a book…’
‘A book’ snarled Inspector Flint. ‘What sort of book? A book of poetry or a crime story?’
‘A crime story.’ said Wilt, grateful for the suggestion.
‘I see,’ said the Inspector. ‘So you were going to write a thriller. Well now, just let me guess the outline of the plot. There’s this lecturer at the Tech and he has this wife he hates and he decides to murder her…’
‘Go on!’ said Wilt, ‘you’re doing very well so far.’
‘I thought I might be,’ said Flint delightedly. ‘Well, this lecturer thinks he’s a clever fellow who can hoodwink the police. He doesn’t think much of the police. So he dumps a plastic doll down a hole that’s going to be filled with concrete in the hope that the police will waste their time digging it out and in the meantime he’s buried his wife somewhere else. By the way, where did you bury Mrs Wilt, Henry? Let’s get this over once and for all. Where did you put her? Just tell me that. You’ll feel better when it’s out.’
‘I didn’t put her anywhere. If I’ve told you that once I’ve told you a thousand times. How many more times have I got to tell you I don’t know where she is.’
‘I’ll say this for you, Wilt,’ said the Inspector, when he could bring himself to speak. ‘I’ve known some cool customers in my time but I have to take my hat off to you. You’re the coolest bastard it’s ever been my unfortunate experience to come across.’
Wilt shook his head. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I feel sorry for you, Inspector, I really do. You can’t recognise the truth when it’s staring you in the face.’
Inspector Flint got up and left the room. ‘You there,’ he said to the first detective he could find. ‘Go into that Interview Room and ask that bastard questions and don’t stop till I tell you’
‘What sort of questions?’
‘Any sort. Just any. Keep asking him why he stuffed an inflatable plastic doll down a pile hole. That’s all. Just ask it over and over again. I’m going to break that sod.’
He went down to his office and slumped into his chair and tried to think.
Chapter 13
At the Tech Sergeant Yates sat in Mr Morris’s office. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you again,’ he said, ‘but we need some more details on this fellow Wilt.’
The Head of Liberal Studies looked up with a haggard expression from the timetable. He had been having a desperate struggle trying to find someone to take Bricklayers Four. Price wouldn’t do because he had Mechanics Two and Williams wouldn’t anyway. He had already gone home the day before with a nervous stomach and was threatening to repeat the performance if anyone so much as mentioned Bricklayers Four to him again. That left Mr Morris himself and he was prepared to be disturbed by Sergeant Yates for as long as he liked if it meant he didn’t have to take those bloody bricklayers.
‘Anything to help,’ he said, with an affability that was in curious contrast to the haunted look in his eyes. ‘What details would you like to know?’
‘Just a general impression of the man, sir,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Was there anything unusual about him?’
‘Unusual?’ Mr Morris thought for a moment. Apart from a preparedness to teach the most awful Day Release Classes year in and year out without complaint he could think of nothing unusual about Wilt. ‘I suppose you could call what amounted to a phobic reaction to The Lord of the Flies a bit unusual but then I’ve never much cared for…’
‘If you’d just wait a moment, sir,’ said the Sergeant busying himself with his notebook. ‘You did say “phobic reaction” didn’t you?’
‘Well what I meant was…’
‘To flies, sir?’
‘To The Lord of the Flies. It’s a book,’ said
Mr Morris, now uncertain that he had been wise to mention the fact. Policemen were not noticeably sensitive to those niceties of literary taste that constituted his own definition of intelligence. ‘I do hope I haven’t said the wrong thing.’
‘Not at all, sir. It’s these little details that help us to build up a picture of the criminal’s mind.’
Mr Morris sighed. ‘I’m sure I never thought when Mr Wilt came to us from the University that he would turn out like this.’
‘Quite so, sir. Now did Mr Wilt ever say anything disparaging about his wife?’
‘Disparaging? Dear me no. Mind you he didn’t have to. Eva spoke for herself.’ He looked miserably out of the window at the pile-boring machine.
‘Then in your opinion Mrs Wilt was not a very likeable woman?’
Mr Morris shook his head. ‘She was a ghastly woman,’ he said.
Sergeant Yates licked the end of his ballpen.
‘You did say “ghastly” sir?’
‘I’m afraid so. I once had her in an Evening Class for Elementary Drama.’
‘Elementary?’ said the Sergeant, and wrote it down.
‘Yes, though elemental would have been more appropriate in Mrs Wilt’s case. She threw herself into the parts rather too vigorously to be wholly convincing. Her Desdemona to my Othello is something I am never likely to forget.’
‘An impetuous woman, would you say?’
‘Let me put it this way,’ said Mr Morris, ‘had Shakespeare written the play as Mrs Wilt interpreted it, Othello would have been the one to be strangled.’
‘I see, sir,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Then I take it she didn’t like black men.’
‘I have no idea what she thought about the racial issue.’ said Mr Morris, ‘I am talking of her physical strength.’
‘A powerful woman, sir?’
‘Very.’ said Mr Morris with feelings.
Sergeant Yates looked puzzled. ‘It seems strange a woman like that allowing herself to be murdered by Mr Wilt without putting up more of a struggle,’ he said thoughtfully.
‘It seems incredible to me,’ Mr Morris agreed, ‘and what is more it indicates a degree of fanatical courage in Henry that his behaviour in this department never led me to suspect. I can only suppose he was insane at the time.’
Sergeant Yates seized on the point. ‘Then it is your considered opinion that he was not in his right mind when he killed his wife?’
‘Right mind? I can think of nothing rightminded about killing your wife and dumping her body…’
‘I meant sir,’ said the Sergeant, ‘that you think Mr Wilt is a lunatic.’
Mr Morris hesitated. There were a good many members of his department whom he would have classified as mentally unbalanced but he hardly liked to advertise the fact. On the other hand it might help poor Wilt.
‘Yes. I suppose so.’ he said finally for at heart he was a kindly man. ‘Quite mad. Between ourselves, Sergeant, anyone who is prepared to teach the sort of bloodyminded young thugs we get can’t be entirely sane. And only last week Wilt got into an altercation with one of the Printers and was punched in the face. I think that may have had something to do with his subsequent behaviour. I trust you will treat what I say in the strictest confidence. I wouldn’t want…’
‘Quite so, sir,’ said Sergeant Yates. ‘Well, I needn’t detain you any longer.’
He returned to the Police Station and reported his findings to Inspector Flint.
‘Nutty as a fruitcake,’ he announced. ‘That’s his opinion. He’s quite positive about it.’
‘In that case he had no right to employ the sod,’ said Flint. ‘He should have sacked the brute.’
‘Sacked him? From the Tech? You know they can’t sack teachers. You’ve got to do something really drastic before they give you the boot.’
‘Like murdering three people, I suppose. Well as far as I’m concerned they can have the little bastard back.’
‘You mean he’s still holding out?’
‘Holding out? He’s counterattacking. He’s reduced me to a nervous wreck and now Bolton says he wants to be relieved. Can’t stand the strain any longer.’
Sergeant Yates scratched his head. ‘Beats me how he does it,’ he said. ‘Anyone would think he was innocent. I wonder when he’ll start asking for a lawyer.’
‘Never,’ said Flint. ‘What does he need a lawyer for? If I had a lawyer in there handing out advice I’d have got the truth out of Wilt hours ago.’
As night fell over Eel Sretch the wind increased to Gale Force Eight. Rain hammered on the cabin roof, waves slapped against the hull and the cabin cruiser, listing to starboard, settled more firmly into the mud. Inside the cabin the air was thick with smoke and bad feelings, Gaskell had opened a bottle of vodka and was getting drunk. To pass the time they played Scrabble.
‘My idea of hell,’ said Gaskell, ‘is to be huis closed with a couple of dykes.’
‘What’s a dyke?’ said Eva.
Gaskell stared at her. ‘You don’t know?’
‘I know the sort they have in Holland…’
‘Yoga bear,’ said Gaskell, ‘you are the naïvest. A dyke is–’
‘Forget it, G’ said Sally. ‘Whose turn to play?’
‘It’s mine.’ said Eva. ‘I…M…P spells Imp.’
‘O…T…E…N…T spells Gaskell,’ said Sally.
Gaskell drank some mote vodka. ‘What the hell sort of game we supposed to be playing? Scrabble or some sort of Truth group?’
‘Your turn,’ said Sally.
Gaskell put D…I…L…D on the O. ‘Try that for size.’
Eva looked at it critically.
‘You can’t use proper names,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t let me use Squezy.’
‘Eva teats, dildo is not a proper name. It’s an improper thing. A surrogate penis.’
‘A what?’
‘Never mind what it is,’ said Sally. ‘Your turn to play.’ Eva studied her letters. She didn’t like being told what to do so often and besides she still wanted to know what a dyke was. And a surrogate penis. In the end she put L…O…V on the E.
‘Is a many-splendoured thing,’ said Gaskell and put D…I…D on the L and O.
‘You can’t have two of them,’ said Eva. ‘You’ve got one Dildo already.’
‘This one’s different,’ said Gaskell, ‘it’s got whiskers.’
‘What difference does that make?’
‘Ask Sally. She’s the one with penis envy.’
‘You asshole,’ said Salty and put F…A…G…G…O on the T. ‘Meaning you.’
‘Like I said. Truth Scrabble,’ said Gaskell. ‘Trouble for sure. So why don’t we have an encounter group instead. Let the truth hang out like it is.’
Eva used the F to make faithful. Gaskell followed with Hooker and Sally went Insane.
‘Great.’ said Gaskell, ‘Alphabetical I Ching.’
‘Wunderkind, you slay me,’ said Sally.
‘Go Zelda yourself,’ said Gaskell and slid his hand up Eva’s thigh.
‘Keep your hands to yourself,’ said Eva and pushed him away. She put S and N on the I. Gaskell made Butch with the B.’
‘And don’t tell me it’s a proper name.’
‘Well it’s certainly not a word I’ve heard.’ said Eva.
Gaskell stared at her and then roared with laughter.
‘Now I’ve heard it all.’ he said. ‘Like cunnilingus is a cough medicine. How dumb can you get?’
‘Go look in the mirror,’ said Sally.
‘Oh sure. So I married a goddam lesbian whore who goes round stealing other people’s wives and boats and things. I’m dumb. But boobs here beats me. She’s so fucking hypocritical she pretends she’s not a dyke…’
‘I don’t know what a dyke is,’ said Eva.
‘Well let me inform you, fatso. A dyke is a lesbian,’
‘Are you calling me a lesbian?’ said Eva.
‘Yes,’ said Gaskell.
Eva slapped him across the face har
d. Gaskell’s glasses came off and he sat down on the floor.
‘Now G…’ Sally began but Gaskell had scrambled to his feet.’
‘Right you fat bitch,’ he said. ‘You want the truth you’re going to get it. First off, you think husband Henry got into that doll off his own bat, well let me tell you…’
‘Gaskell, you just shut up.’ shouted Sally.
‘Like hell I will. I’ve had about enough of you and your rotten little ways. I picked you out of a cathouse…’
‘That’s not true. It was a clinic,’ screamed Sally, ‘a clinic for sick perverts like you.’
Eva wasn’t listening. She was staring at Gaskell. He had called her a lesbian and had said Henry hadn’t got into that doll of his own accord.
‘Tell me about Henry,’ she shouted. ‘How did he get into that doll?’
Gaskell pointed at Sally. ‘She,’ put him there. That poor goof wouldn’t know…’
‘You put him there?’ Eva said to Sally. ‘You did?’
‘He tried to make me, Eva. He tried to–’
‘I don’t believe it,’ Eva shouted. ‘Henry isn’t like that.’
‘I tell you he did. He…’
‘And you put him in that doll?’ Eva screamed and launched herself across the table at Sally. There was a splintering sound and the table collapsed, Gaskell scudded sideways on to the bunk and Sally shot out of the cabin. Eva got to her feet and moved forward towards the door. She had been tricked, cheated and lied to. And Henry had been humiliated. She was going to kill that bitch Sally. She stepped out into the cockpit. On the far side Sally was a dark shadow. Eva went round the engine and lunged at her. The next moment she had slipped on the oily deck and Sally had darted across the cockpit and through the door into the cabin. She slammed the door behind her and locked it. Eva Wilt got to her feet and stood with the rain running down her face and as she stood there the illusions that had sustained her through the week disappeared. She saw herself as a fat, silly woman who had left her husband in pursuit of a glamour that was false and shoddy and founded on brittle talk and money. And Gaskell had said she was a lesbian. The full nausea of knowing what Touch Therapy had meant dawned on Eva. She staggered to the side of the boat and sat down on a locker.