by Tom Sharpe
Wilt got up and asked to go to the toilet. As usual the constable came with him and stood outside the door.
‘Do you have to?’ said Wilt. ‘I’m not going to hang myself with the chain.’
‘To see you don’t beat your meat,’ said the constable coarsely.
Wilt sat down. Beat your meat. What a hell of an expression. It called to mind Meat One. Meat One? It was a moment of inspiration. Wilt got up and flushed the toilet. Meat One would keep them busy for a long time. He went back to the pale green room where the light buzzed. Flint was waiting for him.
‘You going to talk now?’ he asked.
Wilt shook his head. They would have to drag it out of him if his confession was to be at all convincing. He would have to hesitate, start to say something, stop, start again, appeal to Flint to stop torturing him, plead and start again. This trout needed tickling. Oh well, it would help to keep him awake.
‘Are you going to start again at the beginning?’ he asked.
Inspector Flint smiled horribly. ‘Right at the beginning.’
‘All right,’ said Wilt, ‘have it your own way. Just don’t keep asking me if I gave the dog Chappie or Bonzo. I can’t stand all that talk about dog food.’
Inspector Flint rose to the bait. ‘Why not?’
‘It gets on my nerves,’ said Wilt, with a shudder.
The Inspector leant forward. ‘Dog food gets on your nerves?’ he said.
Wilt hesitated pathetically. ‘Don’t go on about it,’ he said. ‘Please don’t go on.’
‘Now then which was it, Bonzo or Chappie?’ said the Inspector, scenting blood.
Wilt put his head in his hands. ‘I won’t say anything. I won’t. Why must you keep asking me about food? Leave me alone.’ His voice rose hysterically and with it Inspector Flint’s hopes. He knew when he had touched the nerve. He was on to a good thing.
18
‘Dear God,’ said Sergeant Yates, ‘but we had pork pies for lunch yesterday. It’s too awful.’
Inspector Flint rinsed his mouth out with black coffee and spat into the washbasin. He had vomited twice and felt like vomiting again.
‘I knew it would be something like that,’ he said with a shudder, ‘I just knew it. A man who could pull that doll trick had to have something really filthy up his sleeve.’
‘But they may all have been eaten by now,’ said the Sergeant. Flint looked at him balefully.
‘Why the hell do you think he laid that phoney trail?’ he asked. ‘To give them plenty of time to be consumed. His expression “consumed”, not mine. You know what the shelf life of a pork pie is?’
Yates shook his head.
‘Five days. Five days. So they went out on Tuesday which leaves us one day to find them or what remains of them. I want every pork pie in East Anglia picked up. I want every fucking sausage and steak and kidney pie that went out of Sweetbreads Meat Factory this week found and brought in. And every tin of dog food.’
‘Dog food?’
‘You heard me,’ said Inspector Flint staggering out of the washroom. ‘And while you’re about it you’d better make it cat food too. You never know with Wilt. He’s capable of leading us up the garden path in one important detail.’
‘But if they went into pork pies what’s all this about dog food?’
‘Where the hell do you think he put the odds and ends and I do mean ends?’ Inspector Flint asked savagely. ‘You don’t imagine he was going to have people coming in and complaining they’d found a tooth or a toenail in the Sweetbreads pie they had bought that morning. Not Wilt. That swine thinks of everything. He drowns them in their own bath. He puts them in plastic garbage bags and locks the bags in the garage while he goes home and sticks the doll down that fucking hole. Then on Sunday he goes back and picks them up and spends the day at the meat factory all by himself … Well if you want to know what he did on Sunday you can read all about it in his statement. It’s more than my stomach can stand.’
The Inspector went back hurriedly into the washroom. He’d been living off pork pies since Monday. The statistical chances of his having partaken of Mrs Wilt were extremely high.
*
When Sweetbreads Meat and Canning Factory opened at eight, Inspector Flint was waiting at the gate. He stormed into the manager’s office and demanded to speak to him.
‘He’s not here yet,’ said the secretary. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’
‘I want a list of every establishment you supply with pork pies, steak and kidney pies, sausages and dog food,’ said the Inspector.
‘I couldn’t possibly give you that information,’ said the secretary. ‘It’s extremely confidential.’
‘Confidential? What the hell do you mean confidential?’
‘Well I don’t know really. It’s just that I couldn’t take it on myself to provide you with inside information …’ She stopped. Inspector Flint was staring at her with a quite horrible expression on his face.
‘Well, miss,’ he said finally, ‘while we’re on the topic of inside information, it may interest you to know that what has been inside your pork pies is by way of being inside information. Vital information.’
‘Vital information? I don’t know what you mean. Our pies contain perfectly wholesome ingredients.’
‘Wholesome?’ shouted the Inspector. ‘You call three human bodies wholesome? You call the boiled, bleached, minced and cooked remains of three murdered bodies wholesome?’
‘But we only use …’ the secretary began, and fell sideways off her chair in a dead faint.
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ shouted the Inspector, ‘you’d think a silly bitch who can work in an abattoir wouldn’t be squeamish. Find out who the manager is and where he lives and tell him to come down here at the double.’
He sat down in a chair while Sergeant Yates rummaged in the desk. ‘Wakey, wakey,’ he said, prodding the secretary with his foot. ‘If anyone has got a right to lie down on the job, it’s me. I’ve been on my feet for three days and nights and I’ve been an accessory after the fact of murder.’
‘An accessory?’ said Yates. ‘I don’t see how you can say that.’
‘Can’t you? Well what would you call helping to dispose of parts of a murder victim? Concealing evidence of a crime?’
‘I never thought of it that way,’ said Yates.
‘I did,’ said the Inspector, ‘I can’t think of anything else.’
*
In his cell Wilt stared up at the ceiling peacefully. He was astonished that it had been so easy. All you had to do was tell people what they wanted to hear and they would believe you no matter how implausible your story might be. And three days and nights without sleep had suspended Inspector Flint’s disbelief with a vengeance. Then again Wilt’s hesitations had been timed perfectly and his final confession a nice mixture of conceit and matter-of-factness. On the details of the murder he had been coldly precise and in describing their disposal he had been a craftsman taking pride in his work. Every now and then when he got to a difficult spot he would veer away into a manic arrogance at once boastful and cowardly with ‘You’ll never be able to prove it. They’ll have disappeared without trace now.’ And the Harpic had come in useful once again, adding a macabre touch of realism about evidence being flushed down thousands of U-bends with Harpic being poured after it like salt from a salt cellar. Eva would enjoy that when he told her about it, which was more than could be said for Inspector Flint. He hadn’t even seen the irony of Wilt’s remark that while he had been looking for the Pringsheims they had been under his nose all the time. He had been particularly upset by the crack about gut reactions and the advice to stick to health foods in future. Yes, in spite of his tiredness Wilt had enjoyed himself watching the Inspector’s bloodshot eyes turn from glee and gloating self-satisfaction to open amazement and finally undisguised nausea. And when finally Wilt had boasted that they would never be able to bring him to trial without the evidence, Flint had responded magnificently.
�
��Oh yes, we will,’ he had shouted hoarsely. ‘If there is one single pie left from that batch we’ll get it and when we do the Lab boys will …’
‘Find nothing but pork in it,’ said Wilt, before being dragged off to his cell. At least that was the truth and if Flint didn’t believe it that was his own fault. He had asked for a confession and he had got one by courtesy of Meat One, the apprentice butchers who had spent so many hours of Liberal Studies explaining the workings of Sweetbreads Meat Factory to him and had actually taken him down there one afternoon to show him how it all worked. Dear lads. And how he had loathed them at the time. Which only went to show how wrong you could be about people. Wilt was just wondering if he had been wrong about Eva and perhaps she was dead when he fell asleep.
*
In the churchyard Eva watched the Rev St John Froude walk down to the boathouse and start rowing towards the reeds. As soon as he had disappeared she made her way up the path towards the house. With the Vicar out of the way she was prepared to take the risk of meeting his wife. She stole through the doorway into the courtyard and looked about her. The place had a dilapidated air about it and a pile of empty bottles in one corner, whisky and gin bottles, seemed to indicate that he might well be unmarried. Still clutching her ivy, she went across to the door, evidently the kitchen door, and knocked. There was no answer. She crossed to the window and looked inside. The kitchen was large, distinctly untidy and had all the hallmarks of a bachelor existence about it. She went back to the door and knocked again and she was just wondering what to do now when there was the sound of a vehicle coming down the drive.
Eva hesitated for a second and then tried the door. It was unlocked. She stepped inside and shut the door as a milk van drove into the courtyard. Eva listened while the milkman put down several bottles and then drove away. Then she turned and went down the passage to the front hall. If she could find the phone she could ring Henry and he could come out in the car and fetch her. She would go back to the church and wait for him there. But the hall was empty. She poked her head into several rooms with a good deal of care and found them largely bare of furniture or with dustcovers over chairs and sofas. The place was incredibly untidy too. Definitely the Vicar was a bachelor. Finally she found his study. There was a phone on the desk. Eva went over and lifted the receiver and dialled Ipford 66066. There was no reply. Henry would be at the Tech. She dialled the Tech number and asked for Mr Wilt.
‘Wilt?’ said the girl on the switchboard. ‘Mr Wilt?’
‘Yes,’ said Eva in a low voice.
‘I’m afraid he’s not here,’ said the girl.
‘Not there? But he’s got to be there.’
‘Well he isn’t.’
‘But he’s got to be. It’s desperately important I get in touch with him.’
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help you,’ said the girl.
‘But …’ Eva began, and glanced out of the window. The Vicar had returned and was walking up the garden path towards her. ‘Oh God,’ she muttered, and put the phone down hurriedly. She turned and rushed out of the room in a state of panic. Only when she had made her way back along the passage to the kitchen did it occur to her that she had left her ivy behind in the study. There were footsteps in the passage. Eva looked frantically around, decided against the courtyard and went up a flight of stone steps to the first floor. There she stood and listened. Her heart was palpitating. She was naked and alone in a strange house with a clergyman and Henry wasn’t at the Tech when he should have been and the girl on the switchboard had sounded most peculiar, almost as though there was something wrong with wanting to speak to Henry. She had no idea what to do.
*
In the kitchen the Rev St John Froude had a very good idea what he wanted to do: expunge for ever the vision of the inferno to which he had been lured by those vile things with their meaningless messages floating across the water. He dug a fresh bottle of Teachers out of the cupboard and took it back to his study. What he had witnessed had been so grotesque, so evidently evil, so awful, so prescient of hell itself that he was in two minds whether it had been real or simply a waking nightmare. A man without a face, whose hands were tied behind his back, a woman with a painted face and a knife, the language … The Rev St John Froude opened the bottle and was about to pour a glass when his eye fell on the ivy Eva had left on the chair. He put the bottle down hastily and stared at the leaves. Here was another mystery to perplex him. How had a clump of ivy got on to the chair in his study? It certainly hadn’t been there when he had left the house. He picked it up gingerly and put it on his desk. Then he sat down and contemplated it with a growing sense of unease. Something was happening in his world that he could not understand. And what about the strange figure he had seen flitting about between the tombstones? He had quite forgotten her. The Rev St John Froude got up and went out on to the terrace and down the path to the church.
*
‘On a Sunday?’ shouted the manager of Sweetbreads.
‘On a Sunday? But we don’t work on a Sunday. There’s nobody here. The place is shut.’
‘It wasn’t last Sunday and there was someone here, Mr Kidney,’ said the Inspector.
‘Kidley, please,’ said the manager. ‘Kidley with an L.’
The Inspector nodded. ‘OK Mr Kidley, now what I’m telling you is that this man Wilt was here last Sunday and he …’
‘How did he get in?’
‘He used a ladder against the back wall from the car park.’
‘In broad daylight? He’d have been seen.’
‘At two o’clock in the morning, Mr Kidney.’
‘Kidley, Inspector, Kidley.’
‘Look, Mr Kidley, if you work in a place like this with a name like that you’re asking for it.’
Mr Kidley looked at him belligerently. ‘And if you’re telling me that some bloody maniac came in here with three dead bodies last Sunday and spent the day using our equipment to convert them into cooked meat edible for human consumption under the Food Regulations Act I’m telling you that that comes under the head of … Head? What did he do with the heads? Tell me that?’
‘What do you do with heads, Mr Kidley?’ asked the Inspector.
‘That rather depends. Some of them go with the offal into the animal food bins …’
‘Right. So that’s what Wilt said he did with them. And you keep those in the No 2 cold storage room. Am I right?’
Mr Kidley nodded miserably. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we do.’ He paused and gaped at the Inspector. ‘But there’s a world of difference between a pig’s head and a …’
‘Quite,’ said the Inspector hastily, ‘and I daresay you think someone was bound to spot the difference.’
‘Of course they would.’
‘Now I understand from Mr Wilt that you have an extremely efficient mincing machine …’
‘No,’ shouted Mr Kidley desperately. ‘No, I don’t believe it. It’s not possible. It’s …’
‘Are you saying he couldn’t possibly have …’
‘I’m not saying that. I’m saying he shouldn’t have. It’s monstrous. It’s horrible.’
‘Of course it’s horrible,’ said the Inspector. ‘The fact remains that he used that machine.’
‘But we keep our equipment meticulously clean.’
‘So Wilt says. He was definite on that point. He says he cleaned up carefully afterwards.’
‘He must have done,’ said Mr Kidley. ‘There wasn’t a thing out of place on Monday morning. You heard the foreman say so.’
‘And I also heard this swine Wilt say that he made a list of where everything came from before he used it so that he could put it back exactly where he’d found it. He thought of everything.’
‘And what about our reputation for hygiene? He didn’t think of that, did he? For twenty-five years we’ve been known for the excellence of our products and now this has to happen. We’ve been at the head of …’ Mr Kidley stopped suddenly and sat down.
‘Now then,’ said the
Inspector, ‘what I have to know is who you supply to. We’re going to call in every pork pie and sausage …’
‘Call them in? You can’t call them in,’ screamed Mr Kidley, ‘they’ve all gone.’
‘Gone? What do you mean they’ve gone?’
‘What I say. They’ve gone. They’ve either been eaten or destroyed by now.’