by Tom Sharpe
'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 homebrew. 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 Wrilt. 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 somethingstood to reasonbut 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: not 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 loner 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 wasand the Inspector had his own views on the matterhe 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.
And so presently he was standing in the pub near the prison discussing Wilt with the Chief Warder with a frankness Wilt would have found only partly reassuring. 'If you want my opinion,' said Mr Blaggs, 'educating villains is anti-social. Only gives them more brains than they need. Makes your job more difficult when they come out, doesn't it?
'
Flint had to agree that it didn't make it any easier. 'But you don't reckon Wilt had anything to do with Mac's having a cache of junk in his cell?' he asked.
'Wilt? Never. A bloody do-gooder, that's what he is. Mind you, I'm not saying they're not daft enough, because I know for a fact they are. What I'm saying is, a nick ought to be a prison, not a fucking finishing-school for turning half-witted petty thieves into first-rate bank robbers with degrees in law.'
'That's not what Mac was studying for, is it?' asked Flint.
Mr Blaggs laughed. 'Didn't need to,' he said. 'He had enough cash on the outside, he had a fistful of legal beavers on his payroll.'
'So how come Wilt's supposed to have made this phone call?' asked Flint.
'Just what Bill Coven thought, he took the call,' said Blaggs, and looked significantly at his glass. Flint ordered two more pints. 'He just thought he recognized Wilt's voice,' Blaggs continued, satisfied that he was getting his money's worth for information. 'Could have been anyone.'
Flint paid for the beer and tried to think what to ask next. 'And you've got no idea how Mac got his dope then?' he asked finally.
'Know exactly,' said Blaggs proudly. 'Another bloody do-gooder only this time a fucking prison visitor. If you ask me, they should ban all vi'
'A prison visitor?' interrupted Flint, before the Chief Warder could express his views on a proper prison regime, which involved perpetual solitary confinement for all convicts and mandatory hanging for murderers, rapists and anyone insulting a prison officer. 'You mean a visitor to the prison?'
'I don't. I mean an authorized prison visitor, a bloody licensed busybody. They come in and treat us officers like we've committed the ruddy crimes and the villains are all bloody orphans who didn't get enough teat when they were toddlers. Right, well, this bitch of a PV, name of Jardin, was the one McCullum got to bring his stuff in.'
'Christ,' said Flint. 'What did she do that for?'
'Scared,' said Blaggs. 'Some of Mac's nastier mates on the outside paid her a visit with razors and a bottle of nitric acid and threatened to leave her looking like a cross between a dog's dinner and a leper with acne unless...You get the message?'
'Yes,' said Flint, who'd begun to sympathize with the prison visitor, though for the life of him he couldn't visualize what a leper with acne looked like. 'And you mean she walked in and announced the fact?'
'Oh dear me, no,' said Blaggs. 'Starts off we've done for MrI ask you, Misterfucking McCullum ourselves. Practically said I'd hanged the sod myself, not that I'd have minded. So we took her down the morgueof course it just happened the prison quack was doing an autopsy at the time and didn't much like the look of things by the sound of it, using a saw he was, tooand he wasn't having any crap about anyone doing anything to the bugger. Right, well when she'd come to, like, and he's saying the swine died of drug overdose and anyone who said different'd end up in court for slander, she cracked. Tears all over the place and practically down on her knees in front of the Governor. And it all comes out how she's been running heroin into the prison for months. Ever so bleeding sorry and all.'
'I should bloody well think so,' said Flint. 'When's she going to be charged?'
Mr Blaggs drank his beer mournfully. 'Never,' he grunted.
'Never? But smuggling anything, let alone drugs, into a prison is an indictable offence,'
'Don't tell me,' said Blaggs. 'On the other hand, the Governor don't want no scandal, can't afford one with his job up for grabs and anyway, she'd done a social service in a way by shoving the bugger where he belongs.'
'There is that,' said Flint. 'Does Hodge know this?'
The Chief Warder shook his head. 'Like I said, the Governor don't want no publicity. Anyway, she claimed she thought the stuff was talcum powder. Like hell, but you know what a Rumpole would do with a defence like that. Prison authorities entirely to blame, and so on. Negligence, the lot.'
'Did she say where she got the heroin?' asked Flint.
'Picked it up back of a telephone box on the London Road at night. Never saw the blokes who delivered it.'
'And it won't have been any of the lot who'd threatened her either.'
By the time the Inspector left the pub, he was a happy man. Hodge was way offline, and Flint had a conscience-stricken prison visitor to question. He wasn't even worried about the effect of four pints of the best bitter being flushed through his system by those bloody piss-pills. He'd already charted his route home by way of three relatively clean public lavatories.
Chapter 10
But if Flint's mood had changed for the better, Inspector Hodge's hadn't. His interpretation of Wilt's behaviour had been coloured by the accident at the end of Nott Road. 'The bastard's got to know we're onto him, ramming a police car like that,' he told Sergeant Runk, 'so what's he do?'
'Buggered if I know,' said the Sergeant, who preferred early nights and couldn't think at all clearly at one in the morning.
'He goes for an early arrest, knowing we've got no hard evidence and will have to let him go.'
'What's he want us to do that for?'
'Because if we pull him in again he can start squealing about harassment and civil bloody liberties,' said Hodge.
'Seems an odd way of going about things,' said Runk.
'And what about sending your wife out to a herb farm to pick up a load of drugs on the very day after a girl dies of the filth? Isn't that a bit odd too?' Hodge demanded.
'Definitely,' said Runk. 'In fact, I can't think of anything odder. Any normal criminal would lie bloody low.'
Inspector Hodge smiled unpleasantly. 'Exactly. But we're not dealing with any ordinary criminal. That's the point I'm trying to make. We've got one of the cleverest monkeys I've ever had to catch on our hands.'
Sergeant Runk couldn't see it. 'Not if he sends his missus out to get a bottle of the stuff when we're watching her, he's not clever. Downright stupid.'
Hodge shook his head sadly. It was always difficult to get the Sergeant to understand the complexities of the criminal mind. 'Suppose there was nothing remotely like drugs in that bottle she was seen carrying?' he asked.
Sergeant Runk dragged his thoughts back from beds and tried to concentrate. 'Seem a bit of a wasted journey,' was all he could find to say.
'It's also intended to lead us up the garden path,' said Hodge. 'And that's his tactics. You've only to look at Wilt's record to see that. Take that doll caper for instance. He had old Flint by the short and curlies there, and why? Because the stupid fool pulled him in for questioning when all the evidence he had to go on was a blown-up doll of Mrs Wilt down a piling-hole with twenty tons of concrete on top of her. And where was the real Mrs Wilt all that week? Out on a boat with a couple of hippie Yanks who were into drugs up to their eyeballs and Flint lets them flee the country without grilling them about what they'd really been doing down the coast. Sticks out a mile they were smuggling and Wilt had set himself up for a decoy and kept Flint busy digging up a plastic doll. That's how cunning Wilt is.'
'I suppose when you put it like that it makes sense,' said Runk. And you reckon he's using the same tactics now.'
'Leopards,' said Hodge.
'Leopards?'
'Don't change their bleeding spots.'
'Oh, them,' said the Sergeant, who could have done without ellipses at that time of night.
'Only this time he's not dealing with some old-fashioned dead-beat copper like Flint,' said Hodge, now thoroughly convinced by the persuasiveness of his argument. 'He's dealing with me.'
'Makes a change. And talking about changes, I'd like to go...'
'To 45 Oakhurst Avenue,' said Hodge decisively, 'that's where you're going. I want Mr Smart-Arse Wilt's car wired for sound and we're calling off the physical observation. This time it's going to be electronic all the way.'
'Not if I have anything to do with it,' said Runk defiantly, 'I've enough sense to know better than start tinkering with a sod like Wilt's car. Besides, I've got a wife and three kids to'<
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'What the hell's your family got to do with it?' said Hodge. 'All I'm saying is, we'll go round there while they're asleep'
'Asleep? A bloke who electrifies his back gate, you think he takes chances with his bloody car? You can do what you like, but I'm buggered if I'm going to meet my Maker charred to a fucking cinder by a maniac who's linked his car to the national grid. Not for you or anyone else.'
But Hodge was not to be stopped. 'We can check it's safe,' he insisted.
'How?' asked Runk, who was wide awake now. 'Let a police dog pee against the thing and see if he gets 32,000 volts up his prick? You've got to be joking.'
'I'm not,' said Hodge. 'I'm telling. Go and get the equipment.'
Half an hour later, a desperately nervous Sergeant wearing gum boots and electrically safe rubber gloves eased the door of Wilt's car open. He'd already been round it four times to check there were no wires running from the house and had earthed it with a copper rod. Even so, he was taking no chances and was a trifle surprised that the thing didn't explode.
'All right, now where do you want the tape recorder?' he asked when the Inspector finally joined him.
'Somewhere where we can get at the tape easily,' Hodge whispered.
Runk groped under the dash and tried to find a space.
'Too bloody obvious,' said Hodge. 'Stick it under his seat.'
'Anything you say,' said Runk and stuffed the recorder into the springs. The sooner he was out of the damned car, the better. 'And what about the transmitter?'
'One in the boot and the other...'
'Other?' said Runk. 'You're going to get him picked up by the TV licence-detector vans at this rate. One of these sets has a radius of five miles.'
'I'm not taking chances,' said Hodge. 'If he finds one, he won't look for the other.'
'Not unless he has his car serviced.'