by Tom Sharpe
Shortly afterwards the old man in the next bed had convulsions and his false teeth fell out. A nurse put them back and called the Sister who took her time coming.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she demanded. Even to Flint’s medically untutored way of thinking, the question seemed gratuitous. How the hell could the old fellow know what was wrong with him?
‘How would I know? I just get these hot flushes. I had a prostate operation on Tuesday,’ he said.
‘And a very successful one too. You’ve done nothing but grumble since you came here. You’re just a grotty old man. I’ll be glad to see the back of you.’
The nurse intervened. ‘But he’s eighty-one, Sister,’ she said.
‘And a very healthy eighty-one he is too,’ the Sister replied and swept off to deal with the patient who had dragged his catheter out for the fifth time. It was perfectly obvious what ‘gender’ he was now. To avoid witnessing the reinsertion of the catheter, and a fresh bout of convulsions by the old man in the next bed, Flint turned to look at Wilt and found an eye staring at him. Wilt had recovered consciousness and, if the eye was anything to go by, didn’t like what he was seeing. Flint wasn’t enjoying it much either. He stared back and wondered what to do. But the eye closed abruptly. Flint turned to the nurse to ask her if an open eye was an indication that the patient had recovered consciousness but the nurse was having difficulty putting the old man’s dentures back into his mouth again. When she had succeeded Flint asked again.
‘Couldn’t say, not really,’ she said. ‘I’ve known some of them die with their eyes wide open. Of course they glaze over a bit blue later on. That way you know they’ve gone.’
‘Charming,’ said the Inspector and turned back but Wilt’s eyes were firmly shut. The sight of the Inspector sitting beside the bed had so startled him he had almost forgotten his dreadful headache and how awful he felt. Whatever had happened to him – and he had no idea where he’d been or what he’d done – the vaguely familiar figure sitting and staring at him was not a reassuring one. Not that he recognised Flint. And presently he fell into a coma again and Flint sent for Sergeant Yates.
‘I’m off home for a bit of lunch and a kip,’ he told him. ‘Let me know the moment he comes round and on no account let that idiot Hodge know he’s here. He’ll have Wilt charged for drug dealing before the poor bugger’s conscious.’
He went down the seemingly endless corridors and drove home.
24
On the other side of the Atlantic Eva and the quads sat in the airport waiting for their plane. It had been delayed first by a bomb threat and then, when it had been thoroughly searched, by a mechanical fault. Eva was no longer impatient or even angry with the quads or Auntie Joan. She was glad to be going home to her Henry but intensely worried about his whereabouts and what had happened to him. The girls played and squabbled around her. She blamed herself for having accepted the invitation to Wilma but at least she was going home and in a way she was glad her mission to get the Immelmanns to change their wills in the girls’ favour had failed so catastrophically. The prospect of a fortune would have been bad for the quads.
From an office overlooking the check-in DEA officials studied the little group and wondered what to do.
‘We stop them here, we’re not going to find anything. If there ever was anything to find. Reckon Palowski was right. This Mrs Wilt is a decoy. The guys in London can check her out. No point in pulling her in here.’
What Ruth Rottecombe was doing was preparing a prospect that would be very bad. For Wilt, at any rate. When she was woken from her sleep after her long drive back from Ipford by a phone call from the Superintendent at Oston Police Station to say he was coming up to interview her, she realised she hadn’t got rid of Wilt’s trousers and rucksack as she had intended. They were still in the back of the Volvo. If the police found them … Ruth preferred not to think of the consequences. She hurried out to the garage and took them up to an empty trunk in the attic and locked it. Then she returned to the garage and moved the car over the spot where Wilt had fallen and locked Wilfred and Pickles inside. They would act as a deterrent to any investigation of the place. Somehow she had been sure the police would pay her another visit and she had no wish to answer any more awkward questions.
She need not have worried. The police had checked at the Country Club and Battleby’s alibi seemed authentic. He had been there at least an hour before the fire had broken out and the arson investigators had found no sign of a delayed-action device. Whoever had started the fire, it couldn’t have been the beastly Battleby or Mrs Rottecombe. And they’d got the bloody paedophile on two charges, one of which would put him away for a very long time and ruin the swine’s reputation for life. The Superintendent didn’t care so much about the arson. On the other hand, while he detested Ruthless Ruth, he had to be careful. She was the wife of an influential Member of Parliament who could ask awkward questions in the House about police interrogation methods and harassment. It would pay to be polite to her for the time being. Talking about the fire would give him a chance to study her.
‘I’m extremely sorry to bother you,’ he said when she opened the front door. ‘It’s just that there are some points in the case against Mr Battleby that are bothering us and we thought you might be in a position to enlighten us. We are simply concerned with the fire at the Manor House.’
Ruth Rottecombe hesitated for a moment and decided to be conciliatory. ‘If I can be of any help, I’ll certainly try. You’d better come in.’
She held the door open but the Superintendent was not anxious to enter a house if those damned bull terriers were loose inside. It had taken all his courage to drive up and get out of the car.
‘About those two dogs …’ he began but Mrs Rottecombe reassured him.
‘They are locked in the garage. Do come in.’
They went into the drawing room.
‘Please take a seat.’
The Superintendent sat down hesitantly. This was hardly the reception he’d expected. Mrs Rottecombe pulled up a chair and prepared to answer questions.
The Superintendent picked his words carefully. ‘We have checked with the Club Secretary and he has confirmed that Battleby was at the Country Club playing bridge for nearly an hour before the fire broke out. Secondly, the kitchen door was unlocked. So it was perfectly possible that someone else started the fire.’
‘But that’s impossible. I locked—’ Ruth said before realising she was walking into a trap. ‘I mean, someone must have known where the keys were kept. I hope you don’t think I—’
‘Certainly not,’ said the Superintendent. ‘We know you were at the Club at the same time. No, there’s no suspicion against you. I can guarantee that. What interests us more is a set of footprints in the vegetable garden. They are those of a man who came down from the track behind the house. Now in the mud in the track we’ve also found tyre marks which indicate that a vehicle was parked there and drove off hurriedly some time later on. It begins to look as though the fire was started deliberately by a third party.’
Mrs Rottecombe bridled at that ‘third’. ‘Are you suggesting Bob hired someone to start the fire—’
‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ said the Superintendent hurriedly. ‘I simply meant that someone, some unknown person, entered the house and caused the fire. We also have evidence that he had been in the kitchen garden for some considerable time, evidently watching the house. There are a group of footprints by the gate in the wall which indicate that he had moved about waiting for a chance to enter the house.’ He paused. ‘What we are trying to find out is if anyone had a particular grudge against the man Battleby, and we wondered if you could help us.’
Mrs Rottecombe nodded. ‘I should think there were a great many,’ she said finally. ‘Bob Battleby was not a popular figure in the district. Those vile magazines in the Range Rover indicate that he has paedophile tendencies and he may have abused … well, done something horrible.’
It was h
er turn to pause and let the inference sink in. The suggestion helped to clear her of any connection with that side of Battleby’s inclinations. Whatever she was she was not a child or, as the Superintendent put it to himself, a spring chicken.
By the time he left he had not gained any useful information from her. On the other hand, Ruth Rottecombe had a shrewd idea why Harold had found the unconscious man in the garage. He’d had something to do with that disastrous night and she saw no reason why she shouldn’t provide the police with his jeans covered with ash near the burnt-out Manor. She wouldn’t leave them there immediately but would wait until it was dark. Like after midnight.
25
When Wilt opened his eyes again Flint was still in the chair beside the bed. The Inspector had shut his own eyes when the old man in the next bed spat his dentures out for the fifth time and accompanied them with such a quantity of blood that some of it had landed on his trousers. After that he had ceased to be a grotty old man of eighty-one and was a decidedly dead one. Wilt had heard Flint say ‘Fuck’ and various unpleasant noises going on but had kept his eyes firmly shut, only opening them in time to see Flint turn and look at him curiously.
‘Feeling better, Henry?’ Flint asked.
Wilt didn’t reply. The police waiting to take a statement from him weren’t at all to his liking. And in any case Wilt had no idea what had happened to him or what he might have done. It seemed best to have amnesia. Besides, he wasn’t feeling any better. If anything Flint’s presence made him feel decidedly worse. But before the Inspector could make any more inquiries a doctor came up to the bed. This time it was Flint who was questioned.
‘What are you doing here?’ the doctor asked rather nastily, evidently disliking the presence of a police officer in the ward almost as much as Wilt did. Flint wasn’t enjoying being there either.
‘Waiting to take a statement from this patient,’ he said, indicating Wilt.
‘Well, you’re not likely to get one out of him today. He’s suffering from severe concussion and probably amnesia. He may not remember anything. That’s a frequent consequence of a severe blow to the head and subsequent concussion.’
‘And how long does one have to wait before he gets his memory back?’
‘Depends. I’ve known some cases where there’s been no return at all. That’s rare, of course, but it does occasionally happen. Frankly, there’s no saying but in this case I should think he’ll get some memories back in a day or two.’
Wilt listened to the exchange and made it a day or three. He had to find out what he had done first.
Eva returned to 45 Oakhurst Avenue in a state of total exhaustion. The flight had been awful, a drunk had had to be tied down for hitting another passenger and the plane had been diverted to Manchester because of a breakdown in the Flight Control computer. What she found when she finally got home temporarily galvanised her. The house looked as though it had been burgled. Wilt’s ordinary clothes, along with his shoes, were scattered on the floor of the bedroom and to add to her alarm several drawers in the bedroom had obviously been clumsily searched. The same was true of the desk in his study. Finally, and in its own way most alarming of all, the mail had been opened and lay on a side-table beside the front door. While the quads, still relatively subdued, went upstairs she phoned the Tech only to be told by the Secretary that he hadn’t been seen there and there was no saying where he was. Eva put the phone down and tried the Braintrees’ number. They were bound to know where he was. There was no answer. She pressed the button on the answerphone and heard herself repeatedly telling Henry to phone her in Wilma. She went back upstairs and felt in the pockets of Wilt’s clothes but there was nothing to indicate what he had been doing or where he was. The fact that they were lying in a pile on the floor frightened her. She’d trained him to fold them up carefully and he’d got into the habit of hanging them over the back of a chair. From there she went to the wardrobe and checked his other trousers and jackets. None of them were missing. He must have been wearing something when he left the house. He couldn’t have gone out naked. Eva’s thoughts ran wildly to extremes. Ignoring Penelope’s questions she went back downstairs and phoned the police station.
‘I want to report a missing person,’ she said. ‘My name is Mrs Wilt and I’ve just got back from America and my husband is missing.’
‘When you say missing do you mean—’
‘I’m saying he has disappeared.’
‘In America?’ asked the girl.
‘Not in America. I left him here and I live at 45 Oakhurst Avenue. I’ve just come back and he isn’t here.’
‘If you’ll just hold the line a moment.’ The telephonist could be heard muttering to someone in the background about some ghastly woman and she could understand why her husband had gone missing. ‘I’ll put you through to someone who may be able to help you,’ she said.
‘You lousy bitch, I heard what you just said!’ yelled Eva.
‘Me? I didn’t say anything. And I’ll have you for using offensive language.’
In the end she was answered by Sergeant Yates. ‘Is that Mrs Eva Wilt of 45 Oakhurst Avenue?’
‘Who else do you think it is?’ Eva snapped back.
‘I’m afraid I have some rather bad news for you, Mrs Wilt. Your husband has been in some sort of accident,’ the Sergeant told her. He obviously didn’t like being snapped at. ‘He’s in the Ipford General Hospital and he’s still unconscious. If you …’
But Eva had already slammed the phone down and, having told the quads in her most menacing manner to behave themselves really well, was on her way to the hospital. She parked and stormed through the crowded waiting room to the reception desk, pushing aside a little man who was already there.
‘You’ll just have to wait your turn,’ the girl told her.
‘But my husband has been injured in a serious accident and he’s unconscious. I’ve got to see him.’
‘You’d better try A & E then.’
‘A & E? What’s that?’ Eva demanded.
‘Accident and Emergency. It’s out the main door. You’ll see a sign,’ said the receptionist and attended to the little man.
Eva hurried out the door and turned left. There was no sign of Accident and Emergency there. Cursing the receptionist she tried to the right. It wasn’t there either. In the end she asked a woman with her arm in a sling and was directed to the other end of the hospital.
‘It’s way past the main door. You can’t miss it. I wouldn’t go in, though. It’s absolutely filthy. Dust everywhere.’
This time Eva did find it. The place was filled with children injured in the coach crash. Eva went back to the main door and found herself in what looked like a shopping mall with a restaurant and adjacent tearoom, a boutique, a parfumerie and a book and magazine stall. For a moment she felt quite mad. Then gathering her wits together she headed down a passage following a sign which read ‘Gynaecology’. There were more signs pointing down other corridors further on. Henry wouldn’t be in a gynaecological ward.
Eva stopped a man in a white coat who was carrying a decidedly sinister-looking plastic bucket with a bloodstained cloth over it.
‘Can’t stop now. I’ve got to get this little tot to the incinerator. We’ve got another starting in twenty minutes.’
‘Another baby? That’s lovely,’ said Eva without getting the implication of ‘the incinerator’.
The nurse put her right. ‘Another bloody foetus,’ he said. ‘Take a dekko if you don’t believe me.’
He removed the bloodstained cloth and Eva glanced into the bucket. As the nurse hurried away she fainted and slid down the wall. Opposite her a door opened and a young doctor, a very young doctor, came out. The fact that he was a Lithuanian and had recently attended a seminar on Obesity and Coronary Infarcts didn’t help. Fat women lying unconscious were his chance to show his expertise. Five minutes later Eva Wilt was in the Emergency Heart Unit, had been stripped to her panties, was being given oxygen and was about to be put on a
defibrillator. That didn’t help either. She wasn’t unconscious long. She woke to find a nurse lifting her breasts for a defibrillator pad. Eva promptly hit her and hurled herself off the trolley and grabbed her clothes and was out of the room. She dashed to the toilet and got dressed. She’d come to visit her Henry and nothing was going to stop her. After trying several other wards she traipsed back to Reception. This time she was told that Mr Wilt was in Psychiatry 3.
‘Where’s that?’ Eva asked.
‘On floor 6 at the far end,’ the receptionist told her to get rid of the wretched woman. Eva looked for a lift, failed to find one and had to walk up to floor 6 only to find herself outside Autopsy. Even she knew what an autopsy was. But Henry wasn’t dead. He was in Psychiatry 3. An hour later she found that he wasn’t. In the following two hours she had walked another mile and was furious. So furious in fact that she tackled a senior surgeon and screamed abuse at him. Then because it was getting late she remembered the girls at home. She’d have to go back to see they weren’t up to any mischief and to make supper. In any case she was too exhausted to continue her search for Henry. She’d try again in the morning.
26
But by the time she arrived at the hospital the next morning, Inspector Flint had gone to get a cup of coffee and Wilt was still apparently unconscious. In fact Wilt was considering what the doctor had said.
‘He may have amnesia and have no memory of what happened to him.’ Or words to that effect. Wilt was now definitely in favour of having amnesia. He’d had no intention of making a statement. He’d had an awful night, much of it spent listening to a man on a heart monitor by the door dying. At one o’clock the Night Sister had come to the ward and Wilt had heard her whisper to the Ward Nurse that they’d have to do something about the man because he was coupling and wouldn’t last till morning if they didn’t iron the problem out. Listening to the sounds of the monitor Wilt could hear what she meant. The beeps were most irregular and as the night wore on they got worse, until just before dawn they petered out altogether and he could hear the poor old fellow’s bed being wheeled out into the corridor. For a moment he thought of looking over to see what was going on but there was no point. It would only be morbid curiosity to see the corpse being carted off to the morgue.