Wilt in Nowhere (18 page)

Inspector Flint arrived in his office in a state of confusion. His conversation
with Eva had confirmed him in his belief that whatever mess Henry Wilt had got himself
into he was not responsible for the death of Harold Rottecombe. Tripping on the gravel
and then being trampled over by a herd of maddened lunatics had given him fresh insight
into Wilt’s inconsequential view of life. Things just happened to people for no good
reason and, while Flint had previously believed that every effect had to have a
rational cause, he now realised that the purely accidental was the norm. In short,
nothing made sense. The world was as mad as the inmates of the hospital he had just
left.

In an effort to regain something approaching equanimity he ordered Sergeant Yates to
bring him the notes on the Rottecombe murder case he’d received from the Chief
Superintendent who had been cross-examining Ruth the Ruthless. Flint read them through
and came to the conclusion that, far from being involved in the death of the Shadow
Minister for Social Enhancement, Wilt had himself been the victim of an assault.
Everything pointed to the Shadow Minister’s wife. Wilt’s blood in the garage and in the
Volvo, the fact that she was seen in Ipford New Estate and caught on the motorway camera
in the middle of the night, and in Flint’s opinion that she had been on sado-masochistic
terms with the paedophile ‘Bobby Beat Me’ Battleby whose house had been torched. In
addition there was a motive. Wilt had been in the lane behind Meldrum Manor. His jeans had
been found there two days after the fire but they hadn’t been there when the police had
searched the lane on the day after the fire. It followed that they had been put there in
order to implicate him in the arson. Finally and most damning of all his knapsack,
socks and boots had been recovered from the attic in Leyline Lodge and he was hardly
likely to have put them there himself. No, everything pointed to Mrs Rottecombe. Wilt
had no reason to kill her husband and if the Shadow Minister suspected or, worse still,
knew his wife had connived in the fire, she had every reason to want him dead. At this point
Flint spotted a flaw. Wilt hadn’t been found dead. He’d certainly been assaulted by some
young thugs on the New Estate and the Rottecombe bitch had brought him there without his
jeans or walking boots. Why had they been removed? That was the mystery. He went back to the
theory that she’d needed them to indicate that he’d been involved in the arson of the
Manor. But why leave them in the lane two days later than the fire? That only deepened the
mystery. The Inspector gave up.

In Hereford Police Station the Chief Superintendent, urged on by Downing Street,
hadn’t. He no longer believed Wilt had had anything to do with the torching of Meldrum
Manor or the death of the Shadow Minister. He had ordered the police at Oston to find
witnesses to Wilt’s journey and to trace his route as far as they could. ‘You know where he
stayed each night,’ he told the Inspector there. ‘What I want now is for your men to check
where he bought his lunch and get as clear an idea as you can where his walk took him and where
it ended and when.’

‘You talk as if I have an army of constables here,’ the Inspector protested. ‘I have
precisely seven, and two are extras brought in from the next county. Why don’t you charge
this man Wilt?’

‘Because he was the victim of an assault, not the perpetrator of one. And I don’t mean
he was just mugged in Ipford. He was bleeding from a head wound when he was in the Leyline
Lodge garage and when she drove him down to Ipford. He’s not on the suspect list any
more.’

‘So what does it matter where he went?’

‘Because he may have been a witness to the fire and who started it. Why else did this
woman take him down there? In any case, he has amnesia. Can’t remember who or what hit
him. That’s the official psychiatric report.’

‘What a hell of a case,’ said the Inspector. ‘I’m dashed if I understand it.’

Which was exactly what could be said for Ruth the Ruthless. Deprived of sleep,
endlessly cross-examined and made to drink extremely strong coffee, she was desperate
and unable to give any coherent answers to the questions being put to her. To make
matters worse she had been charged with hindering the course of justice, falsifying a
birth certificate and, thanks to Battleby’s seriously damaging allegations,
purchasing the paedophile magazines he revelled in. The two so-called journalists Butch
Cassidy and the Flashgun Kid had had writs issued in relation to the attacks by Wilfred
and Pickles and the media were having a field-day smearing her in the tabloids. Even the
broadsheet papers were using her reputation to attack the Opposition.

At 45 Oakhurst Avenue Wilt was having something of a hard time too, convincing Eva that
he didn’t know where his walking tour had taken him.

‘You didn’t want to know where you were going? You mean you’ve forgotten?’ she said.

Wilt sighed. ‘Yes,’ he said. It was easier to lie than to try to explain.

‘And you told me you had to work for a course next term on Communism and Castro,’ Eva
persisted. ‘I suppose you’ve forgotten that too.’

‘No, I haven’t.’

‘So you took those awful books with you?’

Wilt looked miserably at the books on the shelf and had to admit he’d left them behind.
‘I only meant to be away a fortnight.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

Wilt’s sigh was audible this time. It would be impossible to explain his wish to see
the English countryside without any literary associations to her. Eva would never
understand and almost certainly would suppose there was another woman involved.
‘Suppose’ was too mild a word: she’d be certain. Wilt went on to the offensive.

‘What brought you back so quickly from Wilma? I thought you were going to be over there
for six weeks?’ he asked.

Eva hesitated. In her own way she was suffering from self-induced amnesia about the
events in Wilma and in any case, coming home to learn her Henry had been mugged and was in
hospital and incapable of recognising her had been so traumatic, she hadn’t had a spare
second to consider what had caused Uncle Wally to have an infarct and Auntie Joan to
turn so nasty and throw her and the quads out of the house. The only answer she could come up
with was that their return had been necessitated by Wally Immelmann’s two heart
attacks.

‘Couldn’t have happened to a better bloke,’ said Wilt. ‘Mind you, the way he swilled
vodka with his steak at the Tavern in the Park and followed it up with that murderous
drink he called A Bed of Nails, I’m surprised he’s lived so long.’

And with the happy thought that the ghastly Wally was finally getting his
comeuppance he went to his study and made a long and uncomplimentary entry about Mr
Immelmann in his diary. He hoped it would be the bastard’s obituary.

In the two separate bedrooms which they occupied at 45 Oakhurst Avenue the quads were
each compiling dossiers for Miss Sprockett which, had he seen them, would definitely have
finished Uncle Wally off. Josephine was concentrating on his sexual relations with
Maybelle with emphasis on ‘forced unnatural acts’; Penelope, who had a natural gift for
mathematics and statistics, was listing the vastly different rates of pay between
whites and blacks at Immelmann Enterprises and other industries in Wilma; Samantha was
comparing execution numbers in various states and Wally’s expressed preference for
public hangings and floggings to be mandatorily shown on prime-time television
instead of less inhumane methods; and finally Emmeline was describing his
collection of weapons and their use in language that was calculated to horrify the
teachers at the Convent, in particular Wally’s description of flame-throwers and
‘barbecuing Nips’. All in all they were ensuring that the havoc they had caused in Wilma
itself would be compounded by the justified disgust their dossiers would provoke among
the parents of the girls at the Convent and their friends in Ipford.

Down at the police station Inspector Flint was enjoying himself too, berating Hodge
and the two men from the US Embassy.

‘Brilliant,’ he said. ‘You come in with Hodge here and refuse to identify yourselves
clearly or explain why you’ve come and expect me to kowtow to you. And now you’re back to
tell me there’s not a shred of evidence of any drugs in this man Immelmann’s place. Well,
let me tell you, this isn’t the Gulf and I’m not an Iraqi.’ By the time he’d finished working
off his feelings he was in a good humour. The Americans weren’t but there was nothing they
could say. They left and Flint could hear them calling him an arrogant Brit and, best of
all, blaming Hodge for misleading them. He went down to the canteen and had a coffee. For
the first time he appreciated Wilt’s view of the world. Ruth Rottecombe still
maintained, in spite of the pressure brought to bear on her, that she had no idea who, if
anyone, had murdered her husband, and the Scotland Yard detectives were at long last
beginning to believe her. Harold Rottecombe’s shoe and the sock with the hole in it had
been found, the shoe wedged in the stream and the sock on the ground in the field. Much as they
wanted a conviction, they were forced to admit that his death might well have been purely
accidental.

Wilt’s account of getting drunk on whisky in the wood had been substantiated by the
discovery of an empty bottle of Famous Grouse with his fingerprints on it under a tree.
His route had been worked out by the police in Oston; there had been a thunderstorm and
everything fitted his account exactly. All that remained was to uncover the person
who had set fire to the Manor House but that was proving impossible too. Bert Addle had
burnt his boots and the clothes he had been wearing, and had washed and scrubbed the pick-up
he had borrowed. The friend who owned it and who had been in Ibiza on holiday at the time had
no idea it had been used in his absence.

In short, everything added to the mystery. The police had questioned everyone in
Meldrum Slocum who had been connected with the Manor and the Battleby family in the hope
that they would know of anyone who was in league with ‘Beat Me Bobby’ to torch the place for
him. But Battleby was so thoroughly disliked as a boorish drunk that nothing came of
that line of questioning. Had anyone a sufficient grudge against the man? Mrs Meadows
nervously admitted that he had sacked her but Mr and Mrs Sawlie were adamant they were with
her when the fire started and for an hour before she had been in the pub. Above all the
Filipino maid was a major suspect because of the pressurised cans of Oriental Splendour
and Rose Blossom which had contributed so explosively to the conflagration, but she
had the perfect alibi: it had been her day off and she had spent it applying to become a
trainee nurse in Hereford. She hadn’t got back to Meldrum Slocum until the following
morning because the train had broken down.

Reading the report, Flint could find nothing to explain the arson or the possible
murder of the Shadow Minister. The confusion would never be unravelled. For the first
time in his long career as a policeman he began to appreciate Henry Wilt’s refusal to
see things in terms of good and evil or black and white. There were grey areas in between and
the world was dominated by them to a far greater extent than he had ever imagined. It was
a revelation to the Inspector and a liberating one. Outside, the sun shone brightly
down. Flint got up and went out into that sunshine and walked cheerfully across the
park.

In the summer-house in the back garden at Oakhurst Avenue Wilt sat contentedly,
stroking Tibby the tail-less cat happy in the knowledge that this was his own version of
Old England and that he would always remain a suburban man. Adventures were for the
adventurous and he had strayed from his proper role in life as husband to Eva with her
multitude of temporary enthusiasms, and as the father of four uncontrollable girls.
He would never again venture from the routine of the Tech, his chats over pints of bitter
with Peter Braintree at the Duck and Dragon, and Eva’s complaints that he drank too much
and had no ambition. Next year they would go to the Lake District for their summer
holiday.

The End