Wilt in Nowhere (4 page)

Eva was not having a wonderful time. What she was going through was keeping her wide
awake with worry half the night. After the effusive greetings at the airport from Uncle
Wally and Auntie Joan and their delight at seeing the quads again, they had driven out to
the private jet bearing the logo of Immelmann Enterprises and had climbed aboard. The
jet had been cleared for take-off and presently they were flying west towards Wilma. Below
them the landscape was dotted with lakes and rivers and after a while they were over woods
and hills, with signs of habitation few and far between. The quads peered out of the
windows and to satisfy their curiosity. Uncle Wally put the jet into a dive and
levelled out quite low down so that they could see the ground even better. Eva, who wasn’t
accustomed to flying and had never been up in a small plane before, felt queasy and
frightened. But at least the girls were enjoying the ride and Uncle Wally was enjoying
showing off his flying skills to them.

‘She isn’t as fast as the jets I flew in the Air Force out of Lakenheath, England,’ he
said, ‘but she’s good and manoeuvrable and she covers the ground fast enough for an old man
like me.’

‘Oh, shoot, honey, you ain’t old,’ Auntie Joan said. ‘I don’t like you using that word.
Everybody’s just as old as they feel and the way you feel, Wally, feels pretty good and
young to me. How’s Henry these days, Eva?’

‘Oh, Henry’s just fine,’ said Eva, readily adapting to American.

‘Henry’s a great guy,’ said Wally. ‘You got the makings of a great man there, Evie, you
know that? I guess you girls are mighty proud of your daddy, eh? Having a daddy who’s a
professor is really something.’

Penelope began the process of disillusionment.

‘Dad’s not ambitious,’ she said. ‘He drinks too much.’

Wally said nothing but the plane dipped a little.

‘A guy’s got a right to a little liquor after a hard day’s work,’ he said. ‘That’s what I
always say, isn’t it, Joanie honey?’

Auntie Joan’s smile suggested that that was indeed exactly what he always said. It
also suggested disapproval.

‘I gave up smoking though,’ Wally said. ‘Man, that stuff kills you and no mistake. Feel a
hundred and ten per cent better since I quit.’

‘Dad’s taken up smoking again,’ Samantha told him. ‘He smokes a pipe because he says
everyone is against smoking and no one is going to tell him what to do and what not to
do.’

The plane dipped again.

‘He really says that? Henry really says that? That no one is going to tell him what
not to do?’ said Wally, glancing nervously over his shoulder at the two women. ‘Would you
credit that? And he ain’t much to look at manhoodwise either.’

‘Wally!’ said Auntie Joanie and there was no mistaking her meaning.

‘And you stop speaking about Daddy like that,’ Eva told Samantha with equal
firmness.

‘Hell, I didn’t mean nothing by it,’ said Wally. ‘Manhood is just an expression.’

‘Yeah, and yours isn’t anything to write home about either,’ said Auntie Joanie. ‘Cracks
like that just aren’t called for.’

Uncle Wally said nothing. They flew on and finally Josephine spoke up.

‘Boys aren’t the only people with manhoods,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a sort of manhood too.
It’s not a very big one though. It’s called a–’

‘Shut up!’ Eva shouted. ‘We don’t want to hear. Do you hear me, Josephine? Nobody’s
interested.’

‘But Miss Sprockett said it was quite normal and some women prefer–’ A swift cuff from
Eva ended this exposition of Miss Sprockett’s opinion of the function of the clitoris
in one-to-one encounters between women. All the same it was clear that Uncle Wally was
still interested.

‘Gee, Miss Sprockett? That’s some name for a woman.’

‘She’s our biology teacher and she’s not like most women,’ Samantha told him. ‘She
believes in practising masturbation. She says it’s safer than having sex with men.’

This time there could be no doubting Wally’s shock or the aerodynamic effect of Eva’s
sudden attempt to reach Samantha and shut her up. As the plane lurched, Wally fought to
control it and wasn’t helped by the blow on the side of his head intended for Samantha who
had seen it coming and had ducked.

‘Shit!’ shouted Wally. ‘For Chrissake everyone sit still. You want to ditch this
kite?’

Even Auntie Joanie was alarmed. ‘Eva, do sit down!’ she yelled.

Eva sat back in her seat with a grim look on her face. Everything she had hoped to
prevent was beginning to happen. She sat looking lividly at Samantha and willed her to
go dumb at least temporarily. She was going to have to give the quads a good talking-to.
For the rest of the flight there was a grim silence in the aircraft and an hour later they
touched down at the little airfield at Wilma. The Immelmann Enterprises stretch limo in
red and gold was waiting for them. So, discreetly hidden in an unmarked car, were two men
from the Drug Enforcement Agency who watched as the Wilt children climbed out of the plane.
In the back sat a local cop.

‘You reckon?’

‘Could be. Sam said they were in the same row ‘longside the guy Sol Campito. Who’s the fat
guy?’

‘Hell, that’s Wally Immelmann. Runs the biggest plant in Wilma.’

‘Anything on him? Like he’s done time inside.’

‘On Wally? Hell no, he’s clean as you can be in his business,’ said the cop. ‘Solid
citizen. Pays his dues. Votes Republican and subscribes to everything he can. Backed
Herb Reich for Congress.’

‘So that makes him clean?’

‘I didn’t say he was clean as a hound’s tooth. Just that he’s a big wheel round these parts.
I don’t see him into drug running.’

‘Just another fucking good ole boy? That right?’ said the DEA man who was clearly not a
Southerner.

‘I guess so. I don’t mix in those circles. I mean, man, that’s money.’

‘And how’s his business doing right now?’

‘Same as everything in Wilma. Pretty average, I guess. I don’t know. He downsized last
year but the latest is he’s diversifying into things outside vacuum pumps.’

‘So he could be…Shit, look at the one with the obesity problem.’

‘That’s his wife, Mrs Immelmann,’ said the cop.

‘Yeah, well it would be, wouldn’t it? Who’s the other one needs liposuction?’

The second DEA man checked the file.

‘Name of Wilt, Mrs Eva Wilt, mother of the four pack, 45 Oakhurst Avenue, Ipford,
England. Want to put out a check call on her?’

‘They were in the same row with Sol. Could be he was the decoy. Yeah, call Atlanta and
they can decide.’

They watched as the limo drove off. After it had gone the local cop got out and drove down
to the Sheriff’s office.

‘What’s with those drug-busting shits?’ asked the Sheriff who resented Northerners
almost as much as he resented being bossed around by the Feds. ‘Come marching into Wilma
like they own the whole fucking place.’

‘You ain’t going to believe this. They got Wally Immelmann tagged for a drug
dealer.’

The Sheriff stared at him. The man was right. He didn’t believe him.

‘Wally into running drugs? You got to be joking! Oh my God, they must be out of their
fucking heads. If Wally got to hear he was on a fucking dealer suspicion list he’d go
apeshit. Would he ever. Like we got Mount St Helens volcano right here in Wispoen County
spewing brimstone. Jesus.’ He stopped and pondered for a moment. ‘What evidence they
got?’

‘The fatso with the four girls. Dogs picked them out at the airport. And Wally is moving
into pharmaceuticals. It fits.’

‘And the woman? Why not hold her for questioning?’

‘I don’t know. Wanted to see her contact, I guess. British. Name of Wilt.’

The Sheriff groaned.

‘Where those two goons from, Herb?’ he said presently.

‘Unit down Atlanta. They–’

‘I got that already. Like, where are they from? What’s their names and their home
towns?’

‘Don’t give no names, Sheriff. Flash their IDs and credentials from Drug Enforcement
and come to the high and mighty. Those boys in that game don’t have real names. Not good for
their health, I’ve heard. Got numbers. One’s from New Jersey, that I do know.’

‘New Jersey? So how come the Yankee’s doing duty down South? Don’t trust us local
cops?’

‘They don’t do that, and that’s for sure. Wanted to know if Mr Immelmann was a good ole
boy like it was a dirty word.’

‘Said that, did they?’ said the Sheriff grimly. ‘Nice manners these Northern assholes
have got. Come on down and think they run the place.’

‘And the other one…name of Palowski, yeah that’s right. I saw that much. He said Mrs
Immelmann was so fat she should be into liposuction. Like that was a dirty word too.’

‘It is,’ said the Sheriff. ‘OK, OK. They want to walk into a fire-storm with Wally
Immelmann, I’m not going to stop them. They’re on their own from now on. We just say Yessir
and Nossir and let the bastards fuck up real good.’

‘No co-operation, sir?’

The Sheriff sat back in his chair and smiled meaningfully.

‘Let’s just say we let them draw their own conclusions. Ain’t our asses going to be
gored if they hit Wally. Good ole boy indeed. I reckon he’ll good ole boy them so fast they
won’t have time to shit themselves.’

For five days Wilt wandered happily along little country lanes, across fields, through
woods, down bridle-paths and beside streams and rivers, doing what he had hoped to do:
discover a different England remote from the traffic and ugliness of big cities and
the sort of life he led in Ipford. At midday he would stop at a pub and have a couple of
pints and a sandwich and in the evening find some small hotel or B&B where he could get a
square meal and a room for the night. The prices were reasonable and the food varied but he
wasn’t looking for anything modern or luxurious and the people were friendly and
helpful. In any case, he was always so tired–he’d never done so much walking in his life
before–that he didn’t care whether a bed was comfortable or not. And when one landlady
insisted rather unpleasantly that he take his muddy boots off and not make a mess of her
carpets, he wasn’t bothered. Nor did he ever feel lonely. He’d come away to be alone, and
apart from a few old men in pubs who struck up conversations with him and asked him where he
was heading, and were puzzled when he replied that he had no idea, he spoke to hardly
anyone. And the fact was that he really had no idea where he was or where he was going. He
deliberately didn’t want to know. It was enough to lean on a five-bar gate and watch a
farmer on a tractor mowing hay, or to sit by a river in the sunshine and stare at the
water drifting by. Once he glimpsed a dark shape glide through the grass on the far bank and
disappear into the river, and supposed it must be an otter. Occasionally, when he had
had rather more than his usual two pints of beer for lunch, he would find a sheltered spot
behind a hedge and, having made sure there were no cattle in the field (he was
particularly worried about meeting a bull), he would lean his head against the knapsack
and snooze for half an hour before going on. There was never any need to hurry; he could
take all the time in the world because he was going nowhere.

So it continued until on the sixth day the weather turned nasty in the late afternoon.
The landscape had changed too and Wilt found himself crossing a stretch of spongy heath land
with marshy areas he had to avoid. Several miles ahead there were some low hills but the
emptiness and silence of the place had something faintly ominous about it and for the
first time he began to feel faintly uneasy. It was almost as though he was being followed
but when he looked back, as he did every now and then, there was nothing menacing in sight
and no cover for anything to hide in. All the same the silence oppressed him and he
hurried on. And then it began to rain. Thunder rumbled over the wooded hillside behind
him and occasionally he caught a flash of lightning. The rain began to lash down, the
lightning grew closer and Wilt got out his anorak and wished it lived up to its maker’s
promise that it was waterproof. Shortly afterwards he blundered into a waterlogged
area where he slipped and sat down in the muddy water with a squelch. Wet and miserable he
hurried on still faster, conscious that the lightning was now very close. By this time he
was near to the low rise beyond which he could see the tops of trees. Once there he would at
least find some shelter. It took him half an hour and by then he was wet through, wet and cold
and thoroughly uncomfortable. He was also hungry. For once he had failed to find a pub
and have some lunch. Finally he was in the wood and had slumped down against the trunk of an
old oak tree. The crash of lightning and the roll of thunder were the closest he had ever
been to a storm and he was frankly frightened. He rummaged in his knapsack and found the
bottle of Scotch he’d brought for emergencies. And in Wilt’s opinion his present
situation definitely came into the category of an emergency. Above him the darkening
sky was made darker still by the clouds, and the wood itself was a dark one. Wilt swigged
from the bottle, felt better and swigged again. Only then did it occur to him that
sheltering under a tree was the worst thing to do in a thunderstorm. He no longer cared.
He was not going back to that eerie heath with its bogs and waterlogged pools.

By the time he’d swigged several more times from the bottle he was feeling almost
philosophical. After all, if one came on a walking tour to nowhere in particular and
without really adequate preparations, one had to expect these sudden changes in the
weather. And the storm was passing. The wind was beginning to fall. The branches of the
trees above him no longer thrashed around and the lightning and thunder had moved on. Wilt
counted the seconds between the flash and the thunder. Someone had once told him each
second represented one mile. Wilt drank some more to celebrate the fact that by that
calculation the eye of the storm was six miles away. But still the rain continued. Even
under the oak it ran down his face. Wilt no longer cared. Finally, when the seconds
between flash and crash had reached ten, he put the bottle away in the knapsack and got to
his feet. He had to push on. He couldn’t spend the night in the wood or, if he did, he’d be
likely to go down with a bout of pneumonia. It was only when he’d managed to get the
knapsack on his back–and this took some doing–and he took a few steps forward, that he
realised how drunk he was. Drinking neat whisky on an empty stomach hadn’t been at all
sensible. Wilt tried to see what time it was but it was too dark to see the face of his
watch. After half an hour during which he had twice fallen over logs, he sat down again and
got out the bottle. If he was going to spend the night soaked to the skin in the middle of
some benighted wood he might as well get thoroughly pissed. Then to his surprise he saw
the lights of a vehicle through the trees to his left. It was a good distance away but at
least it indicated that civilisation in the shape of a road existed down there. Wilt had
begun to value civilisation. He stuffed the bottle into the pocket of the anorak and set
off again. He had to reach that road and be near people. He no longer cared if he couldn’t
find a village. A barn or even a pigsty would do as well as a B&B. Just somewhere to lie
down and sleep was enough for him now and in the morning he would be able to see where he was
going. For the moment it was impossible. Weaving his way downhill he banged into trees
and blundered through bracken but he made progress. Then suddenly his foot caught in the
root of a thorn tree and he was falling head first into space. For a moment his knapsack,
caught in the thorn, almost stopped his progress. Wilt continued falling, landed on his
head in the back of Bert Addle’s pick-up and passed out. It was Thursday night.

Across the lane and a field, Bert Addle was watching Meldrum Manor from the gate to the
walled garden. He had driven down in a pick-up he’d borrowed from a mate who’d gone to
Ibiza for a spree of drugs and booze and, if he had any energy left, some sex and a few
fights. Bert was beginning to wonder if the lights in the house would ever go out and the
bastard Battleby and Mrs Rottecombe go off to the Country Club. All he had to do now was
get the keys from the beam in the barn and let himself in through the kitchen door when
Battleby left. Finally at 10.45 the lights went out and he saw the couple shut the back
door and drive off. Bert waited to make sure they’d had enough time to get to the Country
Club. He’d already put on a pair of surgical gloves and half an hour later he was inside
the kitchen and using his torch upstairs to find the cupboard in the passage opposite the
bedroom. It was precisely where Martha had told him and in it were the things he needed. He
went downstairs with them and found the plastic garbage bin in the kitchen. He pulled it away
from the sink, and put some oily rags and a gumboot he’d brought with him in it. ‘There’s got
to be plenty of smoke to attract the Fire Brigade,’ Aunt Martha had told him and Bert meant
to see that she got what she wanted. The gumboot would smoke and smell to high heaven as
well. But first he had to move the Range Rover out of the yard and put the porno mags and some
of the other S&M equipment in the front seat. That done and the Range Rover’s doors
locked he returned to the kitchen and lit the oily rag. As it began to smoulder he went out
through the back door, took the keys out of his pocket and locked it. He whipped across the
yard into the barn and put them back on the beam. Then he was running back to the pick-up,
threw the hood and two whips and a couple of porn magazines into the back and drove up the
lane to the road a mile beyond. His next visit had to be Leyline Lodge. The Rottecombes’
house was two miles further on and conveniently secluded. No lights were on. Bert drove
on, stopped, got out and reached over the back to get the whips and hood and was horrified to
feel Wilt’s leg. For a moment he questioned his own findings. A man lying in the back of
the pick-up? When had the bastard got in? Must have been in the lane. Bert wasn’t wasting
any more time. He threw the S&M gear into the back garage, let down the back of the
pick-up and hauled Wilt out with a thump on to the concrete floor. Then he was in the
driver’s seat and had left Leyline Lodge in a hurry. It was a wise move.

At Meldrum Manor Mrs Meadows’s hopes that smoke would attract the attention of the Fire
Brigade had exceeded her wildest dreams. They’d exceeded her worst fears as well. She had
failed to take the Filipino maid’s extravagant taste in exotic and extremely pungent
air fresheners, and Battleby’s detestation of them, into account. The previous
morning he had hurled six pressurised cans of Jasmine Flower, Rose Blossom and Oriental
Splendour into the garbage bin and told her never to get any more. As a result of Bert
Addle’s activities they wouldn’t be needed. The smoke he had found so satisfying when
the gumboot began to smoulder had slowly but surely turned into a raging fire. By the
time it had reached the pressurised cans the Oriental Splendour lived up to its name and
exploded. The other cans followed suit. With a roar that hurled flaming plastic across
the kitchen and blew out the windows they announced to Meldrum Slocum that the Manor was on
fire.

In her cottage Martha Meadows was busily providing herself with an alibi. She’d spent
the earlier part of the evening as usual in the Meldrum Arms and had then invited Mr and
Mrs Sawlie round for a spot of sloe gin she’d made the winter before. They were sitting
comfortably in front of the telly when the cans exploded.

‘Someone’s car has backfired,’ said Mrs Sawlie.

‘Sounded more like a grenade to me,’ said her husband. Mr Sawlie had been in the War. Five
minutes later the overheated gas bottle for the kitchen stove reached bursting point.
This time there could be no doubt that something closely resembling a bomb had gone off. A
red glow in the direction of the Manor was followed by flames.

‘Gawd help us,’ said Mr Sawlie. ‘The Manor’s on fire. Best call the Fire Brigade.’

There was no need. In the distance came the sound of Fire Engines. The Sawlies crowded
out into the street to watch the blaze. Behind them Martha Meadows helped herself to a very
large sloe gin. What if Bert had got himself killed? She gulped down the gin and prayed.