Wilt in Nowhere (5 page)

At Meldrum Manor the firemen fought the blaze in vain. The fire had spread from the
kitchen to the rest of the house and they had been delayed by the Range Rover in the gate of
the back yard. In the end they had been forced to break a side window to unlock the door and
the car alarm had gone off. More delay and the discovery of the S&M mags and equipment
on the front seat. By the time the police arrived the source of the fire had been
discovered.

‘As clear a case of arson as I’ve ever seen,’ the Fire Chief told the Superintendent
when he arrived. ‘Not a shred of doubt about it, not in my mind at any rate. The
investigators will get the full evidence. Plastic dustbin in the middle of the room and
a wall cupboard full of spray cans. The bloke must have been mad to think he could get away
with it.’

‘There’s no chance it could have been an accident?’

‘All the doors locked and the windows blown outwards and it’s an accident? Not on your
nelly.’

‘The windows blown outwards?’

‘Like a bomb went off. And some people in the village saw the fireball. Besides,
whoever set this little lot going, had a key to the house. Like I said the bloke had to be
mad or drunk.’

The Superintendent was thinking the same thing only more so. Mad and drunk.

‘And take a dekko at what’s in the Range Rover,’ said the Fire Chief. They went down to the
road and looked at the magazines on the front seat. ‘I’ve seen some filth in my time–people
keep some pretty foul porn in their houses–but never anything like this. Bloke ought to be
prosecuted. Not my business, of course.’

The Superintendent looked at the magazines and agreed about prosecuting. He had in
mind a charge of being in Possession of Obscene Material. He didn’t like porn at the
best of times but when it involved sadism and little children he was savage. He didn’t like
leather straps and handcuffs either.

‘You didn’t touch anything?’ he asked.

‘Wouldn’t if you paid me. I’ve got kids of my own, leastways my daughters have. I’d flog
the bastards who do that sort of thing.’

The Superintendent agreed. He’d never seen porn as foul as this lot. In any case, he
didn’t like Bob Battleby one little bit. The man had a rotten reputation and a vile
temper. And the clear indication of arson was very interesting indeed. Rumour had it
that Battleby had lost a small fortune gambling on the stock market and had been living
off cash the General’s wife had left him. He’d have to look into Battleby’s financial
position. There was talk that he was seen too often in the company of the local MP’s
wife, Ruth Rottecombe, and the Superintendent didn’t like her one little bit either. On
the other hand, the Battlebys had influence–and Members of Parliament, particularly
Shadow Ministers and their wives, had to be handled with kid gloves. He looked at the gag
and the handcuffs and shook his head. There were some real weirdos and swine in the
world.

On the road in front of the house Bob Battleby stared in disbelief at the smouldering
shell that had been the family home for over two hundred years. The news that the Manor was
on fire had reached him at the Country Club and, being even drunker than usual, he had
greeted it with disbelief. The Club Secretary had to be joking.

‘Pull the other one. It can’t be. There’s no one there.’

‘You had better speak to the Fire Brigade yourself,’ the Secretary told him. He
disliked Battleby when he was sober. The man was an arrogant snob and invariably rude.
When he was drunk and had lost money in a game of poker he was infinitely worse.

‘You had better be right, bloody right,’ Battleby told him threateningly. ‘If this is
a false alarm, I’ll see you get the fucking sack and…’

But whatever he’d meant to say was left unsaid. He slumped into a chair and dropped his
glass. Mrs Rottecombe took the call in the Secretary’s office and heard the news of the
fire apparently without emotion. She was a hard woman and her association with Bob
Battleby was based solely on self-interest.

In spite of his drinking and his general arrogance he was socially useful. He was a
Battleby and the family name counted a great deal when it came to votes. Influence and
power mattered to Ruth Rottecombe. She had married Harold Rottecombe shortly after he
was first elected to Parliament and she had sensed he was an ambitious man who only
needed a strong woman behind him to succeed. Ruth saw herself as just such a woman. She
did what had to be done and had no scruples. Self-preservation came first in her mind and
sex didn’t come into her marriage. She’d had enough sex in her younger days. Power was all
that mattered now. Besides, Harold was away in Westminster all week and she was sure he had
his own peculiar sexual inclinations. What was important was that he kept his safe seat
in Parliament and remained a Shadow Minister and, if that meant keeping in with Bob
Battleby and satisfying his sado-masochistic fantasies by tying him up and whipping
him on Thursday nights, she was perfectly prepared to do it. In fact, she got
considerable satisfaction from the act. It was better than staying at home and being
bored to death by all the inane activities like hunting and shooting and attending bridge
parties and coffee mornings and talking about gardening that country life seemed to
involve. So she took her two bull terriers for walks and was careful not to dress too
smartly. And by acting as Bob’s driver and minder she supposed his family must be
grateful to her. Not that she had any illusions about what they really thought of her. As
she put it to herself, they owed her, and one day when she was safely installed in London
and the Government had a really solid majority she would see to it that they paid her
back with due deference.

But now as she put the phone down she had the feeling that a crisis was looming. If Bob,
through some act of drunken carelessness like leaving a pan on the stove, had set the Manor
on fire, there would be hell to pay. She left the office thoughtfully and went back to
him.

‘I’m sorry, Bob, but it is true. The house is on fire. We’d better go.’

‘On fire? Can’t bloody be. It’s a listed building. Built two hundred years ago. Houses
that old don’t catch fire. Not like the modern rubbish they put up nowadays.’

Mrs Rottecombe ignored the implied insult to her own house and with the Club
Secretary’s help got him up from the chair and out to her Volvo estate.

It was only now as he stood swaying in the roadway surrounded by fire hoses and stared
at the smoking shell of the beautiful house–fires were burning in the interior and
being doused by the firemen when they flared up again–that some sense of reality returned
to Beastly Battleby.

‘Oh God, what are the family going to say?’ he whined. ‘I mean, the family portraits and
everything. Two Gainsboroughs and a Constable. And the fucking furniture. Oh shit! And
they weren’t insured.’

He was either sweating profusely or weeping. It was difficult in the dim light to
tell which. He was still drunk and maudlin. Mrs Rottecombe said nothing. She had despised
him before; now she had nothing but utter contempt. She should never have associated
with the wimp.

‘It was probably the wiring,’ she said finally. ‘When did you have it rewired last?’

‘Rewired? I don’t know. Twelve or thirteen years ago. Something like that. Nothing wrong
with the bloody wiring.’

They were interrupted by the police Superintendent.

‘A terrible tragedy, Mr Battleby. A tragic loss.’

Battleby turned and looked at him belligerently. A sudden flare-up in what had been
the library illuminated his suffused face.

‘What’s it got to do with you? Not your bloody loss,’ he said.

‘Not mine personally, no, sir. I meant for you and the county, sir.’

The Superintendent’s deference was tinged with hidden anger. He would lard his
questions with ’sirs’ and take his time. No need to get up Mrs Rottecombe’s nose. On the
other hand, now was the time to see Battleby’s reaction to the filth in the Range
Rover.

‘I wonder if you’d mind stepping round to the back, sir?’

‘What the hell for? Why don’t you just bugger off. It’s not your fucking house.’

Mrs Rottecombe intervened. ‘Now, Bob, the Inspector is only trying to help.’

The Superintendent ignored his demotion. ‘It’s a question of identification,
sir,’ he said and watched carefully.

Mrs Rottecombe was shocked but the drunken Battleby misunderstood. ‘What the fuck!
You know me already. Known me for bloody years.’

‘Not you, sir,’ the Superintendent said and paused significantly. ‘There’s something
else.’

‘Something else, Chief Superintendent?’ Mrs Rottecombe corrected her previous
mistake. There was genuine anxiety in her voice now.

The Superintendent took advantage of it. He nodded slowly and added, ‘A bad
business, I’m afraid. Not at all pleasant.’

‘Surely not someone dead…’

The Superintendent didn’t reply. He led the way round to the Range Rover, stepping
over hose-pipes and with the acrid smell of smoke in their nostrils. Battleby stumbled
after them. Mrs Rottecombe wasn’t helping him now. The smell and the Superintendent’s
sinister emphasis was playing on her imagination. In the darkness the Range Rover might
have been an ambulance. Several policemen stood nearby. Only when they got closer did
she see it was Bob’s vehicle. So did he and protested.

‘What the devil’s it doing out here?’ he demanded.

The Superintendent answered with his own question. ‘I assume you always keep it
locked, sir?’

‘Of course I do. I’m not a damned fool. Don’t want it stolen, do I?’

‘And you locked it tonight, sir?’

‘What do you think? Asking dumb questions like that,’ said Battleby. ‘Of course I locked
it.’

‘Just making sure, sir. You see, the firemen had to break the side window to move it out
into the road, sir.’ There could be no mistaking the purpose of the repeated ’sir’, at
least not for Mrs Rottecombe. It was intended to provoke and it succeeded.

‘What the fuck did they do that for? That’s breaking and entering. They had no right
to–’

‘Because you had locked it, sir, as you have just admitted. The fire engines couldn’t
get into the yard, sir,’ said the Superintendent. More provocation. He said it slowly
as though explaining the matter to a backward child. ‘And now, sir, if you’d be so good as
to give me the keys I’ll–’

But Battleby had been baited far enough. ‘Oh, fuck off, copper,’ he said, ‘and mind your
own business. My bloody house burns to the ground and all you want to do is–’

‘Give him the keys, Bob,’ said Mrs Rottecombe firmly. Battleby swore again and groped
in his pockets and finally found them. He tossed them towards the Superintendent who
picked them off the ground and made a show of unlocking the door on the passenger’s
side.

‘If you wouldn’t mind, sir, I’d like you to look at this material, sir,’ he said,
blocking Mrs Rottecombe’s view and switching on the interior light. Lying on the seat
beside the gag and the handcuffs were the magazines. The Superintendent stood back and
let Battleby see them. For a moment he gaped at them.

‘Who the fuck put them there?’

‘I was hoping you could tell me that, sir,’ said the Superintendent and moved away so
that Mrs Rottecombe could see the collection. Her reaction was more informative. It
was also more calculated.

‘Oh, Bob, how revolting! Where on earth did you buy that filth?’

Battleby turned his bloated face on her lividly. ‘Where did I buy it? I didn’t buy it
anywhere. I don’t know what it’s doing there.’

‘Are you saying someone gave it to you, sir? If so, would mind telling me who–’

‘No, I’m fucking not,’ Battleby shouted, totally losing control of his temper. Mrs
Rottecombe backed away from him. She knew now that she had to distance herself from him.
Being the friend of a man who had pictures of children being raped and tortured was the
last thing she needed. Tying Bob up and whipping him was one thing but sadistic
paedophilia…And the police were definitely involved now. She wanted out. The
Superintendent took a step closer to Battleby and peered into his purple face and
bloodshot eyes.

‘If you didn’t buy this material and no one gave it to you, just tell me how it happens
to be in your car, your locked car, sir. You tell me that. You’re not suggesting it got in
there by itself, are you, sir?’

There was no doubting his sarcasm now. This was interrogation proper. Mrs
Rottecombe made an attempt to get away.

‘If you don’t mind…’ she began but the Superintendent’s tactics had achieved the
object he had been hoping for. Battleby took a drunken swing at his face. The
Superintendent made no attempt to dodge the blow; it struck him full on the nose and blood
ran down his chin. He was almost smiling. The next moment Battleby’s arms were behind his
back, he was handcuffed and a large Sergeant was frogmarching him to a police car.

‘I think we had better continue this interview in a calmer atmosphere,’ said the
Superintendent, not bothering to wipe the blood from his face. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to
accompany us too, Mrs Rottecombe. I know it’s very late but we’ll need a statement from
you. It’s not just a case of assaulting a police officer in the course of his duty.
There’s Possession of Obscene Material under the Act as well. You were a witness to
everything that occurred. And there is another matter, possibly a more serious
one.’

Mrs Rottecombe crossed to her Volvo and followed the police cars to the police
station in Oston in a state of controlled fury. Bob Battleby was going to get no help
from her.

‘You’re not going to like this, Flint,’ Superintendent Hodge of the Drug Squad in
Ipford said with all the glee of a man who was finally being proved right, and that at the
expense of a man he thoroughly disliked. He settled his backside on the edge of
Inspector Flint’s desk to emphasise the point.

‘Don’t see how I am,’ said Flint. ‘Don’t tell me they’re putting you back on the beat. I
mean, that would really hurt me.’

The Superintendent smiled nastily. ‘Remember what you told me about Wilt not being
into drugs? Said the blighter wasn’t that sort. Well, I’ve got news for you. The Drug
Enforcement Agency in the States has faxed an inquiry on Mrs Wilt in a drug-dealing
connection. What do you say to that?’

‘I’d say you’d picked up some fancy transatlantic language. Been seeing too many old
movies, have you? The Wilt Connection. You’ve got to be joking.’

‘They are requesting information about Mrs Eva Wilt, address 45 Oakhurst Avenue–’

‘I know where the Wilts live, don’t I just,’ said Flint. ‘But if you are trying to tell me
that Eva Wilt is into drug pushing you’re clean round the twist. That woman is a leading
antidrug campaigner like she’s a leading campaigner for everything else from Save the
Whales to stopping the TV cable company from digging holes along Oakhurst Avenue because
it hurts the cherry trees and they are part of the Ipford Rainforest. Pull the other
one.’

Hodge ignored the crack. ‘Of course she’s a leading antidrug campaigner. Gives her
splendid cover Stateside.’

Inspector Flint sighed. Really, Superintendent Hodge was getting to be a bigger
fool the more he was promoted.

‘Where are we now? _Kojak?_ You should watch something a bit more up to date than that old
stuff. Not that I mind. At least I can sort of understand what you’re talking about.’

‘Very witty, I’m sure,’ said Hodge. ‘So if she’s so clean how come they’re asking for
information?’

‘Don’t ask me what Yanks do. I’ve never understood. Anyway, what reason did they
give?’

‘Presumably because they have her under suspicion,’ said Hodge and moved off the desk.
‘Our American confrères don’t give reasons. All they’re doing is asking. Makes you think,
doesn’t it?’

‘Be nice if some people could begin to,’ said Flint when the door closed behind the
Superintendent. ‘And what was all that confrères business about?’

‘I think he was just trying to show he can speak a bit of French as well as American,’
said Sergeant Yates. ‘Though what a confrère is, I’m blowed if I know.’

‘Means the cunt of my brother,’ said the Inspector.

‘But men don’t have cunts.’

‘I know that, Sergeant, but try telling that to Hodge. He is one.’

He went back to more urgent cases than Eva Wilt pushing drugs only to be interrupted
by Sergeant Yates.

‘Beats me how he ever got back into the Drug Squad after he fouled up the last time.
Promoted to Superintendent too.’

‘Think sex, Yates, think sex, and influence and wedding bells. Married the ugliest
woman in Ipford like the Mayor’s sister. That’s how. I thought even you knew that. Now let
me get on with some work.’

‘The slimy shit,’ said the Sergeant and left the office.

In Wilma, Sheriff Stallard’s attitude towards the DEA agents was much the same.
‘They’ve got to be crazy,’ he told his Deputy over coffee in the local drugstore when
Baxter reported that five more agents had booked into a nearby motel and that there was
already a tap on Wally Immelmann’s phone line. ‘He’ll raise Cain when he gets to know.’

‘Bugging the house is the next phase,’ said Baxter. ‘They’re moving in at the weekend
when he’s going up to the lake house.’

The Sheriff made a mental note to be out of town over the weekend. He wasn’t going to
take the rap for bugging Wally Immelmann’s mansion or even knowing about it. He’d visit
his mother down in Birmingham in the nursing home.

‘You don’t know nothing about this, Baxter,’ he said. ‘You haven’t told me and they never
told you. We could be in deep shit if we don’t take good care of ourselves. You got anyone
could do with arresting on Saturday?’

‘Saturday? There’s that punk up Roselea beats the shit out of his wife Friday
nights.’

‘Need someone better than that,’ the Sheriff told him. ‘How about picking up Hank
Veblen for the burglarising job he did last month and grilling him all Saturday Sunday.
Keep you busy doing that.’

‘Yeah, I reckon Hank could do with some questioning,’ Baxter agreed. ‘But he’ll call his
lawyer and get sprung too quick. He’s got an alibi.’

‘Got to be someone in town needs grilling. Think about it, Herb. You’re going to need an
alibi yourself if those goons go into the Starfighter with bugs.’

‘Bound to be trouble Saturday someplace. I’ll find a reason.’

Uncle Wally’s mind was working along the same lines. The prospect of going up to Lake
Sassaquassee with Eva and the four girls was not one that had the greatest appeal for
him.

‘I tell you, Joanie, I got premonitions about them. You told me they were real nice.
Cute, you said. Well, cute they ain’t. Not my sort of cute. Four fucking hell-cats is what
they are. That one called Penny’s been round asking questions of Maybelle and the rest of
the help.’

‘What sort of questions, honey? I didn’t hear about that.’

‘Like what we pay her and does she get enough time off and do we treat her right?’

‘Oh, that. Eva told me they’d be interested. They’ve been given a school project on life
in the US.’

‘School project? What sort of school is it wants to know what the minimum wage is and do I
screw her often?’

Even Auntie Joan was shocked.

‘Wally, she didn’t ask Maybelle that? Oh, my God. Maybelle’s a Deaconess in her church
and real religious. They go round asking her things like that she’s going to walk out on
us.’

‘That’s what I’m telling you. And that’s not all. Rube says they wanted to know how many
gays there are in Wilma, what proportion of the town and if they’re black or white and
living together as married folk. In Wilma! That gets out it won’t just be Maybelle leaves.
I’ll be going too.’

‘Oh Wally,’ said Auntie Joan and sat down heavily on the bed. ‘What are we going to
do?’

Wally gave the matter some thought. ‘I guess we’d better go up the lake after all.
There’s no one they can ask anything of up there. And you tell that Eva she’s got to stop them
before it gets out what they’re doing. How many mixed couples of gays in Wilma? Jesus, that
beats everything.’

It didn’t. That afternoon Auntie Joan had invited the Revd and Mrs Cooper over with
their daughters to meet her nieces. The occasion was not a success. The Reverend enquired
what they learnt about God at their school in England. Auntie Joan tried to intervene but
it was no good. Samantha had summed the Revd Cooper up only too accurately.

‘God?’ she asked in a bewildered tone of voice. ‘Who is God?’

It was the turn of the Revd Cooper to look utterly bewildered. It was obvious that no
one had ever put such a question to him before.

‘God? Well, I’d have to say…I’d have to say…’ he faltered.

Mrs Cooper took up the problem. ‘God is love,’ she said sanctimoniously.

The quads looked at her with new interest. This was going to be fun.

‘Do you make God?’ Emmeline asked.

‘Make God? Did you say ‘make God’?’ asked Mrs Cooper.

Auntie Joan smiled bleakly. She didn’t know what was coming but she had an idea it wasn’t
going to make things easier. In fact it made things extremely unpleasant.

‘You make love and if God is love you must make him,’ said Emmeline with a seraphic
smile. ‘People wouldn’t exist if you didn’t make love. That’s how babies are made.’

Mrs Cooper gazed at her in horror. She couldn’t find any answer to that one.

The Revd Cooper could. ‘Child,’ he said loudly and injudiciously. ‘You know not of
what you speak. Those are the words of Satan. They are evil words.’

‘They aren’t. They’re simple logic and logic isn’t evil. You said God is love and I
said–’

‘We all heard what you said,’ Eva said, drowning out the Revd Cooper. ‘And we don’t want
to hear any more from you. Do you understand that, Emmy?’

‘Yes, Mummy,’ said Emmeline. ‘But I still don’t understand what God is.’

There was a long silence broken by Auntie Joan who wanted to know if anyone would like
some more iced tea. The Revd Cooper silently prayed for guidance. The phrase ‘out of the
mouths of babes and sucklings’ didn’t apply. These four horrible girls weren’t babes or
sucklings. All the same he had his mission to pursue.

‘It says in the Bible that God created the heaven and the earth. Genesis 1:1. We are all
the children of God–’ he began. Josephine interrupted. ‘It must have made a terrible
noise, the Big Bang,’ she said, giving the word ‘bang’ a distinctly peculiar but
unmistakably lubricious emphasis.

Eva had had enough. ‘Go to your room at once!’ she shouted as wrathfully as the Revd
Cooper felt.

‘I’m only trying to find out what God is,’ said Josephine meekly.

Mrs Cooper struggled with conflicting feelings and decided that Southern
hospitality should prevail. ‘Oh, it’s quite all right,’ she cooed. ‘I guess we all need to
learn the truth.’

Eva doubted it. Auntie Joan clearly didn’t look as if she needed any more truth. A slug
of liquor more like. Eva wasn’t risking her having a stroke.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said to the Coopers, ‘but they must go to their room. I’m not having any
more rudeness from them.’

The quads filed out grumbling.

‘I guess you have a different system of education in England,’ said the Revd Cooper
when they had gone. ‘And I heard they have religious service in school first thing every
morning. Seems they don’t give them Bible reading or anything.’

‘It isn’t easy bringing four girls the same age up all together,’ said Eva, in a
desperate attempt to salvage something from the disaster. ‘We have never been able to
afford a nanny or anything like that.’

‘Oh, you poor things,’ said Mrs Cooper. ‘My, how dreadful. You mean to say you all don’t
have servants in England? I wouldn’t have believed it after seeing all those films with
butlers and castles and all.’ She turned to Auntie Joan. ‘I guess you were lucky having the
daddy you had, Joanie. A Lord who stayed with the Queen at Sandrin…that house you told me
about where they go duck hunting. Why he’d just be bound to have a butler open the door for
him and all. What was the name of the butler, you know the one who was so fat and drank port
wine you told us about at the country club that time Sandra and Al had their silver
anniversary?’

A strange, choking sound from Auntie Joan suggested that her condition had worsened.
The afternoon was not a success. That evening Eva tried to put her fourth call through to
Wilt. There was no answer. Eva went to bed that night and hardly slept. She knew now she
should never have come. Wally and Auntie Joan knew that too.

‘We’d better go up to the lake tomorrow,’ he said helping himself to four fingers of
bourbon. ‘Get them out of the way.’

But as the quads were going to bed Josephine found what Sol Campito had pushed among the
things in her hand luggage. It was a small sealed gelatine cylinder and she didn’t like the
look of it. The other girls didn’t like the look of it either and swore they hadn’t put it
there.

‘It could be something dangerous,’ said Penelope.

‘Like what?’ asked Emmeline.

‘Like a bomb.’

‘It’s too small for a bomb. And it’s too soft. When you squeeze it–’

‘Then don’t. It might burst and we don’t know what is in it.’

‘Whatever it is I don’t want it,’ said Josephine.

Nobody wanted it. In the end they threw it out the window where it landed in the
swimming-pool.

‘Now if it’s a bomb it won’t do any harm,’ said Emmeline.

‘Unless Uncle Wally’s taking his early-morning dip. He could be blown up.’

‘Serve him right. He’s a big mouth,’ said Samantha.