Wilt (18 page)

The Rev St John Froude rowed surprisingly steadily for a man with half a bottle of
whisky inside him and a wrath in his heart, and the nearer he got to the contraceptives
the greater his wrath became. It wasn’t simply that he had been given a quite unnecessary
fright about the state of his liver by the sight of the things (he could see now that he was
close to them that they were real), it was rather that he adhered the doctrine of sexual
non-intervention. God, in his view had created a perfect world if the book of Genesis
was to be believed and it had been going downhill ever since. And the book of Genesis was
to be believed or the rest of the Bible made no sense at all. Starting from this
fundamentalist premise the Rev St John Froude had progressed erratically by way of
Blake, Hawker, Leavis and a number of obscurantist theologians to the conviction that
the miracles of modern science were the works of the devil, that salvation lay in
eschewing every material advance since the Renaissance, and one or two before, and
that nature was infinitely less red in tooth and claw than modern mechanized man. In short
he was convinced that the end of the world was at hand in the shape of a nuclear holocaust
and that it was his duty as a Christian to announce the fact. His sermons on the subject
had been of such a vividly horrendous fervour as to lead to his exile in Waterswick. Now
as he rowed up the channel into Eel Stretch he fulminated silently against
contraception, abortion and the evils of sexual promiscuity. They were all symptoms and
causes and causative symptoms of the moral chaos which life on earth had become. And
finally there were trippers. The Rev St John Froude loathed trippers. They fouled the
little Eden of his parish with their boats, their transistors and their unabashed
enjoyment of the present. And trippers who desecrated the prospect from his study window
with inflated contraceptives and meaningless messages were an abomination. By the
time he came in sight of the cabin cruiser he was in no mood to be trifled with. He rowed
furiously across to the boat, tied up to the rail and, lifting his cassock over his knees,
stepped aboard.

In the cabin Sally stared down at the bathing-cap. It deflated and inflated,
expanded and was sucked in against Gaskell’s lace and Sally squirmed with pleasure. She was
the liberatedest woman in the world, but the liberatedest. Gaskell was dying and she
would be free to be with a million dollars in the kitty. And no one would ever know. When
he was dead she would take the cap off and untie him and push his body over the side into the
water. Gaskell Pringsheim would have died a natural death by drowning. And at that moment
the cabin door opened and she looked up at the silhouette of the Rev St John Froude in the
cabin doorway.

‘What the hell…’ she muttered and leapt off Gaskell.

The Rev St John Froude hesitated. He had come to say his piece and say it he would but he
had clearly intruded on a very naked woman with a horribly made-up face in the act of
making love to a man who as far as a quick glance enabled him to tell had no face at all.

‘I…’ he began and stopped. The man on the bunk had rolled on to the floor and was writhing
there in the most extraordinary fashion. The Rev St John Froude stared down at him aghast.
The man was not only faceless but his hands were tied behind his back.

‘My dear fellow,’ said the Vicar, appalled at the scene and looped up at the naked woman
for some sort of explanation.’ She was staring at him demonically and holding a large
kitchen knife. The Rev St John Froude stumbled back into the cockpit as the woman advanced
towards him holding the knife in front of her with both hands. She was clearly quite
demented. So was the man on the floor. He rolled about and dragged his head from side to
side. The bathing-cap came off but the Rev St. John Froude was too busy scrambling over the
side into his rowing boat to notice. He cast off as the ghastly woman lunged towards him
and began to row away his original mission entirely forgotten. In the cockpit Sally
stood screaming abuse at him and behind her a shape had appeared in the cabin door. The
Vicar was grateful to see that the man had a face now, not a nice face, a positively
horrible face but a face for all that, and he was coming up behind the woman with some
hideous intention. The next moment the intention was carried out. The man hurled himself
at her, the knife dropped onto the deck, the woman scrabbled at the side of the boat and
then slid forward into the water. The Rev St John Froude waited no longer. He rowed
vigorously away. Whatever appalling orgy of sexual perversion he had interrupted,
he wanted none of it on painted women with knives who called him a motherfucking sort of
a cuntsucker, among other things didn’t elicit sympathy when the object of their obscene
passions pushed them into the water. And in any case they were Americans. The Rev St John
Froude had no time for Americans. They epitomized everything he found offensive about the
modern world. Imbued with a new disgust for the present and an urge to hit the whisky he
rowed home and tied up at the bottom of the garden.

Behind him in the cabin cruiser Gaskell ceased shouting. The priest who had saved his
life had ignored his hoarse pleas for further help and Sally was standing waist-deep in
water beside the boat. Well she could stay there. He went back into the cabin, turned so
that he could lock the door with his tied hands and then looked around for something to cut
the silk scarf with. He was still very frightened.

‘Right,’ said Inspector Flint, ’so what did you do then?’

‘Got up and read the Sunday papers’

‘After that?’

‘I ate a plate of All-Bran and drank some tea.

‘Tea? You sure it was tea? Last time you said coffee.’

‘Which time?’

‘The last time you told it.’

‘I drank tea.’

‘What then?’

‘I gave Clem his breakfast.’

‘What sort?’

‘Chappie.’

‘Last time you said Bonzo.’

‘This time I say Chappie.’

‘Make up your mind. Which sort was it?’

‘What the fuck does it matter which sort it was?’

‘It matters to me.’

‘Chappie.’

‘And when you had fed the dog.’

‘I shaved.’

‘Last time you said you had a bath.’

‘I had a bath and then I shaved. I was trying to save time.’

‘Forget the time, Wilt, we’ve got all the time in the world.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Shut up. What did you do then?’

‘Oh for God’s sake, what does it matter? What’s the point of going over and over the same
things?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Right,’ said Wilt, ‘I will.’

‘When you had shaved what did you do?’

Wilt stared at him and said nothing.

‘When you had shaved?’

But Wilt remained silent. Finally Inspector Flint left the room and sent for Sergeant
Yates.

‘He’s clammed up,’ he said wearily. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘Try a little physical persuasion?’

Flint shook his head. ‘Gosdyke’s seen him. If he turns up in Court on Monday with so much
as a hair out of place, he’ll be all over us for brutality. There’s got to be some other
way. He must have a weak spot somewhere but I’m damned if I can find it. How does he do
it?’

‘Do what?’

‘Keep talking and saying nothing. Not one bloody useful thing. That sod’s got more
opinions on every topic under the flaming sun than I’ve got hair on my head.’

‘If we keep him awake for another forty-eight hours he’s bound to crack up.’

‘He’ll take me with him,’ said Flint.’ We’ll both go into court in straitjackets.’

In the Interview Room Wilt put his head on the table. They would be back in a minute with
more questions but a moment’s sleep was better than none. Sleep. If only they would let
sleep. ‘What had Flint said? ‘The moment you sign a confession you can have all the sleep
you want.’ Wilt considered the remark and its possibilities. A confession. But it would
have to be plausible enough to keep them occupied while he got some rest and at the same
time so impossible that it would rejected by the court. A delaying tactic to give Eva
time to come back and prove his innocence. It would be like Gasfitters Two Shane to read
while be sat and thought about putting Eva down the pile shaft. He should be able to think up
something complicated that would keep them frantically active. How he had killed them?
Beat them to death in the bathroom? Not enough blood. Even Flint had admitted that much. So
how? What was a nice gentle way to go? Poor old Pinkerton had chosen a peaceful death when
he stuck a tube up the exhaust pipe of his car…That was it. But why? There had to be a
motive. Eva was having it off with Dr Pringsheim? With that twit? Not in a month of
Sundays. Eva wouldn’t have looked twice at Gaskell. But Flint wasn’t to know that. And what
about that bitch Sally? All three having it off together? Well at least it would explain
why he killed them all and it would provide the sort of motive Flint would understand. And
besides it was right for that kind of party. So he got this pipe…What pipe? There was no need
for a pipe. They were in the garage to get away from everyone else. No, that wouldn’t do. It
had to be the bathroom. How about Eva and Gaskell doing it in the bath? That was better. He
had bust the door down in a fit of jealousy. Much better. Then he had drowned them. And then
Sally had come upstairs and he had had to kill her too. That explained the blood. There had
been a struggle. He hadn’t meant to kill her but she had fallen in the bath. So far so good.
But where had he put them? It had to be something good. Flint wasn’t going to believe
anything like the river. Somewhere that made sense of the doll down the hole. Flint had it
firmly fixed in his head that the doll had been a diversionary tactic. That meant that
time entered into their disposal.

Wilt got up and asked to go to the toilet. As usual the constable came with him and
stood outside the door.

‘Do you have to?’ said Wilt. ‘I’m not going to hang myself with the chain.’

‘To see you don’t beat your meat,’ said the constable coarsely.

Wilt sat down. Beat your meat. What a hell of an expression. It called to mind Meat One.
Meat One? It was a moment of inspiration. Wilt got up and flushed the toilet. Meat One
would keep them busy for a long time. He went back to the pale green room where the light
buzzed. Flint was waiting for him.

‘You going to talk now?’ he asked.

Wilt shook his head. They would have to drag it out of him if his confession was to be at
all convincing. He would have to hesitate, start to say something, stop, start again,
appeal to Flint to stop torturing him, plead and start again. This trout needed tickling.
Oh well, it would help to keep him awake.

‘Are you going to start again at the beginning?’ he asked

Inspector Flint smiled horribly. ‘Right at the beginning.’

‘All right,’ said Wilt. ‘have it your own way, just don’t keep asking me if I gave the dog
Chappie or Bonzo. I can’t stand all that talk about dog food.’

Inspector Flint rose to the bait. ‘Why not?’

‘It gets on my nerves,’ said Wilt, with a shudder.

The Inspector leant forward. ‘Dog food gets on your nerves?’ he said.

Wilt hesitated pathetically. ‘Don’t go on about it,’ he said. ‘Please don’t go on.’

‘Now then, which was it, Bonzo or Chappie?’ said the Inspector, scenting blood.

Wilt put his head in his hands. ‘I won’t say anything. I won’t. Why must you keep asking
me about food? Leave me alone.’ His voice rose hysterically and with it Inspector Flint’s
hopes. He knew when he had touched the nerve. He was on to a good thing.

‘Dear God,’ said Sergeant Yates, ‘but we had pork pies for lunch yesterday. It’s too
awful.’

Inspector Flint rinsed his mouth out with black coffee and spat into the washbasin. He
had vomited twice and felt like vomiting again.

‘I knew it would be something like that.’ he said with a shudder. ‘I just knew it. A man
who could pull that doll-trick had to have something really filthy up his sleeve.’

‘But they may all have been eaten by now,’ said the Sergeant. Flint looked at him
balefully.

‘Why the hell do you think he laid that phoney trail?’ he asked. ‘To give them plenty of
time to be consumed. His expression “consumed”, not mine. You know what the shelf life of a
pork pie is?’

Yates shook his head.

‘Five days. Five days. So they went out on Tuesday which leaves us one day to find them or
what remains of them. I want every pork pie in East Anglia picked up. I want every fucking
sausage and steak and kidney pie that went out of Sweetbreads Meat Factory this week found
and brought in. And every tin of dog food.’

‘Dog food?’

‘You heard me,’ said Inspector Flint staggering out of the washroom. ‘And while you’re
about it you’d better make it cat food too. You never know with Wilt,’ He’s capable of
leading us up the garden path in one important detail.’

‘But if they went into pork pies what’s all this about dog food?’

‘Where the hell do you think he put the odds and ends and I do mean ends?’ Inspector Flint
asked savagely. ‘You don’t imagine he was going to have people coming in and
complaining they’d found a tooth or a toenail in the Sweetbreads pie they had bought that
morning. Not Wilt. That swine thinks of everything. He drowns them in their own bath. He
puts them in plastic garbage bags and locks the bags in the garage while he goes home and
sticks the doll down that fucking hole. Then on Sunday he goes back and picks them up and
spends the day at the meat factory all by himself…Well if you want to know what be did on
Sunday you can read all about it in his statement. It’s more than my stomach can stand.’

The Inspector went back hurriedly into the washroom. He’d been living off pork pies
since Monday. The statistical chances of his having partaken of Mrs Wilt were
extremely high.

When Sweetbreads Meat and Canning Factory opened at eight, Inspector Flint was
waiting at the gate. He stormed into the manager’s office and demanded to speak to
him.

‘He’s not here yet,’ said the secretary. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

‘I want a list of every establishment you supply with pork pies, steak and kidney
pies, sausages and dog food,’ said the Inspector.

‘I couldn’t possibly give you that information,’ said the secretary. ‘It’s
extremely confidential.’

‘Confidential? What the hell do you mean confidential’

‘Well I don’t know really. It’s just that I couldn’t take it on myself to provide you
with inside information…’ She stopped. Inspector Flint was staring at her with a quite
horrible expression on his face.

‘Well, miss,’ he said finally, ‘while we’re on the topic of inside information, it
may interest you to know that what has been inside your pork pies is by way of being
inside information. Vital information.’

‘Vital information? I don’t know what you mean. Our pies contain perfectly wholesome
ingredients.’

‘Wholesome?’ shouted the Inspector. ‘You call three human bodies wholesome? You call
the boiled, bleached, minced and cooked remains of three murdered bodies wholesome?’

‘But we only use…’ the secretary began and fell sideways, off her chair in a dead
faint.

‘Oh for God’s sake,’ shouted the Inspector, ‘you’d think a silly bitch who can work in
an abattoir wouldn’t be squeamish…’ Find out who the manager is and where he lives and tell
him to come down here at the double.’

He sat down in a chair while Sergeant Yates rummaged in the desk. ‘Wakey, wakey,’ he said,
prodding the secretary with his foot. ‘If anyone has got a right to lie down on the job,
it’s me. I’ve been on my feet for three days and nights and I’ve been an accessory after
the fact of murder.’

‘An accessory?’ said Yates. ‘I don’t see how you can say that.’

‘Can’t you? Well what would you call helping to dispose parts of a murder victim?
Concealing evidence of a crime?’

‘I never thought of it that way,’ said Yates.

‘I did,’ said the Inspector, ‘I can’t think of anything else.

In his cell Wilt stared up at the ceiling peacefully. He was astonished that it had
been so easy. All you had to do was tell people what they wanted to hear and they would
believe you no matter how implausible your story might be. And three days and nights
without sleep had suspended Inspector Flint’s disbelief with a vengeance. Then again
Wilt’s hesitations had been timed perfectly and his final confession a nice mixture of
conceit and matter-of-factness. On the details of the murder he had been coldly
precise and in describing their disposal he had been a craftsman taking pride in his
work. Every now and then when he got to a difficult spot he would veer away into a manic
arrogance at once boastful and cowardly with ‘You’ll never be able to prove it. They’ll
have disappeared without trace now. And the Harpic had come in useful once again, adding a
macabre touch of realism about evidence being flushed down thousands of U-bends with
Harpic being poured after it like salt from a salt cellar. Eva would enjoy that when he
told her about it, which was more than could be said for Inspector Flint. He hadn’t even seen
the irony of Wilt’s remark that while he had been looking for the Pringsheims they had been
under his nose all the time. He had been particularly upset by the crack about gut
reactions and the advice to stick to health foods in future. Yes, in spite of his
tiredness Wilt had enjoyed himself watching the Inspector’s bloodshot eyes turn from
glee and gloating self-satisfaction to open amazement and finally undisguised nausea.
And when finally Wilt had boasted that they would never be able to bring him to trial
without the evidence, Flint had responded magnificently.

‘Oh yes, we will,’ he had shouted hoarsely. ‘If there is one single pie left from that
batch we’ll get it and when we do the Lab boys will…’

‘Find nothing but pork in it,’ said Wilt before being dragged off to his cell. At least
that was the truth and if Flint didn’t believe it that was his own fault. He had asked for a
confession and he had got one by courtesy of Meat one, the apprentice butchers who had
spent so many hours of Liberal Studies explaining the workings of Sweetbreads Meat
Factory to him and had actually taken him down there one afternoon to show him how it
all worked. Dear lads. And how he had loathed them at the time. Which only went to show how
wrong you could be about people. Wilt was just wondering if he had been wrong about Eva and
perhaps she was dead when he fell asleep.

In the churchyard Eva watched the Rev St John Froude walk down to the boathouse and start
rowing towards the reeds. As soon as he had disappeared she made her way up the path
towards the house. With the Vicar out of the way she was prepared to take the risk of
meeting his wife. She stole through the doorway into the courtyard and looked about her.
The place had a dilapidated air about it and a pile of empty bottles in one corner,
whiskey and gin bottles, seemed to indicate that he might well be unmarried. Still
clutching her ivy, she went across to the door, evidently the kitchen door, and knocked.
There was no answer. She crossed to the window and looked inside. The kitchen was large,
distinctly untidy and had all the hallmarks of a bachelor existence about it. She went
back to the door and knocked again and she was just wondering what to do now when there was
the sound of a vehicle coming down the drive.

Eva hesitated for a second and then tried the door. It was unlocked. She stepped inside
and shut the door as a milk van drove into the courtyard. Eva listened while the milkman
put down several bottles and then drove away. Then she turned and went down the passage to
the front hall. If she could find the phone she could ring Henry and he could come out in the
car and fetch her. She would go back to the church and wait for him there. But the hall was
empty. She poked her head into several rooms with a goad deal of care and found them
largely bare of furniture or with dustcovers over chairs and sofas. The place was
incredibly untidy too. Definitely the Vicar was a bachelor. Finally she found his
study. There was a phone on the desk. Eva went over and lifted the receiver and dialled
Ipford 66066. Then was no reply. Henry would be at the Tech. She dialled the Tech number
and asked for Mr Wilt.

‘Wilt?’ said the girl on the switchboard. ‘Mr Wilt?’

‘Yes,’ said Eva in a low voice.

‘I’m afraid he’s not here.’ said the girl.

‘Not there? But he’s got to be there.’

‘Well he isn’t.’

‘But he’s got to be. It’s desperately important I get in touch with him.’

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t help you.’ said the girl.

‘But…’ Eva began and glanced out of the window. The Vicar had returned and was walking
up the garden path towards her, ‘Oh God,’ she muttered and put the phone down hurriedly.
She turned and rushed out of the room in a state of panic. Only when she had made her way
back along the passage to the kitchen did it occur to her that she had left her ivy behind
in the study. There were footsteps in the passage. Eva looked frantically around,
decided against the courtyard and went up a flight of stone steps to the first floor. There
she stood and listened. Her heart was palpitating. She was naked and alone in a strange
house with a clergyman and Henry wasn’t at the Tech when he should have been and the girl on
the switchboard had sounded most peculiar, almost as though there was something wrong
with wanting to speak to Henry. She had no idea what to do.

In the kitchen the Rev St John Froude had a very good idea what he wanted to do; expunge
for ever the vision of the inferno to which he had been lured by those vile things with
their meaningless messages floating across the water. He dug a fresh bottle of Teachers
out of the cupboard and took it back to his study what he had witnessed had been so
grotesque, so evidently evil, so awful, so prescient of hell itself that he was in two
minds whether it had been real or simply a waking nightmare. A man without a face, whose
hands were tied behind his back, a woman with a painted face and a knife, the language…The
Rev St John Froude opened the bottle and was about to pour a glass when his eye fell on the
ivy Eva had left on the chair. He put the bottle down hastily and stared at the leaves. Here
was another mystery to perplex him. How had a clump of ivy got on to the chair in his
study? It certainly hadn’t been there when he had left the house. He picked it up gingerly
and put it on his desk. Then he sat down and contemplated it with a growing sense of
unease. Something was happening in his world that he could not understand. And what about
the strange figure he had seen flitting about between the tombstones? He had quite
forgotten her. The Rev St John Froude got up and went out on to the terrace and down the
path to the church.

‘On a Sunday?’ shouted the manager of Sweetbreads. ‘On a Sunday? But we don’t work on
a Sunday. There’s nobody here, The place is shut.’

‘It wasn’t last Sunday and there was someone here, Mr Kidney,’ said the Inspector.

‘Kidley, please,’ said the manager. ‘Kidley with an L.’

The Inspector nodded. ‘OK Mr Kidley, now what I’m telling you is that this man Wilt was
here last Sunday and he…’

‘How did he get in?’

‘He used a ladder against the back wall from the car park.’

‘In broad daylight? He’d have been seen.’

‘At two o’clock in the morning, Mr Kidney.’

‘Kidley, Inspector, Kidley.’

‘Look Mr Kidley, if you work in a place like this with name like that you’re asking for
it.’

Mr Kidley looked at him belligerently. ‘And if you’re telling me that some bloody
maniac came in here with three dead bodies last Sunday and spent the day using our
equipment to convert them into cooked meat edible for human consumption under the Food
Regulations Act, I’m telling you that that come under the head of…Head? What did he do with
the heads?’ Tell me that?’

‘What do you do with heads, Mr Kidley?’ asked the Inspector.

‘That rather depends. Some of them go with the offal into the animal food bins…’

‘Right. So that’s what Wilt said he did with them. And you keep those in the No. 2 cold
storage room. Am I right?’

Mr Kidley nodded miserably. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘we do.’ He paused and gaped at the
Inspector. ‘But there’s a world of difference between a pig’s head and a…’

‘Quite,’ said the Inspector hastily, ‘and I daresay you think someone was bound to spot
the difference.’

‘Of course they would.’

‘Now I understand from Mr Wilt that you have an extremely efficient mincing
machine…’

‘No,’ shouted Mr Kidley desperately. ‘No. I don’t believe it. It’s not possible.
It’s…’

‘Are you saying he couldn’t possibly have…’

‘I’m not saying that. I’m saying he shouldn’t have. It’s monstrous. It’s horrible.’

‘Of course it’s horrible.’ said the Inspector. ‘The fact remains that he used that
machine.’

‘But we keep our equipment meticulously clean.’

‘So Wilt says. He was definite on that point. He says he cleaned up carefully
afterwards.’

‘He must have done,’ said Mr Kidley. ‘There wasn’t a thing out of place on Monday
morning. You heard the foreman say, so.’

‘And I also heard this swine Wilt say that he made a list of where everything came from
before he used it so that he could put it back exactly where he’d found it. He thought of
everything.’

‘And what about our reputation for hygiene? He didn’t think of that, did he? For
twenty-flue years we’ve been known for the excellence of our products and now this has to
happen. We’ve been at the head of…’ Mr Kidley stopped suddenly and sat down.