Wilt (9 page)

‘Clues.’ said Dr Board, with evident satisfaction. ‘Hairs. Bits of skin and
bloodstains. The usual trivial detritus of violent crime.’

Dr Cox hurried from the room and Dr Mayfield looked disgusted. ‘How revolting.’ he
said. ‘Isn’t it possible that there has been some mistake? I mean why should anyone want to
murder a woman here?’

Dr Board sipped his coffee and looked wistfully at him. ‘I can think of any number of
reasons,’ he said happily. ‘There are at least a dozen women in my Evening Class whom I
would cheerfully beat to death and drop down holes. Sylvia Swansbeck for one.’

‘Whoever did it must have known they were going to pour concrete down today,’ said
Fenwick. ‘It looks like an inside job to me.’

‘One of our less community-conscious students perhaps,’ suggested Dr Board, ‘I
don’t suppose they’ve had time to check if any of the staff are missing.’

‘You’ll probably find it had nothing to do with the Tech,’ said Dr Mayfield. ‘Some
maniac…’

‘Come now, give credit where credit is due.’ interrupted Dr Board. ‘There was
obviously an element of premeditation involved. Whoever the murderer was…is, he
planned it pretty carefully. What puzzles me is why be didn’t shovel earth down on top of
the wretched woman so that she couldn’t be seen. Probably intended to but was disturbed
before he could get around to it. One of those little accidents of fate.’

In the corner of the Staff Room Wilt sat and drank his coffee, conscious that he was the
only person not staring out of the window. What the hell was he to do? The sensible thing
would be to go to the police and explain that he had been trying to get rid of an
inflatable doll that someone had given him. But would they believe him? If that was all
that had happened why had he dressed it up in a wig and clothes? And why had he left it
inflated? Why hadn’t he just thrown the thing away? He was just rehearsing the pros and
cons of the argument when the Head of Engineering came in and announced that the police
intended boring another hole next to the first one instead of digging down through the
concrete.

‘They’ll probably be able to see bits of her sticking out the side.’ he explained.
‘Apparently she had one arm up in the air and with all that concrete coming down on top of
her there’s a chance that arm will have been pressed against the side of the hole. Much
quicker that way.’

‘I must say I can’t see the need for haste.’ said Dr Board. ‘I should have thought she’d be
pretty well preserved in all that concrete. Mummified I daresay.’

In his corner Wilt rather doubted it. With twenty tons of concrete on top of her even
Judy who had been an extremely resilient doll was hardly likely to have withstood the
pressure. She would have burst as sure as eggs were eggs in which case all the police would
find was the empty plastic arm of a doll. They would hardly bother to dig a burst plastic
doll out.

‘And another thing.’ continued the Head of Engineering, ‘if the arm is sticking out
they’ll be able to take fingerprints straight away.’

Wilt smiled to himself. That was one thing they weren’t going to find on Judy,
fingerprints. He finished his coffee more cheerfully and went off to a class of Senior
Secretaries. He found them agog with news of the murder.

‘Do you think it was a sex killing?’ a small blonde girl in the front raw asked as Wilt
handed out copies of This Island Now. He had always found the chapter on the
Vicissitudes of Adolescence appealed to Senior Secs. It dealt with sex and violence and
was twelve years out of date but then so were the Senior Secretaries. Today there was no
need for the book.

‘I don’t think it was any sort of killing.’ said Wilt taking his place behind the
desk.’

‘Oh but it was. They saw a woman’s body down there,’ the small blonde insisted.

‘They thought they saw something down there that looked like a body,’ said Wilt. ‘That
doesn’t mean it was one. People’s imaginations play tricks with them.’

‘The police don’t think so.’ said a large girl whose father was something in the City.
‘They must be certain to go to all that trouble. We had a murder on our golf course and all
they found were bits of body cut up and put in the water hazard on the fifteenth. They’d
been there six months. Someone sliced a ball on the dogleg twelfth and it went into the
pond. They fished out a foot first. It was all puffy and green…’ A pale girl from Wilstanton
fainted in the third row. By the time Wilt had revived her and taken her to the Sick Room,
the class had got on to Crippen, Haigh and Christie. Wilt returned to find them discussing
acid baths…and all they found were her false teeth and gallstones.’

‘You seem to know a lot about murder,’ Wilt said to the large girl.

‘Daddy plays bridge with the Chief Constable,’ she explained. ‘He comes to dinner and
tells super stories. He says they ought to bring back hanging.’

‘I’m sure he does,’ said Wilt grimly. It was typical of Senior Secs that they knew Chief
Constables who wanted to bring back hanging. It was all mummy and daddy and horses with
Senior Secretaries.

‘Anyway, hanging doesn’t hurt,’ said the large girl. ‘Sir Frank says a good hangman can
have a man out of the condemned cell and on to the trap with a noose around his neck and pull
the lever in twenty seconds.’

‘Why confine the privilege to men?’ asked ‘Wilt bitterly. The class looked at him with
reproachful eyes, ‘The last woman they hanged was Ruth Ellis,’ said the blonde in the front
row.

‘Anyway with women it’s different,’ said the large girl.

‘Why?’ said Wilt inadvisedly.

‘Well it’s slower.’

‘Slower?’

‘They had to tie Mrs Thomson to a chair,’ volunteered the blonde. ‘She behaved
disgracefully.’

‘I must say I find your judgements peculiar,’ said Wilt. ‘A woman murdering her
husband is doubtless disgraceful. The fact that she puts up a fight when they come to
execute her doesn’t strike me as disgraceful at all. I find that…’

‘It’s not just that,’ interrupted the large girl, who wasn’t to be diverted.

‘What isn’t?’ said Wilt.

‘It’s being slower with women. They have to make them wear waterproof pants.’

Wilt gaped at her in disgust. ‘Waterproof what?’ he asked without thinking.

‘Waterproof pants,’ said the large girl.

‘Dear God,’ said Wilt.

‘You see, when they get to the bottom of the rope their insides drop out,’ continued the
large girl, administering the coup de grâce. Wilt stared at her wildly and stumbled from
the room.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ said the girl. ‘Anyone would think I had said something
beastly.’

In the corridor Wilt leant against the wall and felt sick. Those fucking girls were worse
than Gasfitters. At least Gasfitters didn’t go in for such disgusting anatomical
details and besides Senior Secs all came from so-called respectable families. By the time
he felt strong enough to face them again the hour had ended. Wilt went back into the
classroom sheepishly and collected the books.

‘Name of Wilt mean anything to you? Henry Wilt?’ asked the Inspector.

‘Wilt?’ said the Vice-Principal, who had been left to cope with the police while the
Principal spent his time more profitably trying to offset the, adverse publicity caused
by the whole appalling business. ‘Well, yes it does. He’s one of our Liberal Studies
lecturers. Why? Is there…’

‘If you don’t mind, sir, I’d just like a word with him. In private’

‘But Wilt’s a most inoffensive man,’ said the Vice-Principal. ‘I’m sure he couldn’t
help you at all.’

‘Possibly not but all the same…’

‘You’re not suggesting for one moment that Henry Wilt had anything to do with…’ the
Vice-Principal stopped and studied the expression on the Inspector’s face. It was
ominously neutral.

‘I’d rather not go into details,’ said Inspector Flint, ‘and it’s best if we don’t jump
to conclusions.’

The Vice-Principal picked up the phone. ‘Do you want him to come across to
that…er…caravan?’ he asked.

Inspector Flint shook his head. ‘We like to be as inconspicuous as possible. If I
could just have the use of an empty office.’

‘There’s an office next door. You can use that.’

Wilt was in the canteen having lunch with Peter Braintree when the Vice-Principal’s
secretary came down with a message.

‘Can’t it wait?’ asked Wilt.

‘He said it was most urgent.’

‘It’s probably your Senior Lectureship come through at last,’ said Braintree brightly.
Wilt swallowed the rest of his Scotch egg and got up.

‘I doubt that, ‘he said and went wanly out of the canteen and up the stairs. He had a
horrid suspicion that promotion was the last thing the Vice-Principal wanted to see
him about.

‘Now, sir.’ said the Inspector when they were seated in the office, ‘my name is Flint,
Inspector Flint, CID, and you’re Mr Wilt? Mr Henry Wilt?’

‘Yes,’ said Wilt.

Now, Mr Wilt, as you may have gathered we are investigating the suspected murder of
a woman whose body is believed to have been deposited at the bottom of one of the
foundation holes for the new building. I daresay you know about it.’ Wilt nodded. ‘And
naturally we are interested in anything that might be of assistance. I wonder if you
would mind having a look at these notes.’

He handed Wilt a piece of paper. It was headed ‘Notes on Violence and the Break-Up of
Family Life, and underneath were a number of sub-headings.

1. Increasing use of violence in public life to attain political ends. A) Bombings.
B) Hijacking. C) Kidnapping. D) Assassination.

2. Ineffectuality of Police Methods in combating Violence. A) Negative approach.
Police able only to react to crime after it has taken place. B) Use of violence by
police themselves. C) Low level of intelligence of average policeman. D) Increasing
use of sophisticated methods such as diversionary tactics by criminals.

3. Influence of media. TV brings crime techniques into the home.

There was more. Much more. Wilt looked down the list with a sense of doom.

‘You recognise the handwriting?’ asked the Inspector.

‘I do,’ said Wilt, adopting rather prematurely the elliptical language of the
witness box.

‘You admit that you wrote those notes?’ The Inspector reached out a hand and took the
notes back.

‘Yes.’

‘They express your opinion of police methods?’

Wilt pulled himself together. ‘They were jottings I was making for a lecture to
Sandwich-Course Trainee Firemen,’ he explained. ‘They were simply rough ideas. They need
amplifying of course…’

‘But you don’t deny you wrote them?’

‘Of course I don’t. I’ve just said I did, haven’t I?’

The Inspector nodded and picked up a book. ‘And this is yours too?’

Wilt looked at Bleak House. ‘It says so, doesn’t it?’

Inspector Flint opened the cover. ‘So it does,’ he said with a show of astonishment,
’so it does’

Wilt stared at him. There was no point in maintaining the pretence any longer. The best
thing to do was to get it over quickly. They had found that bloody book in the basket of the
bicycle and the notes must have fallen out of his pocket on the building site.

‘Look, Inspector,’ he said, ‘I can explain everything. It’s really quite simple. I
did go into that building site…’

The Inspector stood up. ‘Mr Wilt, if you’re prepared to make a statement I think I
should warn you…’

Wilt went down to the Murder Headquarters and made a statement in the presence of a
police stenographer. His progress to the blue caravan and his failure to come out again
were noted with interest by members of the staff teaching in the Science block, by
students in the canteen and by twenty-five fellow lecturers gaping through the windows
of the Staff Room.

‘Goddam the thing,’ said Gaskell as he knelt greasily beside the engine of the cruiser,
‘you’d think that even in this pre-technological monarchy they’d fit a decent motor.
This contraption must have been made for the Ark.’

‘Ark Ark the Lark,’ said Sally, ‘and cut-the crowned heads foolery. Eva’s a
reginaphile.’

‘A what?’

‘Reginaphile. Monarchist. Get it. She’s the Queen’s Bee so don’t be anti-British. We
don’t want her to stop working as well as the motor. Maybe it isn’t the con rod.’

‘If I could only get the head off I could tell,’ said Gaskell.

‘And what good would that do? Buy you another?’ said Sally and went into the cabin
where Eva was wondering what they were going to have for supper. ‘Tarbaby is still
tinkering with the motor. He says it’s the con rod.’

‘Con rod?’ said Eva.

‘Only connect, baby, only connect’

‘With what?’

‘The thigh bone’s connected to the knee bone. The con rod’s connected to the piston and
as everyone knows pistons are penis symbols. The mechanised male’s substitute for sex.
The Outboard Motor Syndrome. Only this happens to be inboard like his balls never
dropped. Honestly, Gaskell is so regressive’

‘I’m sure I don’t know,’ said Eva.

Sally, lay back on the bunk and lit a cigar. ‘That’s what I love about you, Eva. You don’t
know. Ignorance is blissful, baby. I lost mine when I was fourteen.’

Eva shook her head. ‘Men,’ she said disapprovingly.

‘He was old enough to be my grandfather,’ said Sally. ‘He was my grandfather.’

‘Oh no. How awful.’

‘Not really,’ said Sally laughing, ‘he was an artist. With a beard. And the smell of
paint on his smock and there was this studio and he wanted to paint me in the nude. I was so
pure in those days. He made me lie on this couch and he arranged my legs. He was always
arranging my legs and then standing back to look at me and painting. And then one day when
I was lying there he came over and bent my legs back and kissed me and then he was on top of
me and his smock was up and…’

Eva sat and listened, fascinated. She could visualise it all so clearly, even the
smell of paint in the studio and the brushes, Sally had had such an exciting life, so full
of incident and so romantic in a dreadful sort of way. Eva tried to remember what she
had been like at fourteen and not even going out with boys and there was Sally lying on a
couch with a famous artist in his studio.

‘But he raped you,’ she said finally. ‘Why didn’t you tell the police?’

‘The police? You don’t understand. I was at this terribly exclusive school. They
would have sent me home. It was progressive and all that but I shouldn’t have been out being
painted by this artist and my parents would never have forgiven me. They were so strict.’
Sally sighed, overcome by the rigours of her wholly fictitious childhood. ‘And now you
can see why I’m so afraid of being hurt by men. When you’ve been raped you know what penile
aggression means.’

‘I suppose you do,’ said Eva, in some doubt as to what penile aggression was.

‘You see the world differently too. Like G says, nothing’s good and nothing’s bad. It
just is.’

‘I went to a lecture on Buddhism once,’ said Eva, ‘and that’s what Mr Podgett said. He
said–’

‘Zen’s all wrong. Like you just sit around waiting. That’s passive. You’ve got to make
things happen. You sit around waiting long enough, you’re dead. Someone’s trampled all over
you. You’ve got to see things happen your way and no one else’s’

‘That doesn’t sound very sociable,’ said Eva. ‘I mean if we all did just what we wanted
all the time it wouldn’t be very nice for other people.’

‘Other people are hell,’ said Sally. ‘That’s Sartre and he should know. You do what you
want is good and no moral kickback. Like G says, rats are the paradigm. You think rats go
around thinking what’s good for other people?’

‘Well no, I don’t suppose they do,’ said Eva.

‘Right. Rats aren’t ethical. No way. They just do. They don’t get screwed up
thinking.’

‘Do you think rats can think?’ asked Eva, now thoroughly engaged in the problems of
rodent psychology.

‘Of course they can’t. Rats just are. No Schadenfreude with rats.’

‘What’s Schadenfreude?’

‘Second cousin to Weltschmerz,’ said Sally, stubbing her cigar out in the ashtray. ‘So
we can all do what we want whenever we want to. That’s the message. It’s only people like
G who’ve got the know bug who get balled up.’

‘No bug?’ said Eva.

‘They’ve got to know how everything works. Scientists. Lawrence was right. It’s all head
and no body with G.’

‘Henry’s a bit like that,’ said Eva. ‘He’s always reading or talking about books. I’ve
told him he doesn’t know what the real world is like.’

In the Mobile Murder Headquarters Wilt was learning. He sat opposite Inspector
Flint whose face was registering increasing incredulity.

‘Now, we’ll just go over that again,’ said the Inspector. ‘You say that what those men saw
down that hole was in actual fact an inflatable plastic doll with a vagina.’

‘The vagina is incidental,’ said Wilt, calling forth reserves of inconsequence.

‘That’s as maybe,’ said the Inspector. ‘Most dolls don’t have them but…all right, we’ll
let that pass. The point I’m trying to get at is that you’re quite positive there isn’t a
real live human being down there.’

‘Positive,’ said Wilt, ‘and if there were it is doubtful if it would still be alive
now.’

The Inspector studied him unpleasantly. ‘I don’t need you to point that out to me,’ he
said. ‘If there was the faintest possibility of whatever it is down there being alive I
wouldn’t be sitting here, would I?’

‘No.’ said Wilt.

‘Right. So now we come to the next point. How is it that what those men saw, they say a
woman and you say a doll…that this thing was wearing clothes, had hair and even more
remarkably had its head bashed in and one hand stretched up in the air?’

‘That was the way it fell,’ said Wilt. ‘I suppose the arm, got caught up on the side and
lifted up’

‘And its head was bashed in?’

Well, I did drop a lump of mud on it.’ Wilt admitted, ‘that would account for that.’

‘You dropped a lump of mud on its head?’

‘That’s what I said,’ Wilt agreed.

‘I know that’s what you said. What I want to know is why you felt obliged to drop a lump of
mud on the head of as inflatable doll that had, as far as I can gather, never done you any
harm.’

Wilt hesitated. That damned doll had done, him a great deal of harm one way and another
but this didn’t seem an opportune moment to go into that. ‘I don’t know really,’ he said
finally, ‘I just thought it might help.’

‘Help what?’

‘Help…I don’t know. I just did it, that’s all. I was drunk at the time.’

‘All right, we’ll come back to that in a minute. There’s still one question you haven’t
answered. If it was a doll, why was it wearing clothes?’

Wilt looked desperately round the caravan and met the eyes of the police
stenographer. There was a look in them that didn’t inspire confidence. Talk about lack of
suspension of disbelief.

‘You’re not going to believe this,’ Wilt said. The Inspector looked at him and lit a
cigarette.

‘Well?’

‘As a matter of fact I had dressed it up,’ Wilt said, squirming with embarrassment’

‘You had dressed it up?’

‘Yes,’ said Wilt.

‘And may one enquire what purpose you had in mind when you dressed it up?’

‘I don’t know exactly.’

The Inspector sighed significantly. ‘Right. We go back to the beginning. We have a
doll with a vagina which you dress up and bring down here in the dead of night and deposit at
the bottom of a thirty-foot hole and drop lumps of mud on its head. Is that what you’re
saying?’

‘Yes,’ said Wilt.

‘You wouldn’t prefer to save everyone concerned a lot of time and bother by admitting
here and now that what is at present resting, hopefully at peace, under twenty tons of
concrete at the bottom of that pile is the body of a murdered woman?’

‘No,’ said Wilt, ‘I most definitely wouldn’t.’

Inspector Flint sighed again. ‘You know, we’re going to get to the bottom of this
thing,’ he said. ‘It may take time and it may take expense and God knows it’s taking
patience but when we do get down there–’

‘You’re going to find an inflatable doll,’ said Wilt.

‘With a vagina?’

‘With a vagina.’

In the Staff Room Peter Braintree staunchly defended Wilt’s innocence. ‘I tell you
I’ve known Henry well for the past seven years and whatever has happened he had nothing
to do with it.’

Mr Morris, the Head of Liberal Studies, looked out of the window sceptically.
‘They’ve had him in there since ten past two. That’s four hours,’ he said. ‘They wouldn’t do
that unless they thought he had some connection with the dead woman.’

‘They can think what they like. I know Henry and even if the poor sod wanted to he’s
incapable of murdering anyone.’

‘He did punch that Printer on Tuesday. That shows he’s capable of irrational
violence.’

‘Wrong again. The Printer punched him,’ said Braintree.

‘Only after Wilt had called him a snivelling fucking moron,’ Mr Morris pointed out.
‘Anyone who goes into Printers Three and calls one of them that needs his head examined.
They killed poor odd Pinkerton, you know. He gassed himself in his car.’

‘They had a damned good try at killing old Henry come to that.’

‘Of course, that blow might have affected his brain,’ said Mr Morris, with morose
satisfaction. ‘Concussion can do funny things to a man’s character. Change him
overnight from a nice quiet inoffensive little fellow like Wilt into a homicidal
maniac who suddenly goes berserk. Stranger things have happened.’

‘I daresay Henry would be the first to agree with you,’ said Braintree. ‘It can’t be very
pleasant sitting in that caravan being questioned by detectives. I wonder what they’re
doing to him.’

‘Just asking questions. Things like “How have you been getting on with your wife?” and
“Can you account for your movements on Saturday night?” They start off gently and then
work up to the heavy stuff later on.’

Peter Braintree sat in silent horror. Eva. He’d forgotten all about her and as for
Saturday night he knew exactly what Henry had said he had been doing before he turned up
on the doorstep covered with mud and looking like death…

‘All I’m saying,’ said Mr Morris, ‘is that it seems very strange to me that they find a
dead body at the bottom of a shaft filled with concrete and the next thing you know they’ve
got Wilt in that Murder HQ for questioning. Very strange indeed. I wouldn’t like to be in
his shoes.’ He got up and left the room and Peter Braintree sat on wondering if there was
anything he should do like phone a lawyer and ask him to come round and speak to Henry. It
seemed a bit premature and presumably Henry could ask to see a lawyer himself if he
wanted one.

Inspector Flint lit another cigarette with an air of insouciant menace. ‘How well do
you get on with your wife?’ he asked.

Wilt hesitated. ‘Well enough,’ he said.

‘Just well enough? No more than that?’

‘We get along just fine,’ said Wilt, conscious that be had made an error.

‘I see. And I suppose she can substantiate your story about this inflatable
doll.’

‘Substantiate it?’

‘The fact that you made a habit of dressing it up and carrying on with it.’

‘I didn’t make a habit of anything of the sort,’ said Wilt indignantly.

‘I’m only asking. You were the one who first raised the fact that it had a vagina. I
didn’t. You volunteered the information and naturally I assumed…’

‘What did you assume?’ said Wilt ‘You’ve got no right…’

‘Mr Wilt,’ said the Inspector, ‘put yourself in my position. I am investigating a
case of suspected murder, and a man comes along and tells me that what two eye-witnesses
describe as the body of a well-nourished woman in her early thirties…’

‘In her early thirties? Dolls don’t have ages. If that bloody doll was more than six
months old…’

‘Please, Mr Wilt, if you’ll just let me continue. As I was saying we have a prima facie
case of murder and you admit yourself to having put a doll with a vagina down that hole.
Now if you were in my shoes what sort of inference would you draw from that?’

Wilt tried to think of some totally innocent interpretation and couldn’t.

‘Wouldn’t you be the first to agree that it does look a bit peculiar?’

Wilt nodded. It looked horribly peculiar.

‘Right,’ continued the Inspector. ‘Now if we put the nicest possible
interpretation on your actions and particularly on your emphasis that this doll had a
vagina–’

‘I didn’t emphasise it. I only mentioned the damned thing to indicate that it was
extremely lifelike. I wasn’t suggesting I made a habit of…’ He stopped and looked
miserably at the floor.

‘Go on, Mr Wilt, don’t stop now. It often helps to talk.’

Wilt stared at him frantically. Talking to Inspector Flint wasn’t helping him one
iota. ‘If you’re implying that my sex life was confined to copulating with an
inflatable fucking doll dressed in my wife’s clothes…’

‘Hold it there,’ said the Inspector, stubbing out his cigarette significantly. ‘Ah, so
we’ve taken another step forward. You admit then that whatever is down that hole is
dressed in your wife’s clothes? Yes or no.’

‘Yes,’ said Wilt miserably.

Inspector Flint stood up. ‘I think it’s about time we all went and had a little chat with
Mrs Wilt,’ he said. ‘I want to hear what she has to say about your funny little habits.’

‘I’m afraid that’s going to be a little difficult,’ said Wilt.

‘Difficult?’

‘Well you see the thing is she’s gone away.’

‘Gone away?’ said the Inspector. ‘Did I hear you say that Mrs Wilt has gone away?’

‘Yes.’

‘And where has Mrs Wilt gone to?’