Wilt in Nowhere (12 page)

But it was in the Starfighter Mansion in Wilma that the real battle was about to begin.
Auntie Joanie had woken from her pill-induced sleep determined to visit Wally and had
driven down to the hospital only to learn that he was in Intensive Care and could see no
one. Dr Cohen and the chief cardiologist broke the news to her.

‘He’s not unconscious but his condition is exceedingly grave. We’re thinking of
having him transferred to the South Atlanta Heart Clinic,’ the cardiologist told
her.

‘But that’s where they do heart transplants!’ Joanie shrieked. ‘He can’t be that bad.’

‘It’s just that we haven’t the facilities here in Wilma. He’ll be a heap better off at
the Clinic.’

‘Well, I’m going there with him. I’m not having him have a heart transplant without my
being with him.’

‘No one is talking about a heart transplant, Mrs Immelmann. It’s just that he’ll get the
best treatment possible down there.’

‘I don’t care!’ she screamed inconsequentially. ‘I’m going to be with him to the end.
You can’t stop me.’

‘Nobody’s going to stop you. You’re entitled to go where you like, but I won’t take
responsibility for the consequences,’ said the cardiologist and ended the argument
by going back to Intensive Care.

As she drove back to the Starfighter Mansion in a blazing temper she made up her mind
what she was going to do. Tell Eva to get herself and her brats out of the house.

‘I’m going down to Atlanta with Wally!’ she shouted. ‘And you’re going back to England
and I never want to see you, any of you, ever again. Pack up and go.’

For once Eva agreed with her. The visit had been a disaster and besides, she was
frantically worried about Henry. She should never have left him alone. He was bound to
have got into trouble without her. She told the quads to pack their things and get ready to
leave. But they had heard Auntie Joan shouting and were way ahead of her. The only problem
was how to get to the airport. Eva put the question to Auntie Joan when she stormed
downstairs.

‘Get a bloody cab, you bitch,’ she snapped.

‘But I haven’t the money,’ said Eva pathetically.

‘Oh, God. Never mind. Anything to get you out of the house.’ She went to the phone and
called the cab company and presently the Wilts were on their way. The quads said nothing.
They knew better than to talk when Eva was in this sort of mood.

In the Surveillance Truck Murphy and Palowski were uncertain what to do. No trace of
any drug had been detected in the effluent coming from the Starfighter Mansion. Wally
Immelmann’s heart attack had made the situation even more difficult and what they had
seen and heard in the house didn’t suggest any activity connected with drugs. Domestic
murder seemed more likely.

‘Best call Atlanta and tell them the sumo with quadruplets is coming and let them decide
the action,’ said Murphy.

‘Affirmative,’ Palowski agreed. He’d forgotten how to say yes.

In Ipford General Hospital Wilt still hadn’t come round. He’d been moved from the
corridor to make room for six youngsters injured in the pig inferno. Finally after
forty-eight hours Wilt was taken into X-ray and diagnosed as suffering from severe
concussion and three badly bruised ribs, but there was no sign of a fractured skull. From
there he was wheeled to what was called the Neurological Ward. As usual it was full.

‘Of course it was a crime,’ said the Duty Sergeant grumpily when the doctor at the
hospital phoned the police station to ask what exactly had happened. ‘The bugger was
mugged and dumped unconscious in the street behind the New Estate. What he was doing there
we’ve no idea. Probably drunk or…well, your guess is as good as mine. He wasn’t wearing any
trousers. Being in that district he was asking for it.’

‘Any identity?’ the doctor asked.

‘One of our men saw him and thought he recognised him as a lecturer at the Tech. Name of
Wilt. Mr Henry Wilt. He taught Communications Studies and–’

‘So what’s his address? Oh, never mind, you can inform his relatives he’s been mugged
and is in Ipford Hospital.’ And he rang off angrily.

In his office Inspector Flint leapt to his feet and barged into the passage. ‘Did I
hear you say ‘Henry Wilt’?’

The Sergeant nodded. ‘He’s up at the hospital. Been mugged according to some quack
who…’

But Flint was no longer listening. He hurried down to the police station car park and
headed for the hospital.

It was a frustrated Inspector Flint who finally found Wilt in the overcrowded maze
that was Ipford General Hospital. To begin with he’d been directed to Neurology only
to find Wilt had been moved to Vasectomy.

‘What on earth for? I understood he had been mugged. What’s he need a vasectomy
for?’

‘He doesn’t. He was only here temporarily. Then he was taken to Hysterectomy.’

‘Hysterectomy? Dear God,’ said Flint faintly. He could just begin to understand why a
man who must presumably have been an active participant in helping to foist those
dreadful quads on the world might deserve a vasectomy to prevent him inflicting any
more nightmares; hysterectomy was something else again. ‘But the blighter’s a man. You
can’t give a man a hysterectomy. It’s not possible.’

‘That’s why he was moved to Infectious Diseases 3. They had a spare bed there. At least I
think it was ID 3,’ the nurse told him. ‘I know someone died there this morning. Mind you,
they always do.’

‘Why?’ asked Flint incautiously.

‘Aids,’ said the nurse, pushing an obese woman on a trolley past him.

‘But they can’t put a man who’s been beaten up and is bleeding in the same bed as a bloke
who’s just died of Aids. It’s outrageous. Bloody near condemning him to death.’

‘Oh, they sterilise the sheets and all that,’ said the nurse over her shoulder.

It was a pale, frustrated and appalled Inspector who finally found Wilt in Unisex 8
which was reserved for geriatrics who had had a variety of operations that required them
to wear catheters, drips and in several cases tubes protruding from various other
orifices. Flint couldn’t see why it was called a unisex ward. Multi-sex would have been
more accurate though just as unpleasant. To take his attention away from a patient of
indeterminate sex–for once Flint preferred the politically correct word ‘gender’–who
clearly had an almost continuous incontinence problem and what amounted to a phobic
horror of catheters, the Inspector tried to concentrate on Wilt. His condition was
pretty awful too. His scalp was bandaged and his face badly bruised and swollen but the
Ward Sister assured Flint that he’d soon recover consciousness. Flint said he sincerely
hoped so.

Shortly afterwards the old man in the next bed had convulsions and his false teeth fell
out. A nurse put them back and called the Sister who took her time coming.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ she demanded. Even to Flint’s medically untutored way
of thinking, the question seemed gratuitous. How the hell could the old fellow know what
was wrong with him?

‘How would I know? I just get these hot flushes. I had a prostate operation on Tuesday,’
he said.

‘And a very successful one too. You’ve done nothing but grumble since you came here.
You’re just a grotty old man. I’ll be glad to see the back of you.’

The nurse intervened. ‘But he’s eighty-one, Sister,’ she said.

‘And a very healthy eighty-one he is too,’ the Sister replied and swept off to deal with
the patient who had dragged his catheter out for the fifth time. It was perfectly obvious
what ‘gender’ he was now. To avoid witnessing the reinsertion of the catheter, and a fresh
bout of convulsions by the old man in the next bed, Flint turned to look at Wilt and found an
eye staring at him. Wilt had recovered consciousness and, if the eye was anything to go
by, didn’t like what he was seeing. Flint wasn’t enjoying it much either. He stared back
and wondered what to do. But the eye closed abruptly. Flint turned to the nurse to ask her if
an open eye was an indication that the patient had recovered consciousness but the
nurse was having difficulty putting the old man’s dentures back into his mouth again.
When she had succeeded Flint asked again.

‘Couldn’t say, not really,’ she said. ‘I’ve known some of them die with their eyes wide
open. Of course they glaze over a bit blue later on. That way you know they’ve gone.’

‘Charming,’ said the Inspector and turned back but Wilt’s eyes were firmly shut. The
sight of the Inspector sitting beside the bed had so startled him he had almost
forgotten his dreadful headache and how awful he felt. Whatever had happened to him–and
he had no idea where he’d been or what he’d done the vaguely familiar figure sitting and
staring at him was not a reassuring one. Not that he recognised Flint. And presently he
fell into a coma again and Flint sent for Sergeant Yates.

‘I’m off home for a bit of lunch and a kip,’ he told him. ‘Let me know the moment he comes
round and on no account let that idiot Hodge know he’s here. He’ll have Wilt charged for drug
dealing before the poor bugger’s conscious.’

He went down the seemingly endless corridors and drove home.

On the other side of the Atlantic Eva and the quads sat in the airport waiting for their
plane. It had been delayed first by a bomb threat and then, when it had been thoroughly
searched, by a mechanical fault. Eva was no longer impatient or even angry with the quads
or Auntie Joan. She was glad to be going home to her Henry but intensely worried about
his whereabouts and what had happened to him. The girls played and squabbled around her. She
blamed herself for having accepted the invitation to Wilma but at least she was going
home and in a way she was glad her mission to get the Immelmanns to change their wills in
the girls’ favour had failed so catastrophically. The prospect of a fortune would have been
bad for the quads.

From an office overlooking the check-in DEA officials studied the little group and
wondered what to do.

‘We stop them here, we’re not going to find anything. If there ever was anything to
find. Reckon Palowski was right. This Mrs Wilt is a decoy. The guys in London can check her
out. No point in pulling her in here.’

What Ruth Rottecombe was doing was preparing a prospect that would be very bad. For
Wilt, at any rate. When she was woken from her sleep after her long drive back from Ipford
by a phone call from the Superintendent at Oston Police Station to say he was coming up
to interview her, she realised she hadn’t got rid of Wilt’s trousers and rucksack as she
had intended. They were still in the back of the Volvo. If the police found them…Ruth
preferred not to think of the consequences. She hurried out to the garage and took them up
to an empty trunk in the attic and locked it. Then she returned to the garage and moved the
car over the spot where Wilt had fallen and locked Wilfred and Pickles inside. They would
act as a deterrent to any investigation of the place. Somehow she had been sure the
police would pay her another visit and she had no wish to answer any more awkward
questions.

She need not have worried. The police had checked at the Country Club and Battleby’s
alibi seemed authentic. He had been there at least an hour before the fire had broken out
and the arson investigators had found no sign of a delayed-action device. Whoever
had started the fire, it couldn’t have been the beastly Battleby or Mrs Rottecombe. And
they’d got the bloody paedophile on two charges, one of which would put him away for a very
long time and ruin the swine’s reputation for life. The Superintendent didn’t care so
much about the arson. On the other hand, while he detested Ruthless Ruth, he had to be
careful. She was the wife of an influential Member of Parliament who could ask awkward
questions in the House about police interrogation methods and harassment. It would pay
to be polite to her for the time being. Talking about the fire would give him a chance to
study her.

‘I’m extremely sorry to bother you,’ he said when she opened the front door. ‘It’s just
that there are some points in the case against Mr Battleby that are bothering us and we
thought you might be in a position to enlighten us. We are simply concerned with the fire
at the Manor House.’

Ruth Rottecombe hesitated for a moment and decided to be conciliatory. ‘If I can
be of any help, I’ll certainly try. You’d better come in.’

She held the door open but the Superintendent was not anxious to enter a house if
those damned bull terriers were loose inside. It had taken all his courage to drive up and
get out of the car.

‘About those two dogs…’ he began but Mrs Rottecombe reassured him.

‘They are locked in the garage. Do come in.’

They went into the drawing room.

‘Please take a seat.’

The Superintendent sat down hesitantly. This was hardly the reception he’d
expected. Mrs Rottecombe pulled up a chair and prepared to answer questions.

The Superintendent picked his words carefully. ‘We have checked with the Club
Secretary and he has confirmed that Battleby was at the Country Club playing bridge for
nearly an hour before the fire broke out. Secondly, the kitchen door was unlocked. So it
was perfectly possible that someone else started the fire.’

‘But that’s impossible. I locked–’ Ruth said before realising she was walking into
a trap. ‘I mean, someone must have known where the keys were kept. I hope you don’t think
I–’

‘Certainly not,’ said the Superintendent. ‘We know you were at the Club at the same
time. No, there’s no suspicion against you. I can guarantee that. What interests us more
is a set of footprints in the vegetable garden. They are those of a man who came down from
the track behind the house. Now in the mud in the track we’ve also found tyre marks which
indicate that a vehicle was parked there and drove off hurriedly some time later on. It
begins to look as though the fire was started deliberately by a third party.’

Mrs Rottecombe bridled at that ‘third’. ‘Are you suggesting Bob hired someone to start
the fire–’

‘I’m not suggesting anything,’ said the Superintendent hurriedly. ‘I simply meant
that someone, some unknown person, entered the house and caused the fire. We also have
evidence that he had been in the kitchen garden for some considerable time, evidently
watching the house. There are a group of footprints by the gate in the wall which indicate
that he had moved about waiting for a chance to enter the house.’ He paused. ‘What we are
trying to find out is if anyone had a particular grudge against the man Battleby, and we
wondered if you could help us.’

Mrs Rottecombe nodded. ‘I should think there were a great many,’ she said finally. ‘Bob
Battleby was not a popular figure in the district. Those vile magazines in the Range
Rover indicate that he has paedophile tendencies and he may have abused…well, done
something horrible.’

It was her turn to pause and let the inference sink in. The suggestion helped to clear
her of any connection with that side of Battleby’s inclinations. Whatever she was she
was not a child or, as the Superintendent put it to himself, a spring chicken.

By the time he left he had not gained any useful information from her. On the other
hand, Ruth Rottecombe had a shrewd idea why Harold had found the unconscious man in the
garage. He’d had something to do with that disastrous night and she saw no reason why she
shouldn’t provide the police with his jeans covered with ash near the burnt-out Manor. She
wouldn’t leave them there immediately but would wait until it was dark. Like after
midnight.