Wilt on High (9 page)

With a fresh sense of desperation, Wilt drove on to The Glassblowers’ Arms to think things out over a drink.

‘All right, call it off,’ said Inspector Flint, helping himself to a plastic cup of coffee from the dispenser and stumping into his office.

‘Call it off?’ said Sergeant Yates, following him in.

‘That’s what I said. I knew it was an OD from the start. Obvious. Gave those old windbags a nasty turn all the same, and they could do with a bit of reality. Live in a bloody dream world where everything’s nice and hygienic because it’s been put into words. That way they don’t happen, do they?’

‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ said Yates.

The Inspector took a magazine out of the cardboard box and studied a photograph of a threesome grotesquely intertwined. ‘Bloody disgusting,’ he said.

Sergeant Yates peered over his shoulder. ‘You wouldn’t think anyone would have the nerve to be shot doing that, would you?’

‘Anyone who does that ought to be shot, if you ask me,’ said Flint. ‘Though mind you they’re not really doing it. Can’t be. You’d get ruptured or something. Found this little lot in that boiler-room and it didn’t do that murky Principal a bit of good. Turned a very queer colour, he did.’

‘Not his, are they?’ asked Yates.

Flint shut the magazine and dumped it back in the box. ‘You never know, my son, you never know. Not with so-called educated people you don’t. It’s all hidden behind words with them. They look all right from the outside, but it’s what goes on in here that’s really weird.’ Flint tapped his forehead significantly. ‘And that’s something else again.’

‘I suppose it must be,’ said Yates. ‘Specially when it’s hygienic into the bargain.’

Flint looked at him suspiciously. He never knew if Sergeant Yates was as stupid as he made out. ‘You trying to be funny or something?’

‘Of course not. Only first you said they lived in a hygienic dream world of words; and then you say they’re kinky in the head. I was just putting the two together.’

‘Well, don’t,’ said Flint. ‘Don’t even try. Just get me Hodge. The Drug Squad can take this mess over, and good luck to them.’ The Sergeant went out, leaving Flint studying his pale fingers and thinking weird thoughts of his own about Hodge, the Tech and the possibilities that might result from bringing the Head of the Drug Squad and that infernal institution together. And Wilt. It was an interesting prospect, particularly when he remembered Hodge’s request for phone-tapping facilities and his generally conspiratorial air. Kept his cards close to his chest, did Inspector Hodge, and a fat lot of good it had done him so far. Well, two could play at that game, and if ever there was a quicksand of misinformation and
inconsequentiality, it had to be the Tech and Wilt. Flint reversed the order. Wilt and the Tech. And Wilt had been vaguely connected with the dead girl, if only by going to the wrong toilet. The word alerted Flint to his own immediate needs. Those bloody pills had struck again.

He hurried down the passage for a pee and as he stood there, standing and staring at the tiled wall and a notice which said, ‘Don’t drop your cigarette ends in the urinal. It makes them soggy and difficult to light,’ his disgust changed to inspiration. There was a lesson to be learned from that notice if he could only see it. It had to do with the connection between a reasonable request and an utterly revolting supposition. The word ‘inconsequential’ came to mind again. Sticking Inspector Bloody Hodge onto Wilt would be like tying two cats together by their tails and seeing which one came out on top. And if Wilt didn’t, Flint had sorely misjudged the little shit. And behind Wilt there was Eva and those foul quads and if that frightful combination didn’t foul Hodge’s career up as effectively as it had wrecked Flint’s, the Inspector deserved promotion. With the delightful thought that he’d be getting his own back on Wilt too, he returned to his office and was presently doodling figures of infinite confusion which was exactly what he hoped to initiate.

He was still happily immersed in this daydream of revenge when Yates returned. ‘Hodge is out,’ he reported. ‘Left a message he’d be back shortly.’

‘Typical,’ said Flint. ‘The sod’s probably lurking in
some coffee bar trying to make up his mind which dolly bird he’s going to nail.’

Yates sighed. Ever since Flint had been on those ruddy penis-blockers or whatever they were called, he’d had girls on his mind. ‘Why shouldn’t he be doing that?’ he asked.

‘Because that’s the way the sod works. A right shoddy copper. Pulls some babe in arms in for smoking pot and then tries to turn her into a supergrass. Been watching too much TV.’

He was interrupted by the preliminary report from the Lab. ‘Massive heroin dose,’ the technician told him, ‘that’s for starters. She’d used something else we haven’t identified yet. Could be a new product. It’s certainly not the usual. Might be “Embalming Fluid” though.’

‘Embalming Fluid? What the hell would she be doing with that?’ said Flint with a genuine and justified revulsion.

‘It’s a name for another of these hallucinogens like LSD only worse. Anyway, we’ll let you know.’

‘Don’t,’ said Flint. ‘Deal direct with Hodge. It’s his pigeon now.’

He put the phone down and shook his head sorrowfully. ‘Says she fixed herself with heroin and some filth called Embalming Fluid,’ he told Yates. ‘You wouldn’t credit it, would you? Embalming Fluid! I don’t know what the world’s coming to.’

Fifty miles away, Lord Lynchknowle’s dinner had been interrupted by the arrival of a police car and the news of his daughter’s death. The fact that it had come between the mackerel pâté and the game pie, and on the wine side, an excellent Montrachet and a Château Lafite 1962, several bottles of which he’d opened to impress the Home Secretary and two old friends from the Foreign Office, particularly annoyed him. Not that he intended to let the news spoil his meal by announcing it before he’d finished, but he could foresee an ugly episode with his wife afterwards for no better reason than that he had come back to the table with the rather unfortunate remark that it was nothing important. Of course, he could always excuse himself on the grounds that hospitality came first, and old Freddie was the Home Secretary after all, and he wasn’t going to let that Lafite ’62 go to waste, but somehow he knew Hilary was going to kick up the devil of a fuss about it afterwards. He sat on over the Stilton in a pensive mood wishing to God he’d never married her. Looking back over the years, he could see that his mother had been right when she’d warned him that there was bad blood in ‘that family’, the Puckertons.

‘You can’t breed bad blood out, you know,’ she’d said, and as a breeder of bull terriers, she’d known what she was talking about. ‘It’ll come out in the end, mark my words.’

And it had, in that damned girl Penny. Silly bitch should have stuck to showjumping instead of getting it into her head she was going to be some sort of intellectual and skiving off to that rotten Tech in Ipford and
mixing with the scum there. All Hilary’s fault, too, for encouraging the girl. Not that she’d see it that way. All the blame would be on his side. Oh well, he’d have to do something to pacify her. Phone the Chief Constable perhaps and get Charles to put the boot in. His eyes wandered round the table and rested moodily on the Home Secretary. That was it, have a word with Freddie before he left and see that the police got their marching orders from the top.

By the time he was able to get the Home Secretary alone, a process that required him to lurk in the darkness outside the cloakroom and listen to some frank observations about himself by the hired waitresses in the kitchen, Lord Lynchknowle had worked himself up into a state of indignation that was positively public-spirited. ‘It’s not simply a personal matter, Freddie,’ he told the Home Secretary, when the latter was finally convinced Lynchknowle’s daughter was dead and that he wasn’t indulging that curious taste for which he’d been renowned at school. ‘There she was at this bloody awful Tech at the mercy of all these drug pedlars. You’ve got to put a stop to it.’

‘Of course, of course,’ said the Home Secretary, backing into a hatstand and a collection of shooting sticks and umbrellas. ‘I’m deeply sorry –’

‘It’s no use you damned politicians being sorry,’ continued Lynchknowle, forcing him back against a clutter of raincoats, ‘I begin to understand the man-in-the-street’s disenchantment with the parliamentary process.’ (The
Home Secretary doubted it) ‘What’s more, words’ll mend no fences’ (the Home Secretary didn’t doubt that) ‘and I want action.’

‘And you’ll have it, Percy,’ the Home Secretary assured him, ‘I guarantee that. I’ll get the top men at Scotland Yard onto it tomorrow first thing and no mistake.’ He reached for the little notebook he used to appease influential supporters. ‘What did you say the name of the place was?’

‘Ipford,’ said Lord Lynchknowle, still glowering at him.

‘And she was at the University there?’

‘At the Tech.’

‘Really?’ said the Home Secretary, with just enough inflexion in his voice to lower Lord Lynchknowle’s resolve.

‘All her mother’s fault,’ he said defensively.

‘Quite. All the same, if you will allow your daughters to go to Technical Colleges, not that I’m against them you understand, but a man in your position can’t be too careful …’

In the hall, Lady Lynchknowle caught the phrase.

‘What are you two men doing down there?’ she asked shrilly.

‘Nothing, dear, nothing,’ said Lord Lynchknowle. It was a remark he was to regret an hour later when the guests had gone.

‘Nothing?’ shrieked Lady Lynchknowle, who had by then recovered from the condolences the Home Secretary had offered so unexpectedly. ‘You dare to stand there and call Penny’s death nothing?’

‘I am not actually standing, my dear,’ said Lynchknowle
from the depths of an armchair. But his wife was not to be deflected so easily.

‘And you sat through dinner knowing she was lying there on a marble slab? I knew you were a callous swine but …’

‘What the hell else was I supposed to do?’ yelled Lynchknowle, before she could get into her stride. ‘Come back to the table and announce that your daughter was a damned junkie? You’d have loved that, wouldn’t you? I can just hear you now …’

‘You can’t,’ shrieked his wife, making her fury heard in the servants’ quarters. Lynchknowle lumbered to his feet and slammed the door. ‘And don’t think you’re going to –’

‘Shut up,’ he bawled, ‘I’ve spoken to Freddie and he’s putting Scotland Yard onto the case and now I’m going to call Charles. As Chief Constable he can –’

‘And what good is that going to do? He can’t bring her back to me!’

‘Nobody can, dammit. And if you hadn’t put the idea into her empty head that she was capable of earning her own living when it was as clear as daylight she was as thick as two short planks, none of this would have happened.’ Lord Lychknowle picked up the phone and dialled the Chief Constable.

At The Glassblowers’ Arms, Wilt was on the phone too. He had spent the time trying to think of some way to
circumvent whatever ghastly plans McCullum had in mind for him without revealing his own identity to the prison authorities. It wasn’t easy.

After two large whiskies, Wilt had plucked up enough courage to phone the prison, had refused to give his name and had asked for the Governor’s home number. It wasn’t in the phone book. ‘It’s ex-directory,’ said the warder in the office.

‘Quite,’ said Wilt. ‘That’s why I’m asking.’

‘And that’s why I can’t give it to you. If the Governor wanted every criminal in the district to know where he could be subjected to threats, he’d put it there wouldn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ said Wilt. ‘On the other hand, when a member of the public is being threatened by some of your inmates, how on earth is he supposed to inform the Governor that there’s going to be a mass breakout?’

‘Mass breakout? What do you know about plans for a mass breakout?’

‘Enough to want to speak to the Governor.’ There was a pause while the warder considered this and Wilt fed the phone with another coin.

‘Why can’t you tell me?’ the warder asked finally.

Wilt ignored the question. ‘Listen,’ he said with a desperate earnestness that sprang from the knowledge that having come so far he couldn’t back down, and that if he didn’t convince the man that this was a genuine crisis, McCullum’s accomplices would shortly be doing something ghastly to his knees, ‘I assure you that this is
a deeply serious matter. I wish to speak to the Governor privately. I will call back in ten minutes. All right?’

‘It may not be possible to reach him in that time, sir,’ said the warder, recognizing the voice of genuine desperation. ‘If you can give me your number, I’ll get him to call you.’

‘It’s Ipford 23194,’ he said, ‘and I’m not joking.’

‘No, sir,’ said the warder. ‘I’ll be back to you as soon as I can.’

Wilt put the phone down and wandered back to his whisky at the bar uncomfortably aware that he was now committed to a course of action that could have horrendous consequences. He finished his whisky and ordered another to dull the thought that he’d given the warder the phone number of the pub where he was well-known. ‘At least it proved to him that I was being serious,’ he thought and wondered what it was about the bureaucratic mentality that made communication so difficult. The main thing was to get in touch with the Governor as soon as possible and explain the situation to him. Once McCullum had been transferred to another prison, he’d be off the hook.

At HM Prison Ipford, the information that a mass escape was imminent was already causing repercussions. The Chief Warder, summoned from his bed, had tried to telephone the Governor. ‘The blasted man must be out to dinner somewhere,’ he said when the phone had rung
for several minutes without being answered. ‘Are you certain it wasn’t a hoax call?’

The warder on duty shook his head. ‘Sounded genuine to me,’ he said. ‘Educated voice and obviously frightened. In fact, I have an idea I recognized it.’

‘Recognized it?’

‘Couldn’t put a name to it but he sounded familiar somehow. Anyway, if it wasn’t genuine, why did he give me his phone number so quick?’ The Chief Warder looked at the number and dialled it. The line was engaged. A girl at The Glass-blowers’ Arms was talking to her boyfriend. ‘Why didn’t he give his name?’