Instead he lay sadly pondering on the mystery of life and death and wondering if there was anything in the ‘near-death experience’ and people who had seen the light at the end of the tunnel and a bearded old gentleman, God or someone, who led them into a beautiful garden before deciding they weren’t to die after all. Either that or they hung around the ceiling of the operating theatre looking down at their own bodies and listening to what the surgeons had to say. Wilt couldn’t see why they bothered. There must be something more interesting to do on the ‘other side’. The notion that it was fascinating to eavesdrop on surgeons who’d just cocked up one’s operation suggested the ‘other side’ didn’t have much to offer in the way of interest. Not that Wilt had much confidence in the existence of the ‘other side’. He’d read somewhere that surgeons had gone to the trouble of writing words on top of the theatre lampshade that could only be seen by people and flies on the ceiling to check if the ‘near-death’ patients could really have been up there. None of those who had come back had ever been able to quote what was written there. That was proof enough for Wilt. Besides, he’d read somewhere else that the ‘near-death’ experience could be induced by increasing carbon dioxide content in the brain. On the whole Wilt remained sceptical. Death might be a great adventure, as someone had once put it, but Wilt wasn’t keen on it all the same. He was still wondering where the blighter by the door had got to, and whether he was chatting with some other newly dear departed or simply lying in the mortuary cooling gently and getting rigor mortis, when the Night Sister came round again. She was a tall and well-scrubbed woman who evidently liked her patients to be asleep.
‘Why are you still awake?’ she demanded.
Wilt looked at her bleakly and wondered if she always slept well. ‘It’s that poor bloke by the door,’ he said finally.
‘The poor bloke by the door? What on earth are you talking about? He’s not making any noise.’
‘I know that,’ said Wilt, staring at her pathetically. ‘I know he’s not making any noise. Poor sod can’t, can he? He’s shuffled.’
‘Shuffled?’ said the Sister, looking at him curiously. ‘What do you mean, he’s shuffled?’
Wilt stared at her more pathetically still. ‘Shuffled off this mortal coil,’ he said.
‘Shuffled off this mortal coil? What are you babbling about?’
Wilt took his time. Obviously the Sister didn’t know her Shakespeare.
‘Pegged it, for goodness’ sake. Kicked the bucket. Dropped off the perch. Handed in his dinner pail. Crossed that bourn from which no traveller returns. Died.’
The Sister looked at him as though he really had gone mad. Gone mad or was delirious.
‘Don’t be so stupid. There’s nothing the matter with him. It’s the heart monitor that’s gone wrong.’
And with a remark about ‘some people’ she passed on down the ward. Wilt peered in the direction of the door and was slightly aggrieved to see the man was still there sleeping peacefully. After what seemed ages he went to sleep himself. He was woken two hours later and presently a doctor examined him.
‘What drugs were you on?’ he asked.
Wilt stared at him blankly. ‘I’ve never taken any drugs in my life,’ he muttered.
The doctor looked at his notes. ‘That’s not what it says here. You were clearly on something during the night according to Sister Brownsel. Oh well, we’ll soon find out with a blood test.’
Wilt said nothing. He was going back to suffering from amnesia and since he really couldn’t remember what had happened to him he wouldn’t be bluffing. All the same he was still worried. He had to find out what had been going on.
Eva arrived at the hospital accompanied by Mavis Mottram. Not that she liked Mavis but at least she was a dominant personality and would stand no nonsense from anyone. To begin with Mavis lived up to her hopes.
‘Name,’ she snapped at the girl at the reception desk and took out a small notebook. ‘Name and address.’
‘What do you want it for?’
‘To report you to the Administrator for deliberately directing Mrs Wilt here to Psychiatry when you knew perfectly well where her husband was.’
The girl looked wildly around. Anything to get away from this gorgon.
Mavis went on. ‘I happen to be a member of the council,’ she said, omitting to mention that it was only the parish council, not the county council, ‘and what’s more I happen to know Dr Roche very well indeed.’
The receptionist went white. Dr Roche was the top physician and a very important man. She could see she was in danger of losing her job. ‘Mr Wilt hadn’t been logged in,’ she muttered.
‘And whose fault was that? Yours, of course,’ said Mavis with a snarl and wrote something in her notebook. ‘Now then, where is Mr Wilt?’
The receptionist checked the register and phoned someone. ‘There’s a woman here—’
‘Lady, if you don’t mind,’ hissed Mavis.
Behind her Eva marvelled at Mavis Mottram’s authority. ‘I don’t know how you do it,’ she said. ‘When I try it never works.’
‘It’s simply a question of breeding. My family can trace its lineage back to William the Conqueror.’
‘Fancy that. And your father was a plumber too,’ said Eva, unable to keep a note of scepticism out of her voice.
‘And a very good one too. What was your father?’
‘My daddy died when I was young,’ said Eva mournfully.
‘Quite. Barmen frequently do. Of drink.’
‘He didn’t. He died of pancreatitis.’
‘And how do you get pancreatitis? By drinking whisky and gin by the gallon. In other words by becoming an alcoholic.’
Before the spat could turn into a full-scale row the receptionist intervened. ‘Mr Wilt has been moved to Geriatrics 5,’ she told them. ‘You’ll find it on the second floor. There’s a lift just along the passage.’
‘There had better be,’ said Mavis and they set off. Five minutes later Mavis had another altercation, this time with a very formidable Sister who refused them entry on the grounds that it wasn’t Visiting Hours. Even Mavis Mottram’s insistence that Mrs Wilt was Mr Wilt’s wife and entitled to see him at any time didn’t have any effect. In the end they had to sit in the Waiting Room for two hours.
27
The discovery of Wilt’s trousers covered with mud and what looked like dried blood, and with several holes burnt in them, in the lane behind the late Meldrum Manor interested the police at Oston.
‘Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. That bastard Battleby hired some swine to torch the place,’ the Superintendent told the group of policemen assembled to find out what had really happened on the night of the fire. ‘And what’s more we’ve got the sod’s name and address from an envelope in the back pocket. Name of Mr H. Wilt. Address 45 Oakhurst Avenue, Ipford. Does that ring a bell with any of you?’
A constable raised his hand. ‘That’s the name of the backpacker stayed at Mrs Rawley’s B & B up Lentwood Way. You told me to check hotels. There aren’t too many about these parts so I tried the bed and breakfasts too. He stayed at Mrs Crow’s the night before. Wouldn’t say where he was heading. Claimed he didn’t know where he was and didn’t want to know.’
A sergeant spoke up. ‘My wife’s from Ipford,’ he said, ‘and we get the Weekly Echo. There was a story in last week’s about a man being found unconscious in the New Ipford Estate with his head bashed in and no trousers. Covered in mud he was too.’
The Superintendent left the room and made a phone call.
‘Thank you. Spot on,’ he said when he returned. ‘He’s in the Ipford General with concussion and suffering from amnesia. They’re waiting for him to come round. In the mean time they’re sending a specimen of the mud on his shirt up for us to check if it’s the same as in the lane back of the Manor.’
‘That’s strange. I went up that lane the very next day in broad daylight and there were no trousers there then. I guarantee that,’ said a young co
nstable. ‘The insurance bods did the same. You can ask them.’
The Superintendent pursed his lips. What interested him was that the jeans had motor oil and blood on them. He still hadn’t forgotten or forgiven Mrs Rottecombe’s insulting attitude on the night of the fire. His ‘nose’ told him she was involved in the fire at Meldrum Manor in some way. And where had the Shadow Minister for Social Enhancement got to? The newspapers had taken their revenge with accusations that invited a suit for libel but there had not been a squeak out of the MP. Odd, very odd. But most suspicious of all the policeman ostensibly at the gate to guard Leyline Lodge but in fact to keep an eye on the house had reported that the garage doors hadn’t been opened since Wilfred and Pickles had dealt with the two intrepid newsmen. And Ruth Rottecombe had taken to leaving her Volvo estate on the drive near the front door. Added to this the two bull terriers roamed the grounds so that even the usual tradesmen left whatever Mrs Rottecombe had ordered by phone outside the gate where she had to collect it. So she was still there. It was the locked garage doors that held the Superintendent’s attention. They suggested that there was something inside that needed to be kept hidden. The Super’s intuition told him that it would be as well to have a discreet word with the Chief Constable about the advisability of obtaining a search warrant. The Chief was known to detest the Rottecombes and the case against Battleby had alienated him even further. And since the destruction of their ancestral home and Bob Battleby’s arrest for paedophilia there was nothing to fear from the rest of the influential Battlebys. That evening the Superintendent spent an hour with the Chief Constable explaining his suspicions and his dislike of Ruth Rottecombe, and found the Chief shared them.
‘This whole thing stinks,’ he said. ‘That bloody woman’s up to her ears in the rotten business but at least we’ve got that bastard Battleby. And her husband’s in deep trouble too, thank goodness. I’ve had enquiries from … well, on high. You might as well say from the office of the Almighty himself, namely the Home Secretary. Take it from me the press coverage isn’t doing the Central Office any good. They are as interested in knowing where he’s got to as we are and I gained the impression they wouldn’t be unhappy if the bastard was dead. Save sacking the blighter.’
By the time the Superintendent left he had been given permission to apply for a search warrant and to take any reasonable measures he felt like.
One of those measures had been to have the Rottecombes’ phone tapped. All he’d learnt was that the wretched Ruth Rottecombe had phoned her husband’s flat in London time and time again, and had done the same with his club and the Party Central Office, but no one had seen him.
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By the time they found Geriatrics 3 – Wilt hadn’t been in Geriatrics 5 – Mavis Mottram had had enough. So had Eva. They headed for the door only to be confronted by a formidable Sister.
‘I’m sorry but you can’t see him yet. Dr Soltander is examining him,’ she said.
‘But I’m his wife,’ squawked Eva.
‘Very possibly. But—’
Mavis intervened. ‘Show her your driving licence,’ she snapped. ‘That will prove who you are.’ As Eva rummaged in her handbag Mavis turned on the Sister. ‘You can check the address. I assume you know Mr Wilt’s.’
‘Of course we do. We wouldn’t know who he was if we didn’t.’
‘In that case why didn’t you phone Mrs Wilt and let her know he was here?’
The Sister gave up and went back into the ward. ‘His wife and another dreadful woman are demanding to see him,’ she told the doctor.
Dr Soltander sighed. His was a hard life and he had enough terminally ill old people to attend to without having any interruptions from wives and dreadful women. ‘Tell them to give me another twenty minutes,’ he said. ‘I may be in a better position to make a prognosis by then.’
But the Sister wasn’t tackling Mavis Mottram again. ‘You’d better tell them yourself. They won’t listen to me.’
‘Very well,’ muttered the doctor with a dangerous degree of patience and went out into the corridor. He could see at once what the Sister had meant by ‘two dreadful women’. Eva was white-faced and sobbing and demanding to see her Henry. Dr Soltander tried to point out that Wilt was unconscious and in no condition to see anyone and aroused the fury of Mavis Mottram.
‘It’s her legal right to visit her husband. You can’t stop her.’
The doctor’s expression hardened. ‘And who may you be?’
‘Mrs Wilt’s friend and I’ll repeat that Mrs Wilt has every right to visit her husband.’
Dr Soltander’s eyes narrowed. ‘Not while I’m doing my rounds,’ he snapped. ‘She can visit him when I’ve finished.’
‘And when will that be? In four hours?’
‘I’m not here to be cross-examined by you or anyone else. Now kindly take your friend into the Waiting Room while I make sure my absence from the ward hasn’t resulted in any premature deaths.’
‘Presence more likely,’ Mavis snapped back and took out her little notebook. ‘What’s your name? It isn’t Shipman by any chance?’
The remark failed to have the effect she had expected. Two effects to be precise. Eva’s awful wail startled a number of patients several wards down the corridor and even some on the floor above. At the same time Dr Soltander leant forward with a sinister smile until his face was almost touching Mavis Mottram’s.
‘Don’t tempt me, my dear,’ he whispered. ‘One day I look forward to having you as a patient.’
And before Mavis could recover from the shock of being nose to nose with such a sinister man he had turned and stalked back into the ward.
‘Now if you’ll just wait in the Visitors’ Room I’ll call you just as soon as Dr Soltander is through,’ the Sister told them and ushered the two women down the corridor. By the time she returned to the ward the doctor had abandoned Wilt and was taking his fury out on Inspector Flint by explaining that his presence was hindering what little treatment he could give the sick and dying, and that in any case Wilt was not in any condition to be questioned.
‘How the devil am I supposed to do the job of three doctors minimum with blasted coppers littering the ward? You can bloody well go and wait with those two diabolical women. Sister, show him out.’
‘And my job is to take a statement from this bloke when he comes round,’ Flint retorted.
‘Yes, well the Sister here will let you know when he does.’
All the same the Inspector wasn’t sharing the so-called Visitors’ Room with Eva and Mavis Mottram. ‘You can phone me at the police station when he’s awake,’ he told the Sister and went down to the car park. For ten minutes he sat there thinking. Wilt had been found without trousers? And old Mrs Verney had seen him being hoisted out of a car by a woman. And kicked by some drunken louts. It was all very strange.
At Leyline Lodge Ruth Rottecombe was no longer ruthless. She was frantic. The police had arrived early that morning with a search warrant and had insisted she open the garage doors to allow a number of white-coated and gloved forensic experts to make a detailed examination of the place. Still in her dressing gown Ruth had watched them from the kitchen as they moved Harold’s Jaguar and then paid particular attention to the patch of oil underneath. Ruth retreated to the bedroom and tried to think. She decided to place the blame on Harold. After all the car was his and he’d obviously done a runner which she could now see was to her advantage. With him out of the way she was still in the clear. After all there was no evidence against her.
She was wrong. In the garage the police had found all the evidence they needed, oil mixed with dried blood, strands of hair and best of all a fragment of blue cloth which matched the colour of the jeans they had found in the lane. There was also mud. They placed all these items in plastic bags and took their findings back to the police station.
‘Now we’re getting somewhere,’ said the Superintendent. ‘If this stuff proves to be what it looks like we’ve got the bitch. Get forensic on to it pro
nto. And get a match of the cloth with the jeans we found in the lane. If they’re the same she’s up shit creek without a canoe let alone a paddle. In the mean time see she doesn’t leave the house. I want a watch kept on her all the time. And while you’re about it bring me the file.’
He sat back and studied his notes from the previous meeting. A bloke named Wilt, Henry Wilt of 45 Oakhurst Avenue, Ipford, found dumped in the street, apparently mugged and now unconscious in hospital there. And the backpacker who’d stayed at the B & Bs had used the same name. All it required was a DNA check on his blood and that found on the floor of the Rottecombes’ garage and the case was beginning to build up. The Superintendent gloated at the prospect before him. If he could get the evidence to prove that Ruth the Ruthless was truly involved, however indirectly, in setting the Manor on fire he would earn the gratitude of the Chief Constable who loathed the bitch. And if the Shadow Minister for Social Enhancement was forced to resign or better still was involved himself, his own future looked very bright. He’d be certain of promotion. The Home Secretary would be delighted. The Shadow Minister would certainly lose his seat in the next election and his own future would be assured. The Superintendent stared out the window of his shabby office, then picked up the phone and called Ipford Police Station.
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