In her cell in yet another police station in yet another town Ruth Rottecombe felt the same way about her marriage to the late Shadow Minister for Social Enhancement. She should have known he was just the sort of idiot to get himself murdered at a time when she needed his support and influence most desperately. After all, that was what she had married him for, and she had cultivated that drunken swine Battleby to ensure that Harold’s seat in Parliament remained absolutely secure. She tried frantically to make sense out of the chaotic series of events that had led up to his disappearance, but the noises coming from a drunk who alternated whining pleas to be let out of the cell next to hers with vomiting, and on the other side what sounded like a foul-mouthed psychotic on some extremely powerful hallucinogenic drug, made anything approaching rational thought impossible. So was getting any sleep. Every half-hour the cell door was opened, the light turned on and a sinister female detective asked her insistently if she was all right.
‘No, I’m fucking not,’ she had squawked at her time and time again. ‘Haven’t you got anything better to do than turn the light on and come in and ask that damn-fool question?’
Each time the detective had said she was just making sure she hadn’t committed suicide and she had finally left the light on all the time. After three such sleepless nights Ruth Rottecombe was almost prepared to confess she had murdered Harold. Instead she refused to answer any more questions.
‘I did not, repeat not, murder Harold. I didn’t harm him in any way at all. I have no idea who did, either. And that’s my last word.’
‘All right, we’ll talk about something we know you did do,’ the senior detective said. ‘We have proof that you drove to Ipford New Estate with a man in the back of your Volvo estate and dumped him there. We also have proof that he had been in your garage and had been bleeding. You know all that so—’
‘I’ve told you I won’t answer any more questions!’ Ruth shouted hoarsely.
‘I’m not asking any. I’m telling you what is undeniable evidence.’
‘Oh, God, why can’t you stop? I know all that and it is deniable.’
‘Right, but what you don’t know is that we have a witness who saw you drag the man out of the back of your car and dump him in the road. A very reliable witness indeed.’ He paused to let this sink into Ruth Rottecombe’s weary mind before going on. ‘What we now need to know is why – if, as you’ve said repeatedly, you don’t have any idea what he had done to land up lying unconscious and bleeding in your garage – you drove him down to that New Estate.’
Ruth began to cry. This time she wasn’t faking the tears. ‘Harold found him there when he came back from London. At least he said he had. He was out of his mind and tried to pin the blame on me. He was shouting and raving and said I’d picked the man up to have sex with him. I thought he was going to kill me.’
‘Go on. Give us the rest.’
‘He made me go out to the garage and look at the bloody man. I’d never seen him in my life. I swear I hadn’t.’
‘What happened then?’
‘The telephone rang and it was some bloody newspaper said they wanted to interview Harold about bringing young men to the house, you know, rent-boys.’
For another hour they went on with the questions and got nowhere. In the end they left her sobbing in the Interrogation Room with her head on the table, and went into another office.
‘Could be true except for one thing,’ said the senior Scotland Yard man. ‘That bit of cloth from this fellow Wilt’s jeans found in the garage and the fact that they discovered those jeans in the lane behind the Manor House two days after the fire and they hadn’t been there when they searched the area the first time. Second, he wasn’t wearing any when he was picked up in Ipford. On top of that all his gear, the boots, socks and knapsack, were in the attic of the Rottecombe house.’
‘You think she planted the jeans there?’
‘I’m damned sure someone did.’
‘Christ, what a case. And London’s demanding a quick arrest,’ said the Superintendent.
They were interrupted by a Woman Sergeant. ‘She’s passed out or is pretending to have,’ she told them. ‘We’ve put her back in the cell.’
The CID man picked up the phone and called Ipford. When he put it down again he shook his head. ‘They’ve moved the bloke Wilt to a mental hospital for what they call “assessment”, whatever that means. I suppose to see if he’s a psychopath.’ He paused and considered the possibilities. There didn’t seem to be many rational ones.
One of the other detectives took up the theme. ‘Whoever set this little lot up had to be damned abnormal. And this bloke Wilt has been in some weird trouble before. Could be he was paid to torch the house.’
The senior CID man gave the matter some thought. ‘I suppose it’s just possible but this Inspector Flint doesn’t think so. Reckons the man Wilt’s too bloody incompetent. Wouldn’t know how to set fire to a pile of newspapers soaked in petrol, he’s that impractical. In any case, if he’d come to set fire to the house he wouldn’t have left such an obvious trail staying at bed and breakfasts and giving his real name. No, there has to be someone else. What beats me is that he and that damned Shadow Minister had head wounds. The Shadow Minister’s dead and this other fellow might well have been if they hadn’t found him in the road when they did. No, I reckon this Rottecombe cow knows more than she’s letting on. I don’t care if she has passed out. I’m going to break her. She knows more than she’s telling. In any case her background stinks. False birth certificate, high-class prostitute who dupes an MP into marrying her, and on top of that she goes in for sado-masochism with that drunken paedophile swine, Battleby. And of course he’s tried to shift the blame on to her. Says she deliberately encouraged him to become an alcoholic so she could control him. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t an element of truth there.’
And so the questioning went on and got nowhere.
35
At the Methuen Mental Hospital the female psychiatrist assigned to assessing Wilt’s psychological state was having as much difficulty. Wilt had passed all the standard visual and symbolic tests with such surprising ease that the psychiatrist could have sworn he’d spent considerable time practising doing them. His verbal skills were even more disconcerting. Only his attitude to sex remained suspicious. It appeared that he found copulation boring and exhausting, not to say ludicrous and fairly repulsive. His admiration for the procreative habits of earthworms and amoebas who simply reproduced by dividing themselves, voluntarily in the case of amoebas and, as far as Wilt knew, involuntarily by earthworms when they were cut in half by a spade, seemed to indicate a severely depressed libido. Since the lady shrink was completely ignorant on the subject of amoebas and earthworms but keen on what little sex her looks attracted, this information came as a nasty revelation to her.
‘Are you saying you would rather bisect yourself than sleep with your wife?’ she asked, hoping to draw the inference that Wilt had a tendency towards a split personality.
‘Of course not,’ Wilt replied indignantly. ‘Mind you, when you meet my wife you’ll understand why I might be.’
‘Your wife does not attract you physically?’
‘I did not say that and in any case, I can’t see what that has to do with you.’
‘I am merely trying to help you,’ said the psychiatrist.
Wilt looked at her sceptically. ‘Really? I thought I had been brought here for assessment, not for prurient inquiries into my sex life.’
‘Your sexual attitude forms part of the assessment process. We want to get a rounded picture of your mental condition.’
‘My mental condition has not been affected by being mugged, left unconscious and beaten over the head. I am not a criminal and by this time I should have thought you’d have recognised that I have all my wits about me. Having realised that, I suggest you mind your own business about my married life. And if you think I am some sort of pervert, let me tell you that my wife and I have p
roduced four daughters or, to put it absolutely correctly, my wife Eva had quadruplets fourteen years ago. I hope that satisfies you that I am a normal heterosexual and a father to boot. Now if you want to make me do some more absurdly simple mental tests, I will happily oblige. What I don’t intend to do is discuss my marital sex life any further. You can do that with Eva. I think I can hear her voice now. How clever of her to come to my side at such an opportune moment. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll get police protection.’
Leaving the shrink open-mouthed and gaping through her spectacles he hurried from the room and moved down the passage away from the sound of Eva demanding to see her darling Henry. In the background the quads could be heard telling someone who didn’t like what he was confronted with that he wasn’t seeing double. ‘We aren’t twins, we’re quadruplets,’ they sang in unison.
Wilt hurried on, trying to find a door that wasn’t locked and failing. At that moment Inspector Flint emerged from his refuge in the Visitors’ Toilet, Eva barged out of the Waiting Room and the psychiatrist left her office and peered short-sightedly to see what on earth was happening and collided with Eva. In the mêlée that followed, the psychiatrist, who had been bowled over and was helped to her feet by the Inspector, revised her opinion of Wilt.
If the formidable woman who had knocked her down was Mrs Wilt – and the presence of the four almost identical teenage girls seemed to indicate that she must be – she could fully understand his lack of interest in marital sex. And his need for police protection. She groped around for her glasses, perched them on her nose and retreated to her office. Eva and Inspector Flint followed; Eva to apologise and Flint more reluctantly to find out how Wilt’s assessment had gone.
The psychiatrist looked at Eva doubtfully and decided not to object to her presence. ‘You want to know my opinion of the patient?’ she asked.
The Inspector nodded. In Eva’s company the less said the soonest mended seemed entirely appropriate.
‘He seems to be perfectly normal. I did all the routine tests we apply in these cases and I should say he has no symptoms of abnormality. There is absolutely no reason why he should not return home.’
She closed the file and stood up.
‘I told you so. There’s nothing wrong with him. You heard her,’ Eva said sharply to Flint. ‘You’ve got no right to hold him any longer. I’m going to take him home.’
‘I really think we should continue this conversation in private,’ said the Inspector.
‘Don’t mind me. I just happen to work here and this is my office,’ said the psychiatrist, obviously anxious to get this formidably dangerous woman who knocked people over out of the place. ‘You can go and continue your discussion in the Visitors’ Room.’
Flint followed Eva out into the passage and into the Waiting Room.
‘Well?’ Eva said as the Inspector shut the door. ‘I want to know what’s been going on, bringing Henry to an awful place like this.’
‘Mrs Wilt, if you’ll just sit down, I’ll do my best to explain,’ he said.
Eva sat down. ‘You’d better,’ she snapped.
Flint tried to think how to put the situation to her as reasonably as possible. He didn’t want her to go berserk. ‘I had Mr Wilt brought here for simple assessment to get him out of the hospital before two Americans from the US Embassy arrived to question him about something that happened in the States. Something to do with drugs. I don’t know what it was and I don’t want to know. More importantly he’s suspected of being somehow involved in the murder of a Shadow Minister, a man called Rottecombe, and … Yes, I know he couldn’t murder—’ he began but Eva was on her feet. ‘Are you mad?’ she yelled. ‘My Henry wouldn’t hurt a fly. He’s gentle and kind and he doesn’t know anyone in Government.’
Inspector Flint tried to calm her down. ‘I know that, Mrs Wilt, believe me I do, but Scotland Yard have evidence he was in the district when the Shadow Minister disappeared and they want to question him.’
For once in her life Eva resorted to logic. ‘And how many thousands of other people were around wherever it was?’
‘Herefordshire,’ said the Inspector involuntarily.
Eva’s eyes bulged in her head and her face turned purple. ‘Herefordshire? Herefordshire? You’re crazy. He doesn’t know anyone in Herefordshire. He’s never been there. We always go to the Lake District for our summer holidays.’
Flint raised the palms of his hands in submission. Wilt’s inconsequential answers were evidently infectious. ‘I’m sure you do,’ he muttered. ‘I don’t doubt it for a moment. All I’m saying—’
‘Is that Henry is wanted by Scotland Yard for the murder of a Shadow Minister. And you call that all?’
‘I didn’t say he was wanted by Scotland Yard for murder. They just want him to help them with their inquiries.’
‘And we all know what that means, don’t we just.’
The Inspector struggled to get some sense into the tirade. And as ever with the Wilts he failed.
In the central concourse of the mental hospital Wilt, who had spent half an hour searching for a way out, had failed too. All the doors were locked and, dressed as he was, he had been accosted by four genuinely insane patients two of whom protested they weren’t depressives and didn’t intend to have electric shock therapy again. Another two sidled up to him clearly under the influence of some very strong anti-psychotic medication and giggled rather alarmingly.
Wilt hurried on, unnerved by these encounters and by the atmosphere, and cursing the peculiar way he was dressed. Through a window he could see an area of lawn with patients wandering about or sitting on benches in the sun and beyond them a high wire fence. If he could only find his way out there he’d feel a lot better. But before he could make his way into the open air, Eva shot out of the Waiting Room and hurried towards him.
‘We’re going home, Henry. Now come along. I’m not listening to any more nonsense from that dreadful Inspector,’ she ordered. For once Wilt was in no mood to argue. He’d had quite enough of the dim distracted figures around him and the oppressive atmosphere of the mental hospital. He followed her through the main door and towards their car which was parked outside on the gravel, but before they reached it a series of screams echoed through the building.
‘What on earth is going on?’ Eva demanded of a small and evidently demented man who was scurrying past, panic-stricken.
‘There’s a girl in there with breasts that move from one side to the other like the clappers!’ he yelled as he ran past.
Eva knew who that girl was. With a silent curse she turned and pushed her way into the hospital through the crush of patients trying to escape the awful sight of scurrying bosoms. Emmeline’s rat Freddy, encouraged by the effect it was having and at the same time alarmed by the shrieks, was up to its old tricks with a vigour it had never shown before. The sight of a third pubescent breast apparently changing from right to left and back again at a rate of knots was too much even for heavily sedated mental patients. They had been faintly aware that they were not at all well but this was altogether too much. Hallucinations couldn’t come any worse than this.
By the time Eva reached Emmeline the rat was hidden in her jeans. As mad hysteria broke out in the concourse and spread through the entire hospital and even into the Secure Area, Eva, dragging Emmeline and the other three girls, who were enjoying the chaos Freddy’s imitation of a rampaging breast had caused, forced her way through the deluded mass struggling in the doorway and, thanks to her size and strength, out into the open air. By the time they reached the car Wilt was already inside it and cowering in the back seat.
‘Get in and cover your father,’ Eva ordered. ‘We mustn’t let him be seen by the guard on the gate.’
The next moment Wilt was on the floor and the four girls were kneeling on top of him. As Eva started the car and drove down the drive she glanced in the rear-view mirror and glimpsed a dishevelled Inspector Flint hurtle out of the door of the hospital, trip and land face down o
n the gravel. Eva put her foot on the accelerator and five minutes later they were through the gates and heading for Oakhurst Avenue.
36
Inspector Flint arrived in his office in a state of confusion. His conversation with Eva had confirmed him in his belief that whatever mess Henry Wilt had got himself into he was not responsible for the death of Harold Rottecombe. Tripping on the gravel and then being trampled over by a herd of maddened lunatics had given him fresh insight into Wilt’s inconsequential view of life. Things just happened to people for no good reason and, while Flint had previously believed that every effect had to have a rational cause, he now realised that the purely accidental was the norm. In short, nothing made sense. The world was as mad as the inmates of the hospital he had just left.
In an effort to regain something approaching equanimity he ordered Sergeant Yates to bring him the notes on the Rottecombe murder case he’d received from the Chief Superintendent who had been cross-examining Ruth the Ruthless. Flint read them through and came to the conclusion that, far from being involved in the death of the Shadow Minister for Social Enhancement, Wilt had himself been the victim of an assault. Everything pointed to the Shadow Minister’s wife. Wilt’s blood in the garage and in the Volvo, the fact that she was seen in Ipford New Estate and caught on the motorway camera in the middle of the night, and in Flint’s opinion that she had been on sado-masochistic terms with the paedophile ‘Bobby Beat Me’ Battleby whose house had been torched. In addition there was a motive. Wilt had been in the lane behind Meldrum Manor. His jeans had been found there two days after the fire but they hadn’t been there when the police had searched the lane on the day after the fire. It followed that they had been put there in order to implicate him in the arson. Finally and most damning of all his knapsack, socks and boots had been recovered from the attic in Leyline Lodge and he was hardly likely to have put them there himself. No, everything pointed to Mrs Rottecombe. Wilt had no reason to kill her husband and if the Shadow Minister suspected or, worse still, knew his wife had connived in the fire, she had every reason to want him dead. At this point Flint spotted a flaw. Wilt hadn’t been found dead. He’d certainly been assaulted by some young thugs on the New Estate and the Rottecombe bitch had brought him there without his jeans or walking boots. Why had they been removed? That was the mystery. He went back to the theory that she’d needed them to indicate that he’d been involved in the arson of the Manor. But why leave them in the lane two days later than the fire? That only deepened the mystery. The Inspector gave up.