Behind her Wilt dropped the syringe back into the bucket and tried to get his hands out of the washing-up gloves by pulling on the fingers. It wasn’t the best method and it was some time before he’d rid himself of the wretched things and had grabbed the second bottle from the freezer. ‘Bugger the woman,’ he muttered as he clutched the bottle to his penis and tried to think of what to do next. If she went to the police … No, she wasn’t likely to do that but all the same, it would be as well to take precautions. Regardless of hygiene, he flung the bottle from the sink into the freezer and hobbled upstairs. ‘At least we’ve seen the last of Mavis M,’ he thought as he got back into bed. That was some consolation for the reputation he was already doubtless acquiring. As usual, he was entirely wrong.
*
Twenty minutes later, Eva, who had been intercepted by Mavis on her way home, drove up to the house.
‘Henry,’ she shouted as soon as she was inside the front door. ‘You come straight down here and explain what you were doing with Mavis.’
‘Sod off,’ said Wilt.
‘What did you say?’
‘Nothing. I was just groaning.’
‘No, you weren’t. I distinctly heard you say something,’ said Eva on her way upstairs.
Wilt got out of bed and girded his loins with the water bottle. ‘Now you just listen to me,’ he said before Eva could get a word in, ‘I’ve had all I can stand from everybody, you, Mavis-moron-Mottram, that poisoner Kores, the quads and the bloody thugs who’ve been following me. In fact the whole fucking modern world with its emphasis on me being nice and docile and passive and everyone else doing their own thing and to hell with the consequences. (A) I am not a thing, and (B) I’m not going to be done any more. Not by you, or Mavis, or, for that matter, the damned quads. And I don’t give a tuppenny stuff what received opinions you suck up like some dehydrated sponge from the hacks who write articles on progressive education and sex for geriatrics and health through fucking hemlock –’
‘Hemlock’s a poison. No one …’ Eva began, trying to divert his fury.
‘And so’s the ideological codswallop you fill your head with,’ shouted Wilt. ‘Permissive cyanide, page three nudes for the so-called intelligentsia or video nasties for the unemployed, all fucking placebos for them that can’t think or feel. And if you don’t know what a placebo is, try looking it up in a dictionary.’
He paused for breath and Eva grabbed her opportunity. ‘You know very well what I think about video nasties,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t dream of letting the girls see anything like that.’
‘Right,’ yelled Wilt, ‘so how about letting me and Mr bleeding Gamer off the hook. Has it ever occurred to you that you’ve got genuine non-video actual nasties, pre-pubescent horrors, in those four daughters? Oh no, not them. They’re special, they’re unique, they’re flipping geniuses. We mustn’t do anything to retard their intellectual development, like teaching them some manners or how to behave in a civilized fashion. Oh no, we’re your modern model parents holding the ring while those four ignoble little savages turn themselves into computer-addicted technocrats with about as much sense as Ilse Koch on a bad day.’
‘Who’s Ilse Koch?’ asked Eva.
‘Just a mass murderess in a concentration camp,’ said Wilt, ‘and don’t get the idea I’m on a right-wing, flog ‘em and hang ‘em reactionary high because I’m not, and those idiots don’t think either. I’m just mister stick-in-the-middle who doesn’t know which way to jump. But my God I do think! Or try to. Now leave me in peace and discomfort and go and tell your mate Mavis that the next time she doesn’t want to see an involuntary erection, not to advise you to go anywhere near Castrator Kores.’
Eva went downstairs feeling strangely invigorated. It was a long time since she’d heard Henry state his feelings so strongly and, while she didn’t understand everything he’d said, and she certainly didn’t think he’d been fair about the quads, it was somehow reassuring to have him assert his authority in the house. It made her feel better about having been to that awful Dr Kores with all her silly talk about … what was it? … ‘the sexual superiority of the female in the mammalian world’. Eva didn’t want to be superior in everything and anyway, she wasn’t just a mammal. She was a human being. That wasn’t the same thing at all.
12
By the following evening, it would have been difficult to say what Inspector Hodge was. Since Wilt hadn’t emerged from the house, the Inspector had spent the best part of two days tracing Eva’s progress to and from the school and round Ipford in the bugged Escort.
‘It’s good practice,’ he told Sergeant Runk, as they followed her in a van Hodge had converted to a listening-post.
‘For what?’ asked the Sergeant, pinning a mark on the town map to indicate that Eva had now parked behind Sainsbury’s. She’d already been to Tesco’s and Fine Fare. ‘So we learn where to get the best discount on washing powder?’
‘For when he decides to move.’
‘When,’ said Runk. ‘So far he hasn’t been out of the house all day.’
‘He’s sent her out to check she hasn’t got a tail on her,’ said Hodge. ‘In the meantime, he’s lying low.’
‘Which you said was just the thing he wasn’t doing,’ said Runk. ‘I said he was and you said …’
‘I know what I said. But that was when he knew he was being followed. It’s different now.’
‘I’ll say,’ said Runk. ‘So the sod sends us on a tour of shopping centres and we haven’t got a clue what’s going on.’
They had that night. Runk, who had insisted on having the afternoon off for some shut-eye if he was to work at night, retrieved the tape from under the seat and replaced it with a new one. It was one o’clock in the morning. Half an hour later, Hodge, whose childhood had been spent in a house where sex was never mentioned, was listening to the quads discussing Wilt’s condition with a frankness that appalled him. If anything was needed to convince him that Mr and Mrs Wilt were died-in-the-wool criminals, it was Emmeline’s repeated demand to know why Daddy had been up in the night putting cake icing on his penis. Eva’s explanation didn’t help either. ‘He wasn’t feeling very well, dear. He’d had too much beer and he couldn’t sleep, so he went down to the kitchen to see if he could ice cake and …’
‘I wouldn’t like the sort of cake he was icing,’ interrupted Samantha. ‘And anyway, it was face-cream.’
‘I know, dear, but he was practising and he spilt it.’
‘Up his cock?’ demanded Penelope, which gave Eva the opportunity to tell her never to use that word. ‘It’s not nice,’ she said, ‘it’s not nice to say things like that and you’re not going to tell anyone at school.’
‘It wasn’t very nice of Daddy to use the icing syringe to pump face-cream up his penis,’ said Emmeline.
By the time the discussion was over, and Eva had dropped the quads off at the school, Hodge was ashen. Sergeant Runk wasn’t feeling very well either.
‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe a bloody word of it,’ muttered the Inspector.
‘I wish to God I didn’t,’ said Runk. ‘I’ve heard some revolting things in my time but that lot takes the cake.’
‘Don’t mention that word,’ Hodge said. ‘I still don’t believe it. No man in his right mind would do a thing like that. They’re having us on.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I knew a bloke once who used to butter his wick with strawberry jam and have his missus –’
‘Shut up,’ shouted Hodge, ‘if there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s filth and I’ve had my fill of that for one night.’
‘So’s Wilt, by the sound of it,’ said Runk, ‘walking about with his prick in a jug of ice cubes like that. Can’t have been just face-cream or icing-sugar he had in that syringe.’
‘Dear God,’ said Hodge. ‘You’re not suggesting he was fixing himself with a cake-icing syringe, are you? He’d be bloody dead by now, and anyhow the fucking thing would leak.’
‘Not if he mi
xed the junk with cold cream. That’d explain it, wouldn’t it?’
‘It might do,’ Hodge admitted. ‘I suppose if people can sniff the filthy muck, there’s no knowing what they can do with it. Not that it helps us much what he does.’
‘Of course it does,’ said the Sergeant, who had suddenly seen a way of ending the tedium of sitting through the night in the van. ‘It means he’s got the stuff in the house.’
‘Or up his pipe,’ said Hodge.
‘Wherever. Anyway, there’s bound to be enough around to haul him in and give him a good going over.’
But the Inspector had his sights set on more ambitious targets. ‘A fat lot of good that’s going to do us,’ he said, ‘even if he did crack, and if you’d read what he did to old Flint you’d know better –’
‘But this’d be different,’ Runk interrupted. ‘First off, he’d be cold turkey. Don’t have to question him. Leave him in a cell for three days without a fix and he’d be bleating like a fucking baa-lamb.’
‘Yes, and I know who for,’ said the Inspector. ‘His ruddy mouthpiece.’
‘Yes, but we’d have his missus too, remember. And anyway this time we’d have hard evidence and it would just be a matter of charging him. He wouldn’t get bail on a heroin charge.’
‘True,’ said Hodge grudgingly, ‘if we had hard evidence. “If.”’
‘Well, there’s bound to be with him getting the stuff all over his pyjamas like those kids said. Forensic would have an easy time. Take that cake-icing syringe for a starter. And then there are towels and drying-up cloths. Blimey, the place must be alive with the stuff. Even the fleas on the cat must be addicts the way he’s been splashing it round.’
‘That’s what worries me,’ said Hodge. ‘Whoever heard of a pusher splashing it round? No way. They’re too bloody careful. Especially when the heat’s on like it is now. You know what I think?’ Sergeant Runk shook his head. In his opinion the Inspector was incapable of thought. ‘I think the bastard’s trying the old come-on. Wants us to arrest him. He’s trying to trap us into it. That explains the whole thing.’
‘Doesn’t explain anything to me,’ said Runk despairingly.
‘Listen,’ said Hodge, ‘what we’ve heard on that tape just now is too bizarre to be credible, right? Right. You’ve never heard of a junkie fixing his cock and I haven’t either. But apparently, this Wilt does. Not only that, but he makes a fucking mess, does it in the middle of the night and with a cake-icing syringe and makes sure his kids find him in the kitchen doing it. For why? Because he wants the little bitches to shoot their mouths off about it in public and for us to hear about it. That’s why. Well, I’m not falling for it. I’m going to take my time and wait for Mr Clever Wilt to lead me to his source. I’m not interested in single pushers, this time I’m going to pull in the whole ruddy network.’
And having satisfied himself with this interpretation of Wilt’s extraordinary behaviour, the Inspector sat on, savouring his eventual triumph. In his mind’s eye, he could see Wilt in the dock with a dozen big-time criminals, none of whom the likes of Flint had ever suspected. They’d be moneyed men with large houses who played golf and belonged to the best clubs, and after sentencing them, the Judge would compliment Inspector Hodge on his brilliant handling of the case. No one would ever call him inefficient again. He’d be famous and his photograph would be in all the papers.
*
Wilt’s thoughts followed rather similar lines, though with a different emphasis. The effects of Eva’s enthusiasm for aphrodisiacs were still making themselves felt and, more disastrously, had given him what appeared to be a permanent erection. ‘Of course I’m confined to the bloody house,’ he said when Eva complained that she didn’t want him wandering about in his dressing-gown on her weekly coffee morning. ‘You don’t expect me to go back to the Tech with the thing sticking out like a ramrod.’
‘Well, I don’t want you making an exhibition of yourself in front of Betty and the others like you did with Mavis.’
‘Mavis got what she deserved,’ said Wilt. ‘I didn’t ask the woman into the house, she just marched in, and anyway if she hadn’t put you on to poisoner Kores I wouldn’t be wandering around with a coat-hanger strapped to my waist, would I?’
‘What’s the coat-hanger for?’
‘To keep the flipping dressing-gown off the inflamed thing,’ said Wilt. ‘If you knew what it felt like to have stuff like a heavy blanket rubbing against the end of a pressurized and highly sensitive –’
‘I don’t want to hear,’ said Eva.
‘And I don’t want to feel,’ Wilt retorted. ‘Hence the coat-hanger. And what’s more, you want to try bending your knees and leaning forward at the same time every time you have to pee. It’s bloody agony. As it is I’ve banged my head on the wall twice and I haven’t had a crap in two days. I can’t even sit down to read. It’s either flat on my back in bed with the wastepaper basket for protection or up and about with the coat-hanger. And up and about it is. At this rate, they’ll have to build a special coffin with a periscope when I cough it.’
Eva looked at him doubtfully. ‘Perhaps you ought to go and see a doctor if it’s that serious.’
‘How?’ snapped Wilt. ‘If you think I’m going to walk down the road looking like a pregnant sex-change artist, forget it. I’d be arrested before I was half-way there and the local rag would have a field day. TECH TEACHER ON PERMANENT HIGH. And you’d really love it if I got called Pumpkin Penis Percy. So you have your Tupperware Party and I’ll stick around upstairs.’
Wilt went carefully up to the bedroom and took refuge under the wastepaper basket. Presently, he heard voices from below. Eva’s Community Care Committee had begun to arrive. Wilt wondered how many of them had already heard Mavis’ version of the episode in the kitchen and were secretly delighted that Eva was married to a homicidal flasher. Not that they would ever admit as much. No, it would be ‘Did you hear about poor Eva’s awful husband?’ or ‘I can’t think how she can bring herself to stay in the same house with that frightful Henry,’ but in fact the target for their malice would be Eva herself. Which was just as it should be, considering that she’d doctored his beer with whatever poison Dr Kores had given her. Wilt lay back and wondered about the doctor and presently fell into a daydream in which he sued her for some enormous sum on the grounds of … What sort of grounds were there? Invasion of Penisy? Or Deprivation of Scrotal Rights? Or just plain Poisoning. That wouldn’t work because Eva had administered the stuff and presumably if you took it in the correct doses it wouldn’t have such awful effects. And, of course, the Kores bitch wasn’t to know that Eva never did things by halves. In her book, if a little of something was good for you, twice as much was better. Even Charlie, the cat, knew that, and had developed an uncanny knack of disappearing for several days the moment Eva put down a saucer of cream laced with worm powder. But then Charlie was no fool and evidently still remembered the experience of having his innards scoured out by twice the recommended dosage. The poor brute had come limping back into the house after a week in the bushes at the bottom of the garden looking like a tapeworm with fur and had promptly been put on a high-pilchard diet to build him up.
Well, if a cat could learn from experience, there was no excuse for Wilt. On the other hand, Charlie didn’t exactly have to live with Eva, but could shove off at the first sign of trouble. ‘Lucky blighter,’ Wilt muttered and wondered what would happen if he rang up one night and said he wasn’t coming home for a week. He could just imagine the explosion on the other end of the line, and if he put the phone down without coming up with a really plausible explanation, he’d never hear the end of it when he did come home. And why? Because the truth was always too insane or incredible. Just about as incredible as the events of the week which had started with that idiot from the Ministry of Education and had gone on through Miss Hare’s use of karate in the Ladies’ lavatory to McCullum’s threats and the men in the car who’d followed him. Add that little lot together with an overdose
of Spanish Fly, and you had a truth no one would believe. Anyway, there was no point in lying there speculating about things he couldn’t alter.
‘Emulate the cat,’ said Wilt to himself and went through to the bathroom to check in the mirror how his penis was getting on. It certainly felt better, and when he removed the wastepaper basket, he was delighted to find it had begun to droop. He had a shower and shaved and by the time Eva’s little group had broken up, he was able to go downstairs wearing his trousers. ‘How did the hen party go?’ he asked.
Eva rose to the provocation. ‘I see you’re back to your normal sexist self. Anyway, it wasn’t any sort of party. We’re having that next Friday. Here.’
‘Here?’
‘That’s right. It’s going to be a fancy-dress party with prizes for the best costume and a raffle to raise money for the Harmony Community Play-Group.’
‘Yes, and I’m sending a bill to all the people you’re inviting to pay for the insurance in advance. Remember what happened to the Vurkells when Polly Merton sued them for falling downstairs blind drunk.’
‘That was quite different,’ said Eva. ‘It was all Mary’s fault for having a loose stair carpet. She never did look after the house properly. It was always a mess.’
‘So was Polly Merton when she hit the hall floor. It was a wonder she wasn’t killed,’ said Wilt. ‘Anyway, that’s not the point. The Vurkells’ house was wrecked and the insurance company wouldn’t pay up because he’d been breaking the by-laws by running an illegal casino with that roulette wheel of his.’