‘Makes a change from those Wilt bitches and Councillor Birkenshaw. Get a good look at the brute?’
‘She said she couldn’t see it very well because he was on the other side but she had the impression it wasn’t very big.’
‘It? It?’ shouted Flint. ‘I’m not interested in it. I’m talking about the bugger’s mug. How the hell do you think we’re going to identify the maniac. Have a prick parade and ask the victims to go along studying cocks? The next thing you’ll be doing is issuing identikits of penises.’
‘She couldn’t see his face. He was looking down.’
‘And peeing, I daresay. Probably on the same fucking tablets I’m doomed to. Anyway, I wouldn’t take the evidence of a fifty-year-old blasted woman. They’re all sex-mad at that age. I should know. My old woman’s practically off her rocker about it and I keep telling her that the ruddy quack’s lowered my blood pressure so much I couldn’t get the fucking thing up even if I wanted to. Know what she said?’
‘No,’ said Sergeant Yates, who found the subject rather distasteful, and anyway it was obvious he didn’t know what Mrs Flint had said and he didn’t want to hear. The whole notion of anyone wanting the Inspector was beyond him. ‘She had the gall to tell me to do it the other way.’
‘The other way?’ said Yates in spite of himself.
‘The old soixante-neuf. Disgusting. And probably illegal. And if anyone thinks I’m going to go down at my age, and on my ruddy missus at that, they’re clean off their fucking rockers.’
‘I should think they’d have to be,’ said the Sergeant almost pitifully. He’d always been relatively fond of old Flint, but there were limits. In a frantic attempt to change the topic to something less revolting, he mentioned the Head of the Drug Squad. He was just in time. The Inspector had just begun a repulsive description of Mrs Flint’s attempts to stimulate him. ‘Hodge? What’s that bloody cock-sucker want now?’ Flint bawled, still managing to combine the two subjects.
‘Phone-tapping facilities,’ said Yates. ‘Reckons he’s on to a heroin syndicate. And a big one.’
‘Where?’
‘Won’t say, not to me any road.’
‘What’s he want my permission for? Got to ask the Super or the Chief Constable and I don’t come into it. Or do I?’ It had dawned on Flint that this might be a subtle dig at him about his son. ‘If that bastard thinks he’s going to take the piss out of me …’ he muttered and stopped.
‘I shouldn’t think he could,’ said Yates, getting his own back, ‘not with those tablets you’re on.’
But Flint hadn’t heard. His mind had veered off along lines determined more than he knew by beta-blockers, vasodilators and all the other drugs he was on, but which combined with his natural hatred for Hodge and the accumulated worries of his job and his family to turn him into an exceedingly nasty man. If the Head of the Drug Squad thought he was going to put one over on him he’d got another think coming. ‘There are more ways of stuffing a cat than filling it with cream,’ he said with a gruesome smile.
Sergeant Yates looked at him doubtfully. ‘Shouldn’t it be the other way round?’ he asked, and immediately regretted any reference to other way round. He’d had enough of Mrs Flint’s thwarted sex life, and stuffing cats was definitely out. The old man must be off his rocker.
‘Quite right,’ said the Inspector. ‘We’ll fill the bugger with cream all right. Got any idea who he wants to tap?’
‘He’s not telling me that sort of thing. He reckons the uniform branch aren’t to be trusted and he doesn’t want any leaks.’ The word was too much for Inspector Flint. He shot out of his chair and was presently finding temporary relief in the toilet.
By the time he returned to his office, his mood had changed to the almost dementedly cheerful. ‘Tell him we’ll give him all the co-operation he needs,’ he told the Sergeant, ‘only too pleased to help.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure. He’s only got to come and see me. Tell him that.’
‘If you say so,’ said Yates and left the room a puzzled man. Flint sat on in a state of drug-induced bemusement. There was only one bright spot on his limited horizon. If that bastard Hodge wanted to foul up his career by making unauthorized phone taps, Flint would do all he could to encourage him. Fortified by this sudden surge of optimism, he absent-mindedly helped himself to another beta-blocker.
3
But already things were moving in a direction the Inspector would have found even more encouraging. Wilt had emerged from the meeting of the crisis committee rather too pleased with his performance. If Mr Scudd really had the influence with the Minister of Education he had claimed to, there might well be a full-scale inspection by the HMIs. Wilt welcomed the prospect. He had frequently thought about the advantages of such a confrontation. For one thing, he’d be able to demand an explicit statement on what the Ministry really thought Liberal Studies were about. Communication Skills and Expressive Attainment they weren’t. Since the day some twenty years before when he’d joined the Tech staff, he’d never had a clear knowledge and nobody had been able to tell him. He’d started off with the peculiar dictum enunciated by Mr Morris, the then Head of Department, that what he was supposed to be doing was ‘Exposing Day Release Apprentices to Culture’, which had meant getting the poor devils to read Lord Of The Flies and Candide, and then discuss what they thought the books were about, and countering their opinions with his own. As far as Wilt could see, the whole thing had been counterproductive and as he had expressed it, if anyone was being exposed to anything, the lecturers were being exposed to the collective barbarism of the apprentices which accounted for the number who had nervous breakdowns or became milkmen with degrees. And his own attempt to change the curriculum to more practical matters, like how to fill in Income Tax forms, claim Unemployment Benefit, and generally move with some confidence through the maze of bureaucratic complications that had turned the Welfare State into a piggy-bank for the middle classes and literate skivers, and an incomprehensible and humiliating nightmare of forms and jargon for the provident poor, had been thwarted by the lunatic theories of so-called educationalists of the sixties like Dr Mayfield, and the equally irrational spending policies of the seventies. Wilt had persisted in his protestations that Liberal Studies didn’t need video cameras and audio-visual aids galore, but could do with a clear statement from somebody about the purpose of Liberal Studies.
It had been an unwise request. Dr Mayfield and the County Advisor had both produced memoranda nobody could understand, there had been a dozen committee meetings at which nothing had been decided, except that since all the video cameras were available they might as well be used, and that Communication Skills and Expressive Attainment were more suited to the spirit of the times than Liberal Studies. In the event the education cuts had stymied the audio-visual aids and the fact that useless lecturers in more academic departments couldn’t be sacked had meant that Wilt had been lumbered with even more deadbeats. If Her Majesty’s Inspectors did descend, they might be able to clear the log jam and make some sense. Wilt would be only too pleased. Besides, he rather prided himself on his ability to hold his own in confrontations.
His optimism was premature. Having spent fifty minutes listening to Electronic Engineers explaining the meaning of cable television to him, he returned to his office to find his secretary, Mrs Bristol, in a flap. ‘Oh, Mr Wilt,’ she said as he came down the corridor. ‘You’ve got to come quickly. She’s there again and it’s not the first time.’
‘What isn’t?’ asked Wilt from behind a pile of Shane he had never used.
‘That I’ve seen her there.’
‘Seen whom where?’
‘Her. In the loo.’
‘Her in the loo?’ said Wilt, hoping to hell Mrs Bristol wasn’t having another of her ‘turns’. She’d once gone all funny-peculiar when one of the girls in Cake Three had announced in all innocence, that she had five buns in the oven. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.??
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Nor, it appeared, did Mrs Bristol. ‘She’s got this needle thing and …’ she petered out.
‘Needle thing?’
‘Syringe,’ said Mrs Bristol, ‘and it’s in her arm and full of blood and …’
‘Oh my God,’ said Wilt, and headed past her to the door. ‘Which loo?’
‘The Ladies’ staff one.’
Wilt halted in his tracks. ‘Are you telling me one of the members of staff is shooting herself full of heroin in the Ladies’ staff lavatory?’
Mrs Bristol had gone all funny now. ‘I’d have recognized her if she’d been staff. It was a girl. Oh, do something Mr Wilt. She may do herself an injury.’
‘You can say that again,’ said Wilt, and bolted down the corridor and the flight of stairs to the toilet on the landing and went in. He was confronted by six cubicles, a row of washbasins, a long mirror and a paper-towel dispenser. There was no sign of any girl. On the other hand, the door of the third cubicle was shut and someone was making unpleasant sounds inside. Wilt hesitated. In less desperate circumstances, he might have supposed Mr Rusker, whose wife was a fibre freak, was having one of his problem days again. But Mr Rusker didn’t use the Ladies’ lavatory. Perhaps if he knelt down he might get a glimpse. Wilt decided against it. (A) He didn’t want glimpses and (B) it had begun to dawn on him that he was, to put it mildly, in a delicate situation and bending down and peeping under doors in ladies’ lavatories was open to misinterpretation. Better to wait outside. The girl, if there was a girl and not some peculiar figment of Mrs Bristol’s imagination, would have to come out some time.
With one last glance in the trash can for a hypodermic, Wilt tiptoed towards the door. He didn’t reach it. Behind him a cubicle door opened. ‘I thought so,’ a voice shouted, ‘a filthy Peeping Tom!’ Wilt knew that voice. It belonged to Miss Hare, a senior lecturer in Physical Education, whom he had once likened rather too audibly in the staff-room to Myra Hindley in drag. A moment later, his arm had been wrenched up to the back of his neck and his face was in contact with the tiled wall.
‘You little pervert,’ Miss Hare continued, jumping to the nastiest, and, from Wilt’s point of view, the least desirable conclusion. The last person he’d want to peep at was Miss Hare. Only a pervert would. It didn’t seem the time to say so.
‘I was just looking –’ he began, but Miss Hare quite evidently had not forgotten the crack about Myra Hindley.
‘You can keep your explanation for the police,’ she screamed, and reinforced the remark by banging his face against the tiles. She was still enjoying the process, and Wilt wasn’t, when the door opened and Mrs Stoley from Geography came in.
‘Caught the voyeur in the act,’ said Miss Hare. ‘Call the police.’ Against the wall, Wilt tried to offer his point of view and failed. Having Miss Hare’s ample knee in the small of his back didn’t help and his false tooth had come out.
‘But that’s Mr Wilt,’ said Mrs Stoley uncertainly.
‘Of course it’s Wilt. It’s just the sort of thing you’d expect from him.’
‘Well …’ began Mrs Stoley, who evidently hadn’t.
‘Oh for goodness’ sake get a move on. I don’t want the little runt to escape.’
‘Am I trying to?’ Wilt mumbled and had his nose rammed against the wall for his pains.
‘If you say so,’ said Mrs Stoley and left the room only to return five minutes later with the Principal and the V-P. By then, Miss Hare had transferred Wilt to the floor and was kneeling on him.
‘What on earth’s going on?’ demanded the Principal. Miss Hare got up.
‘Caught in the act of peeping at my private parts,’ she said. ‘He was trying to escape when I grabbed him.’
‘Wasn’t,’ said Wilt groping for his false tooth and inadvisedly putting it back in his mouth. It tasted of some extremely strong disinfectant which hadn’t been formulated as a mouthwash, and was doing things to his tongue. As he scrambled to his feet, and made a dash for the washbasins, Miss Hare applied a half-nelson.
‘For God’s sake let go,’ yelled Wilt, by now convinced he was about to die of carbolic poisoning. ‘This is all a terrible mistake.’
‘Yours,’ said Miss Hare and cut off his air supply.
The Principal looked dubiously at them. While he might have enjoyed Wilt’s discomfiture in other circumstances, the sight of him being strangled by an athletically built woman like Miss Hare whose skirt had come down was more than he could stomach.
‘I think it would be best if you let him go,’ he said as Wilt’s face darkened and his tongue stuck out. ‘He seems to be bleeding rather badly.’
‘Serves him right,’ said Miss Hare, reluctantly letting Wilt breathe again. He stumbled to a basin and turned the tap on.
‘Wilt,’ said the Principal, ‘what is the meaning of this?’ But Wilt had his false tooth out again and was trying desperately to wash his mouth out under the tap.
‘Hadn’t we better wait for the police before he makes a statement?’ asked Miss Hare.
‘The police?’ squawked the Principal and the V-P simultaneously. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting the police should be called in to deal with this … er … affair.’
‘I am,’ Wilt mumbled from the basin. Even Miss Hare looked startled.
‘You are?’ she said. ‘You have the nerve to come in here and peer at …’
‘Balls,’ said Wilt, whose tongue seemed to be resuming its normal size, though it still tasted like a recently sterilized toilet bend.
‘How dare you,’ shouted Miss Hare, and was on the point of getting to grips with him again when the V-P intervened. ‘I think we should hear Wilt’s version before we do anything hasty, don’t you?’ Miss Hare obviously didn’t, but she stopped in her tracks. ‘I’ve already told you precisely what he was doing,’ she said.
‘Yes, well let me tell you what …’
‘He was bending over and looking under the door,’ continued Miss Hare remorselessly.
‘Wasn’t,’ said Wilt.
‘Don’t you dare lie. I always knew you were a pervert. Remember that revolting incident with the doll?’ she said, appealing to the Principal. The Principal didn’t need reminding but it was Wilt who answered.
‘Mrs Bristol,’ he mumbled, dabbing his nose with a paper towel, ‘Mrs Bristol’s the one who started this.’
‘Mrs Bristol?’
‘Wilt’s secretary,’ explained the V-P.
‘Are you suggesting you were looking for your secretary in here?’ asked the Principal. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’
‘No, I’m not. I’m saying Mrs Bristol will tell you why I was here and I want you to hear it from her before that damned bulldozer on anabolic steroids starts knocking hell out of me again.’
‘I’m not standing here being insulted by a …’
‘Then you’d better pull your skirt up,’ said the V-P, whose sympathies were entirely with Wilt.
The little group made their way up the stairs, past a class of English A-level students who’d just ended an hour with Mr Gallen on The Pastoral Element in Wordsworth’s Prelude, and were consequently unprepared for the urban element of Wilt’s bleeding nose. Nor was Mrs Bristol. ‘Oh dear, Mr Wilt, what have you done to yourself?’ she asked. ‘She didn’t attack you?’
‘Tell them,’ said Wilt. ‘You tell them.’
‘Tell them what?’
‘What you told me,’ snapped Wilt, but Mrs Bristol was too concerned about his condition and the Principal and the V-P’s presence had unnerved her. ‘You mean about –’
‘I mean … Never mind what I mean,’ said Wilt lividly, ‘just tell them what I was doing in the Ladies’ lavatory, that’s all.’
Mrs Bristol’s face registered even more confusion. ‘But I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I wasn’t there.’
‘I know you weren’t there, dammit. What they want to know is why I was.’
‘Well …’ Mrs Bristol began, and lost her nerve again, ‘Haven’t you told them?’
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‘Caesar’s ghost,’ said Wilt, ‘can’t you just spit it out. Here I am accused of being a peeping Tom by Miss Burke and Hare over there …’
‘You call me that again and your own mother wouldn’t recognize you,’ said Miss Hare.
‘Since she’s been dead for ten years, I don’t suppose she would now,’ said Wilt, retreating behind his desk. By the time the PE teacher had been restrained, the Principal was trying to make some sense out of an increasingly confused situation. ‘Can someone please shed some light on this sordid business?’ he asked.
‘If anyone can, she can,’ said Wilt, indicating his secretary. ‘After all, she set me up.’
‘Set you up, Mr Wilt? I never did anything of the sort. All I said was there was a girl in the staff toilet with a hypodermic and I didn’t know who she was and …’ Intimidated by the look of horror on the Principal’s face, she ground to a halt. ‘Have I said something wrong?’
‘You saw a girl with a hypodermic in the staff toilet? And told Mr Wilt about it?’
Mrs Bristol nodded dumbly.
‘When you say “girl” I presume you don’t mean a member of the staff?’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t. I didn’t see her face but I’d have known surely. And she had this awful syringe filled with blood and …’ She looked at Wilt for assistance.
‘You said she was taking drugs.’
‘There was no one in that toilet while I was there,’ said Miss Hare, ‘I’d have heard them.’
‘I suppose it could have been someone with diabetes,’ said the V-P, ‘some adult student who wouldn’t want to use the students’ toilet for obvious reasons.’
‘Oh quite,’ said Wilt, ‘I mean we all know diabetics go round with hypodermics full of blood. She was obviously flushing back to get the maximum dose.’
‘Flushing back?’ said the Principal weakly.
‘That’s what the junkies do,’ said the V-P. ‘They inject themselves and then –’
‘I don’t want to know,’ said the Principal.
‘Well, if she was taking heroin –’
‘Heroin! That’s all we need,’ said the Principal, and sat down miserably.