Part 9 (2/2)

It was a frustrated Inspector Flint who finally found Wilt in the overcrowded maze that was Ipford General Hospital. To begin with he'd been directed to Neurology only to find Wilt had been moved to Vasectomy.

'What on earth for? I understood he had been mugged. What's he need a vasectomy for?'

'He doesn't. He was only here temporarily. Then he was taken to Hysterectomy.'

'Hysterectomy? Dear G.o.d,' said Flint faintly. He could just begin to understand why a man who must presumably have been an active partic.i.p.ant in helping to foist those dreadful quads on the world might deserve a vasectomy to prevent him inflicting any more nightmares; hysterectomy was something else again. 'But the blighter's a man. You can't give a man a hysterectomy. It's not possible.'

'That's why he was moved to Infectious Diseases 3. They had a spare bed there. At least I think it was ID 3,' the nurse told him. 'I know someone died there this morning. Mind you, they always do.'

'Why?' asked Flint incautiously.

'Aids,' said the nurse, pus.h.i.+ng an obese woman on a trolley past him.

'But they can't put a man who's been beaten up and is bleeding in the same bed as a bloke who's just died of Aids. It's outrageous. b.l.o.o.d.y near condemning him to death.'

'Oh, they sterilise the sheets and all that,' said the nurse over her shoulder.

It was a pale, frustrated and appalled Inspector who finally found Wilt in Unis.e.x 8 which was reserved for geriatrics who had had a variety of operations that required them to wear catheters, drips and in several cases tubes protruding from various other orifices. Flint couldn't see why it was called a unis.e.x ward. Multi-s.e.x would have been more accurate though just as unpleasant. To take his attention away from a patient of indeterminate s.e.xfor once Flint preferred the politically correct word 'gender'who clearly had an almost continuous incontinence problem and what amounted to a phobic horror of catheters, the Inspector tried to concentrate on Wilt. His condition was pretty awful too. His scalp was bandaged and his face badly bruised and swollen but the Ward Sister a.s.sured Flint that he'd soon recover consciousness. Flint said he sincerely hoped so.

Shortly afterwards the old man in the next bed had convulsions and his false teeth fell out. A nurse put them back and called the Sister who took her time coming.

'What's the matter with you?' she demanded. Even to Flint's medically untutored way of thinking, the question seemed gratuitous. How the h.e.l.l could the old fellow know what was wrong with him?

'How would I know? I just get these hot flushes. I had a prostate operation on Tuesday,' he said.

'And a very successful one too. You've done nothing but grumble since you came here. You're just a grotty old man. I'll be glad to see the back of you.'

The nurse intervened. 'But he's eighty-one, Sister,' she said.

'And a very healthy eighty-one he is too,' the Sister replied and swept off to deal with the patient who had dragged his catheter out for the fifth time. It was perfectly obvious what 'gender' he was now. To avoid witnessing the reinsertion of the catheter, and a fresh bout of convulsions by the old man in the next bed, Flint turned to look at Wilt and found an eye staring at him. Wilt had recovered consciousness and, if the eye was anything to go by, didn't like what he was seeing. Flint wasn't enjoying it much either. He stared back and wondered what to do. But the eye closed abruptly. Flint turned to the nurse to ask her if an open eye was an indication that the patient had recovered consciousness but the nurse was having difficulty putting the old man's dentures back into his mouth again. When she had succeeded Flint asked again.

'Couldn't say, not really,' she said. 'I've known some of them die with their eyes wide open. Of course they glaze over a bit blue later on. That way you know they've gone.'

'Charming,' said the Inspector and turned back but Wilt's eyes were firmly shut. The sight of the Inspector sitting beside the bed had so startled him he had almost forgotten his dreadful headache and how awful he felt. Whatever had happened to himand he had no idea where he'd been or what he'd done the vaguely familiar figure sitting and staring at him was not a rea.s.suring one. Not that he recognised Flint. And presently he fell into a coma again and Flint sent for Sergeant Yates.

'I'm off home for a bit of lunch and a kip,' he told him. 'Let me know the moment he comes round and on no account let that idiot Hodge know he's here. He'll have Wilt charged for drug dealing before the poor b.u.g.g.e.r's conscious.'

He went down the seemingly endless corridors and drove home.

Chapter 24.

On the other side of the Atlantic Eva and the quads sat in the airport waiting for their plane. It had been delayed first by a bomb threat and then, when it had been thoroughly searched, by a mechanical fault. Eva was no longer impatient or even angry with the quads or Auntie Joan. She was glad to be going home to her Henry but intensely worried about his whereabouts and what had happened to him. The girls played and squabbled around her. She blamed herself for having accepted the invitation to Wilma but at least she was going home and in a way she was glad her mission to get the Immelmanns to change their wills in the girls' favour had failed so catastrophically. The prospect of a fortune would have been bad for the quads.

From an office overlooking the check-in DEA officials studied the little group and wondered what to do.

'We stop them here, we're not going to find anything. If there ever was anything to find. Reckon Palowski was right. This Mrs Wilt is a decoy. The guys in London can check her out. No point in pulling her in here.'

What Ruth Rottecombe was doing was preparing a prospect that would be very bad. For Wilt, at any rate. When she was woken from her sleep after her long drive back from Ipford by a phone call from the Superintendent at Oston Police Station to say he was coming up to interview her, she realised she hadn't got rid of Wilt's trousers and rucksack as she had intended. They were still in the back of the Volvo. If the police found them...Ruth preferred not to think of the consequences. She hurried out to the garage and took them up to an empty trunk in the attic and locked it. Then she returned to the garage and moved the car over the spot where Wilt had fallen and locked Wilfred and Pickles inside. They would act as a deterrent to any investigation of the place. Somehow she had been sure the police would pay her another visit and she had no wish to answer any more awkward questions.

She need not have worried. The police had checked at the Country Club and Battleby's alibi seemed authentic. He had been there at least an hour before the fire had broken out and the arson investigators had found no sign of a delayed-action device. Whoever had started the fire, it couldn't have been the beastly Battleby or Mrs Rottecombe. And they'd got the b.l.o.o.d.y paedophile on two charges, one of which would put him away for a very long time and ruin the swine's reputation for life. The Superintendent didn't care so much about the arson. On the other hand, while he detested Ruthless Ruth, he had to be careful. She was the wife of an influential Member of Parliament who could ask awkward questions in the House about police interrogation methods and hara.s.sment. It would pay to be polite to her for the time being. Talking about the fire would give him a chance to study her.

'I'm extremely sorry to bother you,' he said when she opened the front door. 'It's just that there are some points in the case against Mr Battleby that are bothering us and we thought you might be in a position to enlighten us. We are simply concerned with the fire at the Manor House.'

Ruth Rottecombe hesitated for a moment and decided to be conciliatory. 'If I can be of any help, I'll certainly try. You'd better come in.'

She held the door open but the Superintendent was not anxious to enter a house if those d.a.m.ned bull terriers were loose inside. It had taken all his courage to drive up and get out of the car.

'About those two dogs...' he began but Mrs Rottecombe rea.s.sured him.

'They are locked in the garage. Do come in.'

They went into the drawing room.

'Please take a seat.'

The Superintendent sat down hesitantly. This was hardly the reception he'd expected. Mrs Rottecombe pulled up a chair and prepared to answer questions.

The Superintendent picked his words carefully. 'We have checked with the Club Secretary and he has confirmed that Battleby was at the Country Club playing bridge for nearly an hour before the fire broke out. Secondly, the kitchen door was unlocked. So it was perfectly possible that someone else started the fire.'

'But that's impossible. I locked' Ruth said before realising she was walking into a trap. 'I mean, someone must have known where the keys were kept. I hope you don't think I'

'Certainly not,' said the Superintendent. 'We know you were at the Club at the same time. No, there's no suspicion against you. I can guarantee that. What interests us more is a set of footprints in the vegetable garden. They are those of a man who came down from the track behind the house. Now in the mud in the track we've also found tyre marks which indicate that a vehicle was parked there and drove off hurriedly some time later on. It begins to look as though the fire was started deliberately by a third party.'

Mrs Rottecombe bridled at that 'third'. 'Are you suggesting Bob hired someone to start the fire'

'I'm not suggesting anything,' said the Superintendent hurriedly. 'I simply meant that someone, some unknown person, entered the house and caused the fire. We also have evidence that he had been in the kitchen garden for some considerable time, evidently watching the house. There are a group of footprints by the gate in the wall which indicate that he had moved about waiting for a chance to enter the house.' He paused. 'What we are trying to find out is if anyone had a particular grudge against the man Battleby, and we wondered if you could help us.'

Mrs Rottecombe nodded. 'I should think there were a great many,' she said finally. 'Bob Battleby was not a popular figure in the district. Those vile magazines in the Range Rover indicate that he has paedophile tendencies and he may have abused...well, done something horrible.'

It was her turn to pause and let the inference sink in. The suggestion helped to clear her of any connection with that side of Battleby's inclinations. Whatever she was she was not a child or, as the Superintendent put it to himself, a spring chicken.

By the time he left he had not gained any useful information from her. On the other hand, Ruth Rottecombe had a shrewd idea why Harold had found the unconscious man in the garage. He'd had something to do with that disastrous night and she saw no reason why she shouldn't provide the police with his jeans covered with ash near the burnt-out Manor. She wouldn't leave them there immediately but would wait until it was dark. Like after midnight.

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