Part 10 (1/2)

Chapter 25.

When Wilt opened his eyes again Flint was still in the chair beside the bed. The Inspector had shut his own eyes when the old man in the next bed spat his dentures out for the fifth time and accompanied them with such a quant.i.ty of blood that some of it had landed on his trousers. After that he had ceased to be a grotty old man of eighty-one and was a decidedly dead one. Wilt had heard Flint say 'f.u.c.k' and various unpleasant noises going on but had kept his eyes firmly shut, only opening them in time to see Flint turn and look at him curiously.

'Feeling better, Henry?' Flint asked.

Wilt didn't reply. The police waiting to take a statement from him weren't at all to his liking. And in any case Wilt had no idea what had happened to him or what he might have done. It seemed best to have amnesia. Besides, he wasn't feeling any better. If anything Flint's presence made him feel decidedly worse. But before the Inspector could make any more inquiries a doctor came up to the bed. This time it was Flint who was questioned.

'What are you doing here?' the doctor asked rather nastily, evidently disliking the presence of a police officer in the ward almost as much as Wilt did. Flint wasn't enjoying being there either.

'Waiting to take a statement from this patient,' he said, indicating Wilt.

'Well, you're not likely to get one out of him today. He's suffering from severe concussion and probably amnesia. He may not remember anything. That's a frequent consequence of a severe blow to the head and subsequent concussion.'

'And how long does one have to wait before he gets his memory back?'

'Depends. I've known some cases where there's been no return at all. That's rare, of course, but it does occasionally happen. Frankly, there's no saying but in this case I should think he'll get some memories back in a day or two.'

Wilt listened to the exchange and made it a day or three. He had to find out what he had done first.

Eva returned to 45 Oakhurst Avenue in a state of total exhaustion. The flight had been awful, a drunk had had to be tied down for hitting another pa.s.senger and the plane had been diverted to Manchester because of a breakdown in the Flight Control computer. What she found when she finally got home temporarily galvanised her. The house looked as though it had been burgled. Wilt's ordinary clothes, along with his shoes, were scattered on the floor of the bedroom and to add to her alarm several drawers in the bedroom had obviously been clumsily searched. The same was true of the desk in his study. Finally, and in its own way most alarming of all, the mail had been opened and lay on a side-table beside the front door. While the quads, still relatively subdued, went upstairs she phoned the Tech only to be told by the Secretary that he hadn't been seen there and there was no saying where he was. Eva put the phone down and tried the Braintrees' number. They were bound to know where he was. There was no answer. She pressed the b.u.t.ton on the answerphone and heard herself repeatedly telling Henry to phone her in Wilma. She went back upstairs and felt in the pockets of Wilt's clothes but there was nothing to indicate what he had been doing or where he was. The fact that they were lying in a pile on the floor frightened her. She'd trained him to fold them up carefully and he'd got into the habit of hanging them over the back of a chair. From there she went to the wardrobe and checked his other trousers and jackets. None of them were missing. He must have been wearing something when he left the house. He couldn't have gone out naked. Eva's thoughts ran wildly to extremes. Ignoring Penelope's questions she went back downstairs and phoned the police station.

'I want to report a missing person,' she said. 'My name is Mrs Wilt and I've just got back from America and my husband is missing.'

'When you say missing do you mean'

'I'm saying he has disappeared.'

'In America?' asked the girl.

'Not in America. I left him here and I live at 45 Oakhurst Avenue. I've just come back and he isn't here.'

'If you'll just hold the line a moment.' The telephonist could be heard muttering to someone in the background about some ghastly woman and she could understand why her husband had gone missing. 'I'll put you through to someone who may be able to help you,' she said.

'You lousy b.i.t.c.h, I heard what you just said!' yelled Eva.

'Me? I didn't say anything. And I'll have you for using offensive language.'

In the end she was answered by Sergeant Yates. 'Is that Mrs Eva Wilt of 45 Oakhurst Avenue?'

'Who else do you think it is?' Eva snapped back.

'I'm afraid I have some rather bad news for you, Mrs Wilt. Your husband has been in some sort of accident,' the Sergeant told her. He obviously didn't like being snapped at. 'He's in the Ipford General Hospital and he's still unconscious. If you...'

But Eva had already slammed the phone down and, having told the quads in her most menacing manner to behave themselves really well, was on her way to the hospital. She parked and stormed through the crowded waiting room to the reception desk, pus.h.i.+ng aside a little man who was already there.

'You'll just have to wait your turn,' the girl told her.

'But my husband has been injured in a serious accident and he's unconscious. I've got to see him.'

'You'd better try A&E then.'

'A&E? What's that?' Eva demanded.

'Accident and Emergency. It's out the main door. You'll see a sign,' said the receptionist and attended to the little man.

Eva hurried out the door and turned left. There was no sign of Accident and Emergency there. Cursing the receptionist she tried to the right. It wasn't there either. In the end she asked a woman with her arm in a sling and was directed to the other end of the hospital.

'It's way past the main door. You can't miss it. I wouldn't go in, though. It's absolutely filthy. Dust everywhere.'

This time Eva did find it. The place was filled with children injured in the coach crash. Eva went back to the main door and found herself in what looked like a shopping mall with a restaurant and adjacent tearoom, a boutique, a parfumerie and a book and magazine stall. For a moment she felt quite mad. Then gathering her wits together she headed down a pa.s.sage following a sign which read 'Gynaecology'. There were more signs pointing down other corridors further on. Henry wouldn't be in a gynaecological ward.

Eva stopped a man in a white coat who was carrying a decidedly sinister-looking plastic bucket with a bloodstained cloth over it.

'Can't stop now. I've got to get this little tot to the incinerator. We've got another starting in twenty minutes.'

'Another baby? That's lovely,' said Eva without getting the implication of 'the incinerator'.

The nurse put her right. 'Another b.l.o.o.d.y foetus,' he said. 'Take a dekko if you don't believe me.'

He removed the bloodstained cloth and Eva glanced into the bucket. As the nurse hurried away she fainted and slid down the wall. Opposite her a door opened and a young doctor, a very young doctor, came out. The fact that he was a Lithuanian and had recently attended a seminar on Obesity and Coronary Infarcts didn't help. Fat women lying unconscious were his chance to show his expertise. Five minutes later Eva Wilt was in the Emergency Heart Unit, had been stripped to her panties, was being given oxygen and was about to be put on a defibrillator. That didn't help either. She wasn't unconscious long. She woke to find a nurse lifting her b.r.e.a.s.t.s for a defibrillator pad. Eva promptly hit her and hurled herself off the trolley and grabbed her clothes and was out of the room. She dashed to the toilet and got dressed. She'd come to visit her Henry and nothing was going to stop her. After trying several other wards she traipsed back to Reception. This time she was told that Mr Wilt was in Psychiatry 3.

'Where's that?' Eva asked.

'On floor 6 at the far end,' the receptionist told her to get rid of the wretched woman. Eva looked for a lift, failed to find one and had to walk up to floor 6 only to find herself outside Autopsy. Even she knew what an autopsy was. But Henry wasn't dead. He was in Psychiatry 3. An hour later she found that he wasn't. In the following two hours she had walked another mile and was furious. So furious in fact that she tackled a senior surgeon and screamed abuse at him. Then because it was getting late she remembered the girls at home. She'd have to go back to see they weren't up to any mischief and to make supper. In any case she was too exhausted to continue her search for Henry. She'd try again in the morning.

Chapter 26.

But by the time she arrived at the hospital the next morning, Inspector Flint had gone to get a cup of coffee and Wilt was still apparently unconscious. In fact Wilt was considering what the doctor had said.

'He may have amnesia and have no memory of what happened to him.' Or words to that effect. Wilt was now definitely in favour of having amnesia. He'd had no intention of making a statement. He'd had an awful night, much of it spent listening to a man on a heart monitor by the door dying. At one o'clock the Night Sister had come to the ward and Wilt had heard her whisper to the Ward Nurse that they'd have to do something about the man because he was coupling and wouldn't last till morning if they didn't iron the problem out. Listening to the sounds of the monitor Wilt could hear what she meant. The beeps were most irregular and as the night wore on they got worse, until just before dawn they petered out altogether and he could hear the poor old fellow's bed being wheeled out into the corridor. For a moment he thought of looking over to see what was going on but there was no point. It would only be morbid curiosity to see the corpse being carted off to the morgue.

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, G.o.d 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 c.o.c.ked 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.'