‘But that’s where they do heart transplants!’ Joanie shrieked. ‘He can’t be that bad.’
‘It’s just that we haven’t the facilities here in Wilma. He’ll be a heap better off at the Clinic.’
‘Well, I’m going there with him. I’m not having him have a heart transplant without my being with him.’
‘No one is talking about a heart transplant, Mrs Immelmann. It’s just that he’ll get the best treatment possible down there.’
‘I don’t care!’ she screamed inconsequentially. ‘I’m going to be with him to the end. You can’t stop me.’
‘Nobody’s going to stop you. You’re entitled to go where you like, but I won’t take responsibility for the consequences,’ said the cardiologist and ended the argument by going back to Intensive Care.
As she drove back to the Starfighter Mansion in a blazing temper she made up her mind what she was going to do. Tell Eva to get herself and her brats out of the house.
‘I’m going down to Atlanta with Wally!’ she shouted. ‘And you’re going back to England and I never want to see you, any of you, ever again. Pack up and go.’
For once Eva agreed with her. The visit had been a disaster and besides, she was frantically worried about Henry. She should never have left him alone. He was bound to have got into trouble without her. She told the quads to pack their things and get ready to leave. But they had heard Auntie Joan shouting and were way ahead of her. The only problem was how to get to the airport. Eva put the question to Auntie Joan when she stormed downstairs.
‘Get a bloody cab, you bitch,’ she snapped.
‘But I haven’t the money,’ said Eva pathetically.
‘Oh, God. Never mind. Anything to get you out of the house.’ She went to the phone and called the cab company and presently the Wilts were on their way. The quads said nothing. They knew better than to talk when Eva was in this sort of mood.
In the Surveillance Truck Murphy and Palowski were uncertain what to do. No trace of any drug had been detected in the effluent coming from the Starfighter Mansion. Wally Immelmann’s heart attack had made the situation even more difficult and what they had seen and heard in the house didn’t suggest any activity connected with drugs. Domestic murder seemed more likely.
‘Best call Atlanta and tell them the sumo with quadruplets is coming and let them decide the action,’ said Murphy.
‘Affirmative,’ Palowski agreed. He’d forgotten how to say yes.
Chapter 23
In Ipford General Hospital Wilt still hadn’t come round. He’d been moved from the corridor to make room for six youngsters injured in the pig inferno. Finally after forty-eight hours Wilt was taken into X-ray and diagnosed as suffering from severe concussion and three badly bruised ribs, but there was no sign of a fractured skull. From there he was wheeled to what was called the Neurological Ward. As usual it was full.
‘Of course it was a crime,’ said the Duty Sergeant grumpily when the doctor at the hospital phoned the police station to ask what exactly had happened. ‘The bugger was mugged and dumped unconscious in the street behind the New Estate. What he was doing there we’ve no idea. Probably drunk or…well, your guess is as good as mine. He wasn’t wearing any trousers. Being in that district he was asking for it.’
‘Any identity?’ the doctor asked.
‘One of our men saw him and thought he recognised him as a lecturer at the Tech. Name of Wilt. Mr Henry Wilt. He taught Communications Studies and–’
‘So what’s his address? Oh, never mind, you can inform his relatives he’s been mugged and is in Ipford Hospital.’ And he rang off angrily.
In his office Inspector Flint leapt to his feet and barged into the passage. ‘Did I hear you say ‘Henry Wilt’?’
The Sergeant nodded. ‘He’s up at the hospital. Been mugged according to some quack who…’
But Flint was no longer listening. He hurried down to the police station car park and headed for the hospital.
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 God,’ said Flint faintly. He could just begin to understand why a man who must presumably have been an active participant 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, pushing 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. Bloody 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 Unisex 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 unisex ward. Multi-sex would have been more accurate though just as unpleasant. To take his attention away from a patient of indeterminate sex–for 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 assured 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 hell 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.