Wilt on High

'Wilt? Never. A bloody do-gooder, that's what he is. Mind you, I'm not saying they're not daft enough, because I know for a fact they are. What I'm saying is, a nick ought to be a prison, not a fucking finishing-school for turning half-witted petty thieves into first-rate bank robbers with degrees in law.'

'That's not what Mac was studying for, is it?' asked Flint.

Mr Blaggs laughed. 'Didn't need to,' he said. 'He had enough cash on the outside, he had a fistful of legal beavers on his payroll.'

'So how come Wilt's supposed to have made this phone call?' asked Flint.

'Just what Bill Coven thought, he took the call,' said Blaggs, and looked significantly at his glass. Flint ordered two more pints. 'He just thought he recognized Wilt's voice,' Blaggs continued, satisfied that he was getting his money's worth for information. 'Could have been anyone.'

Flint paid for the beer and tried to think what to ask next. 'And you've got no idea how Mac got his dope then?' he asked finally.

'Know exactly,' said Blaggs proudly. 'Another bloody do-gooder only this time a fucking prison visitor. If you ask me, they should ban all vi'

'A prison visitor?' interrupted Flint, before the Chief Warder could express his views on a proper prison regime, which involved perpetual solitary confinement for all convicts and mandatory hanging for murderers, rapists and anyone insulting a prison officer. 'You mean a visitor to the prison?'

'I don't. I mean an authorized prison visitor, a bloody licensed busybody. They come in and treat us officers like we've committed the ruddy crimes and the villains are all bloody orphans who didn't get enough teat when they were toddlers. Right, well, this bitch of a PV, name of Jardin, was the one McCullum got to bring his stuff in.'

'Christ,' said Flint. 'What did she do that for?'

'Scared,' said Blaggs. 'Some of Mac's nastier mates on the outside paid her a visit with razors and a bottle of nitric acid and threatened to leave her looking like a cross between a dog's dinner and a leper with acne unless...You get the message?'

'Yes,' said Flint, who'd begun to sympathize with the prison visitor, though for the life of him he couldn't visualize what a leper with acne looked like. 'And you mean she walked in and announced the fact?'

'Oh dear me, no,' said Blaggs. 'Starts off we've done for MrI ask you, Misterfucking McCullum ourselves. Practically said I'd hanged the sod myself, not that I'd have minded. So we took her down the morgueof course it just happened the prison quack was doing an autopsy at the time and didn't much like the look of things by the sound of it, using a saw he was, tooand he wasn't having any crap about anyone doing anything to the bugger. Right, well when she'd come to, like, and he's saying the swine died of drug overdose and anyone who said different'd end up in court for slander, she cracked. Tears all over the place and practically down on her knees in front of the Governor. And it all comes out how she's been running heroin into the prison for months. Ever so bleeding sorry and all.'

'I should bloody well think so,' said Flint. 'When's she going to be charged?'

Mr Blaggs drank his beer mournfully. 'Never,' he grunted.

'Never? But smuggling anything, let alone drugs, into a prison is an indictable offence,'

'Don't tell me,' said Blaggs. 'On the other hand, the Governor don't want no scandal, can't afford one with his job up for grabs and anyway, she'd done a social service in a way by shoving the bugger where he belongs.'

'There is that,' said Flint. 'Does Hodge know this?'

The Chief Warder shook his head. 'Like I said, the Governor don't want no publicity. Anyway, she claimed she thought the stuff was talcum powder. Like hell, but you know what a Rumpole would do with a defence like that. Prison authorities entirely to blame, and so on. Negligence, the lot.'

'Did she say where she got the heroin?' asked Flint.

'Picked it up back of a telephone box on the London Road at night. Never saw the blokes who delivered it.'

'And it won't have been any of the lot who'd threatened her either.'

By the time the Inspector left the pub, he was a happy man. Hodge was way offline, and Flint had a conscience-stricken prison visitor to question. He wasn't even worried about the effect of four pints of the best bitter being flushed through his system by those bloody piss-pills. He'd already charted his route home by way of three relatively clean public lavatories.

Chapter 10

But if Flint's mood had changed for the better, Inspector Hodge's hadn't. His interpretation of Wilt's behaviour had been coloured by the accident at the end of Nott Road. 'The bastard's got to know we're onto him, ramming a police car like that,' he told Sergeant Runk, 'so what's he do?'

'Buggered if I know,' said the Sergeant, who preferred early nights and couldn't think at all clearly at one in the morning.

'He goes for an early arrest, knowing we've got no hard evidence and will have to let him go.'

'What's he want us to do that for?'

'Because if we pull him in again he can start squealing about harassment and civil bloody liberties,' said Hodge.

'Seems an odd way of going about things,' said Runk.

'And what about sending your wife out to a herb farm to pick up a load of drugs on the very day after a girl dies of the filth? Isn't that a bit odd too?' Hodge demanded.

'Definitely,' said Runk. 'In fact, I can't think of anything odder. Any normal criminal would lie bloody low.'

Inspector Hodge smiled unpleasantly. 'Exactly. But we're not dealing with any ordinary criminal. That's the point I'm trying to make. We've got one of the cleverest monkeys I've ever had to catch on our hands.'

Sergeant Runk couldn't see it. 'Not if he sends his missus out to get a bottle of the stuff when we're watching her, he's not clever. Downright stupid.'

Hodge shook his head sadly. It was always difficult to get the Sergeant to understand the complexities of the criminal mind. 'Suppose there was nothing remotely like drugs in that bottle she was seen carrying?' he asked.

Sergeant Runk dragged his thoughts back from beds and tried to concentrate. 'Seem a bit of a wasted journey,' was all he could find to say.

'It's also intended to lead us up the garden path,' said Hodge. 'And that's his tactics. You've only to look at Wilt's record to see that. Take that doll caper for instance. He had old Flint by the short and curlies there, and why? Because the stupid fool pulled him in for questioning when all the evidence he had to go on was a blown-up doll of Mrs Wilt down a piling-hole with twenty tons of concrete on top of her. And where was the real Mrs Wilt all that week? Out on a boat with a couple of hippie Yanks who were into drugs up to their eyeballs and Flint lets them flee the country without grilling them about what they'd really been doing down the coast. Sticks out a mile they were smuggling and Wilt had set himself up for a decoy and kept Flint busy digging up a plastic doll. That's how cunning Wilt is.'

'I suppose when you put it like that it makes sense,' said Runk. And you reckon he's using the same tactics now.'

'Leopards,' said Hodge.

'Leopards?'

'Don't change their bleeding spots.'

'Oh, them,' said the Sergeant, who could have done without ellipses at that time of night.

'Only this time he's not dealing with some old-fashioned dead-beat copper like Flint,' said Hodge, now thoroughly convinced by the persuasiveness of his argument. 'He's dealing with me.'

'Makes a change. And talking about changes, I'd like to go...'

'To 45 Oakhurst Avenue,' said Hodge decisively, 'that's where you're going. I want Mr Smart-Arse Wilt's car wired for sound and we're calling off the physical observation. This time it's going to be electronic all the way.'