‘Leave me alone,’ he yelled. ‘You’ve got no right to do this. You’ve got–’
‘Wilt,’ shouted Inspector Flint, ‘I’m going to give you one last chance. If you don’t go quietly I’m going to charge you here and now with the murder of your wife’
Wilt went quietly. There was nothing else to do.
‘The screw?’ said Sally. ‘But you said it was the con rod.’
‘So I was wrong,’ said Gaskell. She cranks over.’
‘It, G, it. It cranks over.’
‘OK. It cranks over so it can’t be a con rod. It could be something that got tangled with the propshaft.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like weeds.’
‘Why don’t you go down and have a look yourself?’
‘With these glasses?’ said Gaskell. ‘I wouldn’t be able to see anything.’
‘You know I can’t swim,’ said Sally. ‘I have this leg.’
‘I can swim,’ said Eva.
‘We’ll tie a rope round you. That way you won’t drown,’ said Gaskell, ‘all you’ve got to do is go under and feel if there’s anything down there.’
‘We know what’s down there,’ said Sally. ‘Mud is.’
‘Round the propshaft,’ said Gaskell. ‘Then if there is you can take it off.’
Eva went into the cabin and put on the bikini.
‘Honestly, Gaskell, sometimes I think you’re doing this on purpose. First it’s the con rod and now it’s the screw.’
‘Well, we’ve got to try everything. We can’t just sit here,’ said Gaskell, ‘I’m supposed to be back in the lab tomorrow.’
‘You should have thought of that before,’ said Sally. ‘Now all we need is a goddam Albatross.’
‘If you ask me we’ve got one,’ said Gaskell, as Eva came out of the cabin and put on a bathing cap.
‘Now where’s the rope?’ she asked. Gaskell looked in a locker and found some. He tied it round her waist and Eva clambered over the side into the water.
‘It’s ever so cold,’ she giggled.
‘That’s because of the Gulf Stream,’ said Gaskell, ‘it doesn’t come this far round.’
Eva swam out and put her feet down.
‘It’s terribly shallow and full of mud.’
She waded round hanging on to the rope and groped under the stern of the cruiser.
‘I can’t feel anything,’ she called.
‘It will be further under,’ said Gaskell, peering down at her. Eva put her head under the water and felt the rudder.
‘That’s the rudder,’ said Gaskell.
‘Of course it is,’ said Eva, ‘I know that, silly. I’m not stupid.’
She disappeared under the boat. This time she found the propeller but there was nothing wrapped round it.
‘It’s just muddy, that’s all,’ she said, when she resurfaced. ‘There’s mud all along the bottom.’
‘Well there would be wouldn’t there,’ said Gaskell. Eva waded round to the side. ‘We just happen to be stuck on a mudbank.’
Eva went down again but the propshaft was clear too. I told you so,’ said Sally, as they hauled Eva back on board. ‘You just made her do it so you could see her in her plastic kini all covered with mud. Come, Botticelli baby, let Sally wash you off.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ said Gaskell. ‘Penis arising from the waves.’ He went back to the engine and looked at it uncertainly. Perhaps there was a blockage in the fuel line. It didn’t seem very likely but he had to try something. They couldn’t stay stuck on the mudbank forever.
On the foredeck Sally was sponging Eva down.
‘Now the bottom half, darling,’ she said untying the string.
‘Oh, Sally. No, Sally.’
‘Labia babia.’
‘Oh, Sally, you are awful.’
Gaskell struggled with the adjustable wrench. All this Touch Therapy was getting to him. And the plastic.
At the County Hall the Principal was doing his best to pacify the members of the Education Committee who were demanding a full Enquiry into the recruitment policy of the Liberal Studies Department.
‘Let me explain,’ he said patiently, looking round at the Committee, which was a nice balance of business interests and social commitment. ‘The 1944 Education Act laid down that all apprentices should be released from their places of employment to attend Day Release Classes at Technical Colleges…’
‘We know all that,’ said a building contractor, ‘and we all know it’s a bloody waste of time and public money. This country would be a sight better of if they were left to get on with their jobs.’
‘The courses they attend,’ continued the Principal before anyone with a social conscience could intervene, ‘are craft-oriented with the exception of one hour, one obligatory hour of Liberal Studies. Now the difficulty with Liberal Studies is that no one knows what it means.’
‘Liberal Studies means,’ said Mrs Chatterway, who prided herself on being an advocate of progressive education, in which role she had made a substantial contribution to the illiteracy rate in several previously good primary schools, ‘providing socially deprived adolescents with a firm grounding in liberal attitudes and culturally extending topics…’
‘It means teaching them to read and write,’ said a company director. ‘It’s no good having workers who can’t read instructions.’
‘It means whatever anyone chooses it to mean,’ said the Principal hastily. ‘Now if you are faced with the problem of having to find lecturers who are prepared to spend their lives going into classrooms filled with Gasfitters or Plasterers or Printers who see no good reason for being there, and keeping them occupied with a subject that does not, strictly speaking, exist, you cannot afford to pick and choose the sort of staff you employ. That is the crux of the problem.’
The Committee looked at him doubtfully.
‘Am I to understand that you are suggesting that Liberal Studies teachers are not devoted and truly creative individuals imbued with a strong sense of vocation?’ asked Mrs Chatterway belligerently.
‘No,’ said the Principal, ‘I am not saying that at all. I am merely trying to make the point that Liberal Studies lecturers are not as other men are. They either start out odd or they end up odd. It’s in the nature of their occupation.’
‘But they are all highly qualified,’ said Mrs Chatterway, ‘they all have degrees.’
‘Quite. As you say they all hold degrees. They are all qualified teachers but the stresses to which they are subject leave their mark. Let me put it this way. If you were to take a heart transplant surgeon and ask him to spend his working life docking dogs’ tails you would hardly expect him to emerge unscathed after ten years’ work. The analogy is exact, believe me, exact.’
‘Well, all I can say,’ protested the building contractor, ‘is that not all Liberal Studies lecturers end up burying their murdered wives at the bottom of pile shafts.’
‘And all I can say,’ said the Principal, ‘is that I am extremely surprised more don’t’
The meting broke up undecided.
Chapter 11
As dawn broke glaucously over East Anglia Wilt sat in the Interview Room at the central Police Station isolated from the natural world and in a wholly artificial environment that included a table, four chairs, a detective sergeant and a fluorescent light on the ceiling that buzzed slightly. There were no windows, just pale green walls and a door through which people came and went occasionally and Wilt went twice to relieve himself in the company of a constable. Inspector Flint had gone to bed at midnight and his place had been taken by Detective Sergeant Yates who had started again at the beginning.
‘What beginning?’ said Wilt.
‘At the very beginning.’
‘God made heaven and earth and all…’