Inspector Flint sighed. Whatever success Sergeant Yates had had with teeth, it was certainly eluding him. He switched to other matters.
‘Let’s go over what happened at the Pringsheims’ party again,’ he said.
‘Let’s not,’ said Wilt who had so far managed to avoid mentioning his contretemps with the doll in the bathroom. ‘I’ve told you five times already and it’s wearing a bit thin. Besides it was a filthy party. A lot of trendy intellectuals boosting their paltry egos.’
‘Would you say you were an introverted sort of man, Wilt? A solitary type of person?’
Wilt considered the question seriously. It was certainly more to the point than teeth.
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ he said finally. ‘I’m fairly quiet but I’m gregarious too. You have to be to cope with the classes, I teach.’
‘But you don’t like parties?’
‘I don’t like parties like the Pringsheims’, no.’
‘Their sexual behaviour outrages you? Fills you with disgust?’
‘Their sexual behaviour? I don’t know why you pick on that. Everything about them disgusts me. All that crap about Women’s Lib for one thing when all it means to someone like Mrs Pringsheim is that she can go around behaving like a bitch on heat while her husband spends the day slaving over a hot test tube and comes home to cook supper, wash up and is lucky if he’s got enough energy to wank himself off before going to sleep. Now if we’re talking about real Women’s Lib that’s another matter. I’ve got nothing against…’
‘Let’s just hold it there,’ said the Inspector. ‘Now two things you said interest me. One, wives behaving like bitches on heat. Two, this business of you wanking yourself off.’
‘Me?’ said Wilt indignantly. ‘I wasn’t talking about myself.’
‘Weren’t you?’
‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘So you don’t masturbate?’
‘Now look here, Inspector. You’re prying into areas of my private life which don’t concern you. If you want to know about masturbation read the Kinsey Report. Don’t ask me.’
Inspector Flint restrained himself with difficulty. He tried another tack. ‘So when Mrs Pringsheim lay on the bed and asked you to have intercourse with her…’
‘Fuck is what she said,’ Wilt corrected him.’
‘You said no?’
‘Precisely,’ said Wilt.
‘Isn’t that a bit odd?’
‘What, her lying there or me saying no?’
‘You saying no.’
Wilt looked at him incredulously.
‘Odd?’ he said. ‘Odd? A woman comes in here and throws herself flat on her back on this table, pulls up her skirt and says “Fuck me, honey, prick me to the quick.” Are you going to leap onto her with a “Whoopee, let’s roll baby”? Is that what you mean by not odd?’
‘Jesus wept, Wilt,’ snarled the Inspector, ‘you’re walking a fucking tightrope with my patience.’
‘You could have fooled me,’ said Wilt. ‘All I do know is that your notion of what is odd behaviour and what isn’t doesn’t begin to make sense with me.’
Inspector Flint got up and left the room. ‘I’ll murder the bastard, so help me God I’ll murder him,’ he shouted at the Duty Sergeant. Behind him in the interview Room Wilt put his head on the table and fell asleep.
At the Tech Wilt’s absence was making itself felt in more ways than one. Mr Morris had had to take Gasfitters One at nine o’clock and had come out an hour later feeling that he had gained fresh insight into Wilt’s sudden excursion into homicide. The Vice-Principal was fighting off waves of crime reporters anxious to find out more about the man who was helping the police with their enquiries into a particularly macabre and newsworthy crime. And the Principal had begun to regret his criticisms of Liberal Studies to the Education Committee. Mrs Chatterway had phoned to say that she had found his remarks in the worst of taste and had hinted that she might well ask for an enquiry into the running of the Liberal Studies Department. But it was at the meeting of the Course Board that there was most alarm.
‘The visitation of the Council for National Academic Awards takes place on Friday,’ Dr Mayfield, Head of Sociology, told the committee. ‘They are hardly likely to approve the joint Honours degree in the present circumstances.’
‘If they had any sense they wouldn’t approve it in any circumstances,’ said Dr Board. ‘Urban Studies and Medieval Poetry indeed. I know academic eclecticism is the vogue these days but Helen Waddell and Lewis Mumford aren’t even remotely natural bedfellows. Besides the degree lacks academic content.’
Dr Mayfield bristled. Academic content was his strong point. ‘I don’t see how you can say that,’ he said. ‘The course has been structured to meet the needs of students looking for a thematic approach.’
‘The poor benighted creatures we manage to lure away from universities to take this course wouldn’t know a thematic approach if they saw one,’ said Dr Board. ‘Come to think of it I wouldn’t either.’
‘We all have our limitations,’ said Dr Mayfield suavely.
‘Precisely’ said Dr Board, ‘and in the circumstances we should recognise them instead of concocting joint Honours degrees which don’t make sense for students who if their A-level results are anything to go by, haven’t any chance in the first place. Heaven knows I’m all for educational opportunity but–’
‘The point is,’ interjected Dr Cox, Head of Science, ‘that it is not the degree course as such that is the purpose of the visitation. As I understand it they have given their approval to the degree in principle. They are coming to look at the facilities the College provides and they are hardly likely to be impressed by the presence of so many murder squad detectives. That blue caravan is most off-putting.’
‘In any case with the late Mrs Wilt structured into the foundations…’ began Dr Board.
‘I am doing my best to get the police to remove her from…’
‘The syllabus?’ asked Dr Board.
‘The premises,’ said Dr Mayfield. ‘Unfortunately they seem to have hit a snag.’
‘A snag?’
They have hit bedrock at eleven feet.’
Dr Board smiled. ‘One wonders why there was any need for thirty-foot piles in the first instance if there is bedrock at eleven,’ he murmured.
‘I can only tell you what the police have told me,’ said Dr Mayfield. ‘However they have promised to do all they can to be off the site by Friday. Now I would just like to run over the arrangements again with you. The Visitation will start at eleven with an inspection of the library. We will then break up into groups to discuss Faculty libraries and teaching facilities with particular reference to our ability to provide individual tuition…’
‘I shouldn’t have thought that was a point that needed emphasising,’ said Dr Board. ‘With the few students we’re likely to get we’re almost certain to have the highest teacher to student ratio in the country.’
‘If we adopt that approach the Committee will gain the impression that we are not committed to the degree. We must provide a united front,’ said Dr Mayfield ‘we can’t afford at this stage to have divisions among ourselves. This degree could mean our getting Polytechnic status.’
There were divisions too among the men boring down on the building site. The foreman was still at home under sedation suffering nervous exhaustion brought on by his part in the cementation of a murdered woman and it was left to Barney to superintend operations. ‘There was this hand, see…’ he told the Sergeant in charge.