Sally lit a cigarillo.
‘All men get turned on by something,’ she said. ‘They’re manipulable. All you’ve got to do is fend the kink. I should know.’
‘Henry’s not like that. I’d know if he was.’
‘So he makes with the doll. That’s how much you know about Henry. You telling me he’s the great lover?’
‘We’ve been married twelve years. It’s only natural we don’t do it as often as we used to. We’re so busy.’
‘Busy lizzie. And while you’re housebound what’s Henry doing?’
‘He’s taking classes at the Tech. He’s there all day and he comes home tired
‘Takes classes takes asses. You’ll be telling me next he’s not a sidewinder.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ said Eva.
‘He has his piece on the side. His secretary knees up on the desk.’
‘He doesn’t have a secretary.’
‘Then students prudence. Screws their grades up. I know. I’ve seen it. I’ve been around colleges too long to be fooled.’
‘I’m sure Henry would never…’
‘That’s what they all say and then bingo, it’s divorce and bobbysex and all you’re left to look forward to is menopause and peeking through the blinds at the man next door and waiting for the Fuller Brush man.’
‘You make it all sound so awful.’ said Eva. ‘You really do.’
‘It is, Eva teats. It is. You’ve got to do something, about it before it’s too late. You’ve got to liberate yourself from Henry. Make the break and share the cake. Otherwise it’s male domination doomside.’
Eva sat on the bunk and thought about the future. It didn’t seem to hold trench for her. They would never have any children now and they wouldn’t ever have much money. They would go on living in Park-dew Avenue and paying off the mortgage and maybe Henry would find someone else and then what would she do? And even if he didn’t, life was passing her by.
‘I wish I knew what to do,’ she said presently. Sally sat up and put her arm round her.
‘Why don’t you come to the States with us in November?’ she said. ‘We could have such fun.’
‘Oh I couldn’t do that,’ said Eva. ‘It wouldn’t be fair to Henry.’
No such qualms bothered Inspector Flint. Wilt’s intransigence under intense questioning merely indicated that he was harder than he looked.
‘We’ve had him under interrogation for thirty-six hours now,’ he told the conference of the Murder Squad in the briefing room at the Police Station, ‘and we’ve got nothing out of him. So this is going to be a long hard job and quite frankly I have my doubts about breaking him.’
‘I told you he was going to be a hard nut to crack,’ said Sergeant Yates.
‘Nut being the operative word,’ said Flint. ‘So it’s got to be concrete evidence.’
There was a snigger which died away quickly. Inspector Flint was not in a humorous mood.
‘Evidence, hard evidence is the only thing that is going to break him. Evidence is the only thing that is going to bring him to trial.’
‘But we’ve got that,’ said Yates. ‘It’s at the bott…’
‘I know exactly where it is, thank you Sergeant. What I am talking about is evidence of multiple murder. Mrs Wilt is accounted for. Dr and Mrs Pringsheim aren’t. Now my guess is that he murdered all three and that the other two bodies are…’ He stopped and opened the file in front of him and hunted through it for Notes on Violence and the Break-Up of Family Life. He studied them for a moment and shook his head. ‘No,’ he muttered, ‘it’s not possible.’
‘What isn’t, sir?’ asked Sergeant Yates. ‘Anything is possible with this bastard.’
But Inspector Flint was not to be drawn. The notion was too awful.
‘As I was saying’ be continued, ‘what we need now is hard evidence. What we have got is purely circumstantial. I want more evidence on the Pringsheims. I want to know what happened at that party, who was there and why it happened and at the rate we’re going with Wilt we aren’t going to get anything out of him. Snell, you go down to the Department of Biochemistry at the University and get what you can on Dr Pringsheim. Find out if any of his colleagues were at that party. Interview them. Get a list of his friends, his hobbies, his girl friends if he had any. Find out if there is any link between him and Mrs Wilt that would suggest a motive. Jackson, you go up to Rossiter Grove and see what you can get on Mrs Pringsheim…’
By the time the conference broke up detectives had been despatched all over town to build up a dossier on the Pringsheims. Even the American Embassy had been contacted to find out what was known about the couple in the States. The murder investigation had begun in earnest.
Inspector Flint walked back to his office with Sergeant Yates and shut the door. ‘Yates,’ he said, ‘this is confidential. I wasn’t going to mention it in there but I’ve a nasty feeling I know why that sod is so bloody cocky. Have you ever known a murderer sit through thirty-six hours of questioning as cool as a cucumber when be knows we’ve got the body of his victim pinpointed to the nearest inch?’
Sergeant Yates shook his head.’I've known some pretty cool customers in my time and particularly since they stopped hanging but this one takes the biscuit If you ask me he’s a raving psychopath.’
Flint dismissed the idea. ‘Psychopaths crack easy,’ he said. ‘They confess to murders they haven’t committed or they confess to, murders they have committed but they confess. This Wilt doesn’t. He sits there and tells me how to run the investigation. Now take a look at this.’ He opened the file and took out Wilt’s notes. ‘Notice anything peculiar?’
Sergeant Yates read the notes through twice.
‘Well, he doesn’t seem to think much of our methods,’ he said finally. ‘And I don’t much like this bit about low level of intelligence of average policeman.’
‘What about Point Two D?’ said the Inspector. ‘Increasing use of sophisticated methods such as diversionary tactics by criminals. Diversionary tactics. Doesn’t that suggest anything to you?’
‘You mean he’s trying to divert our attention away from the real crime to something else?’
Inspector Flint nodded. ‘What I mean is this. I wouldn’t mind betting that when we do get down to the bottom of that fucking pile we’re going to find an inflatable doll dressed up in Mrs Wilt’s clothes and with a vagina. That’s what I think’
‘But that’s insane.’
‘Insane? It’s fucking diabolical,’ said the Inspector. ‘He’s sitting in there like a goddam dummy giving as good as he gets because he knows he’s got us chasing a red herring.’
Sergeant Yates sat down mystified. ‘But why? Why draw attention to the murder in the first place? Why didn’t he just lie low and act normally?’
‘What, and report Mrs Wilt missing? You’re forgetting the Pringsheims. A wife goes missing, so what? Two of her friends go missing and leave their house in a hell of a mess and covered with bloodstains. That needs explaining, that does. So he puts out a false trail…’
‘But that still doesn’t help him,’ objected the Sergeant. ‘We dig up a plastic doll. Doesn’t mean we’re going to halt the investigation.’
‘Maybe not but it gives him a week while the other bodies disintegrate.’
‘You think be used an acid bath like Haigh?’ asked the Sergeant. ‘That’s horrible.’
‘Of course it’s horrible. You think murder’s nice or something? Anyway the only reason they got Haigh was that stupid bugger told them where to look for the sludge. If he’d kept his trap shut for another week they wouldn’t have found anything. The whole lot would have been washed away. Besides I don’t know what Wilt’s used. All I do know is he’s an intellectual, a clever sod and he thinks he’s got it wrapped up. First we take him in for questioning, maybe even get him remanded and when we’ve done that, we go and dig up a plastic inflatable doll. We’re going to look right Charlies going into court with a plastic doll as evidence of murder. We’ll be the laughing stock of the world. So the case gets thrown out of court and what happens when we pick him up a second time for questioning on the real murders? We’d have the Civil Liberties brigade sinking their teeth into our throats like bleeding vampire bats.’