‘You go out and pacify her.’ said Sally.
‘No way. I’d as soon play blind man’s buff with a fucking rhinoceros.’ He lay on the bunk and smiled happily. ‘You know there’s something really ironical about all this. You had to go and liberate a Neanderthal. Women’s Lib for paleolithics. She Tarzan, you Jane. You’ve bought yourself a piece of zoo.’
‘Very funny,’ said Sally. ‘And what’s your role?’
‘Me Noah. Just be thankful she hasn’t got a gun.’ He pulled a pillow up under his head and went to sleep.
Sally sat on staring at his back venomously. She was frightened. Eva’s reaction had been so violent that it had destroyed her confidence in herself. Gaskell was right. There had been something primeval in Eva Wilt’s behaviour. She shuddered at the thought of that dark shape moving towards her in the cockpit. Sally got up and went into the galley and found a long sharp knife. Then she went back into the cabin and checked the lock on the door and lay down on her bunk and tried to sleep. But sleep wouldn’t come. There were noises outside. Waves lapped against the side of the boat. The wind blew. God, what a mess it all was! Sally clutched her knife and thought about Gaskell and what he had said about divorce.
Peter Braintree sat in the office of Mr Gosdyke, Solicitor, and discussed the problem. ‘He’s been in there since Monday and it’s Thursday now. Surely they’ve no right to keep him there so long without his seeing a solicitor.’
If he doesn’t ask for one and if the police want to question him and he is prepared to answer their questions and refuses to demand his legal rights I don’t really see that there is anything I can do about it,’ said Mr Gosdyke.
‘But are you sure that that is the situation?’ asked Braintree.
‘As far as I can ascertain that is indeed the situation. Mr Wilt has not asked to see me. I spoke to the Inspector in charge, you heard me and it seems quite clear that Mr Wilt appears, for some extraordinary reason, to be prepared to help the police with their enquiries just as long as they feel his presence at the Police Station is necessary. Now if a man refuses to assert his own legal rights then he has only himself to blame for his predicament.’
‘But are you absolutely certain that Henry has refused to see you? I mean the police could be lying to you.’ Mr Gosdyke shook his head. ‘I have known Inspector Flint for many years,’ he said, ‘and he is not the sort of man to deny a suspect his rights. No, I’m sorry. Mr Braintree. I would like to be of more assistance but frankly, in the circumstances, I can do nothing. Mr Wilt’s predilection for the company of police officers is quite incomprehensible to me, but it disqualifies me from interfering.’
‘You don’t think they’re giving him third degree or anything of that sort?’
‘My dear fellow, third degree? You’ve been watching too many old movies on the TV. The police don’t use strong-arm methods in this country.’
‘They’ve been pretty brutal with some of our students who have been on demos,’ Braintree pointed out.
‘Ah, but students are quite another matter and demonstrating students get what they deserve. Political provocation is one thing but domestic murders of the sort your friend Mr Wilt seems to have indulged in come into a different category altogether. I can honestly say that in all my years in the legal profession I have yet to come across a case in which the police did not treat a domestic murderer with great care and not a little sympathy. After all, they are nearly all married men themselves, and in any case Mr Wilt has a degree and that always helps. If you are a professional man, and in spite of what some people may say lecturers in Technical Colleges are members of a profession if only marginally, then you can rest assured that the police will do nothing in the least untoward. Mr Wilt is perfectly safe.’
And Wilt felt safe. He sat in the Interview Room and contemplated Inspector Flint with interest.
‘Motivation? Now there’s an interesting question,’ he said. ‘If you had asked me why I married Eva in the first place I’d have same trouble trying to explain, myself. I was young at the time and…’
‘Wilt,’ said the Inspector, ‘I didn’t ask you why you married your wife. I asked you why you decided to murder her.’
‘I didn’t decide to murder her.’ said Wilt.
‘It was a spontaneous action? A momentary impulse you couldn’t resist? An act of madness you now regret?’
‘It was none of those things. In the first place it was not an act. It was mere fantasy.’
‘But you do admit that the thought crossed your mind?’
‘Inspector,’ said Wilt, ‘if I acted upon every impulse that crossed my mind I would have been convicted of child rape, buggery, burglary, assault with intent to commit grievous bodily harm and mass murder long ago.’
‘All those impulses crossed your mind?’
‘At some time or other, yes,’ said Wilt.
‘You’ve got a bloody odd mind.’
‘Which is something I share with the vast majority of mankind. I daresay that even you in your odd contemplative moments have…’
‘Wilt,’ said the Inspector, ‘I don’t have odd contemplative moments. Not until I met you anyhow. Now then, you admit you thought of killing your wife…’
‘I said the notion had crossed my mind, particularly when I have to take the dog for a walk. It is a game I play with myself. No more than that.’
‘A game? You take the dog for a walk and think of ways and means of killing Mrs Wilt? I don’t call that a game. I call it premeditation.’
‘Not badly put,’ said Wilt with a smile, ‘the meditation bit. Eva curls up in the lotus position on the living-room rug and thinks beautiful thoughts. I take the bloody dog for a walk and think dreadful ones while Clem defecates on the grass verge in Grenville Gardens. And in each case the end result is just the same. Eva gets up and cooks supper and washes up and I come home and watch the box or read and go to bed. Nothing has altered one way or another.’
‘It has now,’ said the Inspector. ‘Your wife has disappeared off the face of the earth together with a brilliant young scientist and his wife, and you are sitting here waiting to be charged with their murder.’
‘Which I don’t happen to have committed,’ said Wilt. ‘Ah well, these things happen. The moving finger writes and having writ…’
‘Fuck the moving finger. Where are they? Where did you put them? You’re going to tell me.’
Wilt sighed. ‘I wish I could,’ he said, ‘I really do. Now you’ve got that plastic doll…’
‘No we haven’t. Not by a long chalk. We’re still going down through solid rock. We won’t get whatever is down there until tomorrow at the earliest.’
‘Something to look forward to,’ said Wilt. ‘Then I suppose you’ll let me go.’
‘Like hell I will. I’ll have you up for remand on Monday.’
‘Without any evidence of murder? Without a body? You can’t do that.’
Inspector Flint smiled. ‘Wilt,’ he said, ‘I’ve got news for you. We don’t need a body. We can hold you on suspicion, we can bring you up for trial and we can find you guilty without a body. You may be clever but you don’t know your law.’
‘Well I must say you fellows have an easy job of it. You mean you can go out in the street and pick up some perfectly innocent passer-by and lug him in here and charge him with murder without any evidence at all?’
‘Evidence? We’ve got evidence all right. We’ve got a blood spattered bathroom with a busted-down door. We’ve got an empty house in a filthy mess and we’ve got some bloody thing or other down that pile hole and you think we haven’t got evidence. You’ve got it wrong.’