An hour later a group of drunk skinheads passed the head of the alley, spotted the body and came up to have a look at it.
‘A bloody old poofter,’ said one of them, drawing the conclusion from the lack of Wilt’s jeans. ‘Let’s put the boot in.’ And having expressed their feelings for gays by kicking him in the ribs a few times and once in the face, they staggered off laughing. Wilt felt nothing. He had found an Older England than he’d expected but he still didn’t know it.
A feeble dawn had broken when he was found by a police car. Two constables got out and looked down at him.
‘Best call an ambulance. This one’s a right mess. Tell them it’s urgent.’
While the WPC used the car radio the other looked around. Above his head the plywood board opened.
‘Happened around three hours ago,’ said an old woman. ‘A woman in a white car came and dragged him out. Then some young bastards gave him a kicking just for the fun of it.’
The constable peered up at her. ‘You should have called us, mother,’ he said.
‘What with, I’d like to know? Think I’ve got a phone?’
‘Don’t suppose you have. What are you doing here anyway? Last time you were down the road.’
The old woman poked her head further out. ‘Think I’m staying in one place round here? Not likely. I may be cabbage-looking but I ain’t that green. Got to keep moving so those young swine don’t get me.’
The policeman took out a notebook. ‘Get a look at the number-plate of the car?’ he asked.
‘What, in this dark? Course I didn’t. Saw a woman though. Rich bitch by the look of her. Not from round here.’
‘We can drive you down with us to the station. You’ll be safe enough down there.’
‘I don’t mean that. I want to go back where I came from. That’s what I mean, copper.’
But before the constable could ask where that was the Woman Police Officer returned with the news that no ambulances were available. There had been a major accident involving two coaches full of schoolchildren on a trip abroad, a petrol tanker and a lorry carrying pigs on the motorway twenty miles away and every available ambulance and fire engine had been sent to the scene.
‘Pigs?’ queried the constable.
‘At least they think it was pigs. The Duty Sergeant’s been told the smell of roast pork is appalling.’
‘Never mind about that. What about the school kids?’
‘They’re in the ambulances. The two coaches skidded on the pig fat and turned over,’ the WPC told him.
‘Oh well, we’d better put this bastard in the back of the car and take him down the hospital ourselves.’
Above their heads the old woman had closed the plywood board again and disappeared. With Wilt lying prone on the back seat they drove to Ipford General Hospital and met with a hostile reception.
‘Oh, all right,’ said a distraught doctor called by the nurse in A & E. ‘It will be difficult with this damned accident. We haven’t any spare beds. We haven’t even a spare trolley. I’m not even sure we’ve got any spare corridors, and just to make working in what amounts to a human abattoir so fulfilling, we’ve got a major catastrophe on our hands, four doctors off sick and the usual shortage of nursing staff. Why can’t you take him home? He’s less likely to die there.’
All the same, Wilt was finally lifted on to a stretcher, and space in a long corridor was found for him. Fortunately, Wilt was still unconscious.
21
Uncle Wally was not so lucky. He was fully conscious and wishing to hell he wasn’t. He had come out of Intensive Care, had refused to see Auntie Joanie and was having a most unpleasant conversation with Dr Cohen who was telling him a man of his age … well, a man of any age deserved an infarct if he did what he’d done to his wife or any other person for that matter. It was, he said, contra natura.
‘Contra what?’ Wally gasped. The only Contras he’d heard of had fought the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
‘Against nature. The sphincter is designed to let excreta out not—’
‘Shit! What’s excrecha?’
‘What you just said. Shit,’ said Dr Cohen. ‘Now, like I was saying, the sphincter—’
‘I don’t even know what a sphincter is.’
‘Asshole,’ said Dr Cohen ambiguously.
Wally took umbrage. ‘You calling me an asshole?’ he yelled.
Dr Cohen hesitated. Wally Immelmann might be a first-rate business man but … The guy was sick. He didn’t want to kill the idiot.
‘I am merely trying to explain the physiological consequences of putting … putting things up someone’s anus instead of in the normal way.’
Wally gaped at him and turned a nasty colour. He couldn’t find words for his feelings.
Dr Cohen continued. ‘Not only could you give your dear wife Aids but—’
Wally Immelmann found words. ‘Aids?’ he yelled. ‘What’s all this about my having Aids? I haven’t got Aids. I’m not a faggot.’
‘I’m not saying you are. I don’t care. What you do is your own business. I am merely telling you that what you have been doing to your wife can be physically damaging to her. Not can be. Is. She could be wearing tampons the rest of her life.’
‘Who says I do what you’re saying I do to her?’ demanded Wally inadvisedly.
Dr Cohen sighed. He’d had just about all he could stomach from Wally Immelmann. ‘As a matter of fact you do,’ he snapped. ‘You can be heard miles away shouting at Mrs Immelmann about giving it to her up the ass. People are taking tours up near Lake Sassaquassee just to hear you.’
Wally’s eyes bulged in his suffused face. ‘You mean … oh my God, they haven’t cut the loudspeakers off? They’ve got to.’
‘You tell them how. The police can’t get near the place. They’ve had the National Guard and helicopters and …’
But Wally Immelmann was no longer listening. He’d had another infarct. As he was rushed back to Intensive Care, Dr Cohen left the hospital. He was a kindly man and gays could do what they liked but screwing wives anally when they didn’t like it disgusted him.
At the Starfighter Mansion things weren’t much better. Auntie Joan had taken to her bed and had locked the door, only unlocking it to go down to the kitchen to get her breakfast, lunch and dinner. She and Eva were hardly on speaking terms and the quads had taken over Uncle Wally’s computer and were sending email messages to all their friends and a number of obscene ones to all recipients on his business address list. Eva, who knew nothing about computers and was in any case too worried about her Henry, left them to their own and Uncle Wally’s devices. She spent her time on the phone to England calling up friends, even Mavis Mottram, to find out where he’d got to. Nobody knew.
‘But he can’t just have disappeared. That’s not possible.’
‘No, dear, and I didn’t say he’d disappeared,’ said Mavis with mock sympathy. ‘I just said nobody knew where he was.’
‘But that’s the same as saying he’s disappeared,’ said Eva, who had learnt some elements of logic from Wilt during their frequent arguments. ‘You said nobody knows where he is. Someone has to know. I mean, he may have gone on holiday with the Braintrees. Have you tried them?’
At the other end of the line Mavis took a deep breath. She had always found Eva difficult to deal with and she wasn’t prepared to be grilled by her now.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I haven’t. For the simple reason that I don’t know their address or if they have gone on holiday and I’m hardly likely to know where they’ve gone.’
‘They always take a cottage in Norfolk for a month in the summer.’
This time Mavis didn’t breathe deeply. She snorted. ‘Then why don’t you phone them?’ she snapped.
‘Because I don’t know where the cottage is. All I do know is that it’s in Norfolk somewhere on the coast.’
‘Norfolk?’ squawked Mavis. ‘If you seriously think I’m going to start searching cottages along the entire coast of Norfolk … well, it??
?s out of the question. Why don’t you phone the hospitals and the police? They’ve usually kept an eye on your Henry. Ask for Missing Persons.’
All in all it was a most disagreeable and acrimonious exchange, and it ended with Mavis putting the phone down without saying goodbye. Eva tried the house again but all she got was her own voice on the answerphone. Apart from the quads, and she wasn’t going to worry them, Eva had no one to consult. Upstairs Auntie Joan could be heard snoring. She’d taken another sleeping pill and washed it down with Jack Daniels. Eva went out to the kitchen. At least there she could talk to Maybelle, the black maid, and tell her her problems. Even that didn’t help. Maybelle’s experience with men was even worse than Eva’s.
‘Men’s all the same. The second you turn your back they’s off like alley cats chasing other girls.’
‘But my Henry’s not like that. He’s … well, he’s different from other men. And he’s definitely not gay, if that’s what you’re thinking.’ Maybelle had raised her eyebrows significantly. ‘It’s just that he’s not really interested in sex,’ Eva confided.
‘Then he’s gotta be different. Never met a man like that in all my life. That Mr Immelmann sure isn’t. I reckon that’s how come his heart’s so bad.’ She looked out the window. ‘There’s those men again. I don’t know what they think they’re doing snooping round the house all the time. And Mrs Joanie’s lost her voice or something. Comes down and gets herself some ice cream and brownies and goes on back up to her room and never a word out of her. Guess she’s all upset over Mr Immelmann being took bad.’
Up at the lake a blessed silence reigned. A special squad of totally deaf Gulf War veterans had been recruited to destroy the generator with explosives. Even then they had found the task difficult and had had to use clothing that looked like spacesuits to get near the thing. But in the end they had succeeded. The loudspeakers went dead and the Drug Squad moved in and ransacked the place. They found nothing more incriminating than a stack of porno videos hidden in Wally’s safe. But by the time they left, the house looked as though it had been vandalised.
22
But it was in the Starfighter Mansion in Wilma that the real battle was about to begin. Auntie Joanie had woken from her pill-induced sleep determined to visit Wally and had driven down to the hospital only to learn that he was in Intensive Care and could see no one. Dr Cohen and the chief cardiologist broke the news to her.
‘He’s not unconscious but his condition is exceedingly grave. We’re thinking of having him transferred to the South Atlanta Heart Clinic,’ the cardiologist told her.
‘But that’s where they do heart transplants!’ Joanie shrieked. ‘He can’t be that bad.’
‘It’s just that we haven’t the facilities here in Wilma. He’ll be a heap better off at the Clinic.’
‘Well, I’m going there with him. I’m not having him have a heart transplant without my being with him.’
‘No one is talking about a heart transplant, Mrs Immelmann. It’s just that he’ll get the best treatment possible down there.’
‘I don’t care!’ she screamed inconsequentially. ‘I’m going to be with him to the end. You can’t stop me.’
‘Nobody’s going to stop you. You’re entitled to go where you like, but I won’t take responsibility for the consequences,’ said the cardiologist and ended the argument by going back to Intensive Care.
As she drove back to the Starfighter Mansion in a blazing temper she made up her mind what she was going to do. Tell Eva to get herself and her brats out of the house.
‘I’m going down to Atlanta with Wally!’ she shouted. ‘And you’re going back to England and I never want to see you, any of you, ever again. Pack up and go.’
For once Eva agreed with her. The visit had been a disaster and besides, she was frantically worried about Henry. She should never have left him alone. He was bound to have got into trouble without her. She told the quads to pack their things and get ready to leave. But they had heard Auntie Joan shouting and were way ahead of her. The only problem was how to get to the airport. Eva put the question to Auntie Joan when she stormed downstairs.
‘Get a bloody cab, you bitch,’ she snapped.
‘But I haven’t the money,’ said Eva pathetically.
‘Oh, God. Never mind. Anything to get you out of the house.’ She went to the phone and called the cab company and presently the Wilts were on their way. The quads said nothing. They knew better than to talk when Eva was in this sort of mood.
In the Surveillance Truck Murphy and Palowski were uncertain what to do. No trace of any drug had been detected in the effluent coming from the Starfighter Mansion. Wally Immelmann’s heart attack had made the situation even more difficult and what they had seen and heard in the house didn’t suggest any activity connected with drugs. Domestic murder seemed more likely.
‘Best call Atlanta and tell them the sumo with quadruplets is coming and let them decide the action,’ said Murphy.
‘Affirmative,’ Palowski agreed. He’d forgotten how to say yes.
23
In Ipford General Hospital Wilt still hadn’t come round. He’d been moved from the corridor to make room for six youngsters injured in the pig inferno. Finally after forty-eight hours Wilt was taken into X-ray and diagnosed as suffering from severe concussion and three badly bruised ribs, but there was no sign of a fractured skull. From there he was wheeled to what was called the Neurological Ward. As usual it was full.
‘Of course it was a crime,’ said the Duty Sergeant grumpily when the doctor at the hospital phoned the police station to ask what exactly had happened. ‘The bugger was mugged and dumped unconscious in the street behind the New Estate. What he was doing there we’ve no idea. Probably drunk or … well, your guess is as good as mine. He wasn’t wearing any trousers. Being in that district he was asking for it.’
‘Any identity?’ the doctor asked.
‘One of our men saw him and thought he recognised him as a lecturer at the Tech. Name of Wilt. Mr Henry Wilt. He taught Communications Studies and—’
‘So what’s his address? Oh, never mind, you can inform his relatives he’s been mugged and is in Ipford Hospital.’ And he rang off angrily.
In his office Inspector Flint leapt to his feet and barged into the passage. ‘Did I hear you say “Henry Wilt”?’
The Sergeant nodded. ‘He’s up at the hospital. Been mugged according to some quack who …’
But Flint was no longer listening. He hurried down to the police station car park and headed for the hospital.
It was a frustrated Inspector Flint who finally found Wilt in the overcrowded maze that was Ipford General Hospital. To begin with he’d been directed to Neurology only to find Wilt had been moved to Vasectomy.
‘What on earth for? I understood he had been mugged. What’s he need a vasectomy for?’
‘He doesn’t. He was only here temporarily. Then he was taken to Hysterectomy.’
‘Hysterectomy? Dear God,’ said Flint faintly. He could just begin to understand why a man who must presumably have been an active participant in helping to foist those dreadful quads on the world might deserve a vasectomy to prevent him inflicting any more nightmares; hysterectomy was something else again. ‘But the blighter’s a man. You can’t give a man a hysterectomy. It’s not possible.’
‘That’s why he was moved to Infectious Diseases 3. They had a spare bed there. At least I think it was ID 3,’ the nurse told him. ‘I know someone died there this morning. Mind you, they always do.’
‘Why?’ asked Flint incautiously.
‘Aids,’ said the nurse, pushing an obese woman on a trolley past him.
‘But they can’t put a man who’s been beaten up and is bleeding in the same bed as a bloke who’s just died of Aids. It’s outrageous. Bloody near condemning him to death.’
‘Oh, they sterilise the sheets and all that,’ said the nurse over her shoulder.
It was a pale, frustrated and appalled Inspector who finally foun
d Wilt in Unisex 8 which was reserved for geriatrics who had had a variety of operations that required them to wear catheters, drips and in several cases tubes protruding from various other orifices. Flint couldn’t see why it was called a unisex ward. Multi-sex would have been more accurate though just as unpleasant. To take his attention away from a patient of indeterminate sex – for once Flint preferred the politically correct word ‘gender’ – who clearly had an almost continuous incontinence problem and what amounted to a phobic horror of catheters, the Inspector tried to concentrate on Wilt. His condition was pretty awful too. His scalp was bandaged and his face badly bruised and swollen but the Ward Sister assured Flint that he’d soon recover consciousness. Flint said he sincerely hoped so.