and brought in. And every tin of dog food.’
‘Dog food?’
‘You heard me,’ said Inspector Flint staggering out of the washroom. ‘And while you’re about it you’d better make it cat food too. You never know with Wilt,’ He’s capable of leading us up the garden path in one important detail.’
‘But if they went into pork pies what’s all this about dog food?’
‘Where the hell do you think he put the odds and ends and I do mean ends?’ Inspector Flint asked savagely. ‘You don’t imagine he was going to have people coming in and complaining they’d found a tooth or a toenail in the Sweetbreads pie they had bought that morning. Not Wilt. That swine thinks of everything. He drowns them in their own bath. He puts them in plastic garbage bags and locks the bags in the garage while he goes home and sticks the doll down that fucking hole. Then on Sunday he goes back and picks them up and spends the day at the meat factory all by himself…Well if you want to know what be did on Sunday you can read all about it in his statement. It’s more than my stomach can stand.’
The Inspector went back hurriedly into the washroom. He’d been living off pork pies since Monday. The statistical chances of his having partaken of Mrs Wilt were extremely high.
When Sweetbreads Meat and Canning Factory opened at eight, Inspector Flint was waiting at the gate. He stormed into the manager’s office and demanded to speak to him.
‘He’s not here yet,’ said the secretary. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’
‘I want a list of every establishment you supply with pork pies, steak and kidney pies, sausages and dog food,’ said the Inspector.
‘I couldn’t possibly give you that information,’ said the secretary. ‘It’s extremely confidential.’
‘Confidential? What the hell do you mean confidential’
‘Well I don’t know really. It’s just that I couldn’t take it on myself to provide you with inside information…’ She stopped. Inspector Flint was staring at her with a quite horrible expression on his face.
‘Well, miss,’ he said finally, ‘while we’re on the topic of inside information, it may interest you to know that what has been inside your pork pies is by way of being inside information. Vital information.’
‘Vital information? I don’t know what you mean. Our pies contain perfectly wholesome ingredients.’
‘Wholesome?’ shouted the Inspector. ‘You call three human bodies wholesome? You call the boiled, bleached, minced and cooked remains of three murdered bodies wholesome?’
‘But we only use…’ the secretary began and fell sideways, off her chair in a dead faint.
‘Oh for God’s sake,’ shouted the Inspector, ‘you’d think a silly bitch who can work in an abattoir wouldn’t be squeamish…’ Find out who the manager is and where he lives and tell him to come down here at the double.’
He sat down in a chair while Sergeant Yates rummaged in the desk. ‘Wakey, wakey,’ he said, prodding the secretary with his foot. ‘If anyone has got a right to lie down on the job, it’s me. I’ve been on my feet for three days and nights and I’ve been an accessory after the fact of murder.’
‘An accessory?’ said Yates. ‘I don’t see how you can say that.’
‘Can’t you? Well what would you call helping to dispose parts of a murder victim? Concealing evidence of a crime?’
‘I never thought of it that way,’ said Yates.
