around him.
‘We’re going in the back way,’ said the Inspector. This doesn’t look good.’
They went down the path to the kitchen door and round to the back garden. Wilt could see what the Inspector had meant by a shambles. The garden didn’t look at all good. Paper plates lay about the lawn or, blown by the wind, had wheeled across the garden into honeysuckle or climbing rose while paper cups, some squashed and some still filled with Pringsheim punch and rainwater, littered the ground. But it was the beefburgers that gave the place its air of macabre filth. They were all over the lawn, stained wilt coleslaw so that Wilt was put in mind of Clem.
‘The dog returns to his vomit,’ said Inspector Flint evidently reading his mind. They crossed the terrace to the lounge windows and peered through. If the garden was bad the interior was awful.
‘Smash a pane in the kitchen window and let us in,’ said the Inspector to the taller of the two detectives. A moment later the lounge window slid back and they went inside.
‘No need for forcible entry,’ said the detective. ‘The back door was unlocked and so was this window. They must have cleared out in a hell of a hurry.’
The Inspector looked round the room and wrinkled his nose. The smell of stale pot, sour punch and candle smoke still hung heavily in the house.
‘If they went away,’ he said ominously and glanced at Wilt.
‘They must have gone away,’ said Wilt who felt called upon to make some comment on the scene, ‘no one would live in all this mess for a whole weekend without…’
‘Live? You did say “live” didn’t you?’ said Flint stepping on a piece of burnt beefburger.
‘What I meant…’
‘Never mind what you meant, Wilt.’ Let’s see what’s happened here.’
They went into the kitchen where the same chaos reigned and then into another room. Everywhere it was the same. Dead cigarette ends doused in cups of coffee or ground out on the carpet. Pieces of broken record behind the sofa marked the end of Beethoven’s Fifth. Cushions lay crumpled against the wall. Burnt-out candles hung limply post-coital from bottles. To add a final touch to the squalor someone had drawn a portrait of Princess Anne on the wall with a red felt pen. She was surrounded by helmeted policemen and underneath was written. THE FUZZ AROUND OUR ANNY THE ROYAL. FAMLYS FANNY THE PRICK IS DEAD LONG LIVE THE CUNT. Sentiments that were doubtless perfectly acceptable is Women’s Lib circles but were hardly calculated to establish the Pringsheims very highly in Inspector Flint’s regard.
‘You’ve got some nice friends, Wilt.’ he said.
‘No friends of mine,’ said Wilt, with feeling. ‘The sods can’t even spell.’
They went upstairs and looked in the big bedroom. The bed was unmade, clothes, mostly underclothes, were all over the floor or hung out of drawers and an unstoppered bottle of Joy lay on its side on the dressing-table. The room stank of perfume.
‘Jesus wept,’ said the Inspector, eyeing a pair of jockstraps belligerently. ‘All that’s missing is some blood.’
They found it in the bathroom. Dr Scheimacher’s cut hand had rained bloodstains in the bath and splattered the tiles with dark blotches. The bathroom door with its broken frame was hanging from the bottom hinge and there were spots of blood on the paintwork.
‘I knew it,’ said the Inspector, studying their message and that written in lipstick on the mirror above the washbasin. Wilt looked at it too. It seemed unduly personal.
WHERE WILT FAGGED AND EVA RAN WHO WAS THEN THE MALE CHAUVINIST PIG?
‘Charming,’ said Inspector Flint. He turned to look at Wilt whose face was now the colour of the tiles. ‘I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that. Not your handiwork?’
