Mrs Pringsheim lay on the bed and asked you to have intercourse with her…’
‘Fuck is what she said,’ Wilt corrected him.’
‘You said no?’
‘Precisely,’ said Wilt.
‘Isn’t that a bit odd?’
‘What, her lying there or me saying no?’
‘You saying no.’
Wilt looked at him incredulously.
‘Odd?’ he said. ‘Odd? A woman comes in here and throws herself flat on her back on this table, pulls up her skirt and says “Fuck me, honey, prick me to the quick.” Are you going to leap onto her with a “Whoopee, let’s roll baby”? Is that what you mean by not odd?’
‘Jesus wept, Wilt,’ snarled the Inspector, ‘you’re walking a fucking tightrope with my patience.’
‘You could have fooled me,’ said Wilt. ‘All I do know is that your notion of what is odd behaviour and what isn’t doesn’t begin to make sense with me.’
Inspector Flint got up and left the room. ‘I’ll murder the bastard, so help me God I’ll murder him,’ he shouted at the Duty Sergeant. Behind him in the interview Room Wilt put his head on the table and fell asleep.
At the Tech Wilt’s absence was making itself felt in more ways than one. Mr Morris had had to take Gasfitters One at nine o’clock and had come out an hour later feeling that he had gained fresh insight into Wilt’s sudden excursion into homicide. The Vice-Principal was fighting off waves of crime reporters anxious to find out more about the man who was helping the police with their enquiries into a particularly macabre and newsworthy crime. And the Principal had begun to regret his criticisms of Liberal Studies to the Education Committee. Mrs Chatterway had phoned to say that she had found his remarks in the worst of taste and had hinted that she might well ask for an enquiry into the running of the Liberal Studies Department. But it was at the meeting of the Course Board that there was most alarm.
‘The visitation of the Council for National Academic Awards takes place on Friday,’ Dr Mayfield, Head of Sociology, told the committee. ‘They are hardly likely to approve the joint Honours degree in the present circumstances.’
‘If they had any sense they wouldn’t approve it in any circumstances,’ said Dr Board. ‘Urban Studies and Medieval Poetry indeed. I know academic eclecticism is the vogue these days but Helen Waddell and Lewis Mumford aren’t even remotely natural bedfellows. Besides the degree lacks academic content.’
Dr Mayfield bristled. Academic content was his strong point. ‘I don’t see how you can say that,’ he said. ‘The course has been structured to meet the needs of students looking for a thematic approach.’
‘The poor benighted creatures we manage to lure away from universities to take this course wouldn’t know a thematic approach if they saw one,’ said Dr Board. ‘Come to think of it I wouldn’t either.’
‘We all have our limitations,’ said Dr Mayfield suavely.
‘Precisely’ said Dr Board, ‘and in the circumstances we should recognise them instead of concocting joint Honours degrees which don’t make sense for students who if their A-level results are anything to go by, haven’t any chance in the first place. Heaven knows I’m all for educational opportunity but–’
‘The point is,’ interjected Dr Cox, Head of Science, ‘that it is not the degree course as such that is the purpose of the visitation. As I understand it they have given their approval to the degree in principle. They are coming to look at the facilities the
