questioning merely indicated that he was harder than he looked.
‘We’ve had him under interrogation for thirty-six hours now,’ he told the conference of the Murder Squad in the briefing room at the Police Station, ‘and we’ve got nothing out of him. So this is going to be a long hard job and quite frankly I have my doubts about breaking him.’
‘I told you he was going to be a hard nut to crack,’ said Sergeant Yates.
‘Nut being the operative word,’ said Flint. ‘So it’s got to be concrete evidence.’
There was a snigger which died away quickly. Inspector Flint was not in a humorous mood.
‘Evidence, hard evidence is the only thing that is going to break him. Evidence is the only thing that is going to bring him to trial.’
‘But we’ve got that,’ said Yates. ‘It’s at the bott…’
‘I know exactly where it is, thank you Sergeant. What I am talking about is evidence of multiple murder. Mrs Wilt is accounted for. Dr and Mrs Pringsheim aren’t. Now my guess is that he murdered all three and that the other two bodies are…’ He stopped and opened the file in front of him and hunted through it for Notes on Violence and the Break-Up of Family Life. He studied them for a moment and shook his head. ‘No,’ he muttered, ‘it’s not possible.’
‘What isn’t, sir?’ asked Sergeant Yates. ‘Anything is possible with this bastard.’
But Inspector Flint was not to be drawn. The notion was too awful.
‘As I was saying’ be continued, ‘what we need now is hard evidence. What we have got is purely circumstantial. I want more evidence on the Pringsheims. I want to know what happened at that party, who was there and why it happened and at the rate we’re going with Wilt we aren’t going to get anything out of him. Snell, you go down to the Department of Biochemistry at the University and get what you can on Dr Pringsheim. Find out if any of his colleagues were at that party. Interview them. Get a list of his friends, his hobbies, his girl friends if he had any. Find out if there is any link between him and Mrs Wilt that would suggest a motive. Jackson, you go up to Rossiter Grove and see what you can get on Mrs Pringsheim…’
By the time the conference broke up detectives had been despatched all over town to build up a dossier on the Pringsheims. Even the American Embassy had been contacted to find out what was known about the couple in the States. The murder investigation had begun in earnest.
Inspector Flint walked back to his office with Sergeant Yates and shut the door. ‘Yates,’ he said, ‘this is confidential. I wasn’t going to mention it in there but I’ve a nasty feeling I know why that sod is so bloody cocky. Have you ever known a murderer sit through thirty-six hours of questioning as cool as a cucumber when be knows we’ve got the body of his victim pinpointed to the nearest inch?’
Sergeant Yates shook his head.’I've known some pretty cool customers in my time and particularly since they stopped hanging but this one takes the biscuit If you ask me he’s a raving psychopath.’
Flint dismissed the idea. ‘Psychopaths crack easy,’ he said. ‘They confess to murders they haven’t committed or they confess to, murders they have committed but they confess. This Wilt doesn’t. He sits there and tells me how to run the investigation. Now take a look at this.’ He opened the file and took out Wilt’s notes. ‘Notice anything peculiar?’
Sergeant Yates read the notes through twice.
‘Well, he doesn’t seem to think much of our methods,’ he said finally. ‘And I don’t much like this bit about low level of intelligence of average policeman.’
‘What about Point Two D?’ said the Inspector. ‘Increasing use of sophisticated methods such as diversionary tactics by criminals. Diversionary tactics. Doesn’t that
