do. You can’t recognise the truth when it’s staring you in the face.’
Inspector Flint got up and left the room. ‘You there,’ he said to the first detective he could find. ‘Go into that Interview Room and ask that bastard questions and don’t stop till I tell you’
‘What sort of questions?’
‘Any sort. Just any. Keep asking him why he stuffed an inflatable plastic doll down a pile hole. That’s all. Just ask it over and over again. I’m going to break that sod.’
He went down to his office and slumped into his chair and tried to think.
Chapter 13
At the Tech Sergeant Yates sat in Mr Morris’s office. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you again,’ he said, ‘but we need some more details on this fellow Wilt.’
The Head of Liberal Studies looked up with a haggard expression from the timetable. He had been having a desperate struggle trying to find someone to take Bricklayers Four. Price wouldn’t do because he had Mechanics Two and Williams wouldn’t anyway. He had already gone home the day before with a nervous stomach and was threatening to repeat the performance if anyone so much as mentioned Bricklayers Four to him again. That left Mr Morris himself and he was prepared to be disturbed by Sergeant Yates for as long as he liked if it meant he didn’t have to take those bloody bricklayers.
‘Anything to help,’ he said, with an affability that was in curious contrast to the haunted look in his eyes. ‘What details would you like to know?’
‘Just a general impression of the man, sir,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Was there anything unusual about him?’
‘Unusual?’ Mr Morris thought for a moment. Apart from a preparedness to teach the most awful Day Release Classes year in and year out without complaint he could think of nothing unusual about Wilt. ‘I suppose you could call what amounted to a phobic reaction to The Lord of the Flies a bit unusual but then I’ve never much cared for…’
‘If you’d just wait a moment, sir,’ said the Sergeant busying himself with his notebook. ‘You did say “phobic reaction” didn’t you?’
‘Well what I meant was…’
‘To flies, sir?’
‘To The Lord of the Flies. It’s a book,’ said Mr Morris, now uncertain that he had been wise to mention the fact. Policemen were not noticeably sensitive to those niceties of literary taste that constituted his own definition of intelligence. ‘I do hope I haven’t said the wrong thing.’
‘Not at all, sir. It’s these little details that help us to build up a picture of the criminal’s mind.’
Mr Morris sighed. ‘I’m sure I never thought when Mr Wilt came to us from the University that he would turn out like this.’
‘Quite so, sir. Now did Mr Wilt ever say anything disparaging about his wife?’
‘Disparaging? Dear me no. Mind you he didn’t have to. Eva spoke for herself.’ He looked miserably out of the window at the pile-boring machine.
‘Then in your opinion Mrs Wilt was not a very likeable woman?’
Mr Morris shook his head. ‘She was a ghastly woman,’ he said.
Sergeant Yates licked the end of his ballpen.
‘You did say “ghastly” sir?’
‘I’m afraid so. I once had her in an Evening Class for Elementary Drama.’
‘Elementary?’ said the Sergeant, and wrote it down.
‘Yes, though elemental would have been more appropriate in Mrs Wilt’s case. She threw
