'One may,' said Wilt, 'if one can't bloody well surmise for one's ruddy self, one may indeed.'
'Mind telling me, then?' said the policeman taking out a notebook. Wilt told him with a wealth of description and a volubility that brought the lights on in several houses down the road. Ten minutes later he was helped out of the police car into the station. 'Drunk and disorderly, using abusive language, disturbing the peace...'
Wilt intervened. 'Peace my bloody foot,' he shouted. 'That was no Peace. We've got a Peace in our front garden and it hasn't got thorns a foot long. And anyway I wasn't disturbing it. You want to try partial circumcision on flaming floribunda to find out what disturbs what. All I was doing was quietly relieving myself or in plain language having a slash when that infernal thicket of climbing cat's claws took it into its vegetable head to have a slash at me and if you don't believe me, go back and try for yourselves...'
'Take him down to the cells,' said the desk sergeant to prevent Wilt upsetting an elderly woman who had come in to report the loss of her Pekinese. But before the two constables could drag Wilt away to a cell they were interrupted by a shout from Inspector Flint's office. The Inspector had been called back to the station by the arrest of a long-suspected burglar and was happily interrogating him when the sound of a familiar voice reached him. He erupted from his office and stared lividly at Wilt.
'What the hell is he doing here?' he demanded.
'Well, sir...' one constable began but Wilt broke loose.
'According to your goons I was attempting to rape a rosebush. According to me I was having a quiet pee.'
'Wilt,' yelled the Inspector, 'if you've come down here to make my life a misery again, forget it. And as for you two, take a good look at this bastard, a very good, long look and unless you catch him in the act of actually murdering someone, or better still wait until you've seen him do it, don't lay a finger on the brute. Now get him out of here.'
'But, sir '
'I said out,' shouted Flint. 'I meant out. That thing you've just brought in is a human virus of infective insanity. Get him out of here before he turns this station into a madhouse.'
'Well, I like that,' Wilt protested. 'I get dragged down here on a trumped-up charge...'
He was dragged out again while Flint went back to his office and sat abstractedly thinking about Wilt. Visions of that damned doll still haunted his mind and he would never forget the hours he had spent interrogating the little sod. And then there was Mrs Eva Wilt whose corpse he had supposed to be buried under thirty tons of concrete while all the time the wretched woman was drifting down the river on a motor cruiser. Together the Wilts had made him look an idiot and there were jokes in the canteen about inflatable dolls. One of these days he would get his revenge. Yes, one of these days... He turned back to the burglar with a new sense of purpose.
On the doorstep of his house in Willington Road Wilt sat staring up at the clouds and meditating on love and life and the differing impressions he made on people. What had Flint called him? An infective virus... a human virus of infective... The word recalled Wilt to his own injury.
'Might get tetanus or something,' he muttered and fumbled in his pocket for the doorkey. Ten minutes later, still wearing his jacket but without trousers and pants, Wilt was in the bathroom soaking his manhood in a toothmug filled with warm water and Dettol when Eva came in.
'Have you any idea what time it is? It's ' She stopped and stared in horror at the toothmug.
'Three o'clock,' said Wilt, trying to steer the conversation back to less controversial matters, but Eva's interest in the time had vanished.
What on earth are doing with that thing?' she gasped. Wilt looked down at the toothmug.
'Well, now that you come to mention it, and despite all circum... circumstantial evidence to
