'Yes, sir,' said Inspector Hodge, and went off to his office a happy man.
So did Flint. Before leaving the station, he called in on the Head of the Drug Squad with Wilt's file. 'If this is any use...' he said and dropped it on the desk with apparent reluctance. 'And any other help I can give you, you've only to ask.'
'I will,' said Inspector Hodge, with the opposite intention. If one thing was certain, it was that Flint would get no credit for breaking the case. And so, while Flint drove home and unwisely helped himself to a brown ale before going to bed, Hodge sat on in his office planning the campaign that would lead to his promotion.
He was still there two hours later. Outside, the street lamps had gone off and Ipford slept, but Hodge sat on, his mind already infected with the virus of ambition and hope. He had gone carefully through Flint's report on the discovery of the body and for once he could find no fault with the Inspector's conclusions. They were confirmed by the preliminary report from Forensic. The victim had died from an overdose of heroin mixed with Embalming Fluid. It was this last which interested Hodge.
'American,' he muttered yet again, and checked with the Police National Computer on the incidence of its use. Negligible, as he had thought. All the same, the drug was extremely dangerous and its spread in the States had been so rapid that it had been described as the syphilis of drug abuse. Crack this case and Hodge's name would be known, not simply in Ipford, but through the Lord Lieutenant to the Home Secretary and...Hodge's dreams pursued his name before returning to the present. He picked up Wilt's file doubtfully. He hadn't been in Ipford at the time of the Great Doll Case and its ghastly effects on Flint's career, but he'd heard about it in the canteen, where it was generally acknowledged that Mr Henry Wilt had outfoxed Inspector Flint. Made him look a damned fool was the usual verdict, but it had never been clear what Wilt had really been up to. No one in his right mind went round burying inflatable dolls dressed in his wife's clothes at the bottom of piling-holes with twenty tons of concrete on top of them. And Wilt had. It followed that either Wilt hadn't been in his right mind, or that he'd been covering some other crime. Diverting suspicion. Anyway, the sod had got away with whatever he'd been up to and had screwed Flint into the bargain. So Flint had a grudge against the bastard. That was generally acknowledged too.
It was therefore with justified suspicion that Hodge turned to Wilt's file and began to read in detail the transcript of his interrogation. And as he read, a certain grim respect for Wilt grew in his mind. The sod hadn't budged from his story, in spite of being kept awake and deluged with questions. And he had made Flint look the idiot he was. Hodge could see that, just as he could see why Flint had a grudge against him. But above all his own intuition told him that Wilt had to have been guilty of something. Just had to be. And he'd been too clever for the old bugger. Which explained why Flint had been prepared to hand the file over to him. He wanted this Wilt nailed. Only natural. All the same, knowing Flint's attitude to him, Hodge was amazed he had given him the file. Not with all that stuff showing what a moron he was. Must be something else there. Like the old man knew when he was beaten? And certainly he looked it lately. Sounded it too, so maybe giving him the file was tacitly acknowledging the fact. Hodge smiled to himself. He'd always known he was the better man and that his chance to prove it would come. Well, now it bloody well had.
He turned to Flint's report on Miss Lynchknowle again and read it through carefully. There was nothing wrong with Flint's methods and it was only when he came to the bit about Wilt having gone to the wrong toilet that Inspector Hodge saw where the old man had made a mistake. He read through it again.
'Principal reported Wilt went to toilet on the second floor when he should have gone to the one on the fourth floor.' And later 'Wilt's secretary, Mrs Bristol, said she told Wilt to go to Ladies' staff toilet on the fourth floor. Claimed she'd seen girl there before.' It fitted. Another of clever Mr Wilt's little moves, to go to the wrong toilet. But Flint hadn't spotted
