the hell would we put them?'
'I suppose we could always call them 'Student Teachers',' said the V-P. 'That way they could sit in on any classes they wanted to without having to say very much.'
'Still going to look bloody peculiar,' said the Principal. 'And frankly, I don't like it at all.'
But it was the Inspector's assertion that the Lord Lieutenant, the Chief Constable and, worst of all, the Home Secretary didn't like what had been going on at the Tech that turned the scales.
'God, what a ghastly man,' said the Principal, when Hodge had left. 'I thought Flint was foul enough, but this one's even bloodier. What is it about policemen that is so unpleasant? When I was a boy, they were quite different.'
'I suppose the criminals were, too,' said the V-P. 'I mean, it can't be much fun with sawn-off shotguns and hooligans hurling Molotov cocktails at you. Enough to turn any man bloody.'
'Odd,' said the Principal, and left it at that.
Meanwhile Hodge had put the Wilts under surveillance. 'What's been happening?' he asked Sergeant Runk.
'Wilt's still at the Tech so we haven't been able to pick him up yet, and his missus hasn't done anything much except the shopping.'
But even as he spoke, Eva was already acting in a manner calculated to heighten suspicion. She had been inspired to phone Dr Kores for an appointment. Where the inspiration came from she couldn't have said, but it had partly to do with an article she had read in her supermarket magazine on sex and the menopause entitled 'No Pause In The Pause, The Importance of Foreplay In The Forties', and partly with the glimpse she'd had of Patrick Mottram at the check-out counter where he usually chatted up the prettiest girl. On this occasion, he had ogled the chocolate bars instead and had ambled off with the glazed eyes of a man for whom the secret consumption of half a pound of Cadbury's Fruit and Nut was the height of sensual experience. If Dr Kores could reduce the randiest man in Ipford to such an awful condition, there was every possibility she could produce the opposite effect in Henry.
Over lunch, Eva had read the article again and, as always on the subject of sex, she was puzzled. All her friends seemed to have so much of it, either with their husbands or with someone, and obviously it was important, otherwise people wouldn't write and talk so much about it. All the same, Eva still had difficulty reconciling it with the way she'd been brought up. Mind you, her mother had been quite wrong going on about remaining a virgin until she was married. Eva could see that now. She certainly wasn't going to do the same with the quads. Not that she'd have them turn into little tarts like the Flatten girls, wearing make-up at fourteen and going around with rough boys on motorbikes. But later on, when they were eighteen and at university, then it would be all right. They'd need experience before they got married instead of getting married to get...Eva stopped herself. That wasn't true, she hadn't married Henry just for sex. They'd been genuinely in love. Of course, Henry had groped and fiddled but never nastily like some of the boys she'd gone out with. If anything, he'd been rather shy and embarrassed and she'd had to encourage him. Mavis was right to call her a full-blooded woman. She did like sex but only with Henry. She wasn't going to have affairs, especially not with the quads in the house. You had to set an example and broken homes were bad. On the other hand, so were homes where both parents were always quarrelling and hated one another. So divorce was a good thing too. Not that anything like that threatened her marriage. It was just that she had a right to a more fulfilling love life and if Henry was too shy to ask for help, and he certainly was, she'd have to do it for him. So she had phoned Dr Kores and had been surprised to learn that she could come at half-past two.
Eva had set off with an unnoticed escort of two cars and four policemen and had caught the bus at the bottom of Perry Road to Silton and Dr Kores' shambolic herb farm. 'I don't suppose she has
