Eva went downstairs feeling strangely invigorated. It was a long time since she'd heard Henry state his feelings so strongly and, while she didn't understand everything he'd said, and she certainly didn't think he'd been fair about the quads, it was somehow reassuring to have him assert his authority in the house. It made her feel better about having been to that awful Dr Kores with all her silly talk about...what was it?...'the sexual superiority of the female in the mammalian world'. Eva didn't want to be superior in everything and anyway, she wasn't just a mammal. She was a human being. That wasn't the same thing at all.
Chapter 12
By the following evening, it would have been difficult to say what Inspector Hodge was. Since Wilt hadn't emerged from the house, the Inspector had spent the best part of two days tracing Eva's progress to and from the school and round Ipford in the bugged Escort.
'It's good practice,' he told Sergeant Runk, as they followed her in a van Hodge had converted to a listening-post.
'For what?' asked the Sergeant, pinning a mark on the town map to indicate that Eva had now parked behind Sainsbury's. She'd already been to Tesco's and Fine Fare. 'So we learn where to get the best discount on washing powder?'
'For when he decides to move.'
'When,' said Runk. 'So far he hasn't been out of the house all day.'
'He's sent her out to check she hasn't got a tail on her,' said Hodge. 'In the meantime, he's lying low.'
'Which you said was just the thing he wasn't doing,' said Runk. 'I said he was and you said...'
'I know what I said. But that was when he knew he was being followed. It's different now.'
'I'll say,' said Runk. 'So the sod sends us on a tour of shopping centres and we haven't got a clue what's going on.'
They had that night. Runk, who had insisted on having the afternoon off for some shut-eye if he was to work at night, retrieved the tape from under the seat and replaced it with a new one. It was one o'clock in the morning. Half an hour later, Hodge, whose childhood had been spent in a house where sex was never mentioned, was listening to the quads discussing Wilt's condition with a frankness that appalled him. If anything was needed to convince him that Mr and Mrs Wilt were dyed-in-the-wool criminals, it was Emmeline's repeated demand to know why Daddy had been up in the night putting cake icing on his penis. Eva's explanation didn't help either. 'He wasn't feeling very well, dear. He'd had too much beer and he couldn't sleep, so he went down to the kitchen to see if he could ice cake and'
'I wouldn't like the sort of cake he was icing,' interrupted Samantha. 'And anyway, it was face-cream.'
'I know, dear, but he was practising and he spilt it.'
'Up his cock?' demanded Penelope, which gave Eva the opportunity to tell her never to use that word.
'It's not nice,' she said, 'it's not nice to say things like that and you're not going to tell anyone at school.'
'It wasn't very nice of Daddy to use the icing syringe to pump face-cream up his penis,' said Emmeline.
By the time the discussion was over, and Eva had dropped the quads off at the school, Hodge was ashen. Sergeant Runk wasn't feeling very well either.
'I don't believe it, I don't believe a bloody word of it,' muttered the Inspector.
'I wish to God I didn't,' said Runk. 'I've heard some revolting things in my time but that lot takes the cake.'
