plays pissed.'
'If he's that bloody clever you're not going to find anything in his house and that's for sure,' said the Superintendent and shook his head. 'No, he'd never have the stuff on his own doorstep. He'd have it stored somewhere miles away.'
'He's still got to move it,' said Hodge, 'and that means the car. Look, sir, Wilt's the one who goes to the airbase, he collects the stuff there and on the way home he hands it over to a third party who distributes it. That explains why he took such pains to lose us. There was a whole twenty minutes when we weren't picking up any signals. That could have been when he was offloading.'
'Could have been,' said the Superintendent, impressed in spite of himself. 'Still, that only goes to prove my point. You go for a search warrant for his house you're going to end up with egg all over your face. More important, so am I. So that's out. You'll have to think of some other way.'
Hodge returned to his office and took it out on Sergeant Runk. 'The way they carry on it's a bloody wonder we ever nick any bugger. And you had to go and sign for those fucking transmitters'
'You don't think they give them out without being signed for,' said Runk.
'You didn't have to land me in the shit by putting 'Authorized by Superintendent Wilkinson for covert surveillance.' He loved that.'
'Well, wasn't it? I mean I thought you'd got permission...'
'Oh no, you didn't. We pulled that stroke in the middle of the night and he'd been home since five. And now we've got to retrieve the bloody things. That's something you can do tonight.'
And having, as he hoped, ensured that the Sergeant would spend the day regretting his indiscretion, the Inspector got up and stared out of the window for inspiration. If he couldn't get a search warrant...He was still pondering the question when his attention was distracted by a car parked down below. It looked hideously familiar.
The Wilts' Escort. What the hell was it doing outside the police station?
Eva sat in Flint's office and held back the tears. 'I didn't know who else to come to,' she said. 'I've been to the Tech and phoned the prison and Mrs Braintree hasn't seen him and he usually goes there if he's...well, if he wants a change. But he hasn't been there or the hospital or anywhere else I can think of and I know you don't like him or anything but you are a policeman and you have been...helpful in the past. And you do know Henry.' She stopped and looked appealingly at the Inspector.
It wasn't a look that held much appeal for Flint and he certainly didn't like the notion that he knew Wilt. He'd tried to understand the blighter, but even at his most optimistic he'd never supposed for one moment that he'd got anywhere near fathoming the horrible depths of Wilt's extraordinary character. The sod came into the category of an enigma made all the more impossible to understand by his choice of Eva as a wife. It was a relationship Flint had always preferred not to think about, but here she was sitting foursquare on a chair in his office telling him, evidently without the slightest regard for his feelings, even as though it were some sort of compliment, that he knew her Henry. 'Has he ever gone off like this before?' he asked, with the private thought that in Wilt's shoes he'd have been off like a flashbefore the wedding.
'No, never,' said Eva, 'that's what's so worrying. I know you think he's...peculiar, but he's really been a good husband.'
'I'm sure he has,' said Flint for want of anything more reassuring to say. 'You don't think he's suffering from amnesia.'
'Amnesia?'
'Loss of memory,' said Flint. 'It hits people who've been under strain. Has anything been happening lately that might have caused him to flip...to have a nervous breakdown?'
'I can't think of anything in particular,' said Eva, determined to keep any mention of Dr
