‘Shit,’ said the Sheriff. ‘These guys are using taxpayers’ money to test all the urine comes out of Wally Immelmann’s place? You’ll be telling me next they’ve got this satellite in statutory orbit over Wilma.’ He stopped and looked in horror up into the sky. ‘Could be reading the letters on my badge.’
‘I think the word is ’stationary’. Stationary orbit. You said ’statutory orbit’.’
Sheriff Stallard turned his glazed eyes on his Deputy. He was beginning to feel quite mad. ‘Stationary, Baxter, stationary it can’t be. Wilma’s moving at around three thousand miles an hour. Has to be because that’s the speed the world goes round. Something like that. You can work it out. The world goes round once a day and the circumference is twenty-four thousand miles. So twenty-four goes into twenty-four thousand a thousand times. Work it out yourself. Well, if you’ve got a satellite out there squatting over Wilma…no, not squatting, let’s cut the squatting. I don’t want to think about that again. It’s up there even further out than Wilma, and Wilma’s way out enough for me the way those guys are acting, that baby has to be moving even faster just to keep up. Right?’ Baxter nodded. ‘Good. So when I said ’statutory’ I mean ’statutory’. This operation has to be costing millions. So it’s got to be statutory. Washington’s approval. And who’s been talking about cutting the Federal deficit?’
He went back to his office and took a Tylenol and lay down and tried to pretend nothing was happening. He couldn’t. The image of Joanie Immelmann on the can overwhelmed him.
In Oston Police Station Bob Battleby continued to protest his innocence. He hadn’t set fire to his own house. Why would he do a thing like that? It was a beautiful house and his family had owned it for hundreds of years. He was very fond of it and so on. As for porno mags and the other stuff, he had no idea how they had got into his Range Rover. Perhaps the firemen had put them there. It was the sort of muck people like firemen tended to read. No, he didn’t know any firemen personally, they weren’t the class of people he usually mixed with–but they were never doing anything useful. They hadn’t saved his house from being burnt to the ground, for instance, and reading porn, he supposed, helped them to pass the time. The handcuffs and the gag and whips? Did he really imagine the firemen made use of them, too, to pass the time? Well no, now that he came to think about it he didn’t suppose they did. They sounded more like things the police might have a use for.
That comment didn’t go down at all well with the Inspector putting the questions in the absence of the Superintendent who was catching up on his sleep. Battleby wasn’t so fortunate. The questions kept on coming and he wasn’t going to get any sleep until he answered them correctly. Where was his wife? He didn’t have one. Was he on good terms with his family? They could mind their own fucking business. But that was exactly what they were doing; their business was arresting criminals and, for his information, men who set fire to their own houses and possessed Obscene Material of a paedophile nature, not to mention punching Superintendents in the face, came into the category, several categories of criminals.
Battleby said he hadn’t set fire to his own house. Mrs Rottecombe could prove that. She’d been with him when he left the kitchen. The Inspector raised his eyebrows. But Mrs Rottecombe had made a sworn statement that she’d been waiting for him in her car outside the front door. Battleby made an even fouler sworn statement about Mrs fucking Rottecombe, and merely pointed out that as the Arson Squad had begun their investigations and were being helped by the Insurance Company investigators who were the real experts, they would soon know. What the Inspector would like to know was the state of Battleby’s finances. Battleby refused to answer. It didn’t matter, they’d get a court order to see his bank accounts. It was normal procedure in cases of arson where so much insurance money was involved. He had insured it, of course? Battleby supposed
