evidence that he had been in the kitchen garden for some considerable time, evidently watching the house. There are a group of footprints by the gate in the wall which indicate that he had moved about waiting for a chance to enter the house.’ He paused. ‘What we are trying to find out is if anyone had a particular grudge against the man Battleby, and we wondered if you could help us.’
Mrs Rottecombe nodded. ‘I should think there were a great many,’ she said finally. ‘Bob Battleby was not a popular figure in the district. Those vile magazines in the Range Rover indicate that he has paedophile tendencies and he may have abused…well, done something horrible.’
It was her turn to pause and let the inference sink in. The suggestion helped to clear her of any connection with that side of Battleby’s inclinations. Whatever she was she was not a child or, as the Superintendent put it to himself, a spring chicken.
By the time he left he had not gained any useful information from her. On the other hand, Ruth Rottecombe had a shrewd idea why Harold had found the unconscious man in the garage. He’d had something to do with that disastrous night and she saw no reason why she shouldn’t provide the police with his jeans covered with ash near the burnt-out Manor. She wouldn’t leave them there immediately but would wait until it was dark. Like after midnight.
Chapter 25
When Wilt opened his eyes again Flint was still in the chair beside the bed. The Inspector had shut his own eyes when the old man in the next bed spat his dentures out for the fifth time and accompanied them with such a quantity of blood that some of it had landed on his trousers. After that he had ceased to be a grotty old man of eighty-one and was a decidedly dead one. Wilt had heard Flint say ‘Fuck’ and various unpleasant noises going on but had kept his eyes firmly shut, only opening them in time to see Flint turn and look at him curiously.
‘Feeling better, Henry?’ Flint asked.
Wilt didn’t reply. The police waiting to take a statement from him weren’t at all to his liking. And in any case Wilt had no idea what had happened to him or what he might have done. It seemed best to have amnesia. Besides, he wasn’t feeling any better. If anything Flint’s presence made him feel decidedly worse. But before the Inspector could make any more inquiries a doctor came up to the bed. This time it was Flint who was questioned.
‘What are you doing here?’ the doctor asked rather nastily, evidently disliking the presence of a police officer in the ward almost as much as Wilt did. Flint wasn’t enjoying being there either.
‘Waiting to take a statement from this patient,’ he said, indicating Wilt.
‘Well, you’re not likely to get one out of him today. He’s suffering from severe concussion and probably amnesia. He may not remember anything. That’s a frequent consequence of a severe blow to the head and subsequent concussion.’
‘And how long does one have to wait before he gets his memory back?’
‘Depends. I’ve known some cases where there’s been no return at all. That’s rare, of course, but it does occasionally happen. Frankly, there’s no saying but in this case I should think he’ll get some memories back in a day or two.’
Wilt listened to the exchange and made it a day or three. He had to find out what he had done first.
Eva returned to 45 Oakhurst Avenue in a state of total exhaustion. The flight had been awful, a drunk had had to be tied down for hitting another passenger and the plane had been diverted to Manchester because of a breakdown in the Flight Control computer. What
