sniffer dog died after licking the water in the swimming-pool? Why in the name of God should they empty the pool? The dog probably fell in and drowned.’
But Baxter was adamant. ‘There was something dissolved down the bottom and they wanted to see what it was.’
‘Sure. One drowned hound dog.’
‘All I know is they had special wet suits and masks. And there was this special container to put it in to fly it up to the Chemical Warfare Research Center in Washington for analysis,’ Baxter told him. ‘They reckon it could be linked to Al Qaeda it’s that toxic.’
‘In Wilma? In Wilma? That’s out-of-this-world crazy. Who the hell’s going to use a highly toxic substance in a one-horse town like Wilma?’
Baxter pondered the question. ‘Could be that Saddam Hussein bastard. Got to test it someplace, I guess,’ he said finally.
‘So why choose Wilma; he’s got all those Kurds he gassed? You tell me that.’
‘Or that other guy Ossam been…The one who did the Twin Towers.’
‘Bin Laden,’ said the Sheriff. ‘Sure. So he chooses Wally Immelmann’s swimming-pool and takes out a hound dog? And that makes sense?’
‘Shit, I don’t know. Nothing makes sense. Hooking the toilets and all up to that tanker back of the old drive-in was crazy.’
Sheriff Stallard pushed his hat back and wiped the sweat from his face. ‘I don’t believe what I’m hearing. This isn’t happening. Not in Wilma it’s not. It can’t be. Wally Immelmann’s in with goddam terrorists. And that ain’t possible, no way, Billy, no way. I mean it’s way out impossible.’
Baxter shrugged. ‘That mega-decibel sound system was impossible too. You heard it. You know.’
The Sheriff did know. He was never going to forget it. He sat thinking. Or trying to. In the end he succeeded and the impossible became slightly more possible and his own position less insecure. People did go loco. ‘Get me Maybelle,’ he said. ‘Bring her in. She’s the one who’ll know.’
One person who definitely didn’t know was Eva. She had finally been allowed out of the Visitors’ Room only to be told that the patient Wilt was still unconscious but she could go and see him provided Mavis Mottram didn’t accompany her. Having been in Eva Wilt’s maudlin company for three hours Mavis had no intention of spending any more time or sympathy on her. She slunk out of the hospital a broken woman, cursing the day she’d met anyone so stupid and mawkishly sentimental. Eva’s feelings about Mavis had changed too. She was all bluff and bravado and a bully to boot and had no staying power.
Through the door of the ward Eva had glimpsed Inspector Flint sitting by the bed, apparently reading a newspaper. In fact he wasn’t reading it at all; he was using it as a shield to hide what was being done to a man who, if appearances were anything to go by, had recently been trepanned or had had an exceedingly nasty accident with some sort of circular saw. Whatever it was Flint didn’t want to see it. He had never been a particularly squeamish man and his experience of mutilated corpses had hardened him to inanimate horrors, but he was less able to cope with those involving modern surgery and in particular found pulsing brains in adult males (babies were different) decidedly unnerving.
‘Can’t you put a screen round the bed while you’re doing whatever you are doing to that poor bloke?’ he’d asked only to be told he could leave the ward if he was so wimpish and anyway it wasn’t a bloke but a woman and this was a unisex ward.
‘You could have fooled me,’ Flint retorted. ‘Though come to think of it, I daresay
