Wilt pretended to think about the question. Not that it needed much thinking about. He had no idea. ‘No,’ he said finally.
‘No? Nothing at all?’
Wilt shook his head carefully. ‘Well, I can remember watching the news and thinking how wrong it was to stop Meals on Wheel to those old people in Burling just to save on the Council Tax. Then Eva–that’s my wife–came in and said supper was ready. I can’t remember much after that. Oh, and I washed the car some time and the cat had to go to the vet again. I can’t remember much after that.’
The psychiatrist made a number of notes and nodded encouragingly. ‘Any little thing will be of help, Henry,’ he said. ‘Take your time.’
Wilt did. He needed to find out how far back his memory would have been affected by a neurological insult. He’d nearly fallen into a trap when he’d said he didn’t know his own name. Clearly that didn’t fit the pattern. Not knowing who he was, on the other hand, still had some mileage to it. Wilt tried again.
‘I remember…no, you wouldn’t be interested in that.’
‘Let me be the one who decides that, Henry. You just tell me what you remember.’
‘I can’t, Doctor, I mean…well…I just can’t,’ he said, adopting the shifty whine he had heard so often in the Disadvantaged Single Sex Seminars he had been forced to attend as part of Ms Lashskirt’s Gender Affirmation Awareness Programme. Wilt was using that whine to his own advantage now.
In front of him Dr Dedge softened noticeably. He felt safer with that whine. It smacked of dependence. ‘I’m interested in anything you have to say,’ he said.
Wilt doubted it. What Dr Dedge was interested in was finding out if he was shamming. ‘Well, it’s just that I’m sitting in this room and suddenly I feel like I don’t know why I’m here or who I am. It doesn’t make sense. Sounds so silly, doesn’t it?’
‘No, not at all. This is a not uncommon occurrence. Does this sensation last long?’
‘I don’t know, Doctor. I can’t remember. I just know I have it and it doesn’t make any sense.’
‘And have you discussed it with your wife?’ Dr Dedge asked.
‘Well, no. Can’t say I have,’ said Wilt sheepishly. ‘I mean, she’s got enough on her plate without me not knowing who I am. What with the quads and all.’
‘Mrs Wilt…? Are you telling me you have quadruplets?’ asked the psychiatrist.
Wilt gave a sickly smile. ‘Yes, Doctor, four of them. All girls. And even the cat’s neutered. Got no tail either. So I just sit there and try to think who I am.’
By the time Wilt went back to the ward, Dr Dedge had no doubt that he was a deeply disturbed man. As he explained to Dr Soltander, the neurological insult had resulted in the emergence of partial amnesia as a complicating factor to a preexisting depressive condition. And a bed had become available in an isolation room because the previous patient, a youth on a drug charge, had hanged himself. Dr Soltander was glad to hear it. He had had enough of Wilt and more importantly he had had far more than enough of Mrs Wilt who had been besieging his ward and disturbing the terminally ill patients. ‘Best place for him and those bloody policemen.’
‘He’s in Psychiatry, is he? Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,’ Inspector Flint said when he found Wilt was no longer in Geriatrics 3 next day. ‘If you ask me, he should have been certified years ago when he stuffed that inflatable doll down the hole. All the same, I don’t think he’s half as sick as he’s making out. I think he’s holding something back. I didn’t like the way he was acting when I was there.’
‘In what way, sir?’ Sergeant Yates asked.
