be damned abnormal. And this bloke Wilt has been in some weird trouble before. Could be he was paid to torch the house.’
The senior CID man gave the matter some thought. ‘I suppose it’s just possible but this Inspector Flint doesn’t think so. Reckons the man Wilt’s too bloody incompetent. Wouldn’t know how to set fire to a pile of newspapers soaked in petrol, he’s that impractical. In any case, if he’d come to set fire to the house he wouldn’t have left such an obvious trail staying at bed and breakfasts and giving his real name. No, there has to be someone else. What beats me is that he and that damned Shadow Minister had head wounds. The Shadow Minister’s dead and this other fellow might well have been if they hadn’t found him in the road when they did. No, I reckon this Rottecombe cow knows more than she’s letting on. I don’t care if she has passed out. I’m going to break her. She knows more than she’s telling. In any case her background stinks. False birth certificate, high-class prostitute who dupes an MP into marrying her, and on top of that she goes in for sado-masochism with that drunken paedophile swine, Battleby. And of course he’s tried to shift the blame on to her. Says she deliberately encouraged him to become an alcoholic so she could control him. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t an element of truth there.’
And so the questioning went on and got nowhere.
Chapter 35
At the Methuen Mental Hospital the female psychiatrist assigned to assessing Wilt’s psychological state was having as much difficulty. Wilt had passed all the standard visual and symbolic tests with such surprising ease that the psychiatrist could have sworn he’d spent considerable time practising doing them. His verbal skills were even more disconcerting. Only his attitude to sex remained suspicious. It appeared that he found copulation boring and exhausting, not to say ludicrous and fairly repulsive. His admiration for the procreative habits of earthworms and amoebas who simply reproduced by dividing themselves, voluntarily in the case of amoebas and, as far as Wilt knew, involuntarily by earthworms when they were cut in half by a spade, seemed to indicate a severely depressed libido. Since the lady shrink was completely ignorant on the subject of amoebas and earthworms but keen on what little sex her looks attracted, this information came as a nasty revelation to her.
‘Are you saying you would rather bisect yourself than sleep with your wife?’ she asked, hoping to draw the inference that Wilt had a tendency towards a split personality.
‘Of course not,’ Wilt replied indignantly. ‘Mind you, when you meet my wife you’ll understand why I might be.’
‘Your wife does not attract you physically?’
‘I did not say that and in any case, I can’t see what that has to do with you.’
‘I am merely trying to help you,’ said the psychiatrist.
Wilt looked at her sceptically. ‘Really? I thought I had been brought here for assessment, not for prurient inquiries into my sex life.’
‘Your sexual attitude forms part of the assessment process. We want to get a rounded picture of your mental condition.’
‘My mental condition has not been affected by being mugged, left unconscious and beaten over the head. I am not a criminal and by this time I should have thought you’d have recognised that I have all my wits about me. Having realised that, I suggest you mind your own business about my married life. And if you think I am some sort of pervert, let me tell you that my wife and I have produced four daughters or, to put it absolutely correctly, my wife Eva had quadruplets fourteen years ago. I hope that satisfies you that I am a
