‘I’d say this for Mrs Wilt,’ said Dr Board, ’she do hold on. No one could call her stiff-necked. Attenuated possibly. One begins to see what Modigliani was getting at.’
‘For God’s sake stop,’ yelled Dr Cox hysterically, ‘I think I’m going off my head.’
‘Which is more than can be said for Mrs Wilt.’ said Dr Board callously.
He was interrupted by another awful crack as Judy’s body finally gave up the struggle with the shaft. With a shower of clay it careered upwards to resume a closer relationship with the head and hung naked, pink and, now that the clothes and the concrete had been removed, remarkably lifelike at the end of the rope some twenty feet above the ground.
‘I must say,’ said Dr Board studying the vulva with relish, ‘I’ve never had much sympathy with necrophilia before but I do begin to see its attractions now. Of course it’s only of historical interest but in Elizabethan times it was one of the perks of an executioner…’
‘Board,’ screamed Dr Mayfield, ‘I’ve known some fucking swine in my time…’
Dr Board helped himself to some more coffee. ‘I believe the slang term for it is liking your meat cold.’
Underneath the crane Inspector Flint wiped the mud from his face and peered up at the awful abject swinging above him. He could see now that it was only a doll. He could also see why Wilt had wanted to bury the beastly thing.
‘Get it down. For God’s sake get it down,’ he bawled, as the press photographers circled round him. But the crane driver had lost his nerve. He shut his eyes, pulled the wrong lever and Judy began a further ascent.
‘Stop it, stop it, that’s fucking evidence,’ screamed the Inspector, but it was already too late. As the rope wound through the final pulley Judy followed. The concrete cap disintegrated, her head slid between the rollers and her body began to swell. Her legs were the first to be affected.
‘I’ve often wondered what elephantiasis looked like,’ said Dr Board. ‘Shelley had a phobia about it, I believe.’
Dr Cox certainly had. He was gibbering in a corner and the Vice-Principal was urging him to pull himself together.
‘An apt expression,’ observed Dr Board, above the gasps of horror as Judy, now clearly twelve months pregnant, continued her transformation. ‘Early Minoan, wouldn’t you say, Mayfield?’
But Dr Mayfield was past speech. He was staring dementedly at a rapidly expanding vagina some fourteen inches long and eight wide. There was a pop and the thing became a penis, an enormous penis that swelled and swelled. He was going mad. He knew he was.
‘Now that,’ said Dr Board, ‘takes some beating. I’ve heard about sex-change operations for men but…’
‘Beatings’ screamed Dr Mayfield, ‘Beating? You can stand there cold-bloodedly and talk about…’
There was a loud bang. Judy had come to the end of her tether. So had Dr Mayfield. The penis was the first thing to go. Dr Mayfield the second. As Judy deflated he hurled himself at Dr Board only to sink to the ground gibbering.
Dr Board ignored his colleague. ‘Who would have thought the old bag had so much wind in her?’ be murmured, and finished his coffee. As Dr Mayfield was led out by the Vice Principal, Dr Board turned to Professor Baxendale.
‘I must apologize for Mayfield,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid this Joint Honours degree has been too much for him and to tell the truth I have always found him to be fundamentally unsound. A case of dementia post Cox I daresay.’
Inspector Flint drove back to the Police Station in a state bordering on lunacy.
‘We’ve been made to look idiots,’ he snarled at Sergeant Yates. ‘You saw them laughing. You heard the bastards.’ He was particularly incensed by the press photographers who he asked him to pose with the limp remnants of the plastic doll. ‘We’ve been held up to public ridicule. Well, my God, somebody’s going to pay.’
He hurled himself out of the car and lunged down the passage to the Interview Room. ‘Right, Wilt,’ he shouted, ‘you’ve had your little joke and a bloody nasty one it was too. So now, we’re going to forget the niceties and get to the bottom of this business.’
Wilt studied the torn piece of plastic. ‘Looks better like that if you ask me,’ he said. ‘More natural if you know what I mean.’
‘You’ll look bloody natural if you don’t answer my questions,’ yelled the Inspector. ‘Where is she?’
‘Where is who?’ said Wilt.
‘Mrs Fucking Wilt. Where did you put her?’
‘I’ve told you. I didn’t put her anywhere.’
‘And I’m telling you you did. Now either you’re going to tell me where she is or I’m going to beat it out of you.’
‘You can beat me up if you like,’ said Wilt, ‘but it won’t do you any good.’
‘Oh yes it will,’ said the Inspector and took off his coat.
‘I demand to see a solicitor,’ said Wilt hastily.
Inspector Flint put his jacket on again. ‘I’ve been waiting to hear you say that. Henry Wilt, I hereby charge you with…’
Chapter 16
In the reeds Eva greeted the dawn of another day by blowing up the airbed for the tenth time. It had either sprung a leak or developed a fault in the valve. Whichever it was it had made her progress exceedingly slow and had finally forced her to take refuge in the reeds away from the channel. Here, wedged between the stems, she had spent a muddy night getting off the airbed to blow it up and getting back on to try and wash off the sludge and weeds that had adhered to her when she got off. In the process she had lost the bottom half of her lemon loungers and had torn the top half so that by dawn she resembled less the obsessive housewife of 34 Parkview Avenue than a finalist in the heavyweight division of the Ladies Mudwrestling Championship. In addition she was exceedingly cold and was glad when the sun came up bringing with it the promise of a hot summer day. All she had to do now was to find her way to land or open water and get someone to…At this point Eva became aware that her appearance was likely to cause some embarrassment. The lemon loungers had been sufficiently outré to make her avoid walking down the street when she had had them on; with them largely off, she certainly didn’t want to be seen in public. On the other hand she couldn’t stay in the reeds all day. She plunged on, dragging the airbed behind her, half swimming but for the most part trudging through mud and water. At last she came out of the reeds into open water and found herself looking across a stretch to a house, a garden that sloped down to the water’s edge, and a church. It seemed a long way across but there was no boat in sight. She would have to swim across and just hope that the woman who lived there was sympathetic and better still large enough to lend her some clothes until she got home. It was at this point that Eva discovered that she had left her handbag somewhere in the reeds. She remembered having it during the night but it must have fallen off the airbed when she was blowing it up. Well she couldn’t go back and look for it now. She would just have to go on without it and ring Henry up and tell him to come out in the car and get her. He could bring some clothes too. Yes, that was it. Eva Wilt climbed on to the airbed and began to paddle across. Halfway over the airbed went down for the eleventh time. Eva abandoned it and struggled on in the lifejacket. But that too impeded her progress and she finally decided to take it off. She trod water and tried to undo it and after a struggle managed to get it off. In the process the rest of the lemon loungers disintegrated so that by the time she reached the bank Eva Wilt was exhausted and quite naked. She crawled into the cover of a willow tree and lay panting on the ground. When she had recovered she stood up and looked around. She was at the bottom of the garden and the house was a hundred yards away up the hill. It was a very large house by Eva’s standards, and not the sort she would feel at home in at the best of times. For one thing it appeared to have a courtyard with stables at the back and to Eva, whose knowledge of large country houses was confined to what she had seen on TV, there was the suggestion of servants, gentility and a social formality that would make her arrival in the nude rather heavy going. On the other hand the whole place looked decidedly run down. The garden was overgrown and unkempt, ornamental bushes which might, once have been trimmed to look like birds and animals had reverted to strange and vaguely monstrous shapes, rusted hoops leant half-hidden in the grass of an untended croquet lawn; a tennis net sagged between posts and an abandoned greenhouse boasted a few panes of lichened glass. Finally there was a dilapidated boathouse and a rowing boat. All in all the domain had a sinister and imposing air to it which wasn’t helped by the presence of a small church hidden among trees to the left and a neglected graveyard beyond an aid iron fence. Eva peered out from the weeping willow and was about to leave its cover when the French windows opened and a man came out on to the terrace with a pair of binoculars and peered through them in the direction of Eel Stretch. He was wearing a black cassock and a dog collar. Eva went back behind the tree and considered the awkwardness off her situation and lack of attire. It was all extremely embarrassing. Nothing on earth would make her go up to the house, the Vicarage with nothing on. Parkview Avenue hadn’t prepared her for situations of this sort.