Free Wilt by Tom Sharpe Page A

put them into

    effect and between the two there lay an area of uncertainty. By the end of his third gin

    Wilt was determined to put the plan into effect. If it did nothing else it would prove he

    was capable of executing a murder.
    Wilt got up and unwrapped the doll. In his interior dialogue Eva was telling him what

    would happen if Mavis Mottram got to hear about his disgusting behaviour at the

    Pringsheim’s.
    ‘You’d be the laughing stock of the neighbourhood,’ she said, ‘you’d never live it

    down.’
    Wouldn’t he though? Wilt smiled drunkenly to himself and went upstairs. For once Eva was

    mistaken. He might not live it down but Mrs Eva Wilt wouldn’t be around to gloat. She

    wouldn’t live at all.
    Upstairs in the bedroom he closed the curtains and laid the doll on the bed and looked

    for the valve which had eluded him the previous night. He found it and fetched a footpump

    from the garage. Five minutes later Judy was in good shape. She lay on the bed and smiled up

    at him. Wilt half closed his eyes and squinted at her. In the half darkness he had to admit

    that she was hideously lifelike. Plastic Eva with the mastic boobs. All that remained was

    to dress it up. He rummaged around in several drawers in search of a bra and blouse,

    decided she didn’t need a bra, and picked out an old skirt and a pair of tights. In a

    cardboard box in the wardrobe he found one of Eva’s wigs. She had had a phase of wigs.

    Finally a pair of shoes. By the time he had finished, Eva Wilt’s replica lay on the bed

    smiling fixedly at the ceiling.
    ‘That’s my girl,’ said Wilt and went down to the kitchen to see how the boil-in-the-bag

    was coming along. It was boil-in-the-bag. Wilt turned the stove off and went into the

    lavatory under the stairs and sat thinking about his next move. He would use the doll for

    dummy runs so that if and when it came to the day he would be accustomed to the whole

    process of murder and would act without feeling like an automaton. Killing by

    conditioned reflex. Murder by habit. Then again he would know how to time the whole

    affair. And Eva’s going off with the Pringsheims for the weekend would help too. It would

    establish a pattern of sudden disappearances. He would provoke her somehow to do it

    again and again and again. And then the visit to the doctor.
    ‘It’s just that I can’t sleep, doctor. My wife keeps on going off and leaving me and I

    just can’t get used to sleeping on my own.’ A prescription for sleeping tablets. Then on

    the night. ‘I’ll make the Ovaltine tonight, dear. You’re looking tired. I’ll bring it up to

    you in bed.’ Gratitude followed by snares. Down to the car…fairly early would be

    best…around ten thirty…over to the Tech and down the hole. Perhaps inside a plastic bag…no,

    not a plastic bag. ‘I understand you bought a large plastic bag recently, sir. I wonder

    if you would mind showing it to us.’ No, better just to leave her down the hole they were

    going to fill with concrete next morning. And finally a bewildered Wilt. He would go

    round to the Pringsheims’. ‘Where’s Eva? Yes, you do. ‘No, we don’t.’ ‘Don’t lie to me. She’s

    always coming round here.’ ‘We’re not lying. We haven’t seen her.’ After that he would go

    to the police.
    Motiveless, clueless and indiscoverable. And proof that he was a man who could act.

    Or wasn’t. What if he broke down under the strain and confessed? That would be some sort of

    vindication too. He would know what sort of man he was one way or another and at least he

    would have acted for once in his life. And fifteen years in prison would be almost

    identical to fifteen, more, twenty years at the Tech confronting louts who despised him

    and talking about Piggy and the Lord of the Flies. Besides he could always plead the book

    as a mitigating circumstance at his trial.
    ‘Me lud, members of the jury, I ask you to put yourself in the