Free The Midden by Tom Sharpe Page B

for you but you can count me out. It's too late in my

life for that sort of thing.'
    Sir Arnold ignored this obvious attempt to sidetrack him. 'All right,' he demanded. 'Who is

he? Just tell me who he is.'
    'Who he is?'
    'I think I've got a right to know that much.'
    'You're asking me...? I don't know.'
    'You don't know. You must know. I mean...' Sir Arnold goggled at her. 'I mean you don't have

some little shit in bed with you without finding out who he is. It's...it's...'
    'If you really must know I thought it was you,' said Lady Vy with revived hauteur.
    The Chief Constable gaped at her open-mouthed. 'Me? One moment you say I can't get it up

without a mouth job and the next I'm the blighter who has just fucked you rigid.'
    For a moment Lady Vy looked as though she might go for the revolver again. 'I keep telling

you,' she shouted, 'nobody did anything. I didn't even know he was there.'
    'You must have known. People don't just climb into bed with you and you don't know.'
    'All right, I suppose I was vaguely aware of someone getting into the bed but naturally I

thought it was you. I mean he stank of dog and booze. How the hell was I to know it was someone

else?'
    Sir Arnold tried to draw himself up. 'I do not stink of dog and booze when I come to bed.'
    'Could have fooled me,' said Lady Vy. 'Come to think of it, it did.' She groped over the side

of the bed for the gin bottle. Sir Arnold grabbed it from her and swigged. 'And now,' she

continued when she'd got it back, 'now you've gone and murdered him.'
    'Not murdered, for God's sake,' he said, 'manslaughter. Quite different. In cases of

manslaughter judges frequently '
    Lady Vy smiled horribly. 'Arnie dear,' she said with a degree of malice that had been

fermenting for years, 'it doesn't seem to have got through to the thing you call your brain that

you are finished, finito, done for and all washed up. Your career is over. All those lovely

directorships with big salaries for favours received, all those nice jobs the good old boys like

Len Bload were going to hand you for running the Property Protection Service you call your

constabulary, all gone bye-bye now. You're up above the Plimsoll line in excreta, as Daddy used

to put it. And it doesn't matter what some senile old judge, hand-picked by the DPP to keep you

out of prison, says. You're all washed up, baby.'
    Sir Arnold Gonders heard her only subliminally, and in any case he didn't need telling. There

were some crimes even a Chief Constable couldn't commit with anything approaching impunity, and

one of them had to be battering a young man to death with a blunt instrument in his own bed. To

make matters worse he couldn't look to the ex-prime minister for help. She wasn't in power any

longer.
    He took Timothy Bright's wrist and felt for the pulse. It was, all things considered,

surprisingly strong. The next moment he was rummaging in the wardrobe for a torch.
    'What are you going to do now?' Lady Vy demanded as he shone the light into one of Timothy's

eyeballs and looked at his iris.
    'Drugged,' he said finally. 'Drugged to the top of his skull.'
    'Perhaps,' said Lady Vy, turning a bit weepy now. 'But look what you've done to the top of his

skull.'
    Sir Arnold preferred not to. 'Take a urine test off this one and it would burn a hole in the

bottle,' he said.
    'Are you sure? I mean it seems so unlikely.'
    The Chief Constable put the torch down and turned on her. 'Unlikely? Unlikely? Anything more

unlikely than coming home to...Never mind. Look at his knees, look at his hands. What do they

tell you?'
    'He seems rather well...well-proportioned now that you come to mention it.'
    'Fuck his proportions,' snarled the Chief Constable. 'The skin has been scraped off them. The

bugger's been dragged along the ground. And where are his clothes?' He looked round the room and

then, putting on a dressing-gown, went downstairs.
    There were no clothes to be found. By the time he got