Wilt on High Read Online Free PDF Page B

mind, a sense of grievance against Henry fucking Wilt. It had always been there,but now it came back stronger than ever: Wilt had buggered his career with that doll of his and then the siege. Oh, yes, he’d almost admired Wilt at one stage but that was a long time ago, a very long time indeed. The little sod was sitting pretty in his house at Oakhurst Avenue and a good salary at the ruddy Tech, and one day he’d probably be the Principal of the stinking place. Whereas any hope Flint had ever had of rising to Super, and being posted to some place Wilt wasn’t, had gone up in smoke. He was stuck with being Inspector Flint for the rest of his natural, and stuck with Ipford. As if to emphasize his lack of any hope, they’d brought Inspector Hodge in as Head of the Drug Squad and a right smart-arse he was too. Oh, they’d tried to butter over the crack, but the Super had called Flint in to tell him personally, and that had to mean something. That he was a dead-beat and they couldn’t trust him in the drugs game, because his son was inside. Which had brought on another of his headaches which he’d always thought were migraines, only this time the police doctor had diagnosed hypertension and put him on pills.
    ‘Of course I’m hypertense,’ Flint had told the quack. ‘With the number of brainy bastards round here who ought to be behind bars, any decent police officer’s got to be tense. He wouldn’t be any good at nailing the shits if he weren’t. It’s an occupational hazard.’
    ‘It’s whatever you like to call it, but I’m telling you you’ve got high blood pressure and …’
    ‘That’s not what you said a moment ago,’ Flint hadflashed back. ‘You stated I had tension. Now then, which is it, hypertension or high blood pressure?’
    ‘Inspector,’ the doctor had said, ‘you’re not interrogating a suspect now.’ (Flint had his reservations about that.) ‘And I’m telling you as simply as I can that hypertension and high blood pressure are one and the same thing. I’m putting you on one diuretic a day –’
    ‘One what?’
    ‘It helps you pass water.’
    ‘As if I needed anything to make me do that. I’m up twice in the blasted night as it is.’
    ‘Then you’d better cut down on your drinking. That’ll help your blood pressure, too.’
    ‘How? You tell me not to be tense and the one thing that helps is a beer or two in the local.’
    ‘Or eight,’ said the doctor, who’d seen Flint in the pub. ‘Anyway, it’ll bring your weight down.’
    ‘And make me piss less. So you give me a pill to make me piss more and tell me to drink less. Doesn’t make sense.’
    By the time Inspector Flint left the surgery, he still didn’t know what the pills he had to take did for him. Even the doctor hadn’t been able to explain how beta-blockers worked. Just said they did and Flint would have to stay on them until he died.
    A month later the Inspector could tell the doctor how they worked. ‘Can’t even type any more,’ he said, displaying a pair of large hands with white fingers. ‘Look at them. Like bloody celery sticks that have been blanched.’
    ‘Bound to have some side-effects. I’ll give you something to relieve those symptoms.’
    ‘I don’t want any more of the piss pills,’ said Flint. ‘Those bleeding things are dehydrating me. I’m on the bloody trot all the time and it’s obvious there’s not enough blood left in me to get to my fingers. And that’s not all. You want to try working some villain over and being taken short just when he’s coming up with a confession. I tell you, it’s affecting my work.’
    The doctor looked at him suspiciously and thought wistfully of the days when his patients didn’t answer back and police officers were of a different calibre to Flint. Besides, he didn’t like the expression ‘working some villain over’. ‘We’ll just have to try you out on some other medications,’ he said, and was startled by the Inspector’s