by Tom Sharpe
‘You heard me. You’ve been doctoring the water supply and they want it undoctored as of now.’
‘Doctoring the …’ Wilt began before remembering he couldn’t talk openly in present company.
‘The water supply,’ said Flint. ‘They’ve set a deadline for it to be cleared and it runs out in half an hour. And I do mean deadline.’
There was a moment’s silence while Wilt tried to think. There must have been something in that bloody hold-all that was poisonous. Perhaps the terrorists carried their own supply of cyanide. He’d have to get the bag out but in the meantime he had to maintain his lunatic stand. He fell back on his earlier approach.
‘We make no deals,’ he shouted. ‘If our demands aren’t met by eight in the morning the hostage dies.’
There was the sound of laughter at the other end of the line. ‘Pull the other one, Wilt,’ said Flint. ‘How are you going to kill her? Screw her to death perhaps?’
He paused to let this information sink in before continuing, ‘We’ve got every little antic you’ve been up to on tape. It’s going to sound great when we play it back in court.’
‘Shit,’ said Wilt, this time impersonally.
‘Mrs Wilt particularly enjoyed it. Yes, you heard me right. Now then, are you going to clear that water or do you want your daughters to have to drink it?’
‘All right, I agree. You have the aircraft waiting on the runway and I don’t move from here until the car arrives. One driver and no tricks or the woman dies with me. You understand?’
‘No,’ said Flint, beginning to feel confused himself, but Wilt had ended the conversation. He was sitting on the floor trying to think himself out of this new dilemma. He couldn’t do anything about the water tank with the Schautz woman watching. He would have to continue his bluff. He went back into the kitchen and found her standing uncertainly by the bathroom door.
‘So now you know,’ he said.
Gudrun Schautz didn’t. ‘Why did you say you would kill me?’ she asked.
‘Why do you think?’ said Wilt, plucking up sufficient courage to move towards her with something approximating to menace. ‘Because you are an informer? Without you the plan …’
But Gudrun Schautz had heard enough. She retreated into the bathroom, slammed the door and bolted it. This little man was insane. The whole situation was insane. Nothing made any sort of sense, and contradiction piled on contradiction so that the outcome was an incomprehensible flux of impressions. She sat on the toilet and tried to think her way through the chaos. If this weird man with his talk of assassinating the Queen was wanted by the police, and everything seemed to point in that direction, however illogically, there was something to be said for seeming to be his hostage. The British police weren’t supposed to be fools but they might free her without asking too many awkward questions. It was the only chance she had. And through the door she could hear Wilt muttering to himself alarmingly. He had started to wire the door-handle again.
When he had finished Wilt climbed back into the attic space and was presently elbow-deep in the water tank. It was certainly a very murky colour and when he finally managed to drag the hold-all out his arm was blue. Wilt laid the bag on the floor and began to rummage through its contents. At the bottom he found a portable typewriter and a large ink pad with a rubber stamp. There was nothing to suggest poison, but the typewriter ribbon and the ink pad had certainly polluted the water. Wilt went back to the kitchen and turned on the tap. ‘No wonder the buggers thought they were being doctored,’ he muttered and, leaving the tap running, climbed back into the roof space. By the time he had crawled round the back of the tank with the hold-all and hidden it under the fibreglass insulation the dawn was beginning to compete with the floodlights. He emerged, went through to the living-room, lay down on the sofa and wondered what to do next.
18
And so Day Two of the siege of Willington Road began. The sun rose, the floodlights faded, Wilt nodded fitfully in a corner of the attic, Gudrun Schautz lay in the bathroom, Mrs de Frackas sat in the cellar, and the quads huddled together under a pile of sacks in which Eva had once stored ‘organic’ potatoes. Even the two terrorists snatched some sleep, while in the Communications Centre the Major, installed on a camp bed, snored and twitched in his sleep like a hound dreaming of the hunt. Elsewhere in Mrs de Frackas’ house several Anti-Terrorist men had made themselves comfortable. The sergeant in charge of the listening devices was curled on a sofa and Inspector Flint had commandeered the main bedroom. But for all this human inactivity the electronic sensors relayed information to the tapes and via them to the computer and the Psycho-Warfare team, while the field telephone, like some audio-visual Trojan horse, monitored Wilt’s breathing and scanned his movements through its TV camera eye.
Only Eva didn’t sleep. She lay in a cell in the police station staring at the dim lightbulb in the ceiling and kept the duty sergeant in a state of uncertainty by demanding to see her solicitor. It was a request he didn’t know how to refuse. Mrs Wilt was not a criminal and to the best of his knowledge there were no legal grounds for keeping her locked in a cell. Even genuine villains were allowed to see their solicitors, and after fruitlessly trying to contact Inspector Flint the sergeant gave in.
‘You can use the telephone in here,’ he told her, and discreetly left her in the office to make as many calls as she chose. If Flint didn’t like it he could lump it. The duty sergeant wasn’t laying his own head on the chopping-block for anyone.
Eva made a great many phone calls. Mavis Mottram was woken at four and was mollified to learn that the only reason Eva hadn’t contacted her before was because she was being held illegally by the police.
‘I never heard anything so scandalous in my life. You poor thing. Now don’t worry, we’ll have you out of there in no time,’ she said, and promptly woke Patrick to tell him to get in touch with the Chief Constable, the local MP and his friends at the BBC.
‘I won’t have any friends at the Beeb if I call them at half-past four.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Mavis, ‘it will give them plenty of time to get it on the early-morning news.’
The Braintrees were woken too. This time Eva horrified them by describing how she had been assaulted by the police and asked them if they knew anyone who could help. Peter Braintree phoned the secretary of the League of Personal Liberties and, as an afterthought, every national newspaper with the story.
And Eva continued her calls. Mr Gosdyke, the Wilts’ solicitor, was dragged from his bed to answer the phone and promised to come to the police station at once.
‘Don’t say anything to anyone,’ he advised her, in the firm belief that Mrs Wilt must have committed some crime. Eva ignored his advice. She spoke to the Nyes, the Principal of the Tech and as many people as she could think of, including Dr Scally. She had just finished when the BBC called back and Eva gave a taped interview as the mother of the quadruplets held by the terrorists who was herself being held by the police for no good reason.
From that moment on a crescendo of protest gathered. The Home Secretary was woken by his Permanent Under-Secretary with the news that the BBC was refusing his request not to broadcast the interview in the national interest on the grounds that the illegal detention of the hostages’ mother was diametrically opposed to the national interest. From there the information reached the Police Commissioner, who was held responsible for the activities of the Anti-Terrorist Squad, and even the Ministry of Defence, whose Special Ground Services had assaulted Mrs Wilt in the first place.
Eva hit the radio news at seven and the headlines of every paper in time for the morning rush hour, and by half-past seven the Ipford police station was more obviously besieged by press men, TV cameras, photographers, Eva’s friends and onlookers, than the house in Willington Road. Even Mr Gosdyke’s scepticism had evaporated in the face of the sergeant’s confession that he did not know why Mrs Wilt was in custody.
‘Don’t ask me what she’s supposed to have done,’ said the sergea
nt. ‘I was ordered to keep her in the cells by Inspector Flint. If you want any further information, ask him.’
‘I intend to,’ said Mr Gosdyke. ‘Where is he?’
‘At the siege. I can try and get him on the phone for you.’
And so it was that Flint, who had finally snatched some sleep with the happy thought that he had at long last got that little bastard Wilt where he wanted him, up to his eyes in a genuine crime, suddenly found that the tables had been turned on him.
‘I didn’t say arrest her. I said she was to be held in custody under the Terrorism Act.’
‘Are you suggesting for one moment that my client is a terrorist suspect?’ demanded Mr Gosdyke. ‘Because if you are …’
Inspector Flint considered the law on slander and decided he wasn’t. ‘She was being kept in custody for her own safety,’ he equivocated. Mr Gosdyke doubted it.
‘Well, having seen the state she’s in all I can say is that it’s my considered opinion that she would have been safer outside the police station than in it. She has obviously been badly beaten, dragged through the mud, and if I’m any judge of the matter, several hedges into the bargain, has suffered multiple abrasions to the hands and legs and is in a state of nervous exhaustion. Now are you going to allow her to leave or do I have to apply for …’
‘No,’ said Flint hastily, ‘of course she can go, but I’m not taking any responsibility for her safety if she comes here.’
‘I hardly need any assurance from you on that score,’ said Mr Gosdyke, and escorted Eva out of the police station. She was greeted by a barrage of questions and cameras.
‘Mrs Wilt, is it correct that the police beat you up?’
‘Yes,’ said Eva before Mr Gosdyke could interject that she was making no comments.
‘Mrs Wilt, what do you intend to do now?’
‘I’m going home,’ said Eva, but Mr Gosdyke hustled her into the car.
‘That’s out of the question, my dear. You must have some friends you can stay with for the time being.’
From the crowd Mavis Mottram was trying to make herself heard. Eva ignored her. She had begun thinking about Henry and that awful German girl in bed together, and the last person she wanted to talk to now was Mavis. Besides, at the back of her mind she still blamed Mavis for insisting on going to that stupid seminar. If she had stayed at home none of this would have happened.
‘I’m sure the Braintrees won’t mind my going there,’ she said, and presently she was sitting in their kitchen sipping coffee and telling Betty all about it.
‘Are you sure, Eva?’ said Betty. ‘I mean, it doesn’t sound at all like Henry.’
Eva nodded tearfully. ‘It did. They have these loudspeaker things all round the house and they can hear everything that’s going on inside.’
‘I must say I can’t understand.’
Nor could Eva. It wasn’t simply that it was unlike Henry to be unfaithful; it wasn’t Henry at all. Henry never even looked at other women. She had always known he didn’t and there had been times when she had been almost irritated by his lack of interest. It somehow deprived her of the little jealousy she was entitled to as his wife, and there was also the suspicion that his lack of interest extended to her too. Now she felt doubly betrayed.
‘You’d think he’d be far too worried about the children,’ she went on. ‘They’re downstairs and there he is up in the flat with that creature …’ Eva broke down and wept openly.
‘What you need is a bath and then a good sleep,’ said Betty, and Eva allowed herself to be led upstairs to the bathroom. But as she lay in the hot water, instinct and thought combined again. She was going home. She had to, and this time she would go in broad daylight. She got out of the bath, dried herself, and put on the maternity dress which was the only thing Betty Braintree had been able to find that would fit her, and went downstairs. She had made up her mind what to do.
*
In the temporary conference room which had once been Major-General de Frackas’ private den, Inspector Flint, the Major and the members of the Psycho-Warfare team sat looking at a television set which had been placed incongruously in the middle of the Battle of Waterloo. The late Major-General’s obsession with toy soldiers and their precise deployment on a large ping-pong table where they had been gathering dust since his death added a surrealist element to the extraordinary sights and sounds being relayed by the TV camera in the field telephone next door. The Wilt alternative had entered a new phase, one in which he had apparently gone clean off his rocker.
‘Mad as a March hare,’ said the Major as Wilt, horribly distorted by the fish-eye lens, loomed and dwarfed as he strode about the attic mouthing words that made no sense at all. Even Flint found it hard not to accept the verdict.
‘What the hell does “Life is prejudicial to Infinity” mean?’ he asked Dr Felden, the psychiatrist.
‘I need to hear more before I express a definite opinion,’ said the doctor.
‘I’m damned if I do,’ muttered the Major, ‘it’s like peering into a padded cell.’
On the screen Wilt could be seen shouting something about fighting for the religion of Allah and death to all unbelievers. He then made some extremely disturbing noises which suggested a village idiot having trouble with a fishbone, and disappeared into the kitchen. There was a moment’s silence before he began chanting, ‘The bells of hell go tingalingaling for you but not for me,’ in a frightening falsetto. When he reappeared he was armed with a bread knife and yelling, ‘There’s a crocodile in the cupboard, mother, and it’s eating up your coat. Bats and lizards braving blizzards keep the world afloat.’ Finally he lay on the bed and giggled.
Flint leant across the sunken road and switched the set off. ‘Much more of that and I’ll go off my head too,’ he muttered. ‘All right, you’ve seen and heard the sod, and I want to know your opinion as to the best way of handling him.’
‘Looked at from the standpoint of a coherent political ideology,’ said Professor Maerlis, ‘I must confess that I find it hard to express an opinion.’
‘Good,’ said the Major, who still harboured the suspicion that the Professor shared the views of the terrorists.
‘On the other hand the transcripts of the tapes made last night indicate definite evidence that Mr Wilt has a profound knowledge of terrorist theory and was apparently engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate the Queen. What I don’t understand is where the Israelis come in.’
‘That could easily be a symptom of paranoia,’ said Dr Felden. ‘A very typical example of persecution mania.’
‘Never mind about the “could be”,’ said Flint, ‘is the bugger mad or not?’
‘Difficult to say. In the first place the subject may well be suffering the after-effects of the drugs he was given yesterday before entering the house. I have ascertained from the so-called medical officer who administered it that the concoction consisted of three parts Valium, two sodium amytal, a jigger of bromide and what he chose to call a bouquet of laudanum. He couldn’t specify the actual quantities involved, but in my opinion it says something for Mr Wilt’s constitution that he is still alive.’
‘Says something for the canteen coffee that the bugger drank it without noticing,’ said Flint. ‘Anyway, do we get him on the blower and ask him what he has done with the Schautz woman or not?’
Dr Felden toyed with a lead Napoleon pensively. ‘On the whole I am against the idea. If Fräulein Schautz is still alive I wouldn’t want to be responsible for introducing the notion of murdering her to a man in Mr Wilt’s condition.’
‘That’s a big help. So when those swine demand her release again I suppose I’ll have to tell them she’s being held by a lunatic.’ And wishing to God the replacement for the head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad would arrive before mass murder began next door, Flint went through to the Communications Centre.
‘No go,’ he told the sergeant. ‘The Idiot Brigade reckon we’re dealing with a homicidal maniac.’
*
; It was more or less the reaction that Wilt wanted. He had spent a miserable night pondering his next move. So far he had played a number of roles – a revolutionary terrorist group, a grateful father, a chinless wonder, an erratic lover and a man who had intended to assassinate the Queen – and with each fresh fabrication he had seen Gudrun Schautz’s sense of certainty waver. Stoned out of her mind by the drug of revolutionary dogma, she was incapable of adjusting to a world of absurd fantasy. And Wilt’s world was absurd; it always had been and as far as he could tell it always would be. It was fantastic and absurd that Bilger had made the bloody film about the crocodile but it was true, and Wilt had spent his adult life surrounded by pimply youths who thought they were God’s gift to women, and by lecturers who imagined that they could convert Plasterers and Motor Mechanics into sensitive human beings by forcing them to read Finnegans Wake or instil them with a truly proletarian consciousness by handing out dollops of Das Kapital. And Wilt himself had been through the gamut of fantasy, those internal dreams of being a great writer which had been reawakened by his first glimpse of Irmgard Mueller and, on a previous occasion, the cold-blooded murderer of Eva. And for eighteen years he had lived with a woman who had changed roles almost as frequently as she changed her clothes. With such a wealth of experience behind him Wilt could produce new fantasies at a moment’s notice just so long as he wasn’t called upon to give them greater credibility by doing anything more practical than gloss them with words. Words were his medium and had been through all the years at the Tech. With Gudrun Schautz locked in the bathroom he was free to use them to his heart’s content and her discomfort. Provided those creatures down below didn’t start doing anything violent.
*
But Baggish and Chinanda had their hands full with another form of bizarre behaviour. The quads had woken early to renew their assault on Eva’s freezer and stock of bottled fruit, and Mrs de Frackas had given up the unequal battle to keep them moderately clean. She had spent an exceedingly uncomfortable night on the wooden chair and her rheumatism had given her hell. In the end she had been driven to drink, and since the only drink available was Wilt’s patented homebrew the results had been remarkable.