The Wilt Alternative w-2 Page 11

  'I wouldn't be at all surprised,' said the Superintendent despondently. 'All right, drive on. Now then, Mr Wilt, for God's sake stick to your story about the herbalist. The fellow's name is...'

  'Falkirk,' said Wilt automatically. 'He lives at Number 45 Barrabas Road. He has recently returned from South America with a collection of plants including tropical herbs previously uncultivated in this country...'

  'At least he knows his lines,' muttered the Superintendent as they turned into Farringdon Avenue and pulled into the kerb. Wilt got out, slammed the car door with unnecessary violence and marched off down Willington Road. Behind him the Superintendent watched miserably and cursed the para-psychologist.

  'Must have given him some sort of chemical kamikaze mixture,' he told the driver.

  'There's still time to stop him, sir,' said the driver. But there wasn't. Wilt had dived into the gate of his house and disappeared. As soon as he had gone a head popped out of the hedge beside the car.

  'Don't want to give the game away, old boy,' said an officer wearing the uniform of a Gas Inspector. 'If you'll just toddle along I'll call HQ and tell them the subject has entered the danger zone...'

  'Oh no you won't,' snarled the Superintendent as the officer twiddled with the knobs of his walkie-talkie, 'there's to be strict radio silence until the family are safely out.'

  'My orders are...'

  'Countermanded as of now,' said the Superintendent. 'Innocent lives are at stake and I'm not having them jeopardized.'

  'Oh all right,' said the officer. 'Anyway we've got the area sealed off. Not even a rabbit could get out of there now.'

  'It's not simply a question of anyone getting out. We want as many to get in before we move.'

  'Rightho, want to bag the lot of them eh? Nothing like going the whole hog, what!'

  The officer disappeared into the hedge and the Superintendent drove on.

  'Lions, lambs, and now fucking rabbits and hogs,' he told the driver, 'I wish to heaven the Special Ground Services hadn't been called in. They seem to have animals on the brain.'

  'Comes of recruiting them from the huntin' an' shootin' set, I expect, sir,' said the driver. 'Wouldn't like to be in that bloke Wilt's shoes.'

  In the garden of Number 9 Willington Road Wilt did not share his apprehensions. Stiffened by the parapsychologist's nerve-bracer he was in no mood to be trifled with. Bloody terrorists coming into his house without so much as a by-your-leave. Well, he'd soon show them the door. He marched resolutely up to the house and opened the front door before realizing that the car wasn't outside. Eva must be out with the quads. In which case there was no need for him to go in. 'To hell with that,' said Wilt to himself, 'this is my house and I'm entitled to do what I damned well please in it.' He went into the hall and shut the door. The house was silent and the living-room empty. Wilt went through the kitchen and wondered what to do next. In normal circumstances he would have left, but circumstances were not normal. To Wilt's intoxicated way of thinking they called for stern measures. The bloody army wanted a battle on his domestic terrain, did they? Well, he'd soon put a stop to that. Domestic terrain indeed! If people wanted to kill one another they could jolly well do it somewhere else. Which was all very fine, but how to persuade them? Well, the simplest way was to go up to the attic and heave Miss Bloody Schautz/Mueller's suitcases and clobber out into the front garden. That way when she came home she'd get the message and take herself off to someone else's domestic terrain.

  With this simple solution in mind Wilt went upstairs and climbed the steps to the attic door only to find it locked. He went down to the kitchen, found the spare key and went back. For a moment he hesitated outside the door before knocking. There was no reply. Wilt unlocked the door and went inside.

  The attic flat consisted of three rooms, a large bedsitter with the balcony looking down on to the garden, a kitchenette and beyond it a bathroom. Wilt shut the door behind him and looked around. The bedsitter which had occupied his former Muse was unexpectedly tidy. Gudrun Schautz might be a ruthless terrorist but she was also house-proud. Clothes hung neatly in a wall closet and the cups and saucers in the kitchen were all washed and set on shelves. Now, where would she have put her suitcases? Wilt looked round and tried another cupboard before remembering that Eva had moved the cold-water cistern to a higher position under the roof when the bathroom had been put in. There was a door to it somewhere.

  He found it beside the stove in the kitchenette and crawled through only to discover that he had to stoop along under the eaves on a narrow plank to reach the storage space. He groped about in the darkness and found the lightswitch. The suitcases were in a row beside the cistern. Wilt made his way along and grabbed the handle of the first bag. It felt incredibly heavy. Also distinctly lumpy. Wilt dragged it down from the shelf and it dropped with a metallic thud on to the plank at his feet. He wasn't going to lug that back across the rafters. Wilt fumbled with the catches and finally opened the bag.

  All his doubts about Miss Schautz/Mueller's profession vanished. He was looking down on some sort of sub-machine gun, a mound of revolvers, boxes of ammunition, a typewriter and what appeared to be grenades. And as he looked he heard the sound of a car outside. It had pulled into the drive and even to his untrained ear it sounded like the Aston-Martin. Cursing himself for not listening to his innate cowardice, Wilt struggled to get back along the plank to the door but the bag was in the way. He banged his head on the rafters above and was about to crawl over the bag when it occurred to him that the submachine gun might be loaded and could well go off if he prodded it in the wrong place. Best get the damned thing out. Again, that was easier said than done. The barrel got caught in the end of the bag and by the time he had disentangled it he could hear footsteps on the wooden stairs below. Too late to do anything now except switch the light off. Leaning forward across the bag and holding the machine gun at arm's length Wilt joggled the switch up with the muzzle before crouching down in the darkness.

  Outside in the garden the quads had had a marvellous afternoon with old Mrs de Frackas. She had read them the story about Rikki Tikki Tavi, the mongoose, and the two cobras, and had then taken them into her house to show them what a stuffed cobra looked like (she had one in a glass case and it bared its fangs most realistically) and had told them about her own childhood in India before sitting them down to tea in her conservatory. For once the quads had behaved themselves. They had picked up from Eva a proper sense of Mrs de Frackas' social standing and in any case the old lady's voice had a distinctly firm ring to it or as Wilt had once put it, if at eighty-two she could no longer break a sherry glass at fifty paces she could still make a guard dog whimper at forty. It was certainly true that the milkman had long since given up trying to collect his payment on a weekly basis. Mrs de Frackas belonged to a generation that had paid when it felt so inclined; the old lady sent her cheque only twice a year, and then it was wrong. The milk company did not dispute it. The widow of the late Major-General de Frackas, DSO etc. was a personage to whom people deferred and it was one of Eva's proudest boasts that she and the old lady got on like a house on fire. Nobody else in Willington Road did and it was almost entirely because Mrs de Frackas loved children and considered Eva, in spite of her obvious lack of breeding, to be an excellent mother that she smiled on the Wilts. To be precise, she seldom smiled on Wilt, evidently regarding him as an accident in the family process and one that, if her observation of his activities in the summerhouse of an evening was correct, drank. Since the Major-General had died of cirrhosis or as she bluntly said, hob-nailed liver, Wilt's solitary communion with the bottle only increased her regard for Eva and concern for the children. Being also rather deaf she thought them delightful girls, an opinion that was shared by no one else in the district.

  And so this bright sunny afternoon Mrs de Frackas sat the quads in her conservatory and served tea, happily unaware of the gathering drama next door. Then she allowed them to play with the tiger rug in her drawing-room and even to knock over
a potted palm before deciding it was time to go home. The little procession went out of the front gate and into Number 9 just as Wilt began his search in the attic. In the bushes on the opposite side of the road the officer whom the Superintendent had warned not to use the radio watched them enter the house and was desperately praying that they would come out again straightaway when the Aston-Martin drove up. Gudrun Schautz and two young men got out, opened the boot and took out several suitcases while the officer dithered but before he could make up his mind to tackle them in the open they had hurried in the front door. Only then did he break radio silence.

  'Female target and two males have entered the zone,' he told the Major who was making a round of the SGS men posted at the bottom of the Wilts' garden. 'No present withdrawal of civilian occupants. Request instructions.'

  In response the Major threaded his way through the gardens of Numbers 4 and 2 and accompanied by two privates carrying a theodolite and a striped pole promptly set this up on the pavement and began to take sightings down Willington Road while carrying on a conversation with the officer in the hedge.

  'What do you mean you couldn't stop them?' demanded the Major when he learnt that the quads and an old lady had left the house next door and gone into the Wilts'. But before the officer could think of an answer they were interrupted by Professor Ball.

  'What's the meaning of all this?' he demanded, regarding the two long-haired privates and the theodolite with equal distaste.

  'Just making a survey for the new road extension,' said the Major improvising hastily.

  'Road extension? What road extension?' said the Professor transferring his disgust to the handbag the Major had over his shoulder.

  'The proposed road extension to the by-pass,' said the Major.

  Professor Ball's voice rose. 'By-pass? Did I hear you say there's a proposal to put a road through here to the by-pass?'

  'Only doing my job, sir,' said the Major, wishing to hell the old fool would get lost.

  'And what job is that?' demanded the Professor, taking a notebook from his pocket.

  'Surveyor's Department, Borough Engineering.'

  'Really? And your name?' asked the Professor with a nasty glint in his eye. He wetted the end of his ballpen with his tongue while the Major hesitated.

  'Palliser, sir,' said the Major. 'And now, sir, if you don't mind, we've got to get on.'

  'Don't let me disturb you, Mr Palliser.' The Professor turned and stalked into his house. He returned a moment later with a heavy stick.

  'It may interest you to know, Mr Palliser,' he said brandishing the stick, 'that I happen to sit on the Highways and Planning Committee of the City Council. Note the word "city", Mr Palliser. And we don't have a Borough Engineering Department. We have a City one.'

  'Slip of the tongue, sir,' said the Major trying to keep one eye on the Wilts' house while conscious of the threat of the stick.

  'And I suppose it was another slip of the tongue that you said that the City of Ipford was proposing to build an extension of this road to the by-pass...'

  'It's just a vague idea, sir,' said the Major.

  Professor Ball laughed dryly. 'It must indeed be vague considering we don't yet have a by-pass and that as Chairman of the Highways and Planning Committee I would be the first to hear of any proposed alterations to the existing roads. What's more, I happen to know a great deal about the use of theodolites and you don't look through the wrong end. Now then, you will kindly remain where you are until the police arrive. My housekeeper has already phoned...'

  'If I could have a word with you in private,' said the Major fumbling frantically in his handbag for his credentials. But Professor Ball knew an imposter when he saw one and, as Wilt had predicted, his reaction to men who carried handbags was violent. With the descent of his stick the Major's credentials tipped from his handbag and clattered on the ground. They included one walkie-talkie, two revolvers and a teargas grenade.

  'Fuck,' said the Major, stooping to retrieve his armoury, but Professor Ball's stick was in action again. This time it caught the Major on the back of the neck and sent him sprawling in the gutter. Behind him the private in charge of the theodolite moved swiftly. Throwing himself on the Professor he pinned his left arm behind his back and with a karate chop knocked the stick from his right hand.

  'If you'll just come quietly, sir,' he said, but that was the last thing Professor Ball intended to do. Safety, from men pretending to be surveyors who carried revolvers and grenades, lay in making as much noise as he could and Willington Road was aroused from its suburban torpor by yells of 'Help! Murder! Call the police!'

  'For God's sake gag the old bastard,' shouted the Major still scrabbling for his revolvers but it was too late. Across the road a face appeared at the attic skylight, was followed by a second, and before the Professor could be removed in silence they had disappeared.

  Squatting in the darkness beside the water tank Wilt was only dimly aware that something odd was happening in the street.

  Gudrun Schautz had decided to take a bath and the tank was rumbling and hissing but he could hear the reactions of her companions clearly enough.

  'Police!' one of them yelled. 'Gudrun, the police are here.'

  Another voice shouted from the balcony room. 'There are more in the garden with rifles.'

  'Downstairs quickly. We take them on the ground.'

  Footsteps clattered down the wooden staircase while Gudrun Schautz from the bathroom shouted instructions in German and then remembered to bawl them in English.

  'The children,' she shouted, 'hold the children.'

  It was too much for Wilt. Disregarding the bag and the machine gun he was holding he hurled himself at the door, fell through it into the kitchen and promptly sprayed the ceiling with bullets by accidentally pulling the trigger. The effect was quite remarkable. In the bathroom Gudrun Schautz screamed, downstairs the terrorists began firing into the back garden and at the little group including Professor Ball across the street, and from both the street and the back garden the SGS returned their fire fourfold, smashing windows, adding new holes in the leaves of Eva's Swiss Cheese plant and generally pock-marking the walls of the living-room where Mrs de Frackas and the quads were enjoying a Western on TV until the Mexican rug on the wall behind them was dislodged and covered their heads.

  'Now then, children,' she said calmly, 'there's no need to be alarmed. We'll just lie on the floor until whatever's happening stops.' But the quads were not in the least alarmed. Inured by continual gunfights on television they were perfectly at home in the middle of a real one.

  The same could hardly be said for Wilt. As the plaster from the perforated ceiling drifted down on to him he scrambled to his feet and was making for the stairs when a burst of small-arms fire heading through the back windows of the landing and out the front deterred him. Still clutching the sub-machine gun he stumbled back into the kitchen and then realized that the infernal Fräulein Schautz was behind him in the bathroom. She had stopped screaming and might at any moment emerge with a gun. 'Lock the bitch in,' was his first thought but since the key was on the inside...Wilt looked round for an alternative and found it in a kitchen chair which he jammed under the door handle. To make this doubly secure he tore the flex from a table-lamp in the main room and dragged it through before tying a loop to the handle and attaching the other end to the leg of the electric stove. Then having secured his rear he made another sortie to the stairs, but the battle below still raged. He was just about to risk going down when a head appeared on the landing, a head and shoulders carrying the same sort of weapon he had just used. Wilt didn't hesitate. He slammed the door of the flat, pushed up the safety lock and then dragged a bed from the wall and lodged it against the door. Finally he picked up his own gun and waited. If anyone tried to come through the door he would pull the trigger. But then just as suddenly as the battle had begun it ceased.

  Silence reigned in Willington Road, a short, blissful, healthy silence. Wilt stood in the attic and li
stened breathlessly, wondering what to do next. It was decided for him by Gudrun Schautz trying the door of the bathroom. He edged into the kitchen and pointed the gun at the door.

  'One more move in there and I fire,' he said, and even to Wilt his voice had a strange and unnaturally menacing, almost unrecognizable sound to it. To Gudrun Schautz it held the authentic tone of a man behind a gun. The door handle stopped wriggling. On the other hand there was someone at the top of the stairs trying to get into the flat. With a facility that astonished him Wilt turned and pulled the trigger and once more the flat resounded to a burst of gunfire. None of the bullets hit the door. They spattered the wall of the bedsitter while the submachine gun juddered in Wilt's hands. The bloody thing seemed to have a will of its own and it was a horrified Wilt who finally took his finger off the trigger and put the gun gingerly down on the kitchen table. Outside someone descended the stairs with remarkable rapidity but there was no other sound.

  Wilt sat down and wondered what the hell was going to happen next.

  Chapter 12

  Much the same question was occupying Superintendent Misterson's mind.

  'What's the hell's going on?' he demanded of the dishevelled Major who arrived with Professor Ball and the two pseudo-surveyors at the corner of Willington Road and Farringdon Avenue. 'I thought I told you nothing must be done until the children were safely out of the house.'

  'Don't look at me,' said the Major. 'This old fool had to poke his fucking nose in.'

  He fingered the back of his neck and eyed the Professor with loathing.

  'And who might you be?' Professor Ball asked the Superintendent.

  'A police officer.'

  'Then kindly do your duty and arrest these bandits. Come down the road with a damned theodolite and handbags filled with guns and tell me they're from the Roads Department and indulge in gun battles...'