The Wilt Alternative

Chapter 21

In the Communications Centre there was confusion too. Flint was happily relaying the message to Wilt and enjoying his protest that it was bad enough risking death by gunshot but he didn't see why he had to go naked and risk double pneumonia into the bargain and anyway how the hell he was going to tie his own hands together he hadn't the faintest idea, when he was stopped by the new head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad.

'Hold everything,' the Superintendent told Flint. 'The Idiot Brigade have just come up with a psycho-political profile of Wilt and it looks bad.'

'It's going to look a damned sight worse if the bastard doesn't get down out of that flat in the next three minutes,' said Flint, 'and anyway what the hell is a psycho-political profile?'

'Never mind that now. Just go into a holding pattern with the terrorists on the ground floor.'

Leaving Flint feeling like a flight controller trying to deal with two demented pilots on a collision course, he hurried through to the conference room.

'Right,' he said, 'I've ordered all armed personnel to fall back to lessen the tension. Now do we allow the swop to go ahead or not?'

Dr Felden was in no doubt 'No,' he said. 'From the data we have accumulated there is no doubt in my mind that Wilt is a latent psychopath with extremely dangerous homicidal tendencies and to let him loose...'

'I cannot agree,' said Professor Maerlis. 'The transcripts of the conversations he has been having with the Schautz woman indicate a degree of ideological commitment to post-Marcusian anarchism of the highest possible order. I would go further...'

'We haven't time, Professor In fact we've got precisely two minutes and all I want to know is whether to make the swop.'

'My advice is definitely negative,' said the psychiatrist. 'If we add the subject Wilt together with Gudrun Schautz to the two terrorists holding the children the effect will be explosive.'

'That's a great help,' said the Superintendent. 'We're sitting on a keg of dynamite and...yes, Major?'

'I suppose if we got all four of them together on the ground floor we could kill two birds with one stone,' said the Major.

The Superintendent looked at him keenly. He had never understood why the SGS had been called in from the beginning and the Major's lack of obvious logic had him baffled.

'If by that you mean we could slaughter everyone in the house I can't see any reason for going ahead with the exchange. We can do that already. The purpose of the exercise is not to kill anyone at all. I want to know how to avoid a bloodbath, not achieve one.'

But events in the house next door had already moved ahead of him. Far from getting the terrorists into a holding pattern, Flint's message that there was a slight technical hitch had met with an immediate reply that if Wilt didn't come down in exactly one minute he would be the father of triplets. But it had been Eva who had forced Wilt to act

'Henry Wilt,' she yelled up the stairs, 'if you don't come down this minute I'll...'

Flint with his ear glued to the phone heard Wilt's tremulous 'Yes, dear, I'm coming' He switched on the monitoring device in the field telephone and could hear Wilt stumbling about undressing and presently his faint steps on the staircase. They were followed a moment later by the heavier tread of Eva coming up. Flint went through to the conference room and announced this latest development.

'I thought I told you...' began the Superintendent before sitting down heavily. 'So now we're really into a different ball-game.'

The quads had reached much the same conclusion, though they didn't put it like that. As Wilt moved cautiously across the hall into the kitchen they squealed with delight.

'Daddy's got a wigwag, Mummy's got a cunt. Mummy wee-wees down her legs and Daddy out in front,' they chanted to the amazement of the terrorists and the disgust of Mrs de Frackas.

'How utterly revolting,' she said, combining criticism of their language with her verdict on Wilt. She had never liked him with his clothes on: without them she detested him. Not only was this wretch responsible for the lethal concoction that had made her head behave like a sentient ping-pong ball in a mixing bowl, and was now, by the flaming feel of things, busily at work cauterizing her waterworks but he was presenting a full frontal view of that diabolical organ which had once helped to thrust four of the most loathsome little girls she had ever met on to an already suffering world. And all this with a blatant disregard for those social niceties to which she was accustomed. Mrs de Frackas threw caution to the winds.

'If you think for one moment I intend to remain in a house with a naked man you're much mistaken,' she said and headed for the kitchen door.

'Stay where you are,' shouted Baggish, but Mrs de Frackas had lost what little fear she had ever possessed. She kept on going.

'One more move and I fire,' yelled Baggish. Mrs de Frackas snorted derisively and moved. So did Wilt. As the gun came up he hurled himself and the quads who were clutching him out of the line of fire. It was also out of the kitchen. The cellar door stood open. Wilt and his brood shot through it, cascaded down the steps, slid across the pea-strewn floor and ended up in the coal-heap. Above them a shot rang out, a thud, and the cellar door slammed to as Mrs de Frackas crashed against it and slumped to the ground

Wilt waited no longer. He had no wish to hear any more shots. He scrambled up the pile of coal and heaved with his shoulders against the iron lid of the chute. Beneath his feet the coal slithered but the cover was moving and his head and shoulders were in the open air. The cover slid forward and Wilt crawled out before dragging each quad out and dropping the lid back in place. For a moment he hesitated. To his right were the kitchen windows, to his left the door, but beyond that were the dustbins and more usefully Eva's Organic Compost Collector. For the first time Wilt regarded the bin with gratitude. No matter what it contained it had space for them all and was, thanks to the insistence of the Health Authorities, constructed of alternative wood or concrete. Wilt hesitated long enough to scoop the quads up under his arms and then dashed for the thing and dropped them in before hurling himself on top of them

'Oh, Daddy, this is fun,' squawked Josephine, raising a face that was largely covered with rotten tomato.

'Shut up,' snarled Wilt and shoved her down into the mess. Then, conscious that anyone opening the kitchen door might see them, he burrowed down into the stinking remains of cabbages, fish ends and the household garbage until it was almost impossible to tell where Wilt and the children began and the compost ended.

'It's ever so warm,' squeaked the indefatigable Josephine from beneath a seasoning of decomposing courgettes.

'It will be a sight warmer if you don't keep your trap shut,' said Wilt wishing to hell he had. His mouth was half-filled with eggshell and something that suggested it had once seen the inside of a vacuum cleaner and should have stayed there. Wilt spat the mixture out and as he did so there came the sound of rapid fire from somewhere within the house. The terrorists were shooting at random into the darkness of the cellar. Wilt stopped spitting and wondered what the hell was going to happen to Eva now.

He had no need to worry. In the attic Eva was busy. She had already used the broken glass of the balcony window to cut the ropes on her hands and had untied her legs. Then she had gone through to the kitchen. As Wilt had passed her on the stairs he had whispered something about the bitch being in the bathroom. Eva had said nothing. She was reserving her comments on his behaviour with the bitch until the children were safe and the way to ensure that was to take Gudrun Schautz downstairs and do what the terrorists wanted. But now as she tried the bathroom door she heard the shot that had felled Mrs de Frackas. It was the signal for all the pent-up fury inside her to let itself loose. If any of the children had been murdered, the vile creature she had invited into her house would die too. And if Eva had to die she would take as many of the terrorists as she could with her. Standing in front of the bathroom door she raised a muscular leg The next moment a further volley of shots came from below and the sole of the Eva's foot slammed forward. The door tore from its hinges and the lock splintered. Eva kicked again; the door fell back into the bath and Eva Wilt stepped over it. In the corner by the washbasin crouched a woman as naked as Eva herself. They had nothing else in common. Gudrun Schautz's body bore no marks of birth upon it. It was as smooth and synthetically attractive as the centre-page of a girlie magazine and her face mocked its appeal. From a mask of terror and madness her eyes stared blankly, her cheeks were the colour of putty, and her mouth uttered the meaningless sounds of a terrified animal.

But Eva was beyond pity. She moved forward, ponderously implacable, and then with surprising swiftness her hands struck out and clenched in the woman's hair. For a moment Gudrun Schautz struggled before Eva's knee came up. Gasping for breath and doubled over, Gudrun was dragged from the bathroom and thrown to the kitchen floor Eva pinned her down with a knee between her shoulder blades and twisting her arms behind her tied her wrists with the electric cord before gagging her with a cloth from the sink. Finally she bound her legs together with a strip of towel.

All this Eva did with as little compunction as she would have trussed a chicken for Sunday lunch. A plan had matured in her mind, a plan that seemed almost to have been waiting for this moment, a plan born of desperation and murder. She turned and foraged in the cupboard under the sink and found what she was looking for the rope fire escape she had had installed when the flat was first built. It was designed to hang from a hook over the balcony window to save lives in an emergency, but she had a different purpose for it now. And as more shots echoed from below she went swiftly to work. She cut the rope in two and fetched an upright chair which she placed in the middle of the bedroom facing the door. Then she dragged the bed over and wedged it on top of the chair before going back to the kitchen and pulling her captive by the ankles across the room on to the balcony. A minute later she was back with the two lengths of rope and had tied them to the legs of the chair, slid them over the hook and, leaving one slack, threaded the other under the woman's arms, wound it round her body and knotted it. The second she coiled neatly on the floor by the chair and, with unconscious expertise, looped the other end into a noose and slipped it over the terrorist's head and around her throat.

Then Gudrun Schautz, who had put the fear of death into so many other innocent people, came to know its terror herself. For a moment she squirmed on the balcony, but Eva was already back in the room and dragging on the rope round her chest. Gudrun Schautz rose sagging to her feet as Eva hauled. Then she was off the ground and level with the railing. Eva tied the rope to the bed and went back to the balcony and hoisted her over the railing. Below lay the patio and oblivion. Finally Eva removed the gag and returned to the chair. But before sitting down she opened the door to the stairs and loosened the rope from the bed. Grasping it in both hands, she played it out until it had run over the balcony rail and seemed taut. Still grasping it, she pushed the bed off the chair and sat down. Then she let go. For a second it felt as if the chair would lift under the strain but her weight held it down. The moment she was shot or rose from the chair it would hurtle away across the room and the murderess now dangling on the makeshift scaffold would drop to her death by hanging in her own frighteningly domestic way. Eva Wilt had reestablished the terrible scales of Justice.

That was hardly the way it looked to the viewers in the Conference Room next door. On the TV screen Eva took on the dimensions of some archetypal Earth Mother and her actions had a symbolic quality surpassing mere reality. Even Dr Felden, whose experience of homicidal maniacs was extensive, was appalled, while Professor Maerlis, witnessing for the first time the awful preparations of a naked hangwoman was heard to mutter something about a great beast slouching towards Bedlam. But it was the representative of the League of Personal Liberties who reacted most violently. Mr Symper could not believe his eyes.

'Dear God,' he squawked, 'she's going to hang the poor girl. She's out of her mind. Someone must stop her.'

'Can't see why, old boy,' said the Major 'Always been in favour of capital punishment myself.'

'But it's illegal,' shrieked Mr Symper, and appealed to Mr Gosdyke, but the solicitor had shut his eyes and was considering a plea of diminished responsibility. On the whole he thought it less likely to convince a jury than justified homicide. Self-defence was clearly out. In the view of the wide-angle lens in the field telephone Eva bulked gigantic while Gudrun Schautz had the tiny proportions of one of Major-General de Frackas' toy soldiers. Professor Maerlis as usual took refuge in logic.

'An interesting ideological situation,' he said 'I cannot think of a clearer example of social polarization. On the one hand we have Mrs Wilt and on the other...'

'A headless Kraut by the look of things.' said the Major enthusiastically as Eva, having hauled Gudrun Schautz into the air, shoved her over the balcony railing 'I don't know what the proper drop for a hanging is but I should have thought forty feet was a bit excessive.'

'Excessive?' squeaked Mr Symper. 'It's positively monstrous. And what's more I take exception to your use of the word "kraut" I shall protest most vehemently to the authorities.'

'Odd bod.' said the Major as the secretary of the League of Personal Liberties rushed from the room 'Anyone would think Mrs Wilt was the terrorist instead of a devoted mother.'

It was more or less the attitude adopted by Inspector Flint. 'Listen, mate,' he told the distraught Symper, 'you can lead as many protest marches as you fucking well like but don't come yelling at me that Mrs Bloody Wilt is a murderess. You brought her here...'

'I didn't know she was going to hang people. I refuse to be party to a private execution.'

'No, well you won't be that. You're an accessory. The bastards on the ground floor have bumped off Wilt and the children by the sound of things. How's that for loss of personal liberties?'

'But they wouldn't have if you had let them go. They...'

Flint had heard enough. Much as he had disliked Wilt the thought that this hysterical do-gooder was blaming the police for refusing to give way to the demands of a group of bloodthirsty foreigners was too much for him. He rose from his chair and grabbed Mr Symper by the lapels 'All right, if that's the way you feel about it I'm sending you next door to persuade the Widow Wilt to come downstairs and let herself be shot by...'

'I won't go,' gibbered Mr Symper. 'You've no right.'

Flint tightened his grip and was frogmarching him backwards down the hall when Mr Gosdyke interrupted.

'Inspector, something has got to be done immediately. Mrs Wilt is taking the law into her own hands!'

'Good for her,' said Flint. 'This little shit has just volunteered to act as an emissary to our friendly neighbourhood freedom fighters...'

'I have done nothing of the sort,' squeaked Mr Symper. 'Mr Gosdyke, I appeal to you to...'

The solicitor ignored him. 'Inspector Flint, if you are prepared to give an undertaking that my client will not be held responsible, questioned, taken into custody, charged or placed on remand or in any way proceeded against for what she is evidently about to do...'

Flint released the egregious Mr Symper. Years of courtroom procedure told him when he was beaten. He followed Mr Gosdyke into the Conference Room and studied Eva Wilt's astonishing posterior with amazement. Gosdyke's remark about taking the law into her own hands seemed totally inappropriate. She was flattening the damned thing. Flint looked to Dr Felden.

'Mrs Wilt is obviously in an extremely disturbed mental state, Inspector. We must try to reassure her. I suggest you use the telephone...'

'No,' said Professor Maerlis 'Mrs Wilt may appear from this angle to have the proportions of an attenuated gorilla, but even so I doubt if she could reach the telephone without getting off the chair.'

'And what's so wrong with that?' demanded the Major aggressively. 'The Schautz bitch has it coming to her.'

'Perhaps, but we don't want to make a martyr of her. She already has a very considerable political charisma...'

'Bugger her charisma,' said Flint, 'she's had the rest of the Wilt family martyred and we can always claim that her death was accidental.'

The Professor looked at him sceptically. 'You could try, I suppose, but I think you'd have some difficulty persuading the media that a woman who has been suspended from a balcony on the end of two ropes, one of which had been expertly knotted round her neck, and who was subsequently hanged and/or decapitated, died in any meaningfully accidental manner. Of course it's up to you but...'

'All right, then what the hell do you suggest?'

'Turn a blind eye, old boy,' said the Major. 'After all Mrs Wilt is only human...'

'Only?' muttered Dr Felden. 'A clearer example of anthropomorphism...'

'And she's got to answer the call of nature sometime.'

'Call of nature?' shouted Flint. 'She's done that already. She's squatting there like a ruddy performing elephant...'

'Pee, old boy, pee,' continued the Major. 'She's got to get up to have a pee sooner or later.'

'Pray later than sooner,' said the psychiatrist. 'The thought of that ghastly shape getting off that chair would be too much to bear.'

'Anyway she's probably got a bladder like a barrage balloon,' said Flint 'Mind you, she can't be any too warm and there's nothing like cold for making one hit the piss-pot.'

'In which case it's curtains for La Schautz,' said the Major. 'Lets us off the hook, what?'

'I can think of happier ways of putting it,' said the Professor, 'and it would still leave us with the problem of Fräulein Schautz's evident martyrdom.'

Flint left them arguing and went out to look for the Superintendent. As he passed through the Communication Centre he was stopped by the sergeant. A series of squeaks and squelches was coming from one of the listening devices.

'It's the boom aimed at the kitchen window,' the sergeant explained.

'Kitchen window?' said Flint incredulously. 'Sounds more like a squad of mice tap-dancing in a septic tank. What the hell are those squeaks?'

'Children,' said the sergeant. 'Hardly likely, I know, but I've yet to hear one mouse tell another to shut its fucking trap. And it's not coming from inside the house. The two wogs have been complaining that they haven't anyone left to shoot. If you want my opinion...'

But Flint was already clambering across the rubble of the conservatory in search of the Superintendent. He found him lying in the grass beside the summerhouse at the bottom of the Wilts' garden, studying Gudrun Schautz's anatomy through a pair of binoculars

'Extraordinary lengths these lunatics will go to gain some publicity,' he said by way of explanation. 'It's a good thing we've kept the TV cameras out of range.'

'She's not up there out of choice,' said Flint. 'It's Mrs Wilt's doing and we've got a chance to take the two swine on the ground floor. They're out of hostages for the time being.'

'Are they really?' said the Superintendent, and transferred his observation to the kitchen windows with some reluctance. A moment later he was refocusing his binoculars on the compost bin.

'Good God,' he muttered, 'I've heard of rapid fermentation but...Here, you take a look at that bin by the back door.'

Flint took the binoculars and looked. In close-up he could see what the Superintendent meant by rapid fermentation. The compost was alive. It moved, it heaved, several bean haulms rose and fell, while a beetroot suddenly emerged from the sludge and promptly disappeared again. Finally, and most disconcerting of all, something that resembled a Hallowe'en pumpkin with matted hair peered over the side of the bin

Flint closed his eyes, opened them again and found himself looking through a mask of decaying vegetable matter at a very familiar face.