‘Well, before you were born, dear,’ said Eva, who had crossed the Rubicon of modesty by hobbling naked into the house, ‘Mummy’s tummy was much bigger. You see, you were inside it.’
The two terrorists shuddered at the thought. It was bad enough being stuck in a kitchen and hall with those revolting children without being regaled with the physiological intimacies of their pre-natal existence in this extraordinary woman.
‘What were we doing inside you?’ asked Penelope.
‘Growing, dear.’
‘What did we eat?’
‘You didn’t exactly eat.’
‘You can’t grow unless you eat. You’re always telling Josephine she won’t grow up big and strong unless she eats her muesli.’
‘Don’t like muesli,’ said Josephine. ‘It’s got sultanas in it.’
‘I know what we ate,’ said Samantha with relish, ‘blood.’
In the corner by the cellar stairs Mrs de Frackas, in the throes of a stupendous hangover, opened a veined eye.
‘I shouldn’t be at all surprised,’ she mumbled. ‘Nearest thing to human vampires I’ve ever met. Whoever called it baby-sitting? Some damned fool.’
‘But we didn’t have teeth,’ continued Samantha.
‘No, dear, you were tied to Mummy by your umbilical cords. And what Mummy ate went through the cord …’
‘Things can’t go through cords, Mummy,’ said Josephine. ‘Cords are string.’
‘Knives can go through string,’ said Samantha.
Eva looked at her appreciatively. ‘Yes, dear, so they can …’
The discussion was cut short by Baggish. ‘Shut up and cover yourself,’ he shouted, throwing the Mexican rug from the living-room at Eva.
‘I don’t see how I can with my hands tied,’ Eva began, but the telephone was ringing. Chinanda answered.
‘No more talking. Either …’ he said before stopping and listening. Behind him Baggish clutched his sub-machine gun and kept a wary eye on Eva.
‘What are they saying?’
That Gudrun won’t come down,’ said Chinanda. ‘They want for us to go up.’
‘No way. It’s a trap. The police are up there. We know that.’
Chinanda took his hand from the phone. ‘No one goes up and Gudrun comes down. Five minutes we give you or …’
‘I’ll go up,’ Eva called out: ‘The police aren’t up there. My husband is. I’ll bring them both down.’
The terrorists stared at her. ‘Your husband?’ they asked in unison. The quads joined in. ‘You mean Daddy’s in the attic? Oh, Mummy, do bring him down. He’s going to be ever so cross with Mrs de Frackas. She drank ever such a lot of Daddy’s peepee.’
‘You can say that again,’ moaned the old lady, but Eva ignored the extraordinary statement. She was looking fixedly at the terrorists and willing them to let her go up to the flat.
‘I promise you I’ll …’
‘You’re lying. You want to go up there to report to the police.’
‘I want to go up there to save my children,’ said Eva, ‘and if you don’t believe me tell Inspector Flint that Henry has got to come down now.’
The terrorists moved away down the kitchen and conferred.
‘If we can free Gudrun and get rid of this woman and her filthy children it’s good,’ said Baggish. ‘We have the man and the old woman.’
Chinanda disagreed. ‘We keep the children. That way the woman does nothing wrong.’
He went back to the phone and repeated Eva’s message. ‘Five minutes we give you only. The man Wilt comes down …’
‘Naked,’ said Eva, determined to see that Henry shared her discomfort.
‘He comes down naked,’ Chinanda repeated, ‘and with his hands tied …’
‘He can’t tie his own hands,’ said Flint practically.
‘Gudrun can tie them for him,’ answered Chinanda. ‘Those are our conditions.’
He put the phone down and sat looking wearily at Eva. The English were strange people. With women like this, why had they ever given up their Empire? He was roused from his reverie. Mrs de Frackas was getting woozily to her feet.
‘Sit down,’ he shouted at her but the old lady ignored him. She wobbled across to the sink.
‘Why don’t I shoot her?’ said Baggish. ‘That way they’ll know we mean what we say.’
Mrs de Frackas squinted at him with bloodshot eyes. ‘Young man,’ she said, ‘with a head like mine you’d be doing me a favour. Just don’t miss.’ And to emphasize the point she turned her back on him and stuck her bun under the cold tap.
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 anno
unced 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 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 frig
hteningly 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.’