The Wilt Alternative (18 page)

'We know you British use psychological warfare. You are experts,' he shouted, 'we are not to
be so easily deceived.'

'But I assure you, Miguel...'

'Don't try bluffing me by calling me Miguel so I think you are my friend. We understand your
tactics. First you threaten and then you keep us talking...'

'Well as a matter of fact I'm not keeping...'

'Shut your mouth, pig. I'm doing the talking now.'

'That's all I was going to say,' protested the Superintendent. 'But I want you to know there
are no police...'

'Bullshit. You tried to trap us and now you threaten to kill Gudrun. Right, we do not respond
to your threats. You kill Gudrun, we kill the hostages.'

'I'm not in a position to stop whoever is holding Fräulein Schautz...'

'You keep trying the bluff but it doesn't work. We know how clever you British imperialists
are.' And Chinanda too slammed the phone down.

'I must say he seems to have a rather higher opinion of the British Empire than I have,' said
the Major. 'I mean I can't actually see where we've got one, unless you count Gibraltar.'

But the Superintendent was in no mood to discuss the extent of the Empire. 'There's something
demented about this bloody siege,' he muttered. 'First we need to get a separate telephone link
through to the lunatics in that top flat. That's number one priority. If they shoot...What on
earth did he call the Schautz woman, sergeant?'

'I think the expression was "the poor innocent creature Irmgard Mueller",' sir? Do you want me
to play the tape back?'

'No,' said the Superintendent, 'we'll wait for the analysts. In the meantime request use of
helicopter to drop a field telephone on to the balcony of the flat. That way we'll at least get
some idea who's up there.'

'Field telephone incorporating TV camera, sir?' asked the sergeant.

The Superintendent nodded. 'Second priority is to move the listening devices into
position.'

'Can't do that until it gets dark,' said the Major. 'Not having my chaps shot down unless
they're allowed to shoot back.'

'Well, we'll just have to wait,' said the Superintendent. 'That's always the way with these
beastly sieges. Just a question of sitting and waiting. Though I must say this is the first time
I've had to deal with two lots of terrorists at once.'

'Makes you feel sorry for those poor children,' said the Major. 'What they must be going
through doesn't bear thinking about.'

But for once his sympathy was wasted. The quads were having a wonderful time. After the
initial excitement of windows being shattered by bullets and the terrorists firing from the
kitchen and the front hall, they had been bundled down into the cellar with Mrs de Frackas. Since
the old lady refused to be flustered and seemed to regard the events upstairs as perfectly
normal, the quads had taken the same attitude. Besides the cellar was usually forbidden
territory, Wilt objecting to their visiting it on the ostensible grounds that the Organic Toilet
was insanitary and dangerously explosive, while Eva barred the quads because she kept her stock
of preserved fruit down there and the chest freezer was filled with homemade ice cream. The quads
had made a bee-line for the ice cream and had finished a large carton before Mrs de Frackas' eyes
had got accustomed to the dim light. By then the quads had found other interesting things to
occupy their attention. A large coal bunker and a pile of logs gave them the opportunity to get
thoroughly filthy. Eva's store of organically grown apples provided them with a second course
after the ice cream, and they would undoubtedly have drunk themselves into a stupor on Wilt's
homebrew if Mrs de Frackas hadn't put her foot down on a broken bottle first.

'You're not to go into that part of the cellar,' she said looking severely at the evidence of
Wilt's inexpert brewing in the shape of several exploded bottles. 'It isn't safe.'

Then why does Daddy drink it?' asked Penelope.

'When you get a little older you'll learn that men do a great many things that aren't very
sensible or safe,' said Mrs de Frackas.

'Like wearing a bag on the end of their wigwags?' asked Josephine.

'Well I wouldn't quite know about that, dear,' said Mrs de Frackas evidently torn between
curiosity and a desire not to enquire too closely into the Wilts' private life.

'Mummy said the doctor made him wear it,' continued Josephine adding an unmentionable disease
to the old lady's dossier of Wilt's faults.

'And I stepped on it and Daddy screamed,' said Emmeline proudly. 'He screamed ever so
loudly.'

'I'm sure he did, dear,' said Mrs de Frackas, trying to imagine the reaction of her late and
liverish husband had any child been so unwise as to step on his penis. 'Now let's talk about
something nice.'

The distinction was wasted on the quads. 'When daddy comes home from the doctor mummy says his
wigwag will be better and he won't say "Fuck" when he goes weewee.'

'Say what, dear? asked Mrs de Frackas, adjusting her hearing aid in the hope that it rather
than Samantha had been at fault. The quads in unison disillusioned her.

'Fuck, fuck, fuck,' they squealed. Mrs de Frackas turned her hearing aid down.

'Well, really,' she said, 'I don't think you should use that word.'

'Mummy says we mustn't too but Michael's daddy told him...'

'I don't want to hear,' said Mrs de Frackas hastily. 'In my young days children didn't talk
about such things.'

'How did babies get born then?' asked Penelope.

'In the usual way, dear, only we were brought up not to mention such things.'

'What things?' demanded Penelope.

Mrs de Frackas regarded her dubiously. It was beginning to dawn on her that the Wilt quads
were not quite such nice children as she had supposed In fact they were distinctly unnerving.
'Just things,' she said finally.

'Like cocks and cunts?' asked Emmeline.

Mrs de Frackas eyed her with disgust. 'You could put it like that, I suppose,' she said
stiffly. 'Though frankly I'd prefer it if you didn't.'

'If you don't put it like that how do you put it?' asked the indefatigable Penelope

Mrs de Frackas searched her mind in vain for an alternative.

'I don't quite know.' she said, surprised at her own ignorance. 'I suppose the matter never
arose.'

'Daddy's does,' said Josephine, 'I saw it once.'

Mrs de Frackas turned her disgusted attention on the child and tried to stifle her own
curiosity. 'You did?' she said involuntarily.

'He was in the bathroom with mummy and I looked through the keyhole and daddy's...'

'It's time you had baths too,' said Mrs de Frackas, getting to her feet before Josephine could
divulge any further details of the Wilts' sexual life.

'We haven't had supper yet,' said Samantha.

'Then I'll get you some,' said Mrs de Frackas and went up the cellar steps to hunt for eggs.
By the time she returned with a tray the quads were no longer hungry. They had finished a jar of
pickled onions and were halfway through their second packet of dried figs.

'You've still got to have scrambled eggs,' said the old lady resolutely. 'I didn't go to the
trouble of making them to have them wasted, you know.'

'You didn't make them,' said Penelope. 'Mummy hens made them.'

'And daddy hens are called cocks,' squealed Josephine but Mrs de Frackas, having just outfaced
two armed bandits, was in no mood to be defied by four foul-minded girls.

'We won't discuss that any further, thank you,' she said, 'I've had quite enough.'

It was shortly apparent that the quads had too. As she shooed them up the cellar steps
Emmeline was complaining that her tummy hurt.

'It will soon stop, dear,' said Mrs de Frackas, 'and it doesn't help to hiccup like that.'

'Not hiccuping,' retorted Emmeline, and promptly vomited on the kitchen floor. Mrs de Frackas
looked around in the semi-darkness for the light switch and had just found it and turned it on
when Chinanda cannoned into her and switched it off.

'What are you trying to do? Get us all killed?' he yelled.

'Not all of us,' said Mrs de Frackas, 'and if you don't look where you're going...'

A crash as the terrorist slid across the kitchen floor on a mixture of half-digested pickled
onions and dried figs indicated that Chinanda hadn't.

'It's no use blaming me,' said Mrs de Frackas, 'and you shouldn't use language like that in
front of children. It sets a very bad example.'

'I set an example all right,' shouted Chinanda, 'I spill your guts.'

'I rather think somebody is doing that already,' retorted the old lady as the other three
quads, evidently sharing Emmeline's inability to cope with quite so eclectic a diet, followed her
example. Presently the kitchen was filled with four howling and vomit-stained small girls, a very
unappetizing smell, two demented terrorists and Mrs de Frackas at her most imperious. To add to
the confusion Baggish had deserted his post in the front hall and had dashed in threatening to
kill the first person who moved.

'I have no intention of moving,' said Mrs de Frackas, 'and since the only person who is
happens to be that creature grovelling in the corner I suggest you put him out of his
misery.'

From the direction of the sink Chinanda could be heard disentangling himself from Eva's
Kenwood mixer which had joined him on the floor.

Mrs de Frackas turned the light on again. This time no one objected, Chinanda because he had
been momentarily stunned and Baggish because he was too dismayed by the state of the kitchen.

'And now,' said the old lady, 'if you've quite finished I'll take the children up for their
bath before putting them to bed.'

'Bed?' yelled Chinanda getting unsteadily to his feet. 'Nobody goes upstairs. You all sleep
down in the cellar. Go down there now.'

'If you really suppose for one moment that I am going to allow these poor children to go down
that cellar again in their present condition and without being thoroughly washed you're very much
mistaken.'

Chinanda jerked the cord on the Venetian blind and cut out the view from the garden.

'Then you wash them in here,' he said pointing to the sink.

'And where do you propose to be?'

'Where we can see what you are doing.'

Mrs de Frackas snorted derisively. 'I know your sort, and if you think I am going to expose
their pure little bodies to your lascivious gaze...'

'What the hell is she saying?' demanded Baggish.

Mrs de Frackas turned her contempt on him. 'And yours too, don't I just. I haven't been
through the Suez Canal and Port Said for nothing you know.'

Baggish stared at her. 'Port Said? The Suez Canal? I never been to Egypt in my life.'

'Well I have. And I know what I know.'

'So what are we talking about? You know what you know. I don't know what you know.'

'Postcards,' said Mrs de Frackas. 'I don't think I need say anymore.'

'You haven't said anything yet. First the Suez Canal, then Port Said and now postcards. Will
someone tell me what the hell these things have to do with washing children?'

'Well if you must know, I mean dirty postcards. I might also mention donkeys but I won't. And
now if you'll both leave the room...'

But the implications of Mrs de Frackas' imperial prejudices had slowly dawned on Baggish.

'You mean pornography? What century you think you're living in? You want pornography you go to
London. Soho is full '

'I don't want pornography and I don't intend to discuss the matter further.'

'Then you go down the cellar before I kill you,' yelled the enraged Baggish. But Mrs de
Frackas was too old to be persuaded by mere threats and it took bodily pressure to shove her
through the cellar door with the quads. As they went down the steps Emmeline could be heard
asking why the nasty man didn't like donkeys.

'I tell you the English are mad,' said Baggish. 'Why did we have to choose this crazy
house?'

'It chose us,' said Chinanda miserably, and switched out the light.

But if Mrs de Frackas had decided to ignore the fact that her life was in danger, upstairs in
the flat Wilt was now acutely aware that his previous tactics had backfired on him. To have
invented the People's Alternative Army had served to confuse things for a while, but his threat
to execute, or more accurately to murder Gudrun Schautz had been a terrific mistake. It put a
time limit on his bluff. Looking back over forty years Wilt's record of violence was limited to
the occasional and usually unsuccessful bout with flies and mosquitoes. No, to have issued that
ultimatum had been almost as stupid as not getting out of the house when the going was good. Now
it was distinctly bad, and the sounds coming from the bathroom suggested that Gudrun Schautz had
torn up the lino and was busy on the floorboards. If she escaped and joined the men below she
would add an intellectual fervour to their evidently stupid fanaticism. On the other hand he
could think of no way of stopping her short of threatening to fire through the bathroom door, and
if that didn't work...There had to be an alternative method. What if he opened the door himself
and somehow persuaded her that it wasn't safe to go downstairs? In that way he could keep the two
groups separate and provided they couldn't communicate with one another Fräulein Schautz would be
hard put to it to influence her blood-brothers down below. Well, that was easy enough to
do.

Wilt crossed to the telephone and jerked the cord from the wall. So far so good but there was
still the little matter of the guns. The notion of sharing the flat with a woman who had
cold-bloodedly murdered eight people was not an attractive one in any circumstances, but when
that flat contained enough firearms to eliminate several hundred it became positively suicidal.
The guns would have to go too. But where? He could hardly drop the damned things out of the
window. The effect of a shower of revolvers, grenades and a sub-machine gun on the terrorists was
likely to encourage them to come up and find out what the hell was going on. Anyway, the grenades
might go off and there were enough misunderstandings floating around already without adding
exploding grenades. The best thing would be to hide them. Very gingerly Wilt put his armoury back
into the flight bag and went through the kitchen to the attic space. Gudrun Schautz was now
definitely busy on the floorboards and under cover of the noise Wilt climbed up and edged his way
along to the water cistern. There he lowered the bag into the water before replacing the cover.
Then, having checked to make quite sure that he hadn't missed a gun, he steeled himself for the
next move. It was, he considered, about as safe as opening the cage of a tiger at the zoo and
inviting the thing to come out, but it had to be done and in an insane situation only an act of
total lunacy could save the children. Wilt went through the kitchen to the bathroom door.