The Wilt Alternative (28 page)

'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...'