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 listened 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...'
'Anti-Terrorist Squad, sir,' said the Superintendent and showed him his pass. Professor Ball regarded it bleakly.
'A likely story. First I'm assaulted by...'
'Oh, get the old bugger out of here,' snarled the Major. 'If he hadn't interfered we'd have '
'Interfered? Interfered indeed! I was exercising my right to make a citizen's arrest of these imposters when they start shooting into a perfectly ordinary house across the street and...' Two uniformed constables arrived to escort the Professor, still protesting angrily, to a waiting police car.
'You heard the damned man,' said the Major in response to the Superintendent's reiterated request for someone to please tell him what the hell had gone wrong. 'We were waiting for the children to come out when he arrives on the scene and blows the gaff. That's what happened. The next thing you know the sods were firing from the house, and by the sound of it using some damnably powerful weapons.'