The Wilt Alternative

And so in a desperate attempt to keep Gudrun Schautz isolated and uncertain, he mouthed Marcusian dogma until the helicopter interrupted his recital. As the telephone encased in a wooden box swung through the window Wilt hurled himself to the floor in the kitchen.

'Back into the bathroom,' he yelled convinced that the thing was some sort of tear-gas bomb. But Gudrun Schautz was already there. Wilt crawled through to her.

'They know we're here,' she whispered.

'They know I'm here,' said Wilt, grateful to the police for seeming to provide proof that he was a wanted man. 'What would they want with you?'

'They locked me in the bathroom. Why would they do that if they didn't want me?'

'Why would they do it if they did?' asked Wilt. 'They'd have dragged you out straightaway.' He paused and looked hard at her in the light reflected from the ceiling. 'But how did they get on to me? I ask myself that question. Who told them?'

Gudrun Schautz looked back and asked herself a great many questions. 'Why do you look at me? I don't know what you are talking about.'

'No?' said Wilt, deciding the time was ripe to switch to full-scale mania. 'That's what you say now. You come to my house when everything is going so good with the plan and now suddenly the Israelis arrive and everything is kaput. No assassination of the Queen, no use for the nerve-gas, no annihilation of the entire pseudo-democratic parliamentary cadres in the House of Commons at one fell swoop, no...'

In the living-room the telephone interrupted this insane catalogue. Wilt listened to it with relief. So did Gudrun Schautz. The paranoia which was part of her make-up was beginning to assume new proportions in her mind with every shift in Wilt's position.

'I'll answer it,' she said but Wilt glared at her ferociously.

'Informer,' he snarled, 'you've done enough harm already. You will stay where you are. That's your only hope.'

And leaving her to work out this strange logic, Wilt crawled through the kitchen and opened the box.

'Listen you fascist pig swine,' he yelled before Flint could get a word in edgeways, 'don't think you're going to sweet-talk the People's Alternative Army into one of your lying dialogues. We demand '

'Shut up, Wilt.' snapped the Inspector. Wilt shut up. So the sods knew. In particular, Flint knew. Which would have been good news if he hadn't had a bloody murderess breathing down his neck. 'So there's no use trying to bluff us. For your information, if you want to see your daughters alive again you had better stop trying to poison your little comrades on the ground floor.'

'Trying to what?' asked Wilt, stunned by this new accusation into using his normal voice.

'You heard me. You've been doctoring the water supply and they want it undoctored as of now.'

'Doctoring the...' Wilt began before remembering he couldn't talk openly in present company.

'The water supply,' said Flint. 'They've set a deadline for it to be cleared and it runs out in half an hour. And I do mean deadline.'

There was a moment's silence while Wilt tried to think. There must have been something in that bloody hold-all that was poisonous Perhaps the terrorists carried their own supply of cyanide. He'd have to get the bag out but in the meantime he had to maintain his lunatic stand. He fell back on his earlier approach.

'We make no deals,' he shouted 'If our demands aren't met by eight in the morning the hostage dies.'

There was the sound of laughter at the other end of the line. 'Pull the other one, Wilt,' said Flint. 'How are you going to kill her? Screw her to death perhaps?'

He paused to let this information sink in before continuing, 'We've got every little antic you've been up to on tape. It's going to sound great when we play it back in court.'

'Shit,' said Wilt, this time impersonally.

'Mrs Wilt particularly enjoyed it. Yes, you heard me right. Now then, are you going to clear that water or do you want your daughters to have to drink it?

'All right, I agree. You have the aircraft waiting on the runway and I don't move from here until the car arrives. One driver and no tricks or the woman dies with me. You understand?'

'No,' said Flint beginning to feel confused himself but Wilt had ended the conversation. He was sitting on the floor trying to think himself out of this new dilemma. He couldn't do anything about the water tank with the Schautz woman watching. He would have to continue his bluff. He went back into the kitchen and found her standing uncertainly by the bathroom door.

'So now you know,' he said.

Gudrun Schautz didn't. 'Why did you say you would kill me?' she asked.

'Why do you think?' said Wilt, plucking up sufficient courage to move towards her with something approximating to menace. 'Because you are an informer? Without you the plan...'

But Gudrun Schautz had heard enough. She retreated into the bathroom, slammed the door and bolted it. This little man was insane. The whole situation was insane. Nothing made any sort of sense, and contradiction piled on contradiction so that the outcome was an incomprehensible flux of impressions. She sat on the toilet and tried to think her way through the chaos. If this weird man with his talk of assassinating the Queen was wanted by the police, and everything seemed to point in that direction, however illogically, there was something to be said for seeming to be his hostage. The British police weren't supposed to be fools but they might free her without asking too many awkward questions. It was the only chance she had. And through the door she could hear Wilt muttering to himself alarmingly. He had started to wire the doorhandle again.