The Wilt Alternative

Eva nodded tearfully. 'It did. They have these loudspeaker things all round the house and they can hear everything that's going on inside.'

'I must say I can't understand.'

Nor could Eva It wasn't simply that it was unlike Henry to be unfaithful; it wasn't Henry at all. Henry never even looked at other women. She had always known he didn't and there had been times when she had been almost irritated by his lack of interest. It somehow deprived her of the little jealousy she was entitled to as his wife, and there was also the suspicion that his lack of interest extended to her too. Now she felt doubly betrayed.

'You'd think he'd be far too worried about the children,' she went on. 'They're downstairs and there he is up in the flat with that creature...' Eva broke down and wept openly.

'What you need is a bath and then a good sleep,' said Betty, and Eva allowed herself to be led upstairs to the bathroom. But as she lay in the hot water, instinct and thought combined again. She was going home. She had to, and this time she would go in broad daylight. She got out of the bath, dried herself, and put on the maternity dress which was the only thing Betty Braintree had been able to find that would fit her, and went downstairs. She had made up her mind what to do.

In the temporary conference room which had once been Major-General de Frackas' private den, Inspector Flint, the Major and the members of the Psycho-Warfare team sat looking at a television set which had been placed incongruously in the middle of the Battle of Waterloo. The late Major-General's obsession with toy soldiers and their precise deployment on a large ping-pong table where they had been gathering dust since his death added a surrealist element to the extraordinary sights and sounds being relayed by the TV camera in the field telephone next door The Wilt alternative had entered a new phase, one in which he had apparently gone clean off his rocker.

'Mad as a March hare,' said the Major as Wilt, horribly distorted by the fish-eye lens, loomed and dwarfed as he strode about the attic mouthing words that made no sense at all. Even Flint found it hard not to accept the verdict.

'What the hell does "Life is prejudicial to Infinity" mean?' he asked Dr Felden, the psychiatrist.

'I need to hear more before I express a definite opinion,' said the doctor.

'I'm damned if I do,' muttered the Major, 'it's like peering into a padded cell.'

On the screen Wilt could be seen shouting something about fighting for the religion of Allah and death to all unbelievers. He then made some extremely disturbing noises which suggested a village idiot having trouble with a fishbone, and disappeared into the kitchen. There was a moment's silence before he began chanting, 'The bells of hell go tingalingaling for you but not for me,' in a frightening falsetto. When he reappeared he was armed with a bread knife and yelling, 'There's a crocodile in the cupboard, mother, and it's eating up your coat. Bats and lizards braving blizzards keep the world afloat.' Finally he lay on the bed and giggled.

Flint leant across the sunken road and switched the set off. 'Much more of that and I'll go off my head too,' he muttered. 'All right, you've seen and heard the sod, and I want to know your opinion as to the best way of handling him.'

'Looked at from the standpoint of a coherent political ideology,' said Professor Maerlis, 'I must confess that I find it hard to express an opinion.'

'Good,' said the Major, who still harboured the suspicion that the professor shared the views of the terrorists.

'On the other hand the transcripts of the tapes made last night indicate definite evidence that Mr Wilt has a profound knowledge of terrorist theory and was apparently engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate the Queen. What I don't understand is where the Israelis come in.'

'That could easily be a symptom of paranoia,' said Dr Felden. 'A very typical example of persecution mania.'

'Never mind about the "could be",' said Flint, 'is the bugger mad or not?'

'Difficult to say. In the first place the subject may well be suffering the after-effects of the drugs he was given yesterday before entering the house. I have ascertained from the so-called medical officer who administered it that the concoction consisted of three parts valium, two sodium amytal, a jigger of bromide and what he chose to call a bouquet of laudanum. He couldn't specify the actual quantities involved, but in my opinion it says something for Mr Wilt's constitution that he is still alive.'

'Says something for the canteen coffee that the bugger drank it without noticing.' said Flint. 'Anyway, do we get him on the blower and ask him what he has done with the Schautz woman or not?'

Dr Felden toyed with a lead Napoleon pensively. 'On the whole I am against the idea. If Fräulein Schautz is still alive I wouldn't want to be responsible for introducing the notion of murdering her to a man in Mr Wilt's condition.'

'That's a big help. So when those swine demand her release again I suppose I'll have to tell them she's being held by a lunatic.' And wishing to God the replacement for the head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad would arrive before mass murder began next door, Flint went through to the Communications Centre.

'No go,' he told the sergeant. 'The Idiot Brigade reckon we're dealing with a homicidal maniac.'

It was more or less the reaction that Wilt wanted. He had spent a miserable night pondering his next move. So far he had played a number of roles a revolutionary terrorist group, a grateful father, a chinless wonder, an erratic lover and a man who had intended to assassinate the Queen and with each fresh fabrication he had seen Gudrun Schautz's sense of certainty waver. Stoned out of her mind by the drug of revolutionary dogma, she was incapable of adjusting to a world of absurd fantasy. And Wilt's world was absurd; it always had been and as far as he could tell it always would be. It was fantastic and absurd that Bilger had made the bloody film about the crocodile but it was true, and Wilt had spent his adult life surrounded by pimply youths who thought they were God's gift to women, and by lecturers who imagined that they could convert Plasterers and Motor Mechanics into sensitive human beings by forcing them to read Finnegan's Wake or instil them with a truly proletarian consciousness by handing out dollops of Das Kapital. And Wilt himself had been through the gamut of fantasy, those internal dreams of being a great writer which had been re-awakened by his first glimpse of Irmgard Mueller and, on a previous occasion, the cold-blooded murderer of Eva. And for eighteen years he had lived with a woman who had changed roles almost as frequently as she changed her clothes. With such a wealth of experience behind him Wilt could produce new fantasies at a moment's notice just so long as he wasn't called upon to give them greater credibility by doing anything more practical than gloss them with words. Words were his medium and had been through all the years at the Tech. With Gudrun Schautz locked in the bathroom he was free to use them to his heart's content and her discomfort. Provided those creatures down below didn't start doing anything violent.

But Baggish and Chinanda had their hands full with another form of bizarre behaviour The quads had woken early to renew their assault on Eva's freezer and stock of bottled fruit, and Mrs de Frackas had given up the unequal battle to keep them moderately clean. She had spent an exceedingly uncomfortable night on the wooden chair and her rheumatism had given her hell. In the end she had been driven to drink, and since the only drink available was Wilt's patented homebrew the results had been remarkable.

From the first appalling mouthful the old lady wondered what the hell had hit her. It wasn't simply that the stuff tasted foul, so foul that she had immediately taken another shot to try to wash her mouth out, it was also extremely potent. Having choked down a second mouthful Mrs de Frackas looked at the bottle with downright disbelief. It was impossible to suppose that anyone had seriously distilled the stuff for human consumption, and for a moment or two she considered the awful possibility that Wilt had, for some diabolical reason of his own, laid up a binful of undiluted paint stripper. It didn't seem likely somehow, but then again what she had just swallowed hadn't seemed likely either It had seared its way down her gullet with all the virulence of a powerful toilet-cleaner going to work on a neglected U-bend. Mrs de Frackas examined the label and felt reassured. The muck proclaimed itself 'Lager' and while the title was in blatant disregard of the facts, whatever the bottle contained was meant to be drunk. The old lady took another mouthful and instantly forgot her rheumatism. It was impossible to concentrate on two ailments simultaneously.