'Hold everything,' the Superintendent told Flint. 'The Idiot Brigade have just come up with a psycho-political profile of Wilt and it looks bad.'
'It's going to look a damned sight worse if the bastard doesn't get down out of that flat in the next three minutes,' said Flint, 'and anyway what the hell is a psycho-political profile?'
'Never mind that now. Just go into a holding pattern with the terrorists on the ground floor.'
Leaving Flint feeling like a flight controller trying to deal with two demented pilots on a collision course, he hurried through to the conference room.
'Right,' he said, 'I've ordered all armed personnel to fall back to lessen the tension. Now do we allow the swop to go ahead or not?'
Dr Felden was in no doubt 'No,' he said. 'From the data we have accumulated there is no doubt in my mind that Wilt is a latent psychopath with extremely dangerous homicidal tendencies and to let him loose...'
'I cannot agree,' said Professor Maerlis. 'The transcripts of the conversations he has been having with the Schautz woman indicate a degree of ideological commitment to post-Marcusian anarchism of the highest possible order. I would go further...'
'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.