‘I hear that Abba again I’m going to go crazy!’ she screamed. ‘I keep telling him I don’t like it any more but he doesn’t listen. Men! I said, ‘Men!”
Eva said Henry didn’t listen to her either. I mean, if she had told him he needed more ambition once she’d told him a thousand times. Auntie Joan nodded. She hadn’t heard a word.
In the music operations centre Uncle Wally turned the tape off and smiled happily. ‘Reverses itself automatically,’ he told the quads. ‘That way you get music non-stop. I tell you one time I had Frankie Sinatra singing ‘My Way’ up here for a month. Of course I’m not around but they told me you could hear it fifteen miles away no problem and that’s with the wind blowing the opposite direction. A guy over Lossville way had to buy a machine-gun to stop the bear stampede from trampling his place to death they were so desperate to get away their way. I’ve told your auntie she’s only got to whistle ‘My Way’ and them bears are going to hit the trail. Won’t come nowhere near her. And it’s got its own independent power plant. Guys trying to burglarise here can cut the main power line it won’t make any difference. Got electricity backup. Now that’s what I call American know-how. I bet they don’t teach you that in England. And them Roman nuns don’t know nothing. Never been…well, I guess you girls could benefit from some of that American know-how.’
The quads already had. While he went to watch a movie and drink some whiskey they took the label off the Abba reel, put it on the one they had made and fed it through just like Uncle Wally had shown them. Then they wiped the Abba reel and put it away in a box and went through to be nice to Auntie Joan and have some cookies.
Next day it rained and even Uncle Wally had to agree it was no time for going out for a picnic.
‘Best be getting back to Wilma. I got an important meeting tomorrow and this rain’s going to stick around.’
They packed into his four-wheeler and drove down the dirt road through the forest. Behind them the timer on the music centre ticked ominously. It was set for six that evening and the volume was at maximum. According to Uncle Wally that was like one thousand decibels.
On the way Eva said she was going to call the neighbours in Oakhurst Avenue even though Henry didn’t get along with them.
‘He’s very private,’ she said. ‘He hates people to know what he’s doing.’
‘Makes sense,’ said Uncle Wally. ‘It’s a free country. Everyone’s entitled to privacy. That’s the First Amendment. No one has to incriminate himself.’
‘What’s ‘incriminate’ mean, Uncle Wally?’ Emmeline asked.
Uncle Wally swelled in the driver’s seat. He liked being asked questions. He had all the answers. ‘Incriminate oneself means to say things that could damage your reputation or land you in court on a criminal charge. It’s like it’s three words, ‘In’ and ‘Crime’ and ‘State’. That’s the way to remember things. Break them up into little lots.’
From their rented house across the street Palowski and Murphy watched the jeep turn in to the Starfighter Mansion and the gates open automatically.
‘Big Foot’s back,’ Murphy told the Surveillance Truck in the disused drive-in over the scrambler.
‘We got him onscreen,’ came the reply. ‘No problem. Vision sound on.’
Murphy sat back and had to agree that all systems were working perfectly. The screen in the room showed Auntie Joan getting out of the four-wheeler and going into the house.
‘Only problem we’ve got is that Mrs Immelmann. Need wide screen to get her all in,’ he told Palowski. ‘That’s sumo on steroids. And here comes another bulk carrier.’ Eva and the quads had entered the hall. ‘I don’t want to see either of them undressing. Put you off sex for life.’
Palowski was more interested in the Wilt girls.
‘Clever using kids like that. Quads. Like they’re special. Nobody’s going to suspect they’re carriers. That Mrs Wilt can’t have any feelings. She gets ten to twenty she’s going to lose custody. If I hadn’t seen that report from the Brits on her record I wouldn’t have thought it possible she’d be involved. Too much to lose.’
‘Weightwise she could afford to. But some people never learn and those girls are more than good cover. Gets a good lawyer to plead for her and work up public sympathy it could be she wouldn’t do any time. Depends how much they were carrying.’
‘Sol said a sample, he thought. She could claim she don’t even know it’s there.’
‘For sure. Not that I care so much about her. It’s that Immelmann bastard I’m out to nail. What’s the schedule for the other house, the one up by the lake?’
Murphy talked to the Surveillance Centre.
‘Says they should have moved in by now. You reckon that place is important?’
‘Got its own air strip. Could be the ideal place for a lab to make the shit.’
But Murphy wasn’t listening. Auntie Joan had gone to the toilet.
Chapter 18
Harold Rottecombe reached the boat-house to find the brilliant plan he had devised to save having to cut across the fields to Slawford wasn’t going to work. It was clearly out of the question. The river, swollen by the downpour that had driven Wilt to the whisky bottle, swirled past the boat-house in full spate, carrying with it branches of trees, empty plastic bottles, a whole bush that had been swept from the bank, someone’s suitcase and, most alarmingly of all, a dead sheep. Harold Rottecombe eyed that sheep for a moment–it passed too quickly for him to dwell on it for long–and instantly came to the conclusion that he had no intention of sharing its fate. The little rowing boat in the boat-house wouldn’t drift downstream; it would hurtle and be swamped. There was nothing for it. He would have to walk to Slawford after all. And Slawford was ten miles downriver. It was a long time, a very long time since Harold had walked ten miles. In fact it was quite a long time since he had walked two. Still, there was nothing for it. He wasn’t going back to the house to face the media mob. Ruth had got them into this mess and she could get them out of it. He set off along the river bank. The ground was soggy from the torrential rain, his shoes weren’t made for trudging through long wet grass and, when he rounded the bend in the river, he found himself confronted by a barbed-wire fence that ran down to the water’s edge. It stood in two feet of water where the river had overflowed. Harold looked at the fence and despaired. Even without the rushing water he would not have attempted to climb round it or over it. That way lay castration. But several hundred yards up the fence there was a gate. He headed for it, found it locked and was forced to climb painfully over it. After that he had to make several detours to find gaps or gates in hedges and the gaps were always too narrow for a man of his size to squeeze through while the gates were invariably locked. Then there was the barbed wire. Even the hedges that would have looked attractive on a nice summer day turned out on closer inspection to be festooned with barbed wire. Harold Rottecombe, Member of Parliament for a rural constituency and previously a spokesman for farming interests, came to detest farmers. He’d always despised them as greedy, ill-informed and generally uncouth creatures but never before had he realised the malicious delight they obviously took in preventing innocent walkers from crossing their land. And of course with so many detours to make to find gates or something he could get through, and parts of fields that were flooded, the ten miles he’d dreaded looked like becoming more like thirty.