In fact he never reached Slawford.
As he staggered wearily along he cursed his wife. The stupid bitch had been raving mad to set the dogs on those two bloody reporters from the _News on Sunday_ instead of being tactful. He was just considering what he would do to her and coming to the conclusion that short of murder she had him by the short and curlies, when it began to rain again. Harold Rottecombe hurried on and came to a stream which led into the river, and trudged up it looking for a place to cross. Then his sodden left shoe came off. With a curse he sat down on the bank and discovered his sock had a hole in it. Worse still his heel was blistered and there was blood. He took the sock off to have a look and as he did so (he was thinking of tetanus) his shoe rolled down the bank into the water. The stream was flowing fast now but he no longer cared. Without that damned shoe he’d never get to Slawford. In a frantic attempt to get his hands on it before it was swept away he slid down the bank, landed painfully on a sharp stone and a moment later was flat on his face in the water and struggling to get up. As the water carried him down his head hit a branch that hung down over the stream and by the time he reached the river he was only partly conscious and in no condition to deal with the torrent. For a moment his head emerged before being sucked under by the current. Unnoticed, he passed below the stone bridge at Slawford and continued on his way to the Severn and the Bristol Channel. Long before that he had lost more than his political hopes. The late Shadow Minister for Social Enhancement swept on his way towards the sea.
Chapter 19
Sheriff Stallard and Baxter were on their way too. In the police car on the dirt road that led to Lake Sassaquassee. Alerted by the guy at Lossville, who’d had trouble with the stampeding bears, that Mr and Mrs Immelmann were having a quarrel that had to be heard to be believed and if the police didn’t hurry and get there soon someone was going to die, the Sheriff was puzzled. He couldn’t see how anyone who admitted he was at home ten miles from the Immelmann place could know what was going on there. By the time he got within five miles he knew exactly. Even with the car windows shut it was possible to hear Auntie Joan yelling that she was fucked if she was going to be sodomised and that if Wally wanted to do that dirty thing with someone he’d better find a gay who enjoyed it. The Sheriff didn’t like it either and the man at Lossville said his wife couldn’t bear it. Listening to it, that is. He was thinking of suing. He’d had enough trouble shooting all those bears without a licence and they were protected animals and the fucking police…The Sheriff turned the communications off. He was more interested in hearing about Dr Cohen and it was coming through loud and clear. At four miles. Not that the Sheriff knew that. He’d never been up to the Immelmann house before. On the other hand he’d never heard anyone shout that loud even in the next room. The man at Lossville was right. This was a domestic dispute to end all domestic disputes. And the business about the Watergate hearings tasting and where her pussy was and had she been totalled when she’d had the hysterectomy was too incredible to put into words. Leastways not so fucking loud the whole world could hear it.
‘How far now?’ the Sheriff yelled above the din.
‘Got another two miles,’ Baxter told him.
The Sheriff looked at him as if he was a crazy. ‘What do you mean two miles? Stop the car. They’ve got to be right here. Somewhere real close.’
Baxter stopped the car and the Sheriff opened the door to get out. He didn’t get far. ‘Shit!’ he screamed, slamming the door shut and putting his hands over his ears. ‘Get the hell out of here.’
‘What did you say?’ Baxter yelled, trying to compete with Auntie Joan and the Book of Genesis being written by a Jew of that name.
‘I said, let’s get the fuck out of here before we go deaf. And call up the Public Nuisance Services. They’ve got to have someone who can deal with this. Tell them it’s a Number One Emergency Noisewise.’
Baxter swung the car round on the wet dirt and the Sheriff clung to his seat-belt as they slithered near the edge of a long drop. Then they were heading back to Wilma and Baxter was trying to get contact. All he got was a guy at Lossville screaming that he was going out of his mind and why didn’t someone do something like bomb the Immelmann fucking house. Something sensible and would his wife please put that gun down because shooting him wasn’t going to stop the goddam noise. His wife could be heard saying she was going to shoot herself if those fucking filthy revelations didn’t stop.
‘Put out a Three AAA all bands!’ shouted the Sheriff as the car hurtled down the road.
‘A Three AAA?’ Baxter yelled back. ‘An Atomic Attack Alert? Jesus, we can’t do that. We could be starting a fucking World War.’
He tried Emergency Services again and couldn’t make himself heard. But by then the domestic dispute was coming to an end. There was a brief moment’s respite while the tape rewound and then it started again. Auntie Joan was screaming about sea slugs and Wally leaving his toupee in the bathroom.
Sheriff Stallard couldn’t believe it. ‘But she’s said all that before. Every single word. She’s got to be out of her mind.’
‘Could be they are on this new drug,’ said Baxter. ‘I mean, they got to be on some God-awful substance to carry on like this.’
‘I wish to God I had some substance to be on!’ yelled the Sheriff and pondered the possibility that he already was. It had to be something like that. He’d never experienced a noise of this magnitude in all his career.
The same could be said for the Electronic Surveillance Team that had been sent to bug the Bear Fort. They had just begun to climb the wire fence around the perimeter when the clock and the tape timer struck six and simultaneously triggered the sound system and Wally Immelmann’s most sophisticated deterrent. The latter was not intended for bears. Wally’s enemy this time was burglarisers and he had used American know-how to excellent effect. In fact he had done more. He had devised a means of adding utility to the merely aesthetic and historical interest of his collection of military memorabilia. As the first bugging expert dropped to the ground he set off the sensors and immediately four antiaircraft searchlights swung round and focused on him. So did the guns in the Sherman and the other armoured vehicles. The agents saw them coming and threw themselves flat as the searchlights swung over them. The man on the far side of the fence didn’t. Blinded by the lights and deafened by the sound of Auntie Joan’s yelling about not giving Wally any foreplay he stumbled about helplessly and added his screams to the din. Behind the searchlights the engines of the armoured vehicles and the Sherman roared into life and then the whole place lit up and the searchlights went out. By the time he could see (he still couldn’t hear) he was aware of the Sherman bearing down on him. Agent Nurdler wasn’t waiting. With a terrible scream he headed for the wire and went up it with an agility that was unnatural to him. He was over the top and running like mad through the trees when the tank veered away from the fence and returned to its original position. The lights went out and apart from Uncle Wally demanding at a thousand decibels to know when in thirty years of marriage he’d ever tried to sodomise Auntie Joan peace reigned. The Immelmann Intruder Deterrent had worked perfectly.
The audiovisual equipment in the Starfighter Mansion was working perfectly too. Every detail of the activities in the house was being monitored in the Surveillance Truck in the drive-in and while the bathroom sequence starring Auntie Joan on the can was all too revealing, the other people seemed to be behaving according to schedule, the schedule already firmly established in the minds of the DEA agents. Wally Immelmann was in his den chewing a cigar and alternately pacing up and down the room and helping himself to Scotch. Every now and then he picked up the phone to call his lawyer and then thought better of it and put it down again. He was obviously extremely worried about something.