‘You think he smells us?’ Murphy asked Palowski. ‘Some guys got sixth sense. They can feel they’re under surveillance. Remember that Panamanian down in Florida who was into voodoo. He was uncanny.’
‘Man marries a broad like Mrs Immelmann doesn’t have sixth sense. No way. Got no sense at all.’
‘They say behind every rich man there’s a great woman,’ said Murphy.
‘Great? Great doesn’t get near it. This time it’s gigantic.’
They switched to the quads who were busy filling their exercise books with details of Auntie Joan and Uncle Wally’s sexual habits for their project on American culture for their English teacher.
‘How do you spell ’sodomise’?’ asked Emmeline.
‘Sodom and eye ess ee,’ Samantha told her.
‘Uncle Wally’s really sexist. Talking about her thing like that is horrible.’
‘Uncle Wally is a wally and he is horrible. They’re both out-of-this-world awful. All that stuff he told us about the War and burning the Japanese with that flame thing. What did he call it?’
‘A turkey roast on the hoof,’ said Josephine.
‘It sounds absolutely horrible. I’m never going to touch turkey again. I’ll always associate them with little Japanese.’
‘Not all Japanese are little,’ Penelope pointed out. ‘Some of those wrestlers are fearfully fat.’
‘Like Auntie Joan,’ said Samantha. ‘She’s disgusting.’
In the surveillance truck across the road Palowski and Murphy nodded agreement.
The next remark was of a different and more intriguing sort.
‘I don’t know why we’re writing all this down now. The incriminating evidence is all there on the tape.’
‘Miss Sprockett would have a fit if we played that to the class. She’s as butch as can be. I’d like to hear her opinion of Uncle Wally.’
‘It’s just a pity we haven’t got it on video,’ said Emmeline. ‘Uncle Wally trying to find Auntie Joan’s ‘thing’ and giving it to her up the bum. We could make our fortunes.’
‘We could have made our fortunes if you’d done what I wanted instead of putting the backup tape on the sound system,’ Josephine said. ‘I wonder what it sounds like. It’s long past six. Uncle Wally’s going to go absolutely bananas. He’d have paid a terrific amount of money for that tape. An absolute fortune. I mean if people find out–’
‘If?’ said Emmeline. ‘I’d say he’ll kill us when he finds out.’
But Samantha shook her head. ‘He won’t,’ she said smugly. ‘I’ve hidden the original tape where he’ll never find it.’
‘Where?’ the others demanded but Samantha wasn’t telling.
‘Just somewhere he’s never going to find it. I’m not telling you anything else. Emmy might go and tell him.’
‘I wouldn’t. You know I wouldn’t,’ said the aggrieved Emmeline.
‘You said that when we put that stuff on the Revd Vascoe’s computer and then you–’
‘It wasn’t me. It was Penny said I was the one who put it there.’
‘Well, so you did. You were the one thought of it. And anyway I didn’t tell Mummy. She knows you because you’re always the one who fouls things up.’
‘I don’t care about that,’ said Samantha. ‘And I’m still not telling and no one is going to make me. So there.’
The discussion moved on to the coming visit to the Florida Keys. Uncle Wally had said he wanted to take them shark fishing in his boat and Auntie Joan and Eva wanted to fly to Miami to do some shopping.
But downstairs Wally Immelmann’s plans were being altered by the second.
‘You telling me someone’s tried to burglarise the Bear Fort?’ he shouted down the phone at Sheriff Stallard who had got back to Wilma and had partially recovered his hearing and had called to find out how to get in touch with Mr Immelmann.
‘I don’t know about burglarising,’ the Sheriff shouted back. ‘All I know is there’s a guy over Lossville says he’s going to sue for nuisance and contravention of the Obscenity Regulations. Had difficulty hearing him myself.’
‘Must be the fucking bears have set the system off. That guy is always complaining. And what’s he mean about Obscenity Regulations? It’s only a prolonged Frankie Sinatra. He sings ‘My Way’.’
‘If you say so, Mr Immelmann, I guess I got to believe you,’ said the Sheriff. ‘Though frankly–’
‘I lie. The tape I got on is Abba. The Abba group. Real soothing stuff from way back.’
For a moment Sheriff Stallard hesitated. He didn’t want to cross Wally Immelmann but if that was Abba and real soothing his name wasn’t Harry Stallard.
‘Anyway, I’m just calling to ask you to cut the stuff off. You got a remote control or something?’
‘A remote control? Are you crazy? There’s no remote control can cover twenty-five miles with forest and mountains in between. You think I can bounce it off a satellite.’
‘I guess I thought you might have some way of shutting it off,’ said the Sheriff.
‘Not from here I haven’t. Got myself a generator so the power can’t be cut off. Anyhow, what’s it to you?’
Sheriff Stallard decided the time had come to break the news. ‘I mean, what you and Mrs Immelmann are discussing over that sound system you’ve built up there isn’t something you’d want to hear. The guy in Lossville says–’
‘Fuck the little shit,’ said Wally. ‘I told you he is always complaining.’ He paused. The Sheriff’s last statement had hit him. ‘What do you mean, what me and Mrs Immelmann are discussing?’
Sheriff Stallard gritted his teeth. This was going to be the hard bit. ‘I don’t really like to say, sir,’ he muttered. ‘It’s kind of intimate.’
‘Intimate?’ Wally yelled. ‘Are you fucking drunk or mad or something? Me and Mrs Immelmann?’
The Sheriff had had enough. He was getting real mad now. ‘And Dr Cohen!’ he shouted back. There was a gasp and silence on the line. ‘You still there, Mr Immelmann?’
Mr Immelmann was still there. Just. He just wasn’t hearing right. He couldn’t be.
‘What was that last you said?’ he asked finally and in a weak voice.
‘I said you and Mrs Immelmann are discussing intimate personal details about…well, I guess you know what you were talking about.’
‘Like what?’ Wally demanded.
‘Well, like Dr Cohen and–’
‘Shit!’ yelled Wally. ‘You telling me the bastard over in Lossville…oh, my God!’
‘He called in to say it was all over the district up there, and we thought you might want to know.’
‘I might want to know? I might want…What else did he say?’
‘Could you cut it off is what he really wanted because the noise is driving his wife crazy. And what you and Mrs Immelmann are shouting about, like your sex life and what she didn’t want you to do to her, isn’t helping.’
Wally could well imagine it. The knowledge was driving him crazy too, trying to work out how what he and Joanie had said in the bedroom was coming out of the sound system at a thousand decibels plus. It wasn’t possible.
‘The thing is, there has to be some way to shut it down,’ the Sheriff insisted. ‘We got the National Guard team moving in. Maybe…Mr Immelmann, are you all right?’