Wilt on High

'Nothing,' shouted the operator. 'They're highly sensitive...'

'So am I,' yelled Hodge, stubbing his little finger into his ear in an attempt to get his hearing back, 'and something's definitely wrong.'

'They're just picking up one hell of a lot of interference. Could be any number of things produce that effect.'

'Like a fifty-megaton rock concert,' said Runk. 'Bloody woman must be stone deaf.'

'Like hell,' said Hodge. 'This is deliberate. They must have scanned the place and spotted they were being bugged. And turn that damned thing off. I can't hear myself think.'

'Never known anyone who could,' said Runk. Thinking doesn't make a sound. It's an'

'Shut up,' yelled Hodge, who didn't need a lecture on the workings of the brain. For the next twenty minutes he sat in comparative silence trying to figure out his next move. At every stage of his campaign he had been outmanoeuvred and all because he hadn't been given the authority and back-up he needed. And now the Superintendent had sent a message demanding an immediate arrest. Hodge had countered with a request for a search warrant and had been answered with a vague remark that the matter would be considered. Which meant, of course, that he'd never get that warrant. He was on the point of returning to the station and demanding the right to raid the house when Sergeant Runk interrupted his train of thought.

'That jam session's stopped,' he said. 'Coming through nice and quiet.'

Hodge grabbed the earphones and listened. Apart from a rattling sound he couldn't identify (but which came in fact from Emmeline's hamster Percival getting some exercise in her wheel) the house in Oakhurst Avenue was silent. Odd. The place hadn't ever been silent before when the Wilts were at home. 'The car still outside?' he asked the technician.

The man turned to the car monitor. 'Nothing coming through,' he muttered and swung the aerial. 'They must have been using that din to dismantle the transmitters.'

Behind him Inspector Hodge verged on apoplexy.

'Jesus, you moron,' he yelled, 'you mean you haven't been checking that fucking car all this time?'

'What do you think I am? A bleeding octopus with ears?' the radio man shouted back. 'First I have to cope with all those stupid bugs you laced the house with and at the same time I've got two direction indicators to listen in to. And what's more I'm not a moron.'

But before Hodge could get into a real fight Sergeant Runk had intervened. 'I'm getting a faint signal from the car,' he said. 'Must be ten miles away.'

'Where?' yelled Hodge.

'East, as before,' said Runk. 'They're heading back to Baconheath.'

'Then get after them,' Hodge shouted, 'this time the shit isn't going to get back home before I've nabbed him. I'll seal that fucking base off if it's the last thing I do.'

Oblivious of the ill-feeling building up behind her Eva drove steadily towards the airbase. She had no conscious plan, only the determination to force the truth, and Wilt, out of somebody even if that meant setting fire to the car or lying naked in the roadway outside the gates. Anything to gain publicity. And for once Mavis had agreed with her and been helpful too. She had organized a group of Mothers Against The Bomb, some of whom were in fact grandmothers, had hired a coach and had telephoned all the London papers and BBC and Fenland Television to ensure maximum coverage for the demonstration.

'It gives us an opportunity to focus the world's attention on the seductive nature of capitalist military-industrial world domination,' she had said, leaving Eva with only the vaguest idea what she meant but with the distinct feeling that Wilt was the 'It' at the beginning of the sentence. Not that Eva cared what anyone said; it was what they did that counted. And Mavis's demonstration would help divert attention away from her own efforts to get into the camp. Or, if she failed to do that, she would see to it that the name Henry Wilt reached the millions of viewers who watched the news that night.

'Now I want you all to behave nicely,' she told the quads as they drove up to the camp gates. 'Just do what Mummy tells you and everything is going to be all right.'

'It isn't going to be all right if Daddy's been staying with an American lady,' said Josephine.

'Fucking,' said Penelope, 'not staying with.'

Eva braked sharply. 'Who said that?' she demanded, turning a livid face on the quads in the back seat.

'Mavis Motty did,' said Penelope. 'She's always going on about fucking.'

Eva took a deep breath. There were times when the quads' language, so carefully nurtured towards mature self-expression at the School for the Mentally Gifted, seemed appallingly inappropriate. And this was one of those times. 'I don't care what Mavis said,' she declared, 'and anyway it isn't like that. Your father has simply been stupid again. We don't know what's happened to him. That's why we've come here. Now you behave yourselves and'

'If we don't know what's happened to him how do you know he's been stupid?' asked Samantha, who had always been hot on logic.

'Shut up,' said Eva and started the car again.

Behind her the quads silently assumed the guise of four nice little girls. It was misleading. As usual they had prepared themselves for the expedition with alarming ingenuity. Emmeline had armed herself with several hatpins that had once belonged to Grandma Wilt; Penelope had filled two bicycle pumps with ammonia and sealed the ends with chewing-gum; Samantha had broken into all their piggy banks and had then bought every tin of pepper she could from a perplexed greengrocer; while Josephine had taken several of Eva's largest and most pointed Sabatier knives from the magnet board in the kitchen. In short the quads were happily looking forward to disabling as many airbase guards as they could and were only afraid that the affair would pass off peacefully. In the event their fears were almost realized.

As they stopped at the gatehouse and were approached by a sentry there were none of those signs of preparedness that had been so obvious the day before. In an effort to maintain that everything was normal and in a 'No Panic Situation' Colonel Urwin had ordered the removal of the concrete blocks in the roadway and had instilled a fresh sense of politeness in the officer in charge of entry to civilian quarters. A large Englishwoman with permed hair and a carload of small girls didn't seem to pose any threat to USAAF security.

'If you'll just pull over there I'll call up the Education Office for you,' he told Eva who had decided not to mention Captain Clodiak this time. Eva drove past the barrier and parked. This was proving much easier than she had expected. In fact for a moment she doubted her judgement. Perhaps Henry wasn't there after all and she had made some terrible mistake. The notion didn't last long. Once again the Wilts' Escort had signalled its presence and Eva was just telling the quads that everything was going to be all right when the Lieutenant appeared from the guardhouse with two armed sentries. 'Pardon me, ma'am,' he said, 'but I'd be glad if you'd step over to the office.'

'What for?' asked Eva.

'Just a routine matter.'

For a moment Eva gazed blankly up at his face and tried to think. She had steeled herself for a confrontation and words like 'stepping over to the office' and 'a routine matter' were somehow threateningly bland. All the same she opened the door and got out.

'And the children too,' said the Lieutenant. 'Everybody out of there.'

'Don't you touch my daughters,' said Eva, now thoroughly alarmed. It was obvious she had been tricked into the base. But this was the opportunity the quads had been waiting for. As the Lieutenant reached for the door handle Penelope poked the end of the bicycle pump through the window and Josephine pointed a carving knife. It was Eva's action that saved him from the knife. She wrenched at his arm and at the same time the ammonia hit him. As the stuff wafted up from his soaked jacket and the two sentries hurled themselves on Eva, the Lieutenant gasped for air and dashed for the guardhouse vaguely aware of the sound of girlish laughter behind him. It sounded demonic to him. Half suffocated he stumbled into the office and pressed the Alert button.