The Superintendent sighed. It was a long ominous sigh. 'In that case I'm afraid there won't be any question of an arrest just yet,' he said 'I take it that Miss... er... Mueller is in the house.'
'I don't know,' said Wilt, 'she was when I left this morning, and today being Wednesday she doesn't have any lectures, so she probably is. Why don't you go round and find out?'
'Because, sir, your lodger just happens to be one of the most dangerous woman terrorists in the world. I think that is self-explanatory.'
'Oh my God,' said Wilt, suddenly feeling very weak.
Superintendent Misterson leant across the desk. 'She has at least eight killings to her credit and she's suspected of being the mastermind... I'm sorry to use such melodramatic terms but in the event they happen to fit. As I was saying she has organized several bombings and we now know she's been involved in the hijacking of a security van in Gantrey last Tuesday. A man died in the attack. You may have read about the case.'
Wilt had. In the waiting-room at the Accident Centre. It had seemed then one of those remote and disgusting acts of gratuitous violence which made the morning paper such depressing reading. And yet because he read about it the murder of a security guard had been invested with a reality which it lacked in the present circumstances. Mastermind, terrorist, killings words spoken casually in an office by a bland man with a paisley tie and a brown tweed suit. Like some country solicitor, Superintendent Misterson, was the last person he would have expected to use such words and it was this incongruity which was so alarming. Wilt stared at the man and shook his head.
'I'm afraid it's true,' said the Superintendent.
'But the money...'
'Marked sir. Marked and numbered. Bait in a trap.'
Wilt shook his head again. The truth was unbearable. 'What are you going to do? My wife and children are at home by now and if she's there... and there are all those other foreigners in the house too.'
'Would you mind telling us how many other... er... foreigners are there, sir?'
'I don't know,' said Wilt, 'it varies from day to day. There's a stream of them coming and going. Jesus wept.'
'Now, sir,' said the Superintendent briskly, 'what's your usual routine? Do you normally go home for lunch?'
'No. I usually have it at the Tech but just at the moment I'm off work and yes, I suppose I do.'
'So your wife will be surprised if you don't come home?'
'I doubt it,' said Wilt 'Sometimes I drop into a pub for sandwiches.'
'And you don't telephone first?'
'Not always.'
'What I am trying to ascertain, sir, is whether your wife will evince any alarm were you not to come home now or contact her.'
'She won't,' said Wilt. 'The only time she'll be alarmed is when she knows we've been providing accommodation for... What is the name of this bloody woman anyway?'
'Gudrun Schautz. And now, sir, I'll have some lunch sent up from the canteen and we'll make preparations.'
'What preparations?' asked Wilt but the Superintendent had left the room and the other plainclothes man seemed disinclined to talk. Wilt regarded the slight bulge under the man's right armpit and tried to stifle his growing feeling of insanity
In the kitchen at Willington Road Eva was busy giving the quads their lunch.
'We won't wait for Daddy,' she said, 'he'll probably be back a little later.'
'Will he bring his bagpipe home?' asked Josephine.
'Bagpipe, dear? Daddy doesn't have a bagpipe.'
