'Oh no you won't,' snarled the Superintendent as the officer twiddled with the knobs of his walkie-talkie, 'there's to be strict radio silence until the family are safely out.'
'My orders are...'
'Countermanded as of now,' said the Superintendent. 'Innocent lives are at stake and I'm not having them jeopardized.'
'Oh all right,' said the officer. 'Anyway we've got the area sealed off. Not even a rabbit could get out of there now.'
'It's not simply a question of anyone getting out. We want as many to get in before we move.'
'Rightho, want to bag the lot of them eh? Nothing like going the whole hog, what!'
The officer disappeared into the hedge and the Superintendent drove on.
'Lions, lambs, and now fucking rabbits and hogs,' he told the driver, 'I wish to heaven the Special Ground Services hadn't been called in. They seem to have animals on the brain.'
'Comes of recruiting them from the huntin' an' shootin' set, I expect, sir,' said the driver. 'Wouldn't like to be in that bloke Wilt's shoes.'
In the garden of Number 9 Willington Road Wilt did not share his apprehensions. Stiffened by the parapsychologist's nerve-bracer he was in no mood to be trifled with. Bloody terrorists coming into his house without so much as a by-your-leave. Well, he'd soon show them the door. He marched resolutely up to the house and opened the front door before realizing that the car wasn't outside. Eva must be out with the quads. In which case there was no need for him to go in. 'To hell with that,' said Wilt to himself, 'this is my house and I'm entitled to do what I damned well please in it.' He went into the hall and shut the door. The house was silent and the living-room empty. Wilt went through the kitchen and wondered what to do next. In normal circumstances he would have left, but circumstances were not normal. To Wilt's intoxicated way of thinking they called for stern measures. The bloody army wanted a battle on his domestic terrain, did they? Well, he'd soon put a stop to that. Domestic terrain indeed! If people wanted to kill one another they could jolly well do it somewhere else. Which was all very fine, but how to persuade them? Well, the simplest way was to go up to the attic and heave Miss Bloody Schautz/Mueller's suitcases and clobber out into the front garden. That way when she came home she'd get the message and take herself off to someone else's domestic terrain.
With this simple solution in mind Wilt went upstairs and climbed the steps to the attic door only to find it locked. He went down to the kitchen, found the spare key and went back. For a moment he hesitated outside the door before knocking. There was no reply. Wilt unlocked the door and went inside.
The attic flat consisted of three rooms, a large bedsitter with the balcony looking down on to the garden, a kitchenette and beyond it a bathroom. Wilt shut the door behind him and looked around. The bedsitter which had occupied his former Muse was unexpectedly tidy. Gudrun Schautz might be a ruthless terrorist but she was also house-proud. Clothes hung neatly in a wall closet and the cups and saucers in the kitchen were all washed and set on shelves. Now, where would she have put her suitcases? Wilt looked round and tried another cupboard before remembering that Eva had moved the cold-water cistern to a higher position under the roof when the bathroom had been put in. There was a door to it somewhere.
He found it beside the stove in the kitchenette and crawled through only to discover that he had to stoop along under the eaves on a narrow plank to reach the storage space. He groped about in the darkness and found the lightswitch. The suitcases were in a row beside the cistern. Wilt made his way along and grabbed the handle of the first bag. It felt incredibly heavy. Also distinctly lumpy. Wilt dragged it down from the shelf and it dropped with a metallic thud on to the plank at his feet. He wasn't going to lug that back across the rafters. Wilt fumbled with the catches and finally opened the bag.
All his doubts about Miss Schautz/Mueller's profession vanished. He was looking down on some
