her car and sat docilely beside her as they drove away. And all the time the woman chattered on, asking questions about the quads and how old they were and saying how difficult it must be bringing up four girls at the same time as if the continually repeated assumption that nothing extraordinary had happened would somehow recreate the happy, humdrum world Eva had seen disintegrate round her that afternoon. Eva hardly heard her. The trite words were so grotesquely at odds with the instincts moving within her that they merely added anger to her terrible resolve. No silly woman who didn't have children could know what it meant to have them threatened and she wasn't going to be lulled into a passive acceptance of the situation.
At the corner of Dill Road and Persimmon Street she caught sight of a billboard outside a newsagent's shop. TERRORIST SIEGE LATEST.
'I want a newspaper,' said Eva abruptly and the woman pulled to the kerb.
'It won't tell you anything you don't know already,' she said.
'I know that. I just want to see what they're saying,' said Eva and opened the door of the car. But the woman stopped her.
'You just sit here and I'll get one for you. Would you like a magazine too?'
'Just the paper.'
And with the sad thought that even in terrible tragedies some people found solace by seeing their names in print the social worker crossed the pavement to the shop and went in. Three minutes later she came out and had opened the car door before she realized that the seat beside her was empty, Eva Wilt had disappeared into the night.
By the time Inspector Flint had made his way past the road blocks in Farrington Avenue and with the help of an SGS man had clambered across several gardens to the Communications Centre he had begun to have doubts about his theory that the whole business was yet another hoax on Wilt's part. If it was it had gone too far this time. The armoured car in the road and the spotlights that had been set up round Number 9 indicated how seriously the Anti-Terrorist Squad and Special Ground Services were taking the siege. In the conservatory at the back of Mrs de Frackas' house men were assembling strange looking equipment.
'Parabolic listening devices. PLDs for short,' explained a technician. 'Once we've installed them we'll be able to hear a cockroach fart in any room in the house.'
'Really? I had no idea cockroaches farted,' said Flint. 'One lives and learns.'
'We'll learn what those bastards are saying and just where they are.'
Flint went through the conservatory into the drawing-room and found the Superintendent and the Major listening to the adviser on International Terrorist Ideology who was discussing the tapes.
'If you want my opinion,' said Professor Maerlis gratuitously, 'I would have to say that the People's Alternative Army represents a sub-fraction or splinter group of the original cadre known as the People's Army Group. I think I would go so far.'
Flint took a seat in a corner and was pleased to note that the Superintendent and Major seemed to share his bewilderment.
'Are you saying that they're actually part of the same group?' asked the Superintendent
'Specifically, no,' said the Professor, 'I can only surmise from the inherent contradictions expressed in their communiques that there is a strong difference of opinion as to the tactical approach while at the same time the two groups share the same underlying ideological assumptions. Owing, however, to the molecular structure of terrorist organizations the actual identification of a member of one group by another member of another group or sub-faction of the same group remains extremely problematical.'
The whole fucking situation is extremely problematical, come to that,' said the Superintendent. 'So far we've had two communiques from what sounds like a partially castrated German, one from an asthmatic Irishman, demands from a Mexican for a jumbo jet and six million quid, a counter-demand from the Kraut for seven millions, not to mention a stream of abuse from
