he gets 32,000 volts up his prick? You've got to be joking.'
'I'm not,' said Hodge. 'I'm telling. Go and get the equipment.'
Half an hour later, a desperately nervous Sergeant wearing gum boots and electrically safe rubber gloves eased the door of Wilt's car open. He'd already been round it four times to check there were no wires running from the house and had earthed it with a copper rod. Even so, he was taking no chances and was a trifle surprised that the thing didn't explode.
'All right, now where do you want the tape recorder?' he asked when the Inspector finally joined him.
'Somewhere where we can get at the tape easily,' Hodge whispered.
Runk groped under the dash and tried to find a space.
'Too bloody obvious,' said Hodge. 'Stick it under his seat.'
'Anything you say,' said Runk and stuffed the recorder into the springs. The sooner he was out of the damned car, the better. 'And what about the transmitter?'
'One in the boot and the other...'
'Other?' said Runk. 'You're going to get him picked up by the TV licence-detector vans at this rate. One of these sets has a radius of five miles.'
'I'm not taking chances,' said Hodge. 'If he finds one, he won't look for the other.'
'Not unless he has his car serviced.'
'Put it where no one looks.'
In the end, and then only after a lot of disagreement, the Sergeant attached one radio magnetically in a corner of the boot and was lying under the car searching for a hiding-place for the second when the lights came on in the Wilts' bedroom. 'I told you the swine wouldn't take any chances,' he whispered frantically as the Inspector fought his way in beside him. 'Now we're for it.'
Hodge said nothing. With his face pressed against an oily patch of tarmac and something that smelt disgustingly of cats, he was incapable of speech.
So was Wilt. The effect of Dr Kores' sexual stimulant added to his homebrewWilt had surreptitiously finished six bottles in an effort to find one that didn't taste peculiarhad been to leave him mentally befuddled and with the distinct impression that something like a battalion of army ants had taken possession of his penis and were busily digging in. Either that, or one of the quads had dementedly shoved the electric toothbrush up it while he was asleep. It didn't seem likely. But then again the sensation he was experiencing didn't seem in the least likely either. As he switched on the bedside lamp and hurled the sheet back to see what on earth was wrong, he glimpsed an expanse of red panties beside him. Eva in red panties? Or was she on fire too?
Wilt stumbled out of bed and fought a losing battle with his pyjama cord for dragging the damned things down without bothering to undo them and pointed the Anglepoise at the offending organ in an effort to identify the cause of his agony. The beastly creature (Wilt had always granted his penis a certain degree of autonomy or, more accurately, had never wholly associated himself with its activities) looked normal enough but it certainly didn't feel normal, not by a long chalk. Perhaps if he put some cold cream on it...
He hobbled across to Eva's dressing-table and searched among the jars. Where the hell did she keep the cold cream? In the end, he chose one that called itself a moisturizer. That'd do. It didn't. By the time he'd smeared half the jar on himself and a good deal on the pillow, the burning sensation seemed to have got worse. And whatever was going on was taking place inside. The army ants weren't digging in, the sods were digging out. For one insane moment he considered using an aerosol of Flykil to flush them out, but decided against it. God alone knew what a load of pressurized insecticide would do to his bladder and anyway the bloody thing was full enough already. Perhaps if he had a pee...Still clutching the moisturizer, he hobbled through to die bathroom. 'Must have been a fucking lunatic who first called it relieving oneself,' he thought
