In fact he never reached Slawford.
As he staggered wearily along he cursed his wife. The stupid bitch had been raving mad to set the dogs on those two bloody reporters from the News on Sunday instead of being tactful. He was just considering what he would do to her and coming to the conclusion that short of murder she had him by the short and curlies, when it began to rain again. Harold Rottecombe hurried on and came to a stream which led into the river, and trudged up it looking for a place to cross. Then his sodden left shoe came off. With a curse he sat down on the bank and discovered his sock had a hole in it. Worse still his heel was blistered and there was blood. He took the sock off to have a look and as he did so (he was thinking of tetanus) his shoe rolled down the bank into the water. The stream was flowing fast now but he no longer cared. Without that damned shoe he’d never get to Slawford. In a frantic attempt to get his hands on it before it was swept away he slid down the bank, landed painfully on a sharp stone and a moment later was flat on his face in the water and struggling to get up. As the water carried him down his head hit a branch that hung down over the stream and by the time he reached the river he was only partly conscious and in no condition to deal with the torrent. For a moment his head emerged before being sucked under by the current. Unnoticed, he passed below the stone bridge at Slawford and continued on his way to the Severn and the Bristol Channel. Long before that he had lost more than his political hopes. The late Shadow Minister for Social Enhancement swept on his way towards the sea.
19
Sheriff Stallard and Baxter were on their way too. In the police car on the dirt road that led to Lake Sassaquassee. Alerted by the guy at Lossville, who’d had trouble with the stampeding bears, that Mr and Mrs Immelmann were having a quarrel that had to be heard to be believed and if the police didn’t hurry and get there soon someone was going to die, the Sheriff was puzzled. He couldn’t see how anyone who admitted he was at home ten miles from the Immelmann place could know what was going on there. By the time he got within five miles he knew exactly. Even with the car windows shut it was possible to hear Auntie Joan yelling that she was fucked if she was going to be sodomised and that if Wally wanted to do that dirty thing with someone he’d better find a gay who enjoyed it. The Sheriff didn’t like it either and the man at Lossville said his wife couldn’t bear it. Listening to it, that is. He was thinking of suing. He’d had enough trouble shooting all those bears without a licence and they were protected animals and the fucking police … The Sheriff turned the communications off. He was more interested in hearing about Dr Cohen and it was coming through loud and clear. At four miles. Not that the Sheriff knew that. He’d never been up to the Immelmann house before. On the other hand he’d never heard anyone shout that loud even in the next room. The man at Lossville was right. This was a domestic dispute to end all domestic disputes. And the business about the Watergate hearings tasting and where her pussy was and had she been totalled when she’d had the hysterectomy was too incredible to put into words. Leastways not so fucking loud the whole world could hear it.
‘How far now?’ the Sheriff yelled above the din.
‘Got another two miles,’ Baxter told him.
The Sheriff looked at him as if he was a crazy. ‘What do you mean two miles? Stop the car. They’ve got to be right here. Somewhere real close.’
Baxter stopped the car and the Sheriff opened the door to get out. He didn’t get far. ‘Shit!’ he screamed, slamming the door shut and putting his hands over his ears. ‘Get the hell out of here.’
‘What did you say?’ Baxter yelled, trying to compete with Auntie Joan and the Book of Genesis being written by a Jew of that name.
‘I said, let’s get the fuck out of here before we go deaf. And call up the Public Nuisance Services. They’ve got to have someone who can deal with this. Tell them it’s a Number One Emergency Noisewise.’
Baxter swung the car round on the wet dirt and the Sheriff clung to his seat-belt as they slithered near the edge of a long drop. Then they were heading back to Wilma and Baxter was trying to get contact. All he got was a guy at Lossville screaming that he was going out of his mind and why didn’t someone do something like bomb the Immelmann fucking house. Something sensible and would his wife please put that gun down because shooting him wasn’t going to stop the goddam noise. His wife could be heard saying she was going to shoot herself if those fucking filthy revelations didn’t stop.
‘Put out a Three AAA all bands!’ shouted the Sheriff as the car hurtled down the road.
‘A Three AAA?’ Baxter yelled back. ‘An Atomic Attack Alert? Jesus, we can’t do that. We could be starting a fucking World War.’
He tried Emergency Services again and couldn’t make himself heard. But by then the domestic dispute was coming to an end. There was a brief moment’s respite while the tape rewound and then it started again. Auntie Joan was screaming about sea slugs and Wally leaving his toupee in the bathroom.
Sheriff Stallard couldn’t believe it. ‘But she’s said all that before. Every single word. She’s got to be out of her mind.’
‘Could be they are on this new drug,’ said Baxter. ‘I mean, they got to be on some God-awful substance to carry on like this.’
‘I wish to God I had some substance to be on!’ yelled the Sheriff and pondered the possibility that he already was. It had to be something like that. He’d never experienced a noise of this magnitude in all his career.
*
The same could be said for the Electronic Surveillance Team that had been sent to bug the Bear Fort. They had just begun to climb the wire fence around the perimeter when the clock and the tape timer struck six and simultaneously triggered the sound system and Wally Immelmann’s most sophisticated deterrent. The latter was not intended for bears. Wally’s enemy this time was burglarisers and he had used American know-how to excellent effect. In fact he had done more. He had devised a means of adding utility to the merely aesthetic and historical interest of his collection of military memorabilia. As the first bugging expert dropped to the ground he set off the sensors and immediately four anti-aircraft searchlights swung round and focused on him. So did the guns in the Sherman and the other armoured vehicles. The agents saw them coming and threw themselves flat as the searchlights swung over them. The man on the far side of the fence didn’t. Blinded by the lights and deafened by the sound of Auntie Joan’s yelling about not giving Wally any foreplay he stumbled about helplessly and added his screams to the din. Behind the searchlights the engines of the armoured vehicles and the Sherman roared into life and then the whole place lit up and the searchlights went out. By the time he could see (he still couldn’t hear) he was aware of the Sherman bearing down on him. Agent Nurdler wasn’t waiting. With a terrible scream he headed for the wire and went up it with an agility that was unnatural to him. He was over the top and running like mad through the trees when the tank veered away from the fence and returned to its original position. The lights went out and apart from Uncle Wally demanding at a thousand decibels to know when in thirty years of marriage he’d ever tried to sodomise Auntie Joan peace reigned. The Immelmann Intruder Deterrent had worked perfectly.
The audiovisual equipment in the Starfighter Mansion was working perfectly too. Every detail of the activities in the house was being monitored in the Surveillance Truck in the drive-in and while the bathroom sequence starring Auntie Joan on the can was all too revealing, the other people seemed to be behaving according to schedule, the schedule already firmly established in the minds of the DEA agents. Wally Immelmann was in his den chewing a cigar and alternately pacing up and down the room and helping himself to Scotch. Every now and then he picked up the phone to call his lawyer and then thought better of it and put it down again. He was obviously extremely worried about something.
‘You think he smells us?’ Murphy asked Palowski. ‘Some guys got sixth sense. They can feel they’re under surveillance. Remember that Panamanian down in Florida who was into voodoo. He was uncanny.’
br /> ‘Man marries a broad like Mrs Immelmann doesn’t have sixth sense. No way. Got no sense at all.’
‘They say behind every rich man there’s a great woman,’ said Murphy.
‘Great? Great doesn’t get near it. This time it’s gigantic.’
They switched to the quads who were busy filling their exercise books with details of Auntie Joan and Uncle Wally’s sexual habits for their project on American culture for their English teacher.
‘How do you spell “sodomise”?’ asked Emmeline.
‘Sodom and eye ess ee,’ Samantha told her.
‘Uncle Wally’s really sexist. Talking about her thing like that is horrible.’
‘Uncle Wally is a wally and he is horrible. They’re both out-of-this-world awful. All that stuff he told us about the War and burning the Japanese with that flame thing. What did he call it?’
‘A turkey roast on the hoof,’ said Josephine.
‘It sounds absolutely horrible. I’m never going to touch turkey again. I’ll always associate them with little Japanese.’
‘Not all Japanese are little,’ Penelope pointed out. ‘Some of those wrestlers are fearfully fat.’
‘Like Auntie Joan,’ said Samantha. ‘She’s disgusting.’
In the surveillance truck across the road Palowski and Murphy nodded agreement.
The next remark was of a different and more intriguing sort.
‘I don’t know why we’re writing all this down now. The incriminating evidence is all there on the tape.’
‘Miss Sprockett would have a fit if we played that to the class. She’s as butch as can be. I’d like to hear her opinion of Uncle Wally.’
‘It’s just a pity we haven’t got it on video,’ said Emmeline. ‘Uncle Wally trying to find Auntie Joan’s “thing” and giving it to her up the bum. We could make our fortunes.’
‘We could have made our fortunes if you’d done what I wanted instead of putting the backup tape on the sound system,’ Josephine said. ‘I wonder what it sounds like. It’s long past six. Uncle Wally’s going to go absolutely bananas. He’d have paid a terrific amount of money for that tape. An absolute fortune. I mean if people find out—’
‘If?’ said Emmeline. ‘I’d say he’ll kill us when he finds out.’
But Samantha shook her head. ‘He won’t,’ she said smugly. ‘I’ve hidden the original tape where he’ll never find it.’
‘Where?’ the others demanded but Samantha wasn’t telling.
‘Just somewhere he’s never going to find it. I’m not telling you anything else. Emmy might go and tell him.’
‘I wouldn’t. You know I wouldn’t,’ said the aggrieved Emmeline.
‘You said that when we put that stuff on the Revd Vascoe’s computer and then you—’
‘It wasn’t me. It was Penny said I was the one who put it there.’
‘Well, so you did. You were the one thought of it. And anyway I didn’t tell Mummy. She knows you because you’re always the one who fouls things up.’
‘I don’t care about that,’ said Samantha. ‘And I’m still not telling and no one is going to make me. So there.’
The discussion moved on to the coming visit to the Florida Keys. Uncle Wally had said he wanted to take them shark fishing in his boat and Auntie Joan and Eva wanted to fly to Miami to do some shopping.
But downstairs Wally Immelmann’s plans were being altered by the second.
‘You telling me someone’s tried to burglarise the Bear Fort?’ he shouted down the phone at Sheriff Stallard who had got back to Wilma and had partially recovered his hearing and had called to find out how to get in touch with Mr Immelmann.
‘I don’t know about burglarising,’ the Sheriff shouted back. ‘All I know is there’s a guy over Lossville says he’s going to sue for nuisance and contravention of the Obscenity Regulations. Had difficulty hearing him myself.’
‘Must be the fucking bears have set the system off. That guy is always complaining. And what’s he mean about Obscenity Regulations? It’s only a prolonged Frankie Sinatra. He sings “My Way”.’
‘If you say so, Mr Immelmann, I guess I got to believe you,’ said the Sheriff. ‘Though frankly—’
‘I lie. The tape I got on is Abba. The Abba group. Real soothing stuff from way back.’
For a moment Sheriff Stallard hesitated. He didn’t want to cross Wally Immelmann but if that was Abba and real soothing his name wasn’t Harry Stallard.
‘Anyway, I’m just calling to ask you to cut the stuff off. You got a remote control or something?’
‘A remote control? Are you crazy? There’s no remote control can cover twenty-five miles with forest and mountains in between. You think I can bounce it off a satellite.’
‘I guess I thought you might have some way of shutting it off,’ said the Sheriff.
‘Not from here I haven’t. Got myself a generator so the power can’t be cut off. Anyhow, what’s it to you?’
Sheriff Stallard decided the time had come to break the news. ‘I mean, what you and Mrs Immelmann are discussing over that sound system you’ve built up there isn’t something you’d want to hear. The guy in Lossville says—’
‘Fuck the little shit,’ said Wally. ‘I told you he is always complaining.’ He paused. The Sheriff’s last statement had hit him. ‘What do you mean, what me and Mrs Immelmann are discussing?’
Sheriff Stallard gritted his teeth. This was going to be the hard bit. ‘I don’t really like to say, sir,’ he muttered. ‘It’s kind of intimate.’
‘Intimate?’ Wally yelled. ‘Are you fucking drunk or mad or something? Me and Mrs Immelmann?’
The Sheriff had had enough. He was getting real mad now. ‘And Dr Cohen!’ he shouted back. There was a gasp and silence on the line. ‘You still there, Mr Immelmann?’
Mr Immelmann was still there. Just. He just wasn’t hearing right. He couldn’t be.
‘What was that last you said?’ he asked finally and in a weak voice.
‘I said you and Mrs Immelmann are discussing intimate personal details about … well, I guess you know what you were talking about.’
‘Like what?’ Wally demanded.
‘Well, like Dr Cohen and—’
‘Shit!’ yelled Wally. ‘You telling me the bastard over in Lossville … oh, my God!’
‘He called in to say it was all over the district up there, and we thought you might want to know.’
‘I might want to know? I might want… What else did he say?’
‘Could you cut it off is what he really wanted because the noise is driving his wife crazy. And what you and Mrs Immelmann are shouting about, like your sex life and what she didn’t want you to do to her, isn’t helping.’
Wally could well imagine it. The knowledge was driving him crazy too, trying to work out how what he and Joanie had said in the bedroom was coming out of the sound system at a thousand decibels plus. It wasn’t possible.
‘The thing is, there has to be some way to shut it down,’ the Sheriff insisted. ‘We got the National Guard team moving in. Maybe … Mr Immelmann, are you all right?’
Something in the Starfighter Mansion had crashed on to something else, like a table.
‘Mr Immelmann, Mr Immelmann, oh shit!’ shouted the Sheriff. ‘Baxter, get an ambulance over there fast. Sounds like Wally’s had a heart attack.’
20
There are in parts of most English industrial towns areas of such urban dereliction that only the most desperately self-pitying junkies and alcoholics, the discards of a concerned and caring society, choose to live there. A few old people, who would rather live anywhere else but can’t afford to move, inhabit the top floors of the tower blocks and curse the day the local authority demolished their nineteenth-century back-to-backs in the 1960s ostensibly in the interests of health and hygiene. More correctly, in the interests of ambitious architects anxious to earn reputations and of local councillors anxious to line their pockets with hand-outs from developers whose only interest wa
s in making vast profits.
One of these areas is on the edge of Ipford and it was towards this that Mrs Rottecombe drove. She knew the place fairly well, too well for her ever to mention it now. One of her first long list of clients before she had married Harold Rottecombe had had a cottage ten miles from Ipford and she had spent weekends there. When the customer had most inconsiderately gone to his Maker while on the job she had moved hurriedly to London to avoid the inquest. She had changed her name and had adopted that of a maternal aunt who had Alzheimer’s and was incapable of remembering who she herself was let alone whether her niece was her daughter or not. The ruse worked. After that, it was simply a question of finding a respectable husband, and being a shrewd and ambitious woman she had made the acquaintance of Harold Rottecombe by becoming a worker in his local constituency office. From there to the Registry Office had been an easy task. Harold, for all his political acumen, had no idea what he had married. He would never know unless … unless it came to a divorce. In short, Ruth Rottecombe, reverting to the language of her adolescence, ‘had him by the balls’. And the further he climbed the greasy pole of politics the less he would want her past to become public knowledge. So far, the only mistake she had made was in associating with Bob Battleby. And, of course, in having to get rid of the man in the back of the Volvo in such a way that he couldn’t talk or, if he did, no one would believe him. Whoever he was, her instincts told her he was an educated married man and not a reporter for some filthy tabloid. Trying to explain to his wife or the police how he had lost his trousers was not going to be an easy one.
By the time she reached Ipford it was getting dark. She skirted the town and approached the derelict estate by a back road. The place was far worse than she’d remembered. There was no one about and no lights in any of the windows, most of which were boarded up. Illiterates with spray cans had covered walls with obscene graffiti. Ruth pulled into a dark alleyway where there were no street lights, parked under a looming tower block and switched off the Volvo estate. She got out and looked cautiously around her and up at the black or boarded-up windows on either side of the alley. In the distance she could hear the sound of lorries on the motorway but otherwise there was no sound of life. Three minutes later she had removed the newspapers and cardboard boxes, unwrapped the Elastoplast from his wrists and removed the gag, and was dragging Wilt by the feet into the gutter, in the process banging his head on the kerb. Then she slammed the back of the estate and drove on only to find she was in a cul-de-sac. She reversed the car and drove back the way she had come, her headlights picking out the almost naked figure of Wilt. She was glad to see his head had begun to bleed again. What she didn’t see was a plywood board covering a window standing partly open on the second floor of the tower block above as she turned right and headed for the motorway. She was by this time tired but euphoric. She had rid herself of a dangerous threat to Harold’s reputation and her own influence. What she forgot as she drove back to Meldrum Slocum was to get rid of Wilt’s jeans, boots, socks and rucksack which were still under the cardboard boxes. By the time she reached Leyline Lodge she was exhausted and slumped into bed. Far behind her the plywood board in the tower block had long since closed again.