Siege (22 page)

One of the secure phones rang in the incident room and Janine picked it up. ‘Gold for you, ma’am.’

Decision time.

Arley picked up the phone at the far end of the office and got Janine to patch him through, turning her back on the others in an effort to get some sort of privacy.

‘It’s good news about the children being released,’ said Commissioner Phillips without preamble. ‘Congratulations are in order to you and your negotiator.’

Tell him. Tell him now
.

‘Thank you, sir,’ she replied, her voice sounding hollow.

‘But the PM and I are still very concerned that your negotiator hasn’t yet been able to speak to Michael Prior. We need to find out urgently whether he’s been compromised.’

They’ve got my husband and children. What do I care about that?

‘I can understand that, sir, but if we insist, we risk antagonizing them or, worse still, letting them know that we’re really worried about what he might say.’

‘Which is why we’re preparing for a possible armed intervention.’

Oh Jesus. The assault the caller was talking about
.

‘Are we handing over control of the scene to the military?’ she asked, unable to keep the undercurrent of fear out of her voice.

‘Not yet. The PM’s very keen for a negotiated settlement.’

‘So am I. Especially now that we’ve secured the release of some of the hostages peacefully.’

‘But we’re also going to have to review our options if Michael Prior remains unaccounted for. Do we have any news on where he might be in the building?’

‘According to calls made to his phone, he was initially being held in one of the guest rooms somewhere on the third floor, but the phone signal was last picked up on the ground floor. We don’t know where the phone is now, because we no longer have coverage within the building. And, of course, there’s no guarantee it’s with him anyway.’

‘So, we don’t have a clue, basically,’ said Phillips, sounding irritated.

‘No,’ she responded tightly, ‘I’m afraid we don’t, sir.’

A silence stretched between them. ‘Are you all right, Arley? You sound very tense.’

Last chance. Tell him
.

‘It’s a tense situation, sir.’

‘Well, you were picked because you’re calm and level-headed, and it would be a great help to all of us if you didn’t forget that.’

‘I won’t.’

Phillips sighed. ‘Carry on doing what you can to locate Prior, and keep me informed of any progress, however small. No one wants a bloodbath, which may well happen if the SAS are sent in, but if the terrorists don’t let us talk to Prior, then I’m afraid it may become inevitable.’

20.02

TINA BOYD DROVE HER
car past the Dale family home as slowly as she could. There were no lights on inside, but that was to be expected. If the kidnappers were holding the family there, they wouldn’t want to advertise their presence, although Tina didn’t think they’d risk staying put with three hostages. It would be far easier to move them to an undisclosed location, just in case Arley didn’t choose to cooperate, or came here looking for them herself. She also noticed something else. None of the curtains at the front of the house had been drawn, which was the first thing you’d do if you were a kidnapper and didn’t want anyone seeing inside.

An Audi estate, which Tina presumed belonged to Arley’s husband Howard, was the only car parked in the driveway. She continued driving, checking to see if any of the cars parked on either side of the road were occupied. She didn’t think the kidnappers had the necessary resources to be keeping a watch on the house, but it paid to be thorough.

When Tina was satisfied that the street was clear, she found a parking space about thirty yards further on and got out, shivering in the cold night air. She walked back towards the Dales’ house, trying to look as natural as possible – just another commuter coming home after a late night at the office – but instead of turning into their drive, she turned into the one next door. She crept by the side of the house, ignoring the lights in the window, and tried the side gate, which was locked. Hoping there wasn’t a dog on the other side, she clambered over it and into the back garden, thankfully without the accompaniment of angry barking.

A high evergreen hedge separated the two properties, and Tina had to force her way through it like some kind of rainforest explorer, before emerging on the other side at the back of the Dales’ house. There were no curtains closed on this side either. She stayed in the shadows of the hedge for a full minute, watching for any signs of life.

Nothing and no one moved. There were no lights coming from inside to signify someone watching the TV. No sounds either. Just the distant hum of traffic and the occasional plane rumbling through the clouds overhead. Tina had been on enough surveillance jobs in her life to know when a place was empty. Human beings can’t stay still for long, even when they’re trying to.

She gave it another thirty seconds, then slowly approached the nearest window, which looked straight into an expansive kitchen diner.

Straight away she saw the body lying there. Or, more accurately, she saw a pair of legs, a pair of forearms, and half a torso lying across the chequered floor, the remainder hidden by the kitchen sink unit. A dark pool of blood had formed round the upper part of the body and the hands were dipped in it, the fingers outstretched. Tina had never seen a photo of Howard but she was certain it was him. And it was clear from the amount of blood that he’d been lying there some time.

She took a step back. This was the time to call the police. If she went inside, she’d be contaminating a crime scene, and giving herself a whole lot of trouble. It was also possible that the kids were still in the house – and if they were, they were almost certainly dead too. She could feel her mobile in her pocket, and she almost took it out to make the call, but stopped herself.

With a long sigh, she put on her gloves and retrieved the spare keys from the potting shed, where Arley had said they’d be, trying them one after the other in the kitchen door until it finally opened. As she stepped inside, she was greeted by an empty, all-pervading silence and the telltale sour smell of death – something she’d experienced too many times before, and which she’d never managed to get used to. Holding her breath, she crouched down beside the body, avoiding stepping in the blood, and felt for a pulse as a simple formality. She wasn’t surprised when there was no sign of one.

To make absolutely sure this was Arley’s husband, Tina crept into the hallway looking for family photos, which was when she saw the second body, propped up against the wall. This would be Magda, the Dale family au pair. Arley had told Tina that she’d been killed by the kidnappers, although she hadn’t mentioned that her body had been left here.

There was a professional family portrait on the opposite wall. Arley, her two teenage children, and Howard, a big bluff smiling man standing a good head taller than the others, and without doubt the corpse she’d just seen in the kitchen.

‘Jesus,’ whispered Tina in the gloom, wondering what the hell she was getting involved with here, but also feeling the kind of intense righteous anger she hadn’t experienced in a long, long time. She wanted to get the people responsible for this. She wanted to make them pay.

With a renewed sense of purpose, she searched the rest of the house, but there was no sign of the two children. Both they and the kidnappers were gone, just as she’d expected. She checked for anything that might give her some clue as to the kidnappers’ identity, or their final destination, but nothing sprang out at her.

All of which left Tina with a stark choice. The chances of her finding Arley’s children were slim in the extreme. The best course of action was to persuade Arley to tell her colleagues what was going on. But she wasn’t at all sure that Arley would. And Tina knew she was almost certainly right not to. Neither the Met nor the government would put her two children before the lives of the hostages in the Stanhope.

Tina let herself out of the house, pulling from the pocket of her jeans a fake warrant card she used sometimes for PI work.

She’d made her decision.

20.20

THIS WAS THE
dead time. The time in the middle of the operation when they were simply waiting around and guarding the hostages, counting down the hours until they were ready to make their next move.

In the ballroom, Fox was back on guard duty with Bear. They’d both just eaten some pot noodles in the satellite kitchen, during which time Bear had complained more than once about Cat’s volatility. The whole room had heard her scream when she was told what had happened to her brother, and since then the rage had been coming off her in waves, and she’d hardly spoken a word. Fox had told Bear not to worry, that as long as she didn’t go off on a one-woman hunt for the man responsible and get herself killed, everything would be OK. Bear had calmed down, but he still seemed spooked, as he had been ever since he’d found out about what happened to Leopard and Panther. Fox was more sanguine. The man responsible for their deaths was certainly dangerous but the chances were that he was hiding out in one of the rooms and would stay out of their way.

Fox was more worried about the atmosphere in the ballroom, which was tense. He could see that some of the hostages were agitated, while others seemed to be looking around for ways to escape. Clearly they were beginning to forget what had happened to some of their fellow hostages earlier when they’d made their bids for freedom.

He and Bear were sitting on chairs twenty feet apart, and well back from the hostages. Bear’s foot rested on the detonation pedal for the bomb that sat in the middle of the hostages, and Fox hoped that none of them would work out that there was no way he or Bear would detonate it, given that they were sat right in the path of any shrapnel. In fact, the bomb, like all but two of the others, was set to timer and would explode at 23.00 hours, not before. Both the pedal and the det cords were there for show only.

One of the more troublesome-looking hostages, a young stocky guy dressed like an American high school jock, caught Fox’s eye, and started to stand up.

Fox shouted at him to sit down.

The guy went down on one knee. ‘I need the toilet, badly,’ he said, his accent public school.

‘I don’t care.’

‘Come on. Cut me some slack. Please.’ There was a confidence to his voice that made some of the hostages take notice.

Fox knew a show of weakness or indecision here would be fatal. He took his time getting to his feet, then took two steps forward and very slowly put the AK-47 to his shoulder, pointing it at the young man’s head. When he spoke, his words cut across the room like a knife. ‘I’ve already shot two people downstairs. Do you think it’ll bother me if I shoot a third? Your life means absolutely nothing to me. If it means anything to you, then keep still and shut up. Understand?’

The hostage nodded, every ounce of confidence now gone.

‘Good. That goes for the rest of you too. Stay silent and you stay alive.’

As Fox sat down, Bear gave him a supportive nod. Bear had always looked to Fox for leadership, ever since he’d served under him in the army. Not for the first time, Fox wondered whether Bear ever resented the fact that he’d been disfigured for life while Fox – who should, by rights, have been blown to pieces – had escaped the IED largely unscathed. If he did, then he hid it very well.

Fox took a brief look over his shoulder towards the kitchen where Wolf and Cat were. God knows what they were doing in there, but as long as it wasn’t anything stupid, like starting a hunt for their fugitive, he didn’t mind. In the meantime, he had something else he had to do.

Still keeping a firm grip on his rifle, he slid the pack from his back and, as casually as possible, removed his laptop. He wanted to check that the individual he’d left a message for earlier in the drafts section of the hotmail account had received it and responded with a message of his own.

But when he tried to go online, the computer didn’t respond. He tried again, keeping his face impassive, but it definitely wasn’t working.

The bastards had cut them off.

This was a real problem. He wasn’t so worried about his own private message. He knew it was there, so a response was less important. However, one of the key components of their plan was knowing where and when the security forces would launch their attack. This information was also going to be provided through the drafts section of a separate hotmail account so that it couldn’t be read by the authorities. But if they didn’t have an internet connection, they wouldn’t get it, and they’d lose a key advantage.

He tried one more time, got the same result, and replaced the laptop in the backpack as he got to his feet.

Bear gave him a questioning look. ‘Is there a problem?’ he whispered as Fox crouched down next to him.

Fox knew there was no point spooking him further. ‘I just need to see Wolf quickly. I’ll be back in a minute.’ And then louder, so the hostages could hear, he said: ‘Anyone moves, put a hole in them.’

He turned and walked quickly towards the kitchen, knowing that they had to get the internet back on, and fast.

Even if it meant killing a hostage in front of the world’s cameras to make the authorities act.

‘DID YOU MANAGE
to get the insulin pens?’ Abby asked groggily. She looked tired but in OK shape, and was drinking from a bottle of water while Ethan knelt beside her, holding her hand.

‘I’m afraid they weren’t there,’ said Scope, shutting the door behind him and putting the chair back against it.

‘But they were in my black handbag by the side of the bed. I’m sure of it.’

‘Your handbag was on the floor, and it looked like someone had been through it.’

‘Who?’

‘I’m guessing one of the terrorists. He was probably looking for clues about who killed his friends.’

A wave of panic crossed Abby’s face, and Scope could see that Ethan was scared too.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll sort something out.’

‘What, though? This siege looks like it’s going to go on a ways longer yet, and I’m going to need that insulin soon, as well as something to eat, otherwise my blood sugar levels are going to start getting way too high.’