‘I’m so angry about what happened,’ Tash said fiercely. ‘To see Jean — floating like that, just as he left her. Covered up. God only knows whether she drowned or was poisoned by the sheep dip. How could he do that to his own wife? It shows you what he’s like.’
‘Sure, but leave it to us now, okay?’ Hannah squeezed the emotion out of her voice. ‘We’ll deal with him.’
‘These people in the — the ARVs. If he fires at them, will they try to cripple him? Shoot him in the legs?’
‘It won’t come to that,’ Hannah said.
‘But if it does?’
‘The firearms officers would only fire in self-defence.’
‘To wound him?’
‘No,’ Hannah said. ‘If they do fire, it’s because life is in imminent jeopardy. When these guys shoot, they shoot to kill.’
Daniel rejoined the throng as a couple of young constables were setting up a cordon at the end of the lane that led to the farm. Another police car had just driven through. The officers stonewalled every question and shooed the onlookers back down the road. In the absence of authoritative information about what was happening, the elderly walker was proving to be a real know-all. He announced in strident tones that the latest arrival was a second armed response vehicle.
‘Looks just like an ordinary traffic car to me,’ the cyclist protested.
‘They keep their weapons locked in the boot,’ the smart-alec informed him. ‘My daughter-in-law works for the police in Carlisle. Some of her stories would make your hair curl, I promise you. Joe Public doesn’t know the half of it, I can tell you that for nothing. Not the bloody half of it.’
‘Armed police,’ the officer shouted into a loudhailer. ‘Mr Allardyce, we have the farm surrounded. Come out of the house slowly and put your weapon on the ground.’
Silence. Tom Allardyce evidently wasn’t in the mood to give himself up for arrest. He was downstairs now, stationed at a window close to the main doorway. Hannah knew there were two contrasting interpretations of his change of position. One, he was preparing to wave the white flag. Two, he was steeling himself to come out in a blaze of gunfire.
Hannah had paused in her briefing of the negotiator, a bald DCI whom she’d never met before. He spoke in a Lowland monotone and was obviously well-suited to his job. Ben had been right, she thought. Ten minutes talking to this man and you’d be bored into submission.
At least now she could see the farmhouse. They were crouching behind the stone wall on the other side of the path from the barn. Nick had joined her but Tash Dumelow was safely back in the Hall. So far as Hannah could see, everything was in place for the conduct of a containment situation. The first priority was to keep the lid on everything; no need for shock and awe. Time was on their side, thank God. If Allardyce had emerged from the house before backup arrived, Hannah would have been at his mercy. At least the arrival of four authorised firearms officers, together with a couple of dog patrols, had pretty much boxed off that risk. Hannah would never want to argue with the huge glowering Alsatians, but the sight of the AFOs’ guns was heart-stopping. Each man was built like a prop forward, each carried serious weaponry: a Glock 9 mm. machine pistol and a Hechler and Koch carbine machine gun.
Somewhere inside the farmhouse, Allardyce’s collie started barking. Outside, the AFOs’ radios were crackling. The men had spaced themselves out around the farmhouse, covering each aspect of the scene as best they could. Hannah saw that they were keeping a wary eye on arcs of fire. For good reason: no matter how long you practised your skills in video-shoots, nothing could prepare you one hundred per cent for the reality of armed response. At least as scary as the unknown quantity inside the house was the possibility of one AFO firing towards another.
‘Let’s see if we can put a lid on it.’ A shaft of sunlight glinted on the top of the negotiator’s scalp. ‘Talk him out.’
‘Even at the best of times, Tom Allardyce wasn’t a smooth conversationalist,’ she said. ‘His wife’s dead now. Presumably he’s thinking he has nothing to lose.’
‘Everyone has something to lose.’ It sounded like something the negotiator had read in a manual.
Hannah held her tongue, but she wasn’t convinced.
As the sun slipped over the horizon, the crowd kept growing. A team had arrived from regional television and a young reporter with Morticia Addams hair and a winsome smile was conducting an impromptu vox pop. An opportunistic snack van, usually to be found selling burgers and hot drinks from a lay-by on the Whitmell road, was doing terrific business. Rumours were fluttering around like leaves in a gale. The excitable cyclist assured Daniel that Tom Allardyce had barricaded himself in the house after murdering his wife and taking the Dumelows hostage.
When Daniel called Miranda on his mobile to let her know why he hadn’t returned from his errand, she decided to come and take a look for herself. She turned up equipped with Mars Bars and a thermos flask.
‘It’s just like being back in London,’ she said gleefully as a policeman waved away a boy who had approached the cordon for a dare.
Daniel gazed across the fields. Overhead, a helicopter circled; its din was deafening. As it banked, he heard sheep bleating in panic. On the ground, the police were setting up lights in the vicinity of the farmhouse.
‘You could say that.’
‘I mean, I know we wanted to get away from it all, but I suppose I never realised how quiet the countryside is.’
Daniel couldn’t think of an answer that didn’t trouble him.
‘Jesus,’ Nick Lowther breathed. ‘He’s coming out.’
‘Let me see.’ Hannah pushed past him and fixed her eyes on the farmhouse. Her palms were sweaty. She could see the front door opening.
‘Armed police!’ the senior AFO screamed. ‘Come out and put your weapon on the ground!’
Hannah could see Tom Allardyce, framed in the doorway. In his hand was a rifle. She was too far away to see the look in his eyes, but his body language wasn’t encouraging. He was rocking back and forth on his heels like a B-movie gunslinger.
‘Armed police! You are surrounded!’
Allardyce shut the door behind him. The unseen collie barked again, as if in warning. The farmer lifted his rifle, then brought it down again. He began to move, as if in a dream.
‘Armed police!’ Hannah could hear the AFO’s desperation. He sounded young. This might be his very first containment. ‘Drop your weapon!’
Allardyce kept walking. He seemed to be looking around, as if in search of a target.
Hannah retreated behind the wall. She was aware of Nick’s warmth behind her, she could hear his breathing quicken.
‘The stupid bastard. Surely he must realise…’
‘Don’t go any further! Armed police! If you move forward, we will shoot!’
For a long, terrible second there was silence. Hannah held her breath.
And then she heard machine gun fire.
Chapter Twenty-Two
‘Suicide by cop,’ Hannah said. ‘A fashionable way to die these days.’
‘I read up about it.’ Daniel savoured his last mouthful of lasagne. ‘Allardyce matches the profile. People who provoke armed police officers to kill them are usually white males of a certain age who have recently suffered an emotional trauma. And if murdering your wife doesn’t qualify as an emotional trauma, what does?’
She pushed her plate aside and leaned across the mahogany table. ‘You’re always very well informed, aren’t you?’
Off duty this evening, she was wearing a white fitted shirt and black trousers. Nothing glitzy, that wasn’t her style. They were nearing the end of dinner in a hot and crowded Italian restaurant in Kendal. There was nothing furtive or secret about their meal together; he’d even asked Miranda if she wanted to come along and be
