this mood. ‘Fair enough,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a think about it.’
‘Well, think fast.’
‘Calm down, mate, I’ve got the message.’ Hendricks opened his beer. ‘You concentrate on who and why, all right?’ He took a swig. ‘I’ll try and figure out how.’
When Hendricks had gone, Thorne sat down at his laptop and saw that an email had arrived from Ian McCarthy. The doctor apologised for not getting the information Thorne had asked for to him sooner. Said that he had been swamped all afternoon. He gave him the name of the prison hospital officer who had been suspended, an address in Potters Bar. He told him that, having checked in the DDA book, he could confirm that sixty Tramadol tablets had been stolen from the dispensary the day after Amin Akhtar had been admitted.
Thorne closed the laptop and heard himself say, ‘That’s very bloody convenient.’
He called the RVP.
Donnelly told him everything there was quiet. That the overnight team would be coming on at 11.30 and that Pascoe had scheduled another call to the newsagent’s in an hour, just before the handover.
The overnight team…
A fresh set of officers was vital of course, Thorne understood that. A new SIO, a wide-awake hostage negotiator and, crucially, a unit of firearms officers with eight hours’ rest behind them. He hoped that the man or woman leading them was a little less excitable than Chivers.
‘We’ll let you know how it goes,’ Donnelly said. ‘Now get some sleep. I’m certainly going to.’
Thorne put Red Headed Stranger on again, turned out the lights and took his friend’s place on the sofa. He held his phone to his chest and closed his eyes. The music – sparse and simple – curled around fragments of the day’s conversations; the pictures that bloomed and swam as he tried and failed to take Donnelly’s advice.
The catch in Helen Weeks’ voice.
The tears on Antoine Daniels’ face.
The blood caked around a dead boy’s mouth…
And, as those images finally began to blur and blacken, and the tiredness gained sway, Willie Nelson whispered to him about a man who was ‘wild in his sorrow’ and Thorne remembered his promise to Amin Akhtar’s father.
TWENTY-TWO
Helen watched as Akhtar moved boxes and stacked them on top of pallets that were piled up against one another. Made some space. He opened a low cupboard and hauled out a green canvas camp bed which he unfolded and pushed against the wall, then went back and took out a couple of ratty-looking cushions. He smacked the dust from them and held them up for examination.
‘We should all try and get a little sleep,’ he said. He tossed the cushions on to the floor in front of Helen and Mitchell. ‘I’m sorry you can’t be more comfortable, but we will have to make do.’
Helen reached for the cushion and nodded towards the camp bed, six or seven feet away. ‘You’ve slept in here before then?’
‘Oh yes, many nights,’ Akhtar said. ‘The shop was broken into three times in one month. Three times!’ He pointed. ‘They smashed straight through that door, took all my stock, everything.’
‘You were insured though, right?’
He shook his head. ‘I lost thirty thousand pounds’ worth of cigarettes in one go and the insurance company refused to pay a penny, because they said I should have had a proper alarm.’ He sat down on the edge of the camp bed. ‘Bloody thieves. Insurance companies, banks, all of them.’
Helen turned to Mitchell. ‘Banks? What have you got to say to that, Stephen?’
Mitchell smiled weakly and said, ‘No comment.’ He was looking exhausted suddenly.
‘So I slept in here for weeks in case they came back.’ He patted the grubby canvas next to him. ‘It was perfectly comfortable, but then Nadira told me to come home and stop being silly.’
‘I didn’t know that was your wife’s name,’ Helen said.
He nodded. ‘Nadira, yes. It means “One who is rare and hard to find”. Like a diamond or something, you know?’ His hand bounced nervously against his knee. ‘It’s a good name for her… ’
Helen had spoken to Akhtar’s wife on many occasions when he was not in the shop. She had been shy and soft-spoken and had not smiled as much as her husband. ‘What will she be thinking about all this, Javed?’
Akhtar looked at her.
‘Will she be proud, do you reckon? Or ashamed?’
She waited, but Akhtar showed no desire to answer her question. She reached for the cushion and tucked it behind her head. It smelled of mould and mice. Seeing that Mitchell had not moved to retrieve his own cushion, she leaned forward to pick it up and held it towards him. After a few seconds he bowed his head and, without a word, she gently tucked the cushion behind it, holding it in position until he leaned back.
‘Here you go. That’s better… ’ There was no noise, just the smallest of shudders across Stephen Mitchell’s shoulders, but Helen could tell that he had begun to cry again.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘Don’t be silly.’
They sat for a few minutes, still and silent, until Helen could no longer ignore the pressure in her bladder. She told Akhtar that she was sorry and nodded towards the toilet door.
Akhtar stood and picked up the gun from the desk. As he reached for the key to the handcuffs, he said, ‘My wife understands why this needs to be done, and she will not judge me. Nadira will not condemn me for this.’
Sue Pascoe sipped from a styrofoam cup of strong coffee. She would be heading home in half an hour or so, after putting in her final call of the shift to Helen Weeks, but wanted to make sure she was on her toes for the remaining time until she was relieved.
There was no movement on any of the monitors, but the phone remained hot in her hand.
She could not help wondering who would be replacing her overnight and if they would be better qualified for the job than she was. Someone who had been to Virginia, maybe. She had applied months before to attend the Advanced Hostage Negotiation course at the FBI Academy at Quantico.
She was still waiting to hear about a vacancy.
The buzz had kicked in from the moment she had received the call first thing and had not gone away. She relished the coppery kick of the adrenalin that coffee could not wash from her mouth; the rush that came from doing something she knew she was cut out for. Those moments when it was just her voice and the hostage taker’s. When the success of the operation was down to her and nobody else.
Certainly not to the likes of Chivers anyway. Not the sort of tosser who thought women did not really belong in high-pressure situations. Who would talk at you instead of to you, then still try it on after work given half a chance. Who still called female officers ‘plonks’ when they weren’t listening.
Nine out of ten hostage situations were resolved through negotiation, she told herself for the umpteenth time.
By people like her.
Why on earth was she worrying about how well qualified she or anybody else was? She knew her superiors thought well of her and that her record was as good as anyone’s. Other negotiators were busy being assigned to talk nutters down off car-park roofs and only the best in the field got called in when weapons were involved.
‘About ten minutes, Sue?’
Donnelly was pulling out the chair next to her. She looked up at him and nodded. For a second she considered asking him who would be taking her place overnight, but thought better of it. Then, when she was sure he wasn’t looking, she lowered the phone and wiped it and her palm against her trouser leg.
As she and Donnelly began a pre-call briefing, Pascoe chided herself again for those fleeting moments of insecurity. She had done a good job, she told herself, had acted and re acted as per all her training. Most importantly of all, the hostages remained safe.
Donnelly talked and she nodded.
As long as they were still safe by the time she walked out of that school hall at the end of her shift, she could
