have understood only too well how quickly a situation could escalate once there were fatalities. As a mother, she had more than just her own life to worry about. He remembered what Donnelly had just said about Chivers, and thought he could understand why Detective Sergeant Helen Weeks might have decided to say nothing.
Whatever the reason, now Thorne had done the same thing and kept the fact of a hostage’s death from those running the operation. One more black mark against him, but it could not make things any blacker.
What else could he do?
Akhtar’s kicking off a bit…
Now, Thorne understood all too clearly that Javed Akhtar was not running out of patience. It had already been exhausted. The picture of Stephen Mitchell’s body had been a simple enough message and one meant only for him.
Get a move on.
He reached the car and yanked open the passenger door. ‘Let’s go.’
McCarthy looked up at him. His face was pale and clammy under the sickly interior light. ‘You said it was too early before. You said-’
‘That was before,’ Thorne said. ‘And I’ve never been particularly fashionable.’
SIXTY-ONE
Donnelly had taken Thorne’s call in the playground, shivering beneath a Met Police umbrella and helping himself to some slightly stale fruit cake from Teapot One as they had talked. Now, he walked quickly back to the TSU truck to relay Thorne’s news. If they could contain the situation, keep the lid on things inside the newsagent’s for just another couple of hours, then they might well see the result they all wanted before knocking-off time.
As soon as he climbed up into the truck, he could see that he had missed something.
‘What?’ he said.
Pascoe was pale, slumped in a chair. The two TSU technicians were looking at the floor. Chivers shook his head and said, ‘Jesus.’
‘I didn’t think about it,’ Pascoe said. ‘It never even occurred to me.’
‘ What? ’ Donnelly asked again.
‘She kept saying everything was fine.’ Pascoe looked from Donnelly to Chivers. ‘Every time I asked, she told me they were all doing fine. You heard.’
The sounds of the television in Akhtar’s storeroom were still coming through the speakers. Donnelly asked the technicians to lower the volume a little, then stepped across to Sue Pascoe. ‘Exactly what didn’t you think about, Sue? What never occurred to you?’
She looked at him.
The male technician – Yates – cleared his throat. ‘Well, it was Annette who pointed it out.’ He gestured towards the female technician sitting next to him; whip-thin with spiky black hair coloured red at the tips. He tentatively laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘It was her idea, really.’
His colleague nodded and spoke quietly. ‘I was just saying that we’ve been monitoring the conversations in there for about four hours now, and yes I know that the television’s been on for a lot of the time and that nobody’s said a great deal. It’s just that in all that time we haven’t heard anything from the second hostage. From Mr Mitchell.’
‘Not a peep,’ Yates said.
Donnelly stared at the speakers for a few seconds, as though willing Stephen Mitchell’s voice to suddenly burst from them. ‘Oh, Christ.’ He turned and looked at Chivers.
‘DS Weeks assured us that everything in there was fine.’ Pascoe sounded as though she was talking to herself. ‘Repeatedly.’
‘You told us it was fine,’ Donnelly said.
‘Because I believed that it was.’
‘All that guff about her voice being normal and no signs of coercion. “There isn’t a problem,” you said. That was your professional opinion, if I remember rightly.’
‘That’s the way I remember it, too,’ Chivers said.
Pascoe looked as though the breath had been punched from her. ‘This wasn’t just me,’ she stammered. ‘Nobody else seemed too concerned about Mitchell.’ She stood up, fumbling to straighten her jacket. ‘It was not just me… ’
Donnelly reached for a headset and threw it at Pascoe.
‘Call her.’
SIXTY-TWO
Helen had been unable to say anything, to do anything but watch, when Akhtar had walked calmly away into the shop with her phone.
Does this have a camera on it?
She had fought to control her breathing as she thought about what he might be taking a picture of, struggled that little bit harder as she considered what he might be thinking of doing with such a photo. After a minute or so, she had finally managed to catch her breath and hold it. She had almost convinced herself she was being ridiculous, when the smell hit her and she knew that she had been right to worry.
He had torn open the bags.
Something like this had been coming for the last few hours, the signs had been clear enough. Or might have been, if she had been able to think clearly and focus for five minutes, if she had not been in such a state herself.
She suddenly remembered something Paul used to say. An expression he’d picked up somewhere.
Up and down like a whore’s drawers.
He’d said it a lot – always in that comedy ‘cockney wanker’ voice he was so fond of – those first few months she’d been carrying Alfie. When the hormone fairy arrived and the mood swings really kicked in.
She felt tears building and held her breath again, refused to let them rise.
She needed to concentrate…
It had been coming. Akhtar’s hand on the gun, cradling it, the talk about being ‘fobbed off’. Being ‘ignored’. She had asked him for tea and he had snapped at her; her well-being or comfort no longer of any concern, no longer something worth worrying about. Not by him, at any rate.
And now he had done something stupid. Worse than stupid.
When he had finally come back in, apologising for the stink and squirting that air-freshener around, there had been this look on his face. Like he’d accomplished something. Triumphant, almost.
‘There,’ he had said. ‘ There ’, like ‘that’ll show them’ or ‘now we’ll see who gets fobbed off’ and more than anything Helen had wanted to strike out hard and smash and claw at his face. To tear the smirk off and demand to know what the fuck he thought he was doing.
At that moment, she knew that she could hurt him.
She looked across at him. Sitting in his chair, his hand was on the revolver in his lap still, but his eyes were fixed happily on the television screen, as though he had done no more than simply cause a little mischief. Put the cat among the pigeons.
Helen knew that if Akhtar had sent a picture of Stephen Mitchell to anyone on the outside, there might not even be time to finish the programme he was watching.
She inhaled through her nose, so she would not have to taste it. The smell was still fierce, the cheap air- freshener no more than a top note, almost as sickening as the stench it was failing to mask. She breathed it in, because she had to.
Rotten meat and lemons.
