and cleared a layer of muck and moss off the registration plate. The number was the one he’d banked on finding: VPL 294S. This was Britt Strand’s car, off the road since 1988.
“Give me more light, someone,” he demanded, squeezing between the wall and the side of the car, brushing away leaf mold and dust that must have been falling through holes in the garage roof for years. Julie’s flashlight gave him a better view.
“There’s damage to the nearside wing, you see?” he said. “It’s badly dented here. Is the other side okay?”
Someone shone a torch over it and said, “There’s nothing wrong with this side.”
“Well, this headlamp is smashed and the bumper is out of alignment,” Diamond went on. “The car definitely hit something.” He looked up at Julie. “That’s it, then. How long have we got?”
She glanced at her watch. “To midnight? Just under four hours.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Emerging from sleep, Samantha felt warm air against her face. It was a pleasant sensation considering how cold the rest of her body had become-pleasant until she began to suspect that the warmth she could feel was human breath. She could actually hear the sharp intake of air and the slow exhaling. Horrified, she opened her eyes and saw nothing. The place was steeped in darkness. Impossible to see who the breather was, or how close. But she wasn’t mistaken. The quiet, rhythmical rasp of air continued.
She tried turning away and found that she couldn’t. She was tied, hand and foot. She remembered why, and where she was. After she had tried to attract attention on the hotel balcony and Mountjoy had wrestled her to the floor, he had dragged her inside and trussed her even more tightly. Enraged, he had turned savage, grunting with the effort of tightening each knot in the flex. This time he’d used a strip of adhesive to gag her. Then he’d left her on the floor, and she’d lain there expecting to be kicked or beaten. She was still naked from the waist up.
But having restrained her, he’d gone away. Some time afterward, he must have slung a blanket over her.
Now, this silent approach. This was the first time he had crept up on her like this. Up to now he had respected her- if being kept a prisoner could be termed respect. He’d made no sexual advance, never deliberately laid hands on the no-go parts of her body.
The breathing quickened.
She tensed.
She felt his hand on her shoulder.
He spoke: “You awake?”
She couldn’t answer through the gag and wouldn’t have known what to say anyway.
“Nod your head.”
She obeyed. Could he have come as close as this just to check that she was still breathing?
He started to peel the adhesive from her mouth, one hand against her cheek to hold her face steady. He warned her, “You scream and you get no food.”
Her face stung. She took a huge gulp of air. The taste in her mouth was foul.
He untied her hands and she felt something being put into them: a banana. She unpeeled it. She was ravenous.
He said, “I’ve been watching them down there. Yes, they know we’re here, thanks to your antics. They’ve stopped the traffic from coming through and they’ve got people on the roofs of all the buildings.”
Secretly she rejoiced. Someone must have seen her waving the T-shirt. She gulped the banana in three pieces. Her lips were numb where the gag had been. Dabbing at them gently with the tips of her fingers, she said as inoffensively as she was able, “What’s going to happen, then?”
He said, “How would I know?”
“What do you expect?”
“I’ll tell you what I expect,” he said with bitterness. “I expect that fatso detective to get me the justice he owes me. Where is he? I don’t see him down in the street.”
The frenzied note in his voice alarmed her. All she could do was try and humor him, praying that nothing the police did would tip him over the edge into panic. Somewhere he still had a gun.
She thought of her father and sent up a prayer that he would not be directing the police operation. Daddy wasn’t capable of being calm and dispassionate. He wouldn’t know how to bring a siege to a peaceful end.
Mountjoy said, “We’re going to have to move.”
“Again?”
He must have heard the despair in her voice because he told her, “Not to another place. Just inside the building. Keep them guessing.”
“Where can we go, then?”
“Somewhere more secure, where they can’t surprise us. While you were sleeping I was looking around. Want a drink?”
She murmured a positive response. She would have done so even if she had not been thirsty. Any offer of food or drink had to be encouraged.
He put a can of something into her hand. She felt for the ring-pull, but her fingers were too numb to lift it. She told him she couldn’t open it and he did the job for her.
“I don’t kid myself,” he confided. “They’re trained for this. Sieges, I mean. They have the latest surveillance techniques. Listening devices. They could be picking up the words I’m speaking to you now.” As if alarmed by his own conclusion, he went silent for a time.
She took some of the drink.
He resumed, “This old building isn’t a fortress. There are ways they can get up here, right up here to the top without using the main stairs. There’s an external fire escape round the back and there are back stairs that link up with the cellars. Or they could climb up the balconies at the front. They could use a crane, or a helicopter.”
Samantha judged it sensible to say nothing while he was talking in this vein. In her mind she was replaying the ending of sieges she’d seen on television, when tear gas was used and special troops went in wearing masks and protective suits.
Mountjoy said with a touch more confidence, “What holds them up is that they don’t know which room we’re in.” He paused, and she was conscious once more of the sharp rise and fall of his breathing. “Do you know where we are right now.”
Of course she knew. The only thing she didn’t know was how to answer a question like that. “Somewhere near the top?”
“Couldn’t get much higher if we tried,” he said. “If you stood down there in the street and looked up at the front, this is the bit at the left-hand end, with the twin gables. Have you ever looked up at the old hotel?”
“Not often,” she said truthfully.
“Because then you’d know where I’m going to take you. It’s at the opposite end. Shaped like a turret, with battlements. That really is the highest point. The only way into it is up a spiral staircase. They can send up anyone they like and I can hold them off with my gun. And in case you were wondering, it doesn’t have a balcony. Get up.”
He switched on a torch and she saw that he had the gun in his other hand. He ordered her to pick up the pieces of flex and wrap the blanket around her shoulders. She asked if she could first put on her T-shirt, which she found she had been using as a pillow, and he gave his consent. She reached for her violin case; she wasn’t going to leave it here. Then she pulled the blanket across her back.
They left the room and crept along a corridor. Thinking that it was a vital opportunity to get her bearings, she looked about her, but with little advantage, because he kept the torch beam directed low, at a spot near her feet. At the end of the corridor he told her to turn right and then immediately left, where the torch picked out the first steps of the spiral staircase.
Climbing the stairs, she was overwhelmed by despair. What he had said was absolutely right. The turret room was going to be impregnable. No one could surprise them. He could command the one doorway with his gun.
