“They’re somewhere on the fifth or sixth floor. They moved from the place where they were sighted. We’ve occupied floors one to four.”
Diamond erupted at this. “You sent men in? Jesus Christ, you gave me your word that you wouldn’t storm the building.”
Farr-Jones checked him curtly, “Don’t over dramatize. We haven’t stormed the place. We made an orderly move. That was a decision I took an hour ago.”
“Armed men?”
“Well, I wouldn’t send them in with batons and shields when the fellow has a handgun.”
“But you gave me an undertaking. I had until midnight to talk him down, you said. You’d stand off until midnight. You bloody agreed!”
Farr-Jones thrust a finger at Diamond. “Don’t tangle with me, Diamond. This is a police operation and I’m responsible, here, on the spot, taking stock from minute to minute and giving the orders. You weren’t anywhere about, and you haven’t been in touch.”
“What exactly are these orders?” Diamond asked, appalled at the potential for a blood bath.
“To seal every possible escape route and advance as high up the stairs as they can without personal risk.”
Tott did his best to take out some of the sting. “We’re working from maps the City Council have supplied. The problem is that the building is a honeycomb. Most of the rooms on the top floors have access to roof spaces. The plumbing is extraordinary. They say it’s like the engine room of a battleship up there.”
“Where’s Warrilow?” Diamond asked, as a disquieting thought surfaced.
Farr-Jones said firmly, “Commander Warrilow is directing the team inside the hotel. We’re in radiophonic communication.”
It was as dire as he had feared. Warrilow could justify any action by claiming he was in the firing line. “Tell him I’m coming in right away and order him to put the action on hold.”
“You’ve got some neck, Diamond.”
He kept control, just. “What I’ve got, Mr. Farr-Jones, is what I promised: the means to bring this siege to an end. I’m ready to talk to Mountjoy, only not with gunmen moving in for a shot.”
“What are you saying-that something has turned up, something relevant to the case?”
“Nothing turned up,” muttered Diamond, his distaste for the words made clear. “We turned it up, Julie Hargreaves and I, through solid detective work. We can prove that Mountjoy didn’t murder Britt Strand.”
Tott clenched his fist and said, “Nice work.”
The Chief Constable was less charitable. “Who the devil did murder her, then?”
If he thought he was entitled to be handed the name on a platter, he was disappointed.
Diamond said rigidly, “We’re dealing with the siege. Would you tell Commander Warrilow I’m coming in and order him to pull back his men to the third floor? I won’t talk to Mountjoy under armed threat.”
“You don’t seem to understand,” said Farr-Jones. “This is a high-risk incident.”
“It is now.”
“We have men deployed all over the building.”
“Yes, in disregard of the promise I was given,” said Diamond, and then played his highest card. “Are you dispensing with my services, Chief Constable? Is it down to Warrilow to end the siege in a shoot-out?”
Tott exclaimed, “God forbid-no!”
Farr-Jones took refuge in silence.
“I’d like to have that confirmed,” Diamond pressed him. “Strictly off the record, as our friends out there express it.”
The allusion to the press struck home. There was a sharp intake of breath. Then Farr-Jones turned to the radio operator and said, “Get Mr. Warrilow for me.”
Diamond didn’t wait to hear the outcome. He headed straight for the front of the hotel, ignoring the press people who trotted beside him, thrusting microphones at his face and badgering him with questions all the way. At the top of the flight of stone steps under the white, wrought-iron portico, he was waved inside by the constable standing guard.
The once-gracious entrance hall that Diamond was seeing for the first time was ungraciously lit by the striplights installed during the time the civil service had occupied the hotel. There were armed men in combat suits at the foot of a fine mahogany staircase that must once have been carpeted and now was fitted with lino treads and metal strips. To the right was a modern-looking counter normally occupied by the security firm who patrolled the hotel. Warrilow stepped from behind it like the bell captain, his deportment proclaiming that he was the man in charge.
“I suppose the lift isn’t working?” Diamond cut through any tedious preliminaries.
Warrilow astutely decided that obstruction wasn’t the best way to deal with this charging rhino. “If you’re serious about wanting to go up, you’ll be forced to use the stairs. I hope you’re in good shape.”
“And I hope the Chief Constable made himself clear,” Diamond stated firmly. “I’m not going up there with guns in support and I don’t want to be interrupted, however long it takes. My brief is to talk him down, and I want his trust.”
Warrilow threw in a spanner. “Do you happen to know where he is?” He asked the question as if he, personally, would give anything to know.
“Don’t you?”
“It’s far from clear. We believe he moved out of that room under the gables.”
“The room with the balcony, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Taking the girl with him?”
“We assume so. We’re getting no sound from that end of the building.”
“Where else would they have gone? Do you have plans?”
With a world-weary manner, as if going through the motions of cooperating with an awkward hotel guest, Warrilow led him to the desk, picked up a sheaf of papers and handed them across. Diamond leafed through them. The fifth floor, where Samantha had been sighted on the balcony, was a V-shape, with some twenty-five rooms divided by a corridor. One side overlooked Orange Grove, the other Grand Parade and Pulteney Weir. The point of the V ended in a heptagonal shape that he took to be the base of the turret that dominated the eastern end of the hotel facade. “I reckon this is where they went,” he said.
“I doubt it,” commented Warrilow, taking the plans and flicking over to the sheet that showed the sixth floor. “Look, the turret goes up to another level and is quite cut off. It’s partitioned into three rooms, each with just the one door. They’d be trapped rats in there.”
“Access is by a spiral staircase,” Diamond pondered aloud, ignoring what had just been said. “He could defend that. And this looks like another set of stairs to the roof. A fire escape, by the look of it. If he kept the girl tied up in one of the rooms, he could stand here”-he touched the point on the plan-“and have a view of the fire escape and the spiral staircase at the same time.”
“He’d still be trapped,” Warrilow insisted. “I have men on the roof.”
Diamond took a sharp breath. “How did they get up there?”
“The exterior fire escape at the back of the building.”
“What are their orders?”
“They’re patrolling the roof. They won’t go in until I radio them. It’s under tight control, Diamond. When Mount-joy understands that there’s no way out wherever he is, he’ll surrender peacefully. He’d better.”
“I’ll tell him,” Diamond said in a quiet, implacable tone.
“You still want to do this?”
It wasn’t worthy of an answer. He put down the plans and looked about him.
“What now?” Warrilow asked. “A gun?”
He shook his head.
“You’ll need one. Are you armed?”
He said, “A bat phone.”
“What?”
“Personal radio. Isn’t that what you call them these days?”
