life had turned out. He wished he’d found her contact details so he could ask some of the questions he so desperately wanted answered before he went to his grave.
‘Please, this is your last chance to come out of the rooms.’ The manager’s voice was coming back down the corridor, loud and clear. And getting closer.
Martin remained absolutely still. There was no way he was going out. He suddenly felt brave. Braver than he’d felt in all his adult life. Even more so than on that day when he received the news about the spread of the cancer, when he’d held himself together so well.
He could hear muffled voices right outside the door.
And then it began to open, and he could hear movement.
God, they were inside his room.
He held his breath. But the wine, the stress and the ever-present cancer were making him feel nauseous.
With his eyes tightly shut, he felt rather than heard the man stop at the end of the bed, and he knew he’d been seen.
He heard the sound of a gun being cocked, loud in the silence of the room, and he gritted his teeth, waiting for it all to be over.
‘Open your eyes.’
The words were delivered calmly in an eastern European accent that, for some reason, didn’t sound quite right. Martin gasped and looked up into the eyes of a masked man in a balaclava and dark overalls, pointing a rifle down at him.
The man turned towards the door. ‘See, I told you there’d be more of them hiding.’
‘Kill him,’ ordered a voice in a foreign accent, its tone terrifyingly casual, as if he, Martin Dalston – a man who’d lived, loved, had children and fought against a terrible illness – was completely worthless. Someone – something – simply to be disposed of as quickly and efficiently as possible.
But the gunman didn’t fire. Instead, Martin could see him watching him beneath the mask.
‘We need more hostages,’ said the gunman. ‘And if we shoot too many guests, we’ll make the security forces jumpy.’
‘As you wish,’ grunted the other man dismissively.
The gunman flicked his gun upwards and Martin got to his feet unsteadily, unsure whether to feel relief, gloom or terror.
He could now see the other gunman. He was small and dark, heavily built, also dressed in black. Beside him was the hotel manager. She was tall and pretty, with blonde hair and a kind face. She was staring, horrified, at the noose hanging from the picture hook.
Their eyes met briefly, and Martin experienced a deep sense of humiliation as his carefully made and deeply personal plans were exposed to the world.
And then he was being pushed into the corridor along with the manager and maybe a dozen guests of varying ages, including the crying child, who was no more than ten. There were four gunmen in all, all masked, and the leader – the man who’d ordered his killing – didn’t look happy at all.
‘There must be more people on this floor,’ he snapped, grabbing the manager and pointing his gun at her.
‘Most of the rooms are taken,’ she answered quickly, ‘but it doesn’t mean that they’re occupied. A lot of our guests will be out.’
‘There should be more.’ The leader turned to two of the other gunmen, one of whom was Armin. ‘You have your key cards. Clear the rooms one by one. Take people alive unless they resist. If they try to fight back, kill them.’
He turned away and, as the little girl’s sobs grew louder, began herding the rest of them towards the exit doors.
Twenty-seven
FOR MORE THAN ten minutes after leaving the suite on the top floor of the Stanhope Scope had tried to get out of the building. The lifts were all out of order, and when he’d started down the fire exit stairs he’d run into one of the hotel staff, a room service waiter, coming the other way. The kid had hurriedly told him that there was some sort of terrorist attack going on. He didn’t have too many details, other than that he’d seen some dead bodies and at least two men with assault rifles.
Just my luck, Scope had thought. To get caught up in the middle of a major incident and trapped in a place I have no choice but to get the hell out of. But he’d learned long ago that there was no point complaining about the hand you’ve been dealt. You just had to play it.
The kid had said he was going up to the restaurant on the ninth floor, which was currently closed, where apparently there were some good hiding places. He’d suggested Scope join him, but Scope had declined, figuring he’d take his chances. But he’d only got a couple of floors down when he’d heard a burst of automatic gunfire coming from somewhere in the belly of the building, followed a few seconds later by people coming up the staircase far below. At that point he’d decided that, given that he was only armed with a knife, maybe discretion was the better part of valour. At least until he knew what he was up against.
He’d returned to the suite and put on the TV. Sure enough, Sky News was showing live footage of the front of the hotel, and the scrolling headline was reporting the presence of armed men inside and gunfire coming from the main lobby. There were also reports of bombs having gone off in two locations in London, and that a full-scale evacuation of the whole public transport system was under way. It sounded as if it had all been going on while Scope was up in the suite, but so far details were still pretty sketchy.
The point was, he was trapped. And the bodies in the suite were already beginning to smell. He thought about his options for a couple of minutes, before concluding that he only had two: stay where he was and sit it out until the cavalry arrived, or try to make a break for it.
Scope didn’t have much experience of how the police worked in scenarios like this. It was possible, of course, that they’d send in the SAS, but if the real-life cop shows were any indicator they preferred to adopt a softly-softly approach and negotiate, and this meant that there was no guarantee they’d enter the hotel before the gunmen torched the place, or shot the shit out of it.
Which meant he had only one option.
He drew the knife, kept it down by his side, and made his way back to the fire exit stairs, passing the next- door suite whose occupants were still playing loud music. He considered warning them about what was going on in the hotel, but knew that to do so would attract unwanted attention to himself. They probably knew about it by now anyway.
This time when he reached the staircase he couldn’t hear anything. He paused for a few moments, then started down the stairs, moving almost silently as he listened hard for any sound that might signal danger. The creak of a door; an intake of breath; the click of a hammer being cocked on a gun. He knew that it was unlikely anyone would be lying in wait for him, but he also knew from bitter experience that you can never be too careful.
And then, when he was between the sixth and fifth floors, he heard it. An exit door opening and a shouted command, delivered with the confidence that in a situation like this could only belong to someone holding a gun: ‘Move.’ This was immediately followed by the sound of people coming up the stairs in his direction. He could hear their frightened whispering, interspersed with angry shouts from more than one gunman.
Scope carried on down to the fifth floor and slipped through the exit door into the empty corridor, closing it behind him. Leaning back against the wall, he watched through the frosted glass as a masked man carrying an AK- 47 came into view. The man had his back to Scope and was barking orders at a procession of stunned-looking hotel guests of all ages who were following him up the stairs. Another masked man, also carrying an AK, brought up the rear.
Scope pressed himself up against the wall, clutching his knife tightly, just in case one of the gunmen decided to come through the door looking for more hostages. But neither of them did, and their voices faded away as they
