message in the drafts section:
He knew he had to move fast. Leaving Prior behind, he exited room 316 and took the emergency stairs to the second floor, where he stopped at room 202. Before he’d tampered with the guest reservation database, 202 had been empty. Now it was registered to Mr Robert Durran, a freelance architect who was on the first night of a two- night stay.
Using the master key card, Fox let himself into the room. The lights were off and the curtains open, letting in the flashing lights of all the emergency services vehicles gathered across the street. The bed was made and the room still had a fresh, unoccupied smell.
Fox unzipped the rucksack and removed the clothes and shoes he’d been wearing when he arrived at the Park Royal rendezvous earlier that afternoon. Next he pulled out a wallet containing a driving licence, passport and credit cards in the name of Robert Durran, as well as several hundred pounds in cash, from an internal pocket. He slipped the wallet into the front pocket of the trousers, then carefully placed the whole bundle under the bed, pushing it in so that it was well out of sight.
Finally, he looked round the room and, satisfied that his contingency plan was in place, headed back to join the others.
In the ballroom, Bear and Cat were sitting on hard-backed plastic chairs a few yards apart, watching the hostages. Both of them turned round as he entered the room. Cat gave him a bored, vaguely dismissive look, which meant that Wolf had yet to tell her about the death of her brother, while Bear, the ‘man with the face’ who’d saved Fox’s neck in Iraq all those years ago by pushing him out of the way of an IED, gave him a nod, which he returned.
Only a handful of the hostages looked up. There were seventy-seven of them in all, forty-six men and thirty- one women, and Fox had to admit they were an acquiescent bunch. Seated quietly at the far end of the room, their heads were down and they were behaving exactly as they’d been ordered. Either sensible or cowardly, depending on which way you chose to look at it.
To Fox, they were cowardly, and he walked past them and into the satellite kitchen.
Wolf was sitting alone at the far end next to the phone in the kitchen drinking a coffee and smoking one of his foul-smelling cigarettes. He turned round as Fox entered. ‘I’ve spoken to the negotiator and given him our demands. They want to speak to Prior. In fact, they are insistent.’
‘We need to be careful about that,’ said Fox. ‘They’ll be trying to pinpoint his location in the building. If you let them speak to him, they’ll know exactly where he is.’
‘We can always move him.’
‘True. But we’re already two men down so we can’t just shift him from room to room. It means manpower and logistics, not to mention risk.’
Wolf frowned. ‘So you think we shouldn’t?’
‘We don’t have anything to gain from it. Let them sweat a little. And in the meantime, let’s release the children. That’ll give them something to work with, and help to stave off any chance of an early assault.’
‘OK,’ said Wolf slowly. ‘That’s what we’ll do. But I’m not releasing any of their parents. I don’t want them giving anything away about us.’
Fox agreed with him. The minute any hostages were released, the police would be on them like a shot, trying to extract any information they could about what was going on inside the Stanhope – information that would later be handed over to the military for when they staged their inevitable assault. Children, however, would be of only limited help.
He rubbed his face beneath the balaclava. His skin felt itchy and sweaty, and he wished he could take the damn thing off, but there was no way he could risk anyone seeing his face tonight.
‘I’m guessing you haven’t told Cat about her brother yet?’ he asked.
‘Not yet, no.’
‘She’s not going to take it well.’
‘Of course she isn’t, you fool.’ Wolf looked agitated. ‘I’ll handle her. She listens to me. Take over out there and send her in.’
He turned away and Fox left the kitchen, thinking that not only was Wolf an arsehole, he was a weak one too. He looked at his watch. 18.50. The siege was two hours old. A little more than four more and it would all be over. And he’d be a rich man.
It was well worth putting up with a few insults in the meantime.
Forty-one
18.53
CLINTON BONNER WAS DYING to urinate. A weak bladder had been a constant companion ever since he’d hit his fifties, over a decade before, and right now it was tormenting him with a vengeance.
He was in the walk-in cupboard of the ballroom’s satellite kitchen, lying in the same spot he’d been in for more than three hours now – the crawlspace beneath the left-hand bottom shelf. When he’d sneaked in there to have a quick nap towards the end of his second double-shift of the week, it was 3.30 on a normal November afternoon. He hadn’t bothered to set the alarm on his phone because he usually only shut his eyes for twenty minutes, but this time, bizarrely, he’d slept for well over an hour, and when he’d woken up at ten to five, already needing the loo, his whole world had changed.
The first thing he remembered was the faint but unmistakeable rat-a-tat-tat of automatic gunfire coming from downstairs, then lots and lots of shouting and screaming. He had no idea what was happening, but his instincts had told him to stay put until it stopped, and being far past the age where curiosity would get the better of him, he’d obeyed them.
The shooting had finally stopped, but the shouting hadn’t. It had got closer until it seemed to be coming from the ballroom, barely ten yards from where he was lying. Totally confused, his need to pee temporarily forgotten amid the drama, Clinton had lain there until he’d heard voices, quieter and calmer now, inside the satellite kitchen. He’d always had good hearing. ‘Ears like a fruit bat’s’ his mother used to claim when he was growing up in Trinidad, as she boxed them for listening in on conversations that didn’t concern him. And what he’d heard in that room had been truly terrifying. It was obvious armed men had taken over the Stanhope, men who’d made Elena Serenko, the pretty young duty manager who was always so friendly to him (unlike some), tell them the locations of the master key cards to the rooms, as well as the mains sprinkler system.
That had been some time ago now. Clinton sneaked a peek at his watch, sheltering the fluorescent green light with his hand, and saw that it was five to seven, almost an hour and a half since the official end of his shift. His wife, Nancy, would be home from work herself by now and would have heard about what was happening at the hotel. She’d be worried sick – she was a worrier at the best of times – which was why he’d sent her a text earlier, telling her he was safe and hidden away, but couldn’t talk. He’d then immediately switched off the phone, not prepared to risk the fact that it might make any kind of noise and betray his location to the men who’d taken over the hotel.
His bladder felt like it was bursting. He tried to think of something else, anything that might provide some temporary relief, but nothing seemed to work, and it was taking all his willpower to hold it in. He considered wetting his pants. Almost did it. But the fear that the odour might give him away held him back.
But he wasn’t going to be able to hold out for much longer.
The talking outside had stopped but he could still hear movement. Someone was there, just beyond the door. Someone prepared to kill him.
He heard footsteps approaching, and he felt the fear rise in his chest as they stopped immediately outside.
And then the door opened and light flooded in.
The fear seemed to squeeze Clinton’s bladder so hard that it felt like it would explode at any second, and he held his breath, pushing himself as far into the crawlspace as possible, silently praying to the Good Lord that
