too many times before, and which she’d never managed to get used to. Holding her breath, she crouched down beside the body, avoiding stepping in the blood, and felt for a pulse as a simple formality. She wasn’t surprised when there was no sign of one.
To make absolutely sure this was Arley’s husband, Tina crept into the hallway looking for family photos, which was when she saw the second body, propped up against the wall. This would be Magda, the Dale family au pair. Arley had told Tina that she’d been killed by the kidnappers, although she hadn’t mentioned that her body had been left here.
There was a professional family portrait on the opposite wall. Arley, her two teenage children, and Howard, a big bluff smiling man standing a good head taller than the others, and without doubt the corpse she’d just seen in the kitchen.
‘Jesus,’ whispered Tina in the gloom, wondering what the hell she was getting involved with here, but also feeling the kind of intense righteous anger she hadn’t experienced in a long, long time. She wanted to get the people responsible for this. She wanted to make them pay.
With a renewed sense of purpose, she searched the rest of the house, but there was no sign of the two children. Both they and the kidnappers were gone, just as she’d expected. She checked for anything that might give her some clue as to the kidnappers’ identity, or their final destination, but nothing sprang out at her.
All of which left Tina with a stark choice. The chances of her finding Arley’s children were slim in the extreme. The best course of action was to persuade Arley to tell her colleagues what was going on. But she wasn’t at all sure that Arley would. And Tina knew she was almost certainly right not to. Neither the Met nor the government would put her two children before the lives of the hostages in the Stanhope.
Tina let herself out of the house, pulling from the pocket of her jeans a fake warrant card she used sometimes for PI work.
She’d made her decision.
Fifty-one
20.20
THIS WAS THE dead time. The time in the middle of the operation when they were simply waiting around and guarding the hostages, counting down the hours until they were ready to make their next move.
In the ballroom, Fox was back on guard duty with Bear. They’d both just eaten some pot noodles in the satellite kitchen, during which time Bear had complained more than once about Cat’s volatility. The whole room had heard her scream when she was told what had happened to her brother, and since then the rage had been coming off her in waves, and she’d hardly spoken a word. Fox had told Bear not to worry, that as long as she didn’t go off on a one-woman hunt for the man responsible and get herself killed, everything would be OK. Bear had calmed down, but he still seemed spooked, as he had been ever since he’d found out about what happened to Leopard and Panther. Fox was more sanguine. The man responsible for their deaths was certainly dangerous but the chances were that he was hiding out in one of the rooms and would stay out of their way.
Fox was more worried about the atmosphere in the ballroom, which was tense. He could see that some of the hostages were agitated, while others seemed to be looking around for ways to escape. Clearly they were beginning to forget what had happened to some of their fellow hostages earlier when they’d made their bids for freedom.
He and Bear were sitting on chairs twenty feet apart, and well back from the hostages. Bear’s foot rested on the detonation pedal for the bomb that sat in the middle of the hostages, and Fox hoped that none of them would work out that there was no way he or Bear would detonate it, given that they were sat right in the path of any shrapnel. In fact, the bomb, like all but two of the others, was set to timer and would explode at 23.00 hours, not before. Both the pedal and the det cords were there for show only.
One of the more troublesome-looking hostages, a young stocky guy dressed like an American high school jock, caught Fox’s eye, and started to stand up.
Fox shouted at him to sit down.
The guy went down on one knee. ‘I need the toilet, badly,’ he said, his accent public school.
‘I don’t care.’
‘Come on. Cut me some slack. Please.’ There was a confidence to his voice that made some of the hostages take notice.
Fox knew a show of weakness or indecision here would be fatal. He took his time getting to his feet, then took two steps forward and very slowly put the AK-47 to his shoulder, pointing it at the young man’s head. When he spoke, his words cut across the room like a knife. ‘I’ve already shot two people downstairs. Do you think it’ll bother me if I shoot a third? Your life means absolutely nothing to me. If it means anything to you, then keep still and shut up. Understand?’
The hostage nodded, every ounce of confidence now gone.
‘Good. That goes for the rest of you too. Stay silent and you stay alive.’
As Fox sat down, Bear gave him a supportive nod. Bear had always looked to Fox for leadership, ever since he’d served under him in the army. Not for the first time, Fox wondered whether Bear ever resented the fact that he’d been disfigured for life while Fox – who should, by rights, have been blown to pieces – had escaped the IED largely unscathed. If he did, then he hid it very well.
Fox took a brief look over his shoulder towards the kitchen where Wolf and Cat were. God knows what they were doing in there, but as long as it wasn’t anything stupid, like starting a hunt for their fugitive, he didn’t mind. In the meantime, he had something else he had to do.
Still keeping a firm grip on his rifle, he slid the pack from his back and, as casually as possible, removed his laptop. He wanted to check that the individual he’d left a message for earlier in the drafts section of the hotmail account had received it and responded with a message of his own.
But when he tried to go online, the computer didn’t respond. He tried again, keeping his face impassive, but it definitely wasn’t working.
The bastards had cut them off.
This was a real problem. He wasn’t so worried about his own private message. He knew it was there, so a response was less important. However, one of the key components of their plan was knowing where and when the security forces would launch their attack. This information was also going to be provided through the drafts section of a separate hotmail account so that it couldn’t be read by the authorities. But if they didn’t have an internet connection, they wouldn’t get it, and they’d lose a key advantage.
He tried one more time, got the same result, and replaced the laptop in the backpack as he got to his feet.
Bear gave him a questioning look. ‘Is there a problem?’ he whispered as Fox crouched down next to him.
Fox knew there was no point spooking him further. ‘I just need to see Wolf quickly. I’ll be back in a minute.’ And then louder, so the hostages could hear, he said: ‘Anyone moves, put a hole in them.’
He turned and walked quickly towards the kitchen, knowing that they had to get the internet back on, and fast.
Even if it meant killing a hostage in front of the world’s cameras to make the authorities act.
Fifty-two
‘DID YOU MANAGE to get the insulin pens?’ Abby asked groggily. She looked tired but in OK shape, and was drinking from a bottle of water while Ethan knelt beside her, holding her hand.
‘I’m afraid they weren’t there,’ said Scope, shutting the door behind him and putting the chair back against it.
‘But they were in my black handbag by the side of the bed. I’m sure of it.’
