The others in the room murmured their agreement.
Arley nodded, acknowledging Cheney’s comments. Her face, she knew, said it all. She might have been doing everything she could to hide her torment, but there was no way she could disguise it completely. She was glad that he thought it was the dead hostage that was bothering her.
She sat down as Phillips reappeared at his desk. He looked grim-faced and pale.
‘I’ve just been told by Silver that the lead terrorist has given permission for us to speak to Michael Prior,’ he said, addressing the room in formal businesslike tones. ‘Because of this, the Prime Minister has given permission to re-establish the internet connection inside the hotel with immediate effect. Like the rest of us, he doesn’t want to see any more needless loss of life.’
Arley flinched as relief, however temporary, flooded through her.
‘However, the PM also believes there’s now no alternative to a rescue mission to free the hostages. Responsibility for this has now officially been passed to the military. Arley, you and your colleagues need to continue doing everything you can to keep the terrorists from killing any more hostages, while the SAS plan the logistics of their operation.’
Arley nodded slowly, accepting the inevitable, conscious that the phone in her pocket was ringing. She pulled it out and saw Howard’s grinning face filling the screen, which meant only one thing.
Her family’s kidnappers were calling.
Sixty
‘ARE YOU IN the control room?’ asked the man on the other end of the phone, his voice calm.
Arley walked across the grass, away from the incident room, glancing over her shoulder to check she wasn’t being followed. ‘Not any more.’
‘Is the internet coming back on?’
‘You need that, don’t you? For your plans to work.’
‘That doesn’t concern you. What should concern you are your husband and children. Have you spoken to anyone about our discussions?’
She thought of Tina, and wondered if she’d made a terrible mistake involving someone like her. ‘Of course I haven’t. I need to know my family are alive, though.’
‘All in good time, DAC Dale,’ he said, with a hint of a smile in his voice. ‘Now please answer
Arley wondered what this man looked like. He sounded middle-aged. She wondered if he had children of his own. She desperately wanted to reason with him, to tell him to please release her children, but she’d been around long enough to know that pleading wasn’t going to work. ‘The internet should have come back on by now.’
‘And what are the plans for an assault?’
‘I don’t know. All I know is that the military have taken control of the operation.’
‘Does this mean it’s imminent?’
She knew there was no point lying. ‘Not necessarily, no.’
‘The phrase “not necessarily” is of no use to us. We need to know what’s being planned. So do you, if you ever want to see your family again.’
Arley took a deep breath. Jesus, she had to hold herself together. ‘The military have only just taken control, and it’ll take them some time to organize a rescue operation. I’ll make sure I know their plans.’ She considered adding that she’d already had a meeting with the SAS commander, but held back. There was no point giving this man anything until it became absolutely necessary.
‘I’m going to keep this phone on for the next fifteen minutes. The moment you have an update, call me. Do you understand?’
‘I do.’
‘If you try to trick us in any way, your family will die. Remember that.’
Arley slowly removed the phone from her ear and looked back towards the incident room, wondering if her absence, and the manner in which she’d taken it, was arousing suspicion among her colleagues.
A group of uniformed officers were in conversation next to an armed response vehicle parked nearby, too far away for Arley to hear what they were saying. One of them laughed, and Arley felt an overwhelming jealousy. For him, this was just another night on the job. For her, though, it was a matter of life and death. She could lose the two people she loved most in the world in one bloody moment, and what frightened her above all was that there was no guarantee she hadn’t already done so.
Her phone bleeped. She had a message from the people running the ANPR database at Hendon, and she felt a surge of hope mixed with dread. Had they been able to get a location for the van that was parked in the driveway of her home that morning, the one that had almost certainly been used to abduct her children?
Taking a deep breath, she returned the call.
Sixty-one
21.12
TINA LIT A cigarette and turned on the car’s engine to stay warm. A chill wind blew down the street making the foliage shiver, and it had started to rain.
Sitting there in the dim light of the streetlight, with the BBC news on the radio, she wondered what the hell she was doing, risking her neck to help a woman she hadn’t spoken to in months, and who was an acquaintance at best.
And yet somehow she was here in the cold, having been dragged into the middle of a case that had global implications. So far tonight she’d impersonated a police officer, interfered with a crime scene, and withheld vital information in what was shaping up to be one of the biggest single crimes in modern policing history.
But that was Tina. She never did anything by halves. And so far she still believed that she was doing the right thing, although the more she thought about it, the more the doubts gnawed away at her. She understood why Arley hadn’t wanted to say anything to her bosses, but at the same time Tina herself didn’t want to be responsible for the deaths of any SAS men. After all, they had families too.
Her phone rang. It was Arley.
‘What have you got?’ Tina asked her.
‘The vehicle with the registration you gave me was last picked up on the ANPR cameras in Willesden,’ stated Arley. Her voice was calm, but only just, as if she was only a wrong word away from hysteria. ‘That was at eight twenty-seven a.m. this morning, and it hasn’t moved within camera-range since. And it’s definitely the same vehicle because it was caught on camera a few hundred metres from our house at five to eight.’
‘How big’s the area it could be in?’
‘About four hundred metres by six hundred. And it’s high-density residential. The Hendon guys are contacting the local council to see if there are any other cameras that might narrow it down, but that’s going to take time, and it’s unlikely.’
‘Driving there’s going to take time too, and unless I strike bloody lucky, I could still be looking round for it tomorrow morning.’
‘It doesn’t look like there’s much off-road parking or garages,’ said Arley hopefully.
Tina didn’t share her optimism. ‘Any news on the location of your husband’s phone?’
‘It’s been switched off most of the day, but on those occasions it has been on, it’s been nowhere near Willesden.’
‘Have any calls been made on it today?’
‘Only the ones to my mobile.’
