in charge of Amber team. Bloody good guy.’
Swift turned away from the constable and spoke into the microphone clipped to his bulletproof vest. Shepherd looked at the rooftops opposite and saw the two uniformed officers who had the pizza place under surveillance. Two armed policemen appeared, bent low behind the parapet. He glimpsed the barrel of a sniping rifle. He dropped down and called Rose on his radio. ‘I see the shots opposite, Sarge,’ he said. ‘They know we’re here, right?’
‘Affirmative,’ crackled Rose’s voice.
Shepherd peered over the parapet again. The two snipers had taken up position at either side of the surveillance officers. Shepherd waved, then indicated that he and Sutherland were going to move along the roof. One of the snipers nodded. Shepherd flashed Sutherland an ‘OK’ signal and they headed down the gully, bent double, carbines clutched to their chests. They stopped when they were directly opposite the snipers. Shepherd hooked a rope round a chimney and attached a karabiner. Sutherland did the same. Shepherd radioed to Rose that they were in position, then the two men settled behind the parapet.
‘Have you been in hostage situations before?’ asked Shepherd.
‘A few times,’ said Sutherland. ‘Usually domestics, though. Criminals tend not to take hostages. They know it always ends badly and the judge will throw away the key.’
‘Sounds like they were forced into it this time,’ said Shepherd. ‘With any luck they’ll be talked out of it.’
‘Don’t bank on it,’ said Sutherland, laconically. ‘There’s a punter bleeding on the floor, remember. That could be attempted murder. Life if the guy dies.’
Shepherd’s earpiece crackled.‘Negotiator’s arrived, but it’s not looking good,’ he said. ‘They’re refusing to send the injured man out until they get a coach or a minibus. They want to take the hostages with them.’
Down below, more area cars were arriving. Sutherland popped a stick of gum into his mouth and offered the pack to Shepherd. Shepherd took a piece.
‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this,’ said Sutherland.
Shepherd chewed thoughtfully. Rose’s plan was for the two of them to drop down the front of the shop. But there were two sawn-off shotguns below and at close range they could do a lot of damage. The robbers would see them and the first shots from the MP5 would only smash the windows. It was impossible to fire through glass with any accuracy. They could use the snipers to smash the windows and, hopefully, the robbers would have their heads down but even so Shepherd and Sutherland would be facing two men with shotguns who knew they were under attack.
‘Negotiators know what they’re doing,’ said Shepherd. ‘They’re professionals.’
‘So are we, mate, but things sometimes turn to shit no matter how well trained you are.’
‘Two shots from Amber team are going to be joining you,’ said Rose in Shepherd’s earpiece. ‘How did you get access?’
Shepherd told the sergeant about the hatchway.
To their right an ambulance arrived. Two paramedics opened the rear doors, took out a trolley and pushed it to the road block.
‘What about going down?’ said Shepherd.
‘Not until Rosie gives the say-so,’ said Sutherland.
‘I mean downstairs. See if we can get into the flat below. Not so far to jump. We might even be able to get through the ceiling. You saw what it was like in the attic.’
‘Bounce it off the sarge, if you like. He can put it to Cockburn.’
Shepherd called up Rose, who told him to stay put.
A minute or so later Cockburn was on the radio. ‘Chief Inspector Cockburn here, Marsden. What’s your plan?’
‘It’s not really a plan, sir, it’s just that we’ve less of a drop if we go from the first floor instead of the roof, and there’s an outside chance that there might be a way in through the ceiling.’
‘You can get access to the first-floor flat?’
‘We’ve an enforcer with us, but the lock didn’t look too strong so we could probably shoulder it.’
There was a long silence. ‘Okay, give it a go,’ Cockburn said, ‘but keep the noise to a minimum. The negotiator isn’t making much progress so it’s likely we’ll have to go in.’
‘Will do, sir.’ Shepherd nodded at Sutherland. ‘Let’s get to it.’
They untied their ropes, coiled them and shuffled back along the gully. As they reached the window, they met the two armed police from the Specialist Firearms team. Sutherland knew them and introduced them to Shepherd as Brian Ramshaw and Kevin Tapping. Both were in their late thirties, calm and unruffled. Shepherd briefed them on what they were going to do.
The four men went back down through the hatch into the hallway, picked up the ram and hurried down to the first floor. Shepherd examined the lock. It was a simple Yale with a metal plate to protect it from being jemmied. Sutherland prepared to use the ram but Shepherd called up Rose and asked him to get one of the area cars to rev its engine, so that the men in the pizza place would be distracted.
A couple of minutes later, when the engine was revving, Shepherd kicked the door hard. It crashed inwards, and a few seconds later the engine went quiet.
Shepherd tiptoed into the flat. It was cheaply furnished with worn carpets and woodchip wallpaper painted a pale yellow. In the hallway there was a teak-effect low table with a phone on it and a framed print of a bowl of fruit above it. The furniture in the sitting room was shabby, and an ashtray overflowed with the butts of hand-rolled cigarettes. The faint smell of marijuana hung in the air.
Sutherland grinned. ‘Whoever lives here is going to piss themselves when they find out that the Old Bill’s been in,’ he said.
Shepherd was already pushing the sofa towards the television. ‘Roll back the carpet – let’s see what we’ve got,’ he said to Ramshaw and Tapping.
The two men ripped away the carpet from the wall. Instead of underlay newspapers lay on the floorboards, dated ten years earlier. Sutherland went to the sash window and opened it. He flashed an ‘OK’ sign to the snipers opposite, then called up Rose and told him they were inside the flat.
Shepherd studied the floorboards, which were in as bad a condition as the carpets. He knelt down and used his Swiss Army knife to lever one up. Ramshaw and Tapping helped him take up several more. Thick beams ran the length of the room from the window to the doorway, about shoulder width apart. If the men went through side on, there should be room to spare, even wearing their bulletproof vests. Shepherd used his knife to make a small hole in the plasterwork and bent down to peer through it. He couldn’t see anything so he widened the hole and took his torch from his belt and shone it through. There was a space almost a foot deep, then sheets of plasterboard. He widened the hole so that he could stick his head through. Close to the walls he could make out air-conditioning ducts and electrical wiring.
He sat up and switched off the torch, then signalled for the three men to keep quiet.
He went back into the hallway outside the flat to radio Rose. ‘It’s definitely a goer, Sarge,’ he said. ‘They’ve put a suspended ceiling below the plaster. It’ll be a tight fit but I reckon we can crash through, two of us with guns, two playing out the rope. If we get the positioning right we’ll drop down behind them.’
‘Sit tight while I bounce it off the OIC,’ said Rose. ‘Good work.’
‘I need to know where the targets are. We’ll be going in blind.’
‘Got that,’ said Rose.
A couple of minutes passed before he came back on the radio. ‘Do the prep,’ he said. ‘Negotiator’s going around in circles.’
‘Affirmative,’ said Shepherd.
‘The surveillance guys say they’re both behind the counter, which is eighteen feet back from the wall and four feet wide. The customer who was shot is being attended to by a female hostage. One of the robbers is covering her with a gun. Everyone else has been taken behind the counter and the second guy’s guarding them. The kitchen’s empty.’
Shepherd closed his eyes and recalled the ground plan in the estate agent’s. ‘Give us five minutes and then have the cars hit the sirens. We’ll be lifting the floorboards.’
‘Affirmative.’
Shepherd waved for the three officers to join him in the hallway, whispered instructions to them, then went back to the window and paced eighteen feet. It took him into the bedroom at the rear of the property. Ramshaw
