From no more than three metres away, a clear command, shouted into the chapel: ‘Everyone behind the altar stand up. No one else move. If you are behind the altar, stand slowly. Arms high where we can see them.’
Hari was now a brown-skinned man with two bloodied knives at the scene of a terrorist attack. Six armed police officers who could easily take his head off the way they had Gregor’s were three metres away. His sisters looked at him.
‘Don’t stand, Hari!’ whispered Amara. Pleading. ‘They’ll shoot you too!’
Everyone behind the altar was moving now. They scrambled to their feet using the altar table to support them, then raised their hands. Some glanced back down at Hari as they stood. His grandmother stood. The girls stood.
Hari was the only one left.
‘You behind the altar! Stand! Now! Arms high!’ The policeman’s voice was piercing enough to reverberate around the cathedral.
Hunched against the cold concrete, kneeling on Collins’ insensible shoulders, he heard the police repositioning themselves along the bars. He placed both knives heavily on the altar. One on top of the other, out of Collins’ reach.
‘High! Put them high!’
Millie and Amara started to cry.
Hari raised his hands. He had saved his sisters. He had saved his grandmother. He didn’t really care what happened next.
88
WHAT FAMIE SAW as she rounded the last pillar and approached the Lady Chapel was this: all six armed police officers side-on to the bars, their MP5s pointing through the gaps. A man lying face up at their feet, his frontal bone crushed, the top right quarter of his head missing. A chapel with ornamental bars, crammed with terrified hostages all with their arms raised. And in the middle of a small, concrete altar, hands above his head, a round-faced man of Indian heritage. Short black hair. Blood-soaked shirt. Blood-splattered arms. Twin girls at his side.
Hari Roy.
This time, she did shout.
‘His name is Hari Roy, twenty-six Boxer Street, Coventry, and he’s a journalist!’
Hari stared at Famie. His mouth dropped open, then he shut it again. Pressed his lips together. If his arms weren’t held so high, he’d have wiped the tears that rolled down his face.
Espie called out too. ‘PC Jean Espie. Roy was undercover. He’s safe!’ She pulled Famie back. They’d done their work.
The police, realizing the gate to the chapel wasn’t locked, pushed it open. One by one the hostages were waved out. The rabbi, his helpers, the hissing woman, the man in the kurta, the phone-callers, the twins, the grandmother and the jumpsuit girl, a handkerchief held to her neck. One by one they filed past Famie and Espie, then hurried from the cathedral past a score of heavily armed, newly arrived police. Hari and the still-prone Collins were last. Six police guns still pointed at his head.
‘There’s a woman here, she needs a medic,’ said Hari. ‘I put a knife in her knee.’
The commands from the police were still urgent, shouted. The operation was ongoing. ‘Walk slowly. Arms up. Come towards the gate.’ The barrels of the MP5s followed him all the way. ‘Smaller steps,’ demanded the officer nearest the gate, then ‘stop’, when Hari was a metre away. ‘Espie,’ he called. ‘And the other woman.’ He beckoned them over.
Espie led. Famie walked past the first three officers – still feet apart, still one hand supporting the gun just forward of the trigger guard, still fingers curled around the trigger. She stood in front of the gate. She smiled at Hari, and he, slowly, reluctantly, smiled back.
‘Hi,’ she mouthed.
‘Hi,’ he mouthed back.
The officer glanced at Famie. ‘I’m Sergeant Tom Winstanley. Did you say you were IPS back there?’
‘Yes.’ There seemed no point in complicating matters with her recent retirement.
‘So talk to me,’ he said. ‘You’ve got twenty seconds.’ He lowered his weapon.
‘I don’t know everything,’ said Famie. She took a beat to condense her thoughts. She spoke fast. She spoke only to Sergeant Winstanley. The first witness for the defence. ‘All I know is that Hari was undercover, hired by IPS. He’s a student at Warwick. That was his twin sisters and grandmother next to him. The woman who hired him was killed in the May twenty-two attacks. I think today was the May twenty-two gang with local extras. He contacted me, tried to tell me what was happening. There’d be a lot more dead without him. That’s it in a nutshell.’
Winstanley nodded. ‘Understood.’
‘Can I speak?’ said Hari.
‘No,’ said Winstanley.
‘That’s Amal Hussain,’ Hari said anyway. He pointed at the east-side first pillar, and the sprawled man, face down in a pool of blood.
Famie recoiled, hands in front of her mouth.
‘He was about to kill my sisters.’ Hari’s voice trailed off.
‘You killed Amal Hussain?’ she said.
Hari nodded, his eyes locked on Famie’s. ‘You’d have done the same,’ he said. ‘I know it.’
Winstanley to his officers: ‘Stand down.’ The MP5s all lowered. To Hari: ‘Hands down. Step out. But don’t go anywhere.’
Hari walked from the chapel. Famie embraced him briefly. She with both hands, he with one.
‘You’re a brave man, Hari,’ she said.
‘But too many died,’ he said.
His voice was weak and he slumped against her. Famie eased him to the floor. He leant back against the bars, closed his eyes.
‘We’ll get you to hospital,’ she said, and leant against the bars next to him.
‘I never thought this would happen, Famie Madden,’ he whispered, his words sticky in his mouth.
‘I doubted it too, Hari Roy,’ she said. ‘We need to talk. When they’ve sorted you out.’
He nodded, eyes still closed.
Famie pulled herself up. Armed police were searching the building. Small pockets of bewildered people were emerging from side rooms. The ‘empty’ Chapel of Unity had actually hidden at least ten of the congregation. Others had played dead under chairs and now scrambled for the door.
Espie reappeared, Sam Carter in her wake, his IPS press ID swinging very
