anything like this before?'
'Yes,' Banks answered. 'A couple of times. Usually with pros, though.'
'But you know the ropes?'
Banks nodded.
'I'll try and keep him talking,' Gristhorpe said, 'keep negotiations open.'
'Your time's running out, Banks,' Mick yelled.
'All right,' Banks said, climbing the steps, 'I'm coming in, Mick.' And as he walked, he thought of Sandra.
Mick Webster was in a dangerously unstable state. Banks could see that at once as he obeyed orders and emptied out his pockets. The boy was constantly edgy, always scratching, sweating, fidgeting, shifting from one foot to the other, and it didn't take Banks long to recognize the signs of an amphetamine user.
Jenny appeared to be calm enough. Her left cheek was inflamed, as if she had been hit, but she seemed to be trying to reassure him with the look in her eyes that all was well and that now he was here they had a chance to work together and get out alive. She was quick, Banks knew that, and he also felt that a certain intuitive bond had quickly been forged between them. If there was an opportunity, he thought, then they could probably do something about it between them. It was just a matter of waiting to see who took the initiative.
Mick's moods were shifting minute by minute. One moment he'd be joking, the next he'd become morose and say he had nothing to lose. And all that pacing and jittering was driving Banks crazy. Tosca still played in the background, well into the second act, and the cassette box lay on a pine table by the broken window.
'All right, Mick,' Banks said quietly. 'What is it you want?'
'What do you think?' Mick sneered. 'I want out of here.' He swaggered over to the window and shouted: 'I want ten thousand quid and safe passage out of the country, or the girl and the cop die, got it?'
Outside in the cold evening, Gristhorpe whispered to Hatchley, 'Not a snowball in hell's chance,' and said back to Mick, 'All right, we'll work on it. Stay in communication and we'll let you know.'
'I don't want to talk to you fuckers,' Mick yelled back. 'I know you and all your games. Just get me what I asked for and fuck off out of the way.' He kept the gun pointed at Jenny. 'Hurry up, get back in those trees where I can't see you or I'll kill the girl now.'
Reluctantly, Gristhorpe, Hatchley and the two uniformed men moved back across the road onto The Green.
'That's right,' Mick shouted at them. 'And fucking well stay there till you've got something to tell me.'
Banks stood as close to Mick and Jenny as he dared. 'Mick,' he said, 'they're not going to do it. You don't stand a chance.'
'They'll do it,' Mick said. 'They don't want to see your brains splattered all over the garden. Or hers.'
'They can't do it, Mick,' Banks went on patiently. 'They can't give in to demands like that. If they did, then every Tom, Dick and Harry would start taking hostages and asking for the world.'
Mick laughed. 'Maybe I'll start a trend then, eh? They'll do it, and you'd better hope they do, both of you.'
The music went on quietly and the cool night air came in through the broken window. Outside, Banks could hear talking on a car radio. They would already have the street cordonned off, and should have evacuated the neighbors.
Mick licked his lips and looked from one to the other of them. 'Well,' he said, 'what shall we do when the transport comes?' And his eyes stayed on Jenny, who stood by the tile fireplace. Banks stuck close to the table by the window.
'Don't make things worse, Mick,' Banks said. 'If you give up now, it'll be taken into consideration. Things wouldn't go too badly for you. But if you go any further…'
'You know as well as I do,' Mick said, turning to Banks, 'that I'm in about as deep as can be.'
'That's not true, Mick. There's a way out of this.'
'And what's going to happen to me then?'
'I can't make any promises, Mick. You know that. But it'll go in your favor.'
'Yeah, it'll go in my fucking favor. I'll only get twenty years instead of twenty-five, is that what you're telling me?'
'You'll get a lot more if you hurt anyone, Mick. No one's been hurt yet. Remember that.'
Mick turned to Jenny. 'This is what we're gonna do,' he said. 'When they fix up my transport, you're coming with me and he's staying. He'll know if he lets his copper mates do anything to stop us, you'll be dead. They might not think I mean it, but he does.'
'No,' Jenny said.
'What do you mean, 'no,' you cunt? What the fuck do you think this is in my hand, a fucking cap-gun?'
Jenny shook her head. 'I'm not going anywhere with you. I'm not going to let you lay one dirty finger on me.'
Mick reddened and looked, to Banks, dangerously near the end of his tether. But Jenny was the psychologist, and she seemed to have taken the initiative; it was up to Banks to follow. While Mick glared at Jenny, Banks picked up the cassette box from the table and tossed it out through the broken window.
There was a sudden clattering sound on the path and Mick turned to aim the gun toward the noise. Banks was close enough to jump him when the gun was pointing out of the window. But before Banks could make his move, Mick actually fired into the garden. The gun made a dull explosion and they both heard Mick scream. Slowly, he turned back toward the room, his face white, mouth and eyes wide open with shock and pain. The blood from his hand dripped onto the clean pine table.
Chapter SIXTEEN
I
As soon as Hatchley and Gristhorpe heard the shot and the scream, they dashed out of the trees toward the house. Inside, Jenny rushed to help Banks, who had already ripped off Mick's shirt-sleeve to apply as a tourniquet.
'It's a mess,' he said, tying the knot, then he caught Jenny's eye. 'You did well,' he told her. 'But for a minute I thought you were going to push him too far.'
'Me, too. The idea was just to confuse him, then attract his attention. The kid was so stoned he didn't know what was happening. I'm glad you caught the signal.' When Banks heard the others reach the steps, he walked over to the window to tell them it was all clear. Inside the house after that it was chaos-several people asking different questions at the same time, orders being given to uniformed men, phone calls being made for the ambulance and Scene-of-Crime Squad-and throughout it all, nobody thought to turn off the stereo; Tosca was still singing: Nell'ora del dolore Perche, perchi, Signor, Perche me ne rimuneri cosi?
A still point for a moment at the center of all the frenetic activity, Banks took in the familiar words: 'In this, my hour of grief and tribulation, Why Heavenly Father, Why hast thou forsaken me?'
'Good work, Alan,' Gristhorpe said, snapping Banks out of the music. 'All right?'
'Fine.'
'You look a bit pale.'
'I always do when I've been in close contact with guns.'
Gristhorpe looked down at Mick. 'If all guns reacted the way that one did, Alan, it might be a better world. I'm not a religious man, as you know-too much of that pernicious Yorkshire Methodism in my background- but maybe sometimes God is there when we need him.' Banks looked over at Jenny, who was telling a constable what had happened. 'She was certainly there.'
He went onto explain about Sandra and asked permission to go home and skip the formalities until later.
'Of course,' Gristhorpe said. 'You should have told me earlier. Are you sure she sounded all right?'
'A bit shook up, but in control. Richmond's still with her.'
