FORTY-NINE
Sue Pascoe was feeling less in control of the situation with every hour that passed. Mid-afternoon on the third day, she would normally have had some sense of how events were likely to pan out. At the very least she would have felt a little more … connected, as though her own role in proceedings was part of an agreed and well-orchestrated strategy.
Normally …
Who was she kidding?
She sat in the small room behind the stage with coffee and sandwiches and reminded herself that she could slide back in behind a nice tidy desk any time she wanted ‘normal’. That it was its unpredictability that had attracted her to hostage negotiation in the first place. The training was vital, of course it was, but once you got out of the classroom, when it came down to the business end of things with guns pointed at heads, the job was all about reacting. Circumstances changed whenever moods did, so it was important to be flexible and to think on your feet.
That’s what kept people alive and got her own heart beating that little bit faster.
She looked across at Chivers on the other side of the table. He crammed half a sandwich into his mouth then washed it down noisily with a slurp of black coffee. He reached for another one and took a bite without looking at it. The process seemed to be about nothing but taking on fuel.
Keeping his strength up. Staying ready for it.
‘Obviously we’re all hoping it doesn’t come to that,’ Chivers kept saying. ‘If and when’ and ‘worst case scenario’, but Pascoe was becoming increasingly convinced that the CO19 man would go home disappointed if he did not get a chance to draw his weapon.
One of his weapons.
Still chewing, Chivers glanced up and nodded. Pascoe quickly looked down at her coffee, watched the creamy globs of powdered milk floating on the surface.
She thought about Tom Thorne.
Usually, the lack of operational predictability stemmed from whatever was happening on the inside. The delicate relationship between hostage and hostage taker, a flash of temper, a sudden tumble into depression. A host of dreadful possibilities and acceptable outcomes. This time though, what was happening on the outside felt every bit as uncertain, as impossible to second-guess, as what was going on behind those scarred metal shutters. There was simply no way to exercise any degree of control or to impose order, when so much seemed to depend on a single copper charging around like a nutcase and hoping to get lucky.
It was rapidly becoming clear that however things turned out, it would have as much to do with Tom Thorne as it did with Javed Akhtar.
Either capable of ending it.
Each with as great a potential for chaos as the other.
‘Nice job,’ Chivers said, suddenly.
Pascoe looked up. Chivers was wiping his mouth with a paper serviette. ‘Sorry?’
‘Just wanted to say. Nice job you’re doing with Akhtar. And with Weeks.’
Pascoe nodded. Bloody hell, was this another one who thought she needed bolstering up somehow? Did he actually think she might like him a bit more if he chucked a pointless compliment or two her way? Or was he trying it on, same as Donnelly had done? Even as she contemplated this last horrific possibility, she knew she was being ridiculous, that Chivers was probably the sort who lived alone and would go home to a cold shower having happily rubbed himself against pictures of some really shiny guns in Massive Weapons monthly. She watched him toss the crumpled serviette back on to the table and hesitated. Saying nothing might come across as unnecessarily antagonistic and ‘Thanks’ would sound a little too grateful.
She said, ‘Cheers,’ and turned as Donnelly came into the room.
‘So, where are we?’ Chivers asked.
‘Getting there,’ Donnelly said.
The Silver Commander had spent the last half-hour in the back of the mobile TSU suite parked up next to Teapot One, being briefed by officers and civilian technicians on their progress thus far. He now explained how an initial survey had made it clear the hostages were being held at the rear of the newsagent’s, in a small room used primarily for storage. Access had been gained to the premises next door – a dry cleaner’s with largely the same layout – from where they were now proposing to establish audio monitoring of the storeroom via the adjoining wall.
‘One microphone in there,’ Donnelly said. ‘And maybe a second in the rear wall next to the back door.’
‘Cameras would be even better,’ Chivers said.
‘I’m being advised that’s not too clever.’ Donnelly told them that the cameras involved a more complex install. That even accounting for micro-tools and fibre-optic cabling, the drilling still needed to be deeper and was that much more likely to be seen or heard from inside. ‘They reckon we could probably get one into the main shop from the front, but what’s the point of that? Just going to be looking at a smashed-up shop, right? I’ve told them to go ahead with these two microphones.’
‘A couple of hours if we go as carefully as we should.’ Donnelly looked at Pascoe. ‘Any reason to think we need to get it done quicker than that? Any concerns for the hostages? For Akhtar’s state of mind?’
Chivers sniffed. ‘Other than the obvious ones, you mean?’
‘DS Pascoe?’
Pascoe said she had no immediate concerns.
‘In the meantime we keep putting the calls in as per normal,’ Donnelly said. ‘Maintain the routine.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Two o’clock?’
Pascoe nodded. Thirty minutes away. ‘Any word from Thorne?’
‘Nothing,’ Donnelly said.
‘He was certainly fired up earlier on. Someone in the frame for that overdose in Hackney.’
‘I told him to call if he had anything worth sharing, so—’
‘We better not be counting on Thorne,’ Chivers said. ‘I think we might all end up looking very stupid.’
Pascoe opened her mouth, but only long enough to push another sandwich into it.