Cry of the Needle

by Radford, Roger

  But before he could deal with the stress in others, a negotiator had to deal with his own, and it was often higher than that of the hostage taker. Hopkin knew that he would be talking to a person who might kill people, and that this, in itself, represented a kind of role ambiguity. On the one hand, as a police officer, he was expected to uphold the law, arrest criminals and protect the public.

  As a negotiator, on the other hand, he was expected to be able to talk to and become friendly with a criminal. He had to set aside his values and beliefs and operate from a different structure.

  In effect, he’d be negotiating for the freedom of the hostage taker as well as his captives. The Welshman knew that every word he spoke, every action he took and every decision he made might cost the lives of not only the hostages and their captors, but also those of his own colleagues. To make matters worse, the negotiator was expected to internalise his fears. He couldn’t let these fears show either to fellow officers or to the hostage takers. At the same time, he was constantly aware that his superiors were monitoring and evaluating his every move.

  ‘Stress,’ the Welshman grumbled, ‘you buggers don’t know the fucking meaning of the word.’

  While Dai Hopkin wrestled with his demons, three other people closely connected to events at the cottage in the heart of the Surrey countryside were caught up in their own maelstroms of emotion.

  Glued to the television screen in her father’s Fenland home, Fiona Harrington soon realised that the hostage takers had taken possession of the incriminating tape that Jonathan had played her. She asked herself whether there was any point in giving the police forewarning of the revelations that were planned for the following evening. Her journalistic instincts screamed for her to write a pre-emptive sidebar exclusive detailing her involvement in the quest to expose corruption at the heart of government. Yet she reckoned that if she spoiled the hostage taker’s party, it might jeopardise Jonathan Tring’s safety. Therefore, she convinced herself, she had to let the man in the balaclava enjoy his moment of glory. Despite her fears, she was forced to admit to harbouring a sneaking admiration for him. The plain fact was that he’d outlined many of the issues she had raised in her unpublished article. They were both in the business of exposing graft and corruption. It was just his methods she abhorred. She decided she would re-write her article in time to catch the front page of the morning edition, knowing full well that this would spark a frenzy among the electronic media. Although the police were bound to be pissed off that she hadn’t revealed all to them sooner, she would beg them to allow her to make a personal televised appeal to the hostage takers. They had to be told that at least one of the men they were holding was innocent of any wrongdoing. She could forgive the hostage takers everything as long as Jonathan came out of that cottage alive.

  Meanwhile, in a northern suburb of London another beautiful woman was confronted by a quandary that was even more profound. The hostage taker’s distorted voice did not fool Countess Magda von Esterhazy, for it was the man’s piercing blue eyes that leapt from the television screen and screamed his identity. ‘Oh, Kieran,’ she had cried out, ‘why have you done this terrible thing?’

  Her first instinct had been to telephone the police. She had even lifted the receiver and begun dialling, but was then overcome by apprehension and a deep melancholy. However misguided were his actions, Kieran was fighting her cause. He had seen that all her conventional efforts had failed to stir the conscience of the authorities. He believed his way was better. He believed his way would right wrongs that had gone uncorrected and unpunished for too long. It was only now that she could understand his strange behaviour, his decision to end their relationship. It had not been because he had not loved her, but because he was consumed by a greater passion. Kieran was probably going to such extraordinary lengths to conceal his identity in order to protect his children, although he must surely have known that it was just a matter of time before the police discovered it.

  Magda slumped back in her bed as the burning in her legs reached a new intensity. She ripped open a synthetic morphine patch and placed it on her thigh, praying silently to God that no one would be harmed and that people would understand her lover’s desperate action. Within a few moments she began to drift off to sleep, her last conscious image being the steely intensity of her lover’s eyes framed by the black wool of the balaclava.

  Unlike the Countess, millions of people continued to stay riveted to their computer screens, albeit that they now portrayed only an empty chair and a poster on a wall. The poster showed a human spine and a syringe with a large red cross through it. Many were afraid that they might miss a scintilla of action if they switched off, for it was now possible to see major events as they unfolded. It was just a case of logging on to the live drama of your choice, whether it was on a TV, a monitor or a cell phone. No longer could the traditional media apply editorial control. True power now resided with the service providers who could throw the switch at any time, although with human lives at stake this was unlikely to happen. The phenomenon was so new that the British Government was still locked in battle with the ISPs as to who should have the last word. The fight was about to become even more intense, for although there were myriad newsworthy dramas on any given day, this was the first time the perpetrators of a crime had sought to enlist the sympathy of the public by running their own live web cast.

  One of the countless numbers who continued to watch their monitors was a man who had more interest than most in the events being played out in a cottage just south of London. Jack Proctor was almost catatonic. Sitting in his office at Parados headquarters, he had not moved an inch since the start of the broadcast. In less than forty-eight hours the Yorkshireman had seen his world turn upside down. His wife had declared that she was leaving him, and now true nemesis was staring him in the face. The bastard in the balaclava had Tring’s tape, and tomorrow his dreams of becoming a true giant of the pharmaceutical industry would be over. While Sharon’s disloyalty had devastated him, in the end she was a woman, and a woman could be replaced. What could never be replaced was a lifetime of effort, which was about to be shattered into thousands of little pieces, each shard a dagger through his heart. What did the world know of what it took to claw one’s way out of a grimy orphanage in a godforsaken mining town, where the main topics of conversation surrounded the pit and its brass band? Working down the mines was not for Jack Albert Proctor. There was no difference between a miner and a soldier at the Battle of the Somme. One may have gone down to the bottom and the other over the top, but a horrible death might await them both. No, he mused, nobody knew how hard it had been for him to scrimp and save from part-time jobs in order to finance his studies. Nobody knew how difficult it had been to reach the top of his profession. And now, dammit, it was all about to come to an end. He would have to suffer a jail sentence and stand the opprobrium of his peers. Even more humiliating was the knowledge that sharks like Kevin Kinloss would go on a feeding frenzy, tearing lumps out of his company and leading it to eventual ruination. Didn’t they understand that he, Jack Albert Proctor, was Parados, and vice versa? Didn’t they know that it had taken him more than thirty years to propel the company from a run-down lab on a derelict industrial estate to a beautiful state-of-the-art complex covering hundreds of acres. Sure, he had made mistakes, but he’d supplied jobs for thousands of people, produced drugs that had helped millions more. Well, fuck them all. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of revelling in his downfall. He wouldn’t bear the humiliation of having to witness the dismemberment of his baby while he rotted helplessly in some godforsaken jail.

  Jack Proctor took a deep breath, opened the drawer to his right and withdrew the Beretta from its nest of green lint. Without hesitation, he placed the barrel in his mouth.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE SIEGE – DAY TWO

  Jack Proctor’s body was discovered early enough to make the first editions of the morning papers. What had begun as a sensational event had now entered the
stratosphere. The media had immediately made the connection between the suicide and the hostage taker’s promised revelation that would shake the Government to its foundations. They had also speculated that it was no coincidence that the health secretary was one of the hostages, and that the doctor was also in some way involved with his captors. Some speculated that the whole military-style operation indicated that the hostage takers were ex-SAS commandos. Two and two made four in anybody’s language, but they all realised that the true answers could only be found in the detail.

  While the media scrum was concentrated around the cottage, there was no shortage of reporters outside the residences of Fiona Harrington and Sharon Proctor. Not wishing to allow pressure to be brought to bear on her parents, Fiona had decided to drive back to her London flat in the early hours of the morning. She had steadfastly ignored the throng of badgering colleagues, and, once safely in her own bed, had quickly succumbed to a deep and dreamless sleep. It was already about eleven when she awoke and groggily replaced the telephone cord in its socket. Within seconds, the phone was ringing urgently.

  ‘Harrington,’ she mumbled wearily.

  ‘I hope you’re satisfied,’ came the cold and familiar drawl.

  ‘Is that you, Sharon?’ she quizzed with more than a tinge of apprehension.

  ‘Yes, it’s me. I said I hope you’re satisfied.’

  ‘Look, I, er, was only doing my job. What Jack did was wrong. He has to pay the price, even if it means going to jail.’

  There was a long pause before, ‘My God, you don’t know, do you?’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Jack killed himself last night.’

  Fiona Harrington felt the stuffing knocked out of her. She would never have believed that a man like Proctor would be capable of such a thing.

  ‘I, er, don’t know what to say,’ she said at length. ‘I’m truly sorry. How? Why?’

  ‘He shot himself in his office. Where else? The company was his life. It was more important to him than anything else in this goddamn world, even me.’

  ‘But he loved you in his own way.’

  ‘Maybe, but I was just a trophy wife,’ the American said without rancour. ‘Look, Fiona, I never loved him, but I respected what he’d achieved. He was a self-made man who came from nothing, just like me. When he told me what he’d done with Sellars, I just flipped. I told him I was going to leave him.’

  ‘You think—’

  ‘No, Jack didn’t love me that much. He knew his empire was about to crumble. He just couldn’t see any other way out.’

  Fiona tried to imagine the last desperate minutes of Jack Proctor’s life. It was clear that the man who always gave the impression that only a ten-ton truck could stop him was as vulnerable as anyone else. ‘I’m sorry, Sharon, that I betrayed your confidence, but I had no other choice.’

  ‘I know that you did what you had to do, but that doesn’t make it any easier. I’ll always feel a sense of betrayal when I remember you.’

  The words cut deeply into Fiona Harrington, for she liked Sharon Proctor. She knew the American could be ruthless, but her strong will coupled with her stunning beauty made for a magnetic personality. ‘What will you do, Sharon, when this is all over?’

  ‘I’ve decided to go back to good ol’ Savannah, Georgia. Only this time the girl from the wrong side of the tracks’ll be able to buy up half the city. At least Jack made sure of that.’

  ‘But Parados was just as much your baby as his. He would never have succeeded without your support. Anyway, it’s your company now.’

  ‘I don’t want it anymore. Let Kinloss and the other piranhas have it. I hope it chokes them. There’s just one more thing, Fiona—’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You were like a younger sister to me, but I don’t ever want to see you again. Can you understand that?’

  ‘Yes, I think I can. I’m sorry. Under different circumstances—’

  ‘We would never have met under different circumstances.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that’s true.’

  Sharon Proctor sighed. ‘Anyway, I hope your boyfriend gets out of this mess in one piece. He’s a good man, if a little naive. So long, Fiona.’

  Fiona Harrington wished the American well and replaced the receiver. She could not help but feel an inordinate sense of loss.

  Inside the cottage, Jonathan Tring had been privy to his captor’s extraordinary performance the previous evening. True to his word, the Irishman had supplied him with a television and a radio. The reports of Proctor’s suicide had shaken the scientist to the core. Kelly’s threat to broadcast the tape had obviously been enough to tip the Yorkshireman over the edge, and, in the end like most bullies, Proctor had taken the cowardly option. In a way he was thankful that it was his captor’s action, and not his own, that had precipitated the suicide. Kelly was either half-mad or extraordinarily clever, and the professor found himself playing out all sorts of scenarios in his mind, most of them concerned with how the police would conduct themselves. He just prayed that they wouldn’t botch any rescue operation. He couldn’t help but think of the Munich Olympics and the demise of the Israeli athletes through the rank amateurishness of the German police. Those poor bastards had all died because of an ill-advised and poorly timed attack, and now he could see from the TV pictures that the authorities had surrounded them with all manner of sophisticated firepower. Chained as he was, he felt like a helpless pawn in a game played between two chess masters, with the police probably not realising they were confronted by a man who was as calculating as a computer. He had little doubt that Kelly would be ready to sacrifice one or two of his pawns if things got rough. He was again envisioning the worst of all scenarios, when his captor suddenly opened the door and ambled into the room.’

  ‘Well, Professor, what did you think?’

  ‘Look, Kelly, if that’s your real name, if you want to know the truth, I don’t think you’ve got a hope in hell of them agreeing to that package.’

  The Irishman sneered in mock derision. ‘Oh, dear me, if the great Professor Tring thinks that then who am I to argue? Opening gambit, man, opening gambit. It’s all a game after all, isn’t it? They’ll soon be starting the old psychological approach, getting some negotiator to try to sweet talk me into surrendering. Do you think I’ll ever surrender before my demands are met?’

  Tring looked directly at the steely blue eyes and hesitated a few seconds before shaking his head.

  ‘So it’s death or glory then, isn’t it Professor. Now what do you prefer? You don’t really want to join your boss in that great laboratory in the sky, do you?’

  Tring again shook his head.

  ‘No, I didn’t think so. You’d better pray that the authorities eventually come around to my way of thinking, otherwise you might not get to taste lunch, which, by the way, is corned beef.’ Kelly winked slyly at his captive. ‘White bread, or rye?’

  The House of Commons

  ‘Mr Speaker, is it the Prime Minister’s intention to stand firm against this unbridled example of modern terrorism, or will he allow anyone with a grievance to bring this great democracy to its knees?’

  The Prime Minister, a dour Scotsman not given to outbursts of hyperbole, rose to the despatch box and gazed at the Leader of the Opposition with undisguised disdain. ‘I have already assured the Right Honourable Gentleman that Her Majesty’s Government will do everything in its power to bring about a peaceful resolution of this incident. The hostage takers are clearly determined to hold this Government to ransom and I can assure the House that we intend to act firmly in this matter. However, I should like to remind my right honourable friend that while we should not be cowed by threats, we must bear in mind that the lives of three innocent people are at stake here, and, therefore, it would be imprudent to use inflammatory language.’

  The Leader of the Opposition, a slack-jawed balding man in his early fifties, jumped to his feet eager to embarrass his counterpart. ‘I am sure the Prime Minister is aware of rumours
in the media that the death of Mr Jack Proctor is linked in some way to the Secretary of State for Health. Can the Prime Minister shed any further light on this matter, or do we have to wait for the man in the balaclava to enlighten us?’

  ‘I am unaware of any such link, and I should advise the right honourable gentleman not to engage in unwarranted speculation that might endanger the lives of the hostages.’

  ‘Hear, hear,’ the Government benches bayed, followed by cries of ‘shame, shame.’

  ‘Order, order,’ cried the Speaker. ‘Order. Order.’

  ‘They’re all over the fucking place, Kieran,’ Sean Callaghan groaned. ‘I’ve never seen so much hardware.’

  Kelly peered through slits in the silver-coated blinds. It looked like most of Police Special Forces and half the British Army had turned out on his parade. ‘Fuck them all, Sean. They can posture all they like. Using a fucking sledgehammer to kill a fly is fucking nonsense. They won’t make a move unless I give them the impression that I’m a madman who’s going to kill their goddamn people anyway.’

  Callaghan looked at the younger man questioningly.

  ‘Carrot and stick, my friend.’ Kelly then cackled somewhat maniacally. ‘I’ll feed the public the carrot, and then I’ll leave them to turn it into a stick with which to beat the authorities.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Listen, my friend, at the moment the British public is against me. That’s good, and I’ll tell you for why. When people have a certain view of things and then you enlighten them, they tend to switch sides, and you know there’s no more passionate believer than a convert.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Kieran, you’ve lost me.’

  Kelly moved away from the window and returned to the panel of screens from which he could survey the whole shebang. He sat down in the chair and swivelled to face his companion. ‘Look, Sean, they might not be able to find out your identity that easily, but I’m not foolish enough to believe that they won’t have mine within a few hours.’