“Two shotguns, one a sawn off. And I think two side arms, I couldn’t see enough to say for certain.
“Descriptions?”
“Two white males, one, in his forties, thinning hair. Light blue T shirt and faded jeans. The second was younger, early twenties I’d say. Fair hair, white shirt, short sleeved blue denim shirt and jeans. He looked jumpy, one point I thought he’d clocked me but …Other two, one black, one Asian male. Both in their mid to late twenties.”
“No one you recognised?” Andrews had been pacing the streets of Ingham for a lot of years.
Andrews shook his head. “Not local,” he said. “But the descriptions and M.O. fit what we’ve had so far.”
Peel nodded briefly, then turned as a dark blue Mondeo pulled up beside him. There’d been four similar robberies in the past month, the difference being, they’d been successful and the thieves in and out within minutes. Not like this.
Looking at the set of Peel’s shoulders and thinking about the people now trapped in the bank, Andrews half wished he’d never even been there. It could have been done and dusted by now. Another robbery, the bank a little lighter on its take and a few shaken people to comfort and maybe arrange some counselling for. Now, because he, Andrews, had been on the ball, been doing his job, there were people inside that bank with four armed men.
The Mondeo door opened and two CID officers got out. D.I Alec Friedman and DCI Dick Travers.
Travers spoke briefly to Peel and then came straight across to Andrews. He patted him briefly on the arm. “Good observation,” he said. “Now, talk to me.”
Friedman stayed where he was staring at the entrance to the bank. “Any movement from inside?” Andrews heard him say.
“Nothing, sir,” someone told him. Andrews glanced at his watch. It seemed like forever, but less than fifteen minutes had passed since he had first noticed the car.
“Control said a shot had been fired” Alec Friedman fired the question towards Andrews without looking his way.
“That’s right, sir. Single shot, I heard screaming, then the outer doors were slammed shut. “ He came over to where Alec stood and pointed. “There’s two sets of double doors. The inner ones are automatic. The old doors, see, they’re generally left wide open. There’s an ATM just inside and a camera facing it.”
“So, there’s a chance our men will have been caught on film before they masked up?”
Andrews nodded. “It’s possible, but they were fast and kept their heads down. My bet is we’ll get a lovely picture of someone’s bald patch. Not that we can get to the camera anyway.”
“Any idea how many hostages they have?” This from Travers.
“No way of knowing, It’s a Monday, not the busiest and it’s still early, before the lunchtime queues.”
“Negotiators are on their way,” Travers said. “Meantime, we sit tight.” He glanced across at Andrews. “We have to assume they know we’re here?”
Andrews nodded and cast a sideways glance at two of his fellow officers, standing sheepishly beside their patrol car.
“Control said no sirens,” he told Travers. “Seems someone didn’t get that particular instruction.”
Travers followed his gaze and then nodded. “No point crying over it,” he said brusquely. ‘We’ll hold the inquest later. Meantime…”
“Back behind the vehicles,” Alec Friedman ordered.
“What?”
“Look. The doors.”
Watching officers beat a hasty retreat, finding what cover they could and dragging the odd member of the public still on scene back with them.
The doors cranked slowly open and a figure stepped out. He held a young woman in front of him. She wore the bank’s blue uniform and she was crying noisily. The man – the older one that Andrews had identified as leader, had his hand beneath her chin, gripping her face tightly enough for her features to deform. In his right hand he held a gun.
Alec felt in his pocket and extracted his mobile phone. He had no idea if he’d get a decent picture at this distance, but he felt he had to give it a go. He watched as the man slowly raised the handgun. From the shape, it looked like an automatic rather than a revolver.
Replica or real. Alec wouldn’t have placed bets.
Moving as unobtrusively as possible, he began to take his pictures, watching all the time, lowering the phone abruptly as the man looked his way.
“Alec, for God’s sake.” Travers grabbed him and pulled him down. Alec shrugged him off, impatient, but also shaken. Just for that instant, before Travers had yanked him away, Alec had been staring straight down the barrel of the gun and, even from that distance, street and pavement and bank steps in between, it was enough to freeze him up inside.
“You stay fucking well away,” the man was shouting. “We’ve got hostages in here and, personally, I don’t give a damn if we have to lose a few, just to prove a point. You get me?”
“We get you,” Travers shouted back. “But you’re not doing yourself any favours. Put the gun down, let the woman go, we can…”
“Look, copper. Why don’t you shut the fuck up?” He shifted position, turning himself and the woman to face Travers. The he moved again, the gun now at the young woman’s head. Her cries turned to whimpers, animal like and desperate.
“Christ!” Travers said. “Where the fuck’s my ARV?”
Personally, Alec thought this would be a lousy time for an Armed Response Vehicle to arrive, but he did not get the chance to say so. The shot, thunderous at such close range, it’s crack amplified by the buildings, had them all on their bellies.
Alec heard the bank doors slam.
The woman? Was she dead?
As the sound of the shot died, her keening was the only sound left in the narrow road. Alec lifted his head and peered over the bonnet of the car. She knelt on the pavement, still dangerously close to the now closed doors, in the line of fire from the windows above.
He heard Andrews shouting to her, telling her to run towards the cars, but Alec could see that she couldn’t move. That moment of frozen-in-the -headlights fear he had experienced when the gun had pointed straight at him, flooded back and he knew she’d stay there until someone went to bring her in.
“Bugger!”
He rounded the front of the car before Travers could stop him – if he could give himself the time to think. Ran, bent almost double, to where she crouched, then grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her onto her feet. Near as he could tell, she was physically unharmed, but her body was rigid with fear and she was beyond listening or even hearing him. Beneath her, the ground was wet and she seemed to notice this as he pulled her away, clutching at her damp skirt and wailing ever more loudly as though her shame at having pissed herself was almost the worst thing.
“Move!” Alec told her. “We’ve got to move.”
He realised that he was shouting at her. The calm, reassuring presence he would have liked to project, lost, somewhere, in the knowledge that in all probability they had a gun pointing at their heads.
Somehow, he struggled half way across the street. Andrews met him, grabbing the woman. They bundled her between them into the partial shelter of the Blue Mondeo. She lay on the ground, moaning softly. Alec could hear Travers summoning an ambulance.
Still crouching, he opened the back door of the car and dragged a plaid travel rug off the back seat. He kept it there for when Naomi’s dog travelled in his car. It smelt of Napoleon, was sprinkled with shiny black Labrador hairs, but he didn’t think the woman was in a fit state to notice and her skin was icily cold despite the heat.
Travers scooted up beside him. “She alright?
“Shock, other than that, I think so.”
“What the bloody hell were you playing at? No, never mind. Ah, finally.” A police car appeared around the slight bend in the road and Alec recognised the ARV. “About bloody time.”
Alec glanced at his watch. Twenty five minutes since Andrews had first called in about the car.
C
HAPTER 3
“Do you think she’s dead?” Patrick whispered.
“I don’t know. He might be bluffing.” Naomi told him
They kept their voices as low as possible but in the silent aftermath that followed the shot and then the slamming of the heavy doors, their voices sounded impossibly loud.
“Hush,” Harry warned.
From somewhere to her right, Naomi heard a child whimper and its mother try to calm it. She felt Harry move beside her and his hand reach out to clasp hers. Patrick, absentmindedly, flicked the wheels on his skateboard. The whirr as it spun grated on her nerves. He stopped the sound almost as soon as it began and murmured an apology. To her? Naomi wondered absently. Or to the hostage takers.
The tread of heavy footsteps on the polished wooden floor. They stopped close by.
“Shut up and behave yourselves and you’ll be all right,” a voice told them.
“Like that young woman is all right, I suppose?”
Naomi lifted her head and turned in the direction of the new voice.
“Thought I told you to shut up?”
“And if I don’t? I suppose you’ll shoot me too?”
A low cry drifted from over on her right. Momentarily distracted, Naomi glanced sideways, responding to the sound with her sighted body language as she still so often did.
The heavy footsteps moved away, towards the person who had interrogated him. “Look, lady, I don’t want to shoot you. I don’t want to do any frigging thing except get all of us out of here with as little fuss as possible. Now, shut up and stay shut up.”
He was dangerously edgy, Naomi thought. Edgy and confused. No way had he expected this or even mentally prepared for the possibility.
“You,” he snapped at someone else. “Is there a back way out?”
“Yes…yes. Into the yard then over the wall. It comes out in Trimball Street.”
“Take a look,” the man demanded. A second set of footsteps, these lighter and accompanied by a slight squeak like hard rubber soles against the polish.
Trainers, Naomi thought. She wanted to ask Harry or Patrick what they could see, but dare not draw attention. A door opened, then slammed closed. Another beyond that, the sound muffled, then the steps again, but with an urgency to them. The voice was slightly breathless. Muffled. Was he still wearing the ski mask?
“They’re out back as well.”
“Shit. You. Help him get something jammed against that back door.
“I told you this was a stupid idea.” A young voice, this time. Young and scared.
“You didn’t have to tag along. I was doing you a bloody favour, so don’t fucking well forget it.”
Sounds of something large being dragged across the office floor grated from the rear of the bank.
“Well, no one’s going to sneak out without paying,” Patrick commented.
Harry shushed him again.
Naomi stifled the sudden and singularly inappropriate desire to laugh. She bit her tongue, recognising the reaction for the nervousness it was. She forced herself to breathe deeply, though the air no longer seemed as cool and refreshing as it had been after the outside heat. If anything, it seemed almost painfully cold.
“How many of us are there,” she whispered softly.
“Four of them and about a dozen of us,” Harry told her. “Including two children, and Patrick, of course.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“Shut up back there.”
They fell silent. Naomi squeezed Harry’s hand suddenly, selfishly relieved that she was not alone.
Outside, the ambulance had arrived. It glided silently into the street, the crew having been told no sirens and minimum of fuss. There was a slight incline from the top of Main Street down towards the bank and the driver cut the engine, allowing momentum to take them to past the tight shut doors and, hopefully, out of direct range of shots fired from the windows.
The officers from the armed response vehicle covered the crew as they got out, using the riot shields they kept in the vehicle to give a semblance of protection. Even so, it was a nervous moment. Alec watched as they came around to the side of the car. He still crouched there, supporting the woman now swaddled in the blanket, trying to get her to respond to him. She was a little calmer now but when she realised she was going to have to leave the cover of the car and walk round to the back of the ambulance, panic set in once again. She clung to Alec, begging him not to let her go. In the end he had to half lift, half drag her, cowering behind the police officers with their body armour and transparent shields and bundle her into the back of the ambulance with the paramedic. The driver ran around to the front and scrabbled in, starting the engine and speeding away in a racing start that would have looked good at Le Mans. He had just departed when the second ARV and a van came through the cordon.
“Finally, some proper backup, Travers grumbled. Right, first priority, we get these people out.” He jerked his head towards the greengrocers behind. They had herded all civilians into the back room awaiting the arrival of the ambulance and the relief now filing their way cautiously out of the back of the van. Alec glanced across to see who was in command, recognising the sergeant, Tom Hemmings. He nodded a brief greeting. Hemmings was from Pinsent a few miles up the coast. Alec wondered who’d be appointed Senior Investigating Officer on this one. He was the local man, but Travers might prefer to bring someone else on board, someone with more experience of this type of incident.
“Hemmings,” Dick Travers noted with dissatisfaction. “Arrogant bastard.”
Alec smiled. “But he gets the job done.”
“Keep him on a tight rein, “Travers instructed.
Alec glanced at him, questioning.
“I’ll have to clear it with the Super, but as far as I’m concerned, you’re in charge. Small time heroics, I can live with.”
Well, Alec thought, that answered that one. Alec Friedman was SIO until someone argued otherwise. He wasn’t sure if he should be pleased at Travers decision and the trust it showed, or annoyed that it meant breaking tonight’s date with Naomi. He decided that the two emotions were not mutually exclusive and settled on both.
Hemmings had ushered his crew into the greengrocers. It was, Alec noted, something of a tight squeeze. He then dropped down beside Alec and DCI Travers. He nodded briefly when Travers informed him of Alec’s seniority.
“Ok, Alec said, feeling that he should do something to deserve his new role. “Let’s get on.”
CHAPTER 4
Alec glanced at his watch. It was eleven o clock, an hour, give or take, since Andrews had first reported this incident. Everyone was in position and it was time to make the next move.
The two armed response units had moved back, reinforcing the cordon, their estate cars pulled diagonally across the street. Rifle officers had been positioned on the flat roof of the Kings Head pub, allowing a clear view of the rear of the bank. Two others had been positioned in upper rooms facing onto the front of the building. One in the greengrocers, which had been taken over as the central control room and the other, two doors down in an attic flat, the residents having been hurriedly evacuated. A second incident room had been set up in the school hall – Sergeant Andrews being put in charge of that one. He was well known in the locality and Alec felt he needed someone familiar to oversee the interviews of potential witnesses and to calm those who’d been so rudely turfed out of their homes. Fortunately, Main Street was mostly small shops, many with the proprietors still living over the premises. Those flats that were let out were largely empty, people already having left for work before the robbery. They’d need dealing with, but not until late in the afternoon, when they’d arrive home to find their street blocked off.
Of course, it could be all over by then, Alec thought hopefully.
Then dismissed the thought. This situation was unlikely to enjoy a swift resolution.
Travers had left, gone to make his report to the Superintendent. Hostage negotiators were on their way, a team of
two, only one of which Alec knew and the under manager had just been escorted through the roadblock, clutching plans of the bank and work rotas. At least they would then know who’d been on duty that morning. To complete the picture, Hemmings had just told him that the local press had arrived. A reporter along with a photographer.
“Says he knows you. Spotted your car so he knows you’re here.” Hemmings grinned.
“Let me guess,” Alec said. “Simon Emmett?”
Hemmings jerked both thumbs upward in a congratulatory gesture. “Give the man a peanut. Likely to be trouble?”
Alec shook his head. Simon was ok; it was the rest he was worried about. And they’d come. Alec knew that. It was just a question of how quickly.
“I’ve got four of my lot either end,” Hemmings told him. “Then there’s the ARVs ten yards in. Anyone stupid enough to break the cordon, they can bloody well get themselves shot. “ He glanced round as the door opened. “Who’s this then?”
“Mr George Tebbut. Under manager,” Alec told him. He advanced and shook the newcomers hand. Tebbut’s palm was damp.
“Thank you for coming so quickly,” Alec told him. “You’ve been told what happened?”
Tebbut nodded. Alec led him over to the table – this was normally the dining room in the upstairs flat – and sat him down. Hemmings followed.
“I need to know,” Alec told him, “Who was working today. How they’re likely to react to this situation and, as much information as possible about the layout of the bank. We want to work out where the hostages are likely to be held.”
“Hostages,” Tebbut said. He seemed awed by the word. He stared at Alec, then shook himself. “They told me that a member of the female staff has been released?”
“A Maria Childs. Yes.”
“She’s all right?”
“Very shocked. They’re checking her out at the hospital, but that’s just procedure. I expect she’ll be home later today.”
“Her family know?”
“Her husband was to meet her at the hospital.”
“Was she able to tell you what happened?”
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