‘Aye, very good. Your OBE’s in the post. Now how about you quit twanging your wire and tell me what it is you called to ask for, because I’m getting a strong niff of “want” blowing in from your direction.’
Darcourt lets out a derisory little laugh, like this is all so beneath him.
‘Yes, very erudite, officer, and indeed very perceptive. But it’s not about what I want. It’s what I can give.’
‘You can give me the five people you’re holding hostage. That’s all I’m interested in.’
‘Oh, but don’t you see, I’m holding hostage something of infinitely greater worth than the lives of five people, no matter how much more valued they seem to be above the average mortal. I’m holding hostage the nation’s sense of its own moral security. What do you think it’s worth for the nation not to see its Saturday teatime favourite being raped and then hacked to death? What do you think it’s worth for the people of Britain not to see Charlotte Westwood tonguing Katie Lorimer’s clit before doing her doggy-style with a dildo? Is it possible to put a price on these things?’
‘I’ve an irrational hunch you’re about to. How much do you want?’
‘A hundred million pounds.’
He says it instantly: no pause, no build-up, no hesitation. His tone asserts that it’s not merely a high gambit to open a negotiation.
‘Aye, tell you what, just give us two minutes here and the boys at the station’ll have a whip-round.’
‘I don’t believe that will be necessary. I think Her Majesty’s Exchequer will be prepared to cover this one. In fact, I’d be very surprised if senior government figures haven’t already been in touch, and as this should remain our little secret, they need have no qualms about negotiating with hostage-takers.’
‘They might have one or two qualms about doling out a hundred million sheets.’
‘Hardly. It’s a figure their spokesmen are happy to admit to losing all the time. “This week’s two-day postal strike is estimated to have cost a hundred million pounds”. “The transport disruption caused by Tuesday’s unexpected snowfall has cost the economy a hundred million pounds”. “An outbreak of diarrhoea at several firms in the Square Mile is reckoned to have cost . . .” guess what. It’s always a hundred fucking million. It is also, poetically enough, roughly what the government has taken in taxes accruing from reality TV since the first Big Brother was broadcast in the year 2000. Ill-gotten gains, about to be confiscated. Otherwise they get my reality TV show, gratis.’
‘All this build-up and it turns out to be nothing more than a shake-down? I have to confess I’m a bit disappointed.’
‘Only because I haven’t shown you the full, deluxe, national peace-of-mind package. I’m not only offering you the hostages. I’m offering myself, Detective Chief Superintendent. You get to catch me. Justice done, threat eliminated. British bobbies get their man, so we can all sleep safely again, celebs and mere mortals alike. You’ll also get my cooperation, once I’m in custody. I will be telling tales, and believe me, I am a fount of information regarding certain individuals and organisations. What I can tell you is worth a hundred mill on its own. Christ, this whole deal is a fucking bargain now that I’m adding it up. But then I suppose it’s kind of a closing-down sale, because everything must go: including, sadly, me.’
Just in case Angelique isn’t quite feeling tense enough right now, her mobile chimes with the arrival of a text. She daren’t even look at the phone to verify who it’s from while there’s anyone close by who might be watching. One glimpse by another cop of a new proof-of-life picture and she’d be ruined. She’s desperate to look, though, hoping for the temporary peace of mind it would bring were the text not to be from them. She felt the lurching sensation the moment Darcourt said he was prepared to tell tales, and when the text alert sounded, it seemed such an omniscient reminder that the paranoid part of her wondered just how close these ‘unknowing’ sources might be.
‘Your silence is touching,’ Darcourt resumes. ‘But there’s no need to feign surprise. I’ve seen that photo of me you released a few days ago, and I know where you must have got it. So if you’ve been accessing my private medical records, then you’ve scooped me on my big revelation, haven’t you?’
‘We’re all really gutted for you,’ Shaw says, confirming.
‘Oh, don’t weep for me, but for yourselves if you don’t take what’s on the table. Because otherwise I will deliver my promise to the viewing public, then fade away, and there will be no resolution, no closure. I will be taking myself off somewhere to die, quietly and comfortably, never to be found, a death never to be certified, which means you will never be free of me. I’ll always be haunting the country, haunting you cops as I cloud the public’s imagination. After every murder, every abduction, the question will be posed: was it the Black Spirit? Is he really dead? And my parting broadcast will inform the public that I offered this deal but the authorities said no. Now, isn’t that hundred million starting to sound like a smaller and smaller sum?’
‘Sounds like a steal, but then it wouldnae be my money. And I really have to ask, what do you need a hundred million for when you don’t have a lot of time left to spend it?’
‘That I don’t have long left is why I need it. There are some things I want to ensure for the future, even if I won’t be around to see it.’
‘You mean your son. Connor McRae.’
‘Things will be difficult for him. There’s no permanent way of shielding him from the truth, not with our media, but all of life’s burdens are easier to carry when money is not an issue. I’ve taken precautions. He won’t be able to identify where the money has come from any more than you will be able to trace where it went.’
‘He’ll be able to work it out eventually.’
‘And then he can make his own choices. But having done nothing wrong himself, he may not find it morally imperative to give it back.’
‘A hundred million is an awful lot for one wee boy. You not worried about spoiling him? I mean, look what a prick his father turned out.’
‘Indeed, and the sins of the father must not be visited upon the son. The money won’t all be going on him, however. I want to leave a legacy: set in motion a few things that might cushion the blow once he finds out the terrible truth about dear old dad.’
‘I reckon you’d better set aside ten million just for his therapy.’
‘You’d be surprised what worthy causes I’m setting money aside for, Detective Chief Superintendent, but it’s all moot unless I get it.’
Shaw sighs, looking to the ceiling, perhaps because it’s the only place he won’t see either a monitor or a colleague’s expression. He looks like he wants to punch something, the body language reminding Angelique of Dale’s inside that common room.
‘So how would this work?’ Shaw asks.
‘It will work according to my instructions: that is the first thing to implicitly understand. There will be no simple handover or exchange, unfortunately, but this is for your – or rather the government’s – benefit. Nobody is going to believe that I just suddenly turned myself in and freed my hostages, and the authorities can’t be seen to have made any deals with a monster like me. To that end, you brave boys in blue are going to catch me in the act.’
‘I’m not sure how plausible that’s going to look either, given how we’ve managed so far, but I’m all ears.’
‘It will be all too plausible. Two nights from now, you will stage a concert at the Tivoli nightclub. I assume I don’t need to underline the significance of the venue. The event will be billed as a public gesture of defiance, a tribute to my victims and a show of solidarity with my new hostages. It will feature a star-studded bill. I’ll leave the line-up to you, bearing in mind that it will only conceal the government’s collusion if you get a decent quorate of celebs. A room full of coppers won’t really sell it.
‘Thus goaded and tempted by so many famous faces, in my greed and insanity, I can’t resist trying one more daring raid to scoop the
pot. But alas, it turns out to have been a trap, and you slap the cuffs on me. Gorblimey, it’s a fair cop guvnor, I’ll come quietly. In front of the cameras too. What a result.’
‘What about the hostages?’
‘Once I’m in custody, you will disburse the funds and allow me to verify that the transfer has been made, using a laptop. Once verified, I will take you to the hostages. However, before I leave for this little soirée, I will be setting a timer to deliver into each of the hostages’ holding cells a massive dose of the gas that killed young Wilson. The countdown will be only a matter of hours. You should therefore not attempt to mess me about with any “unforeseen” delays, and you’d better make sure the traffic is clear too. Any questions?’
Shaw thinks for a moment, his mind already calculating logistics.
‘Yes,’ he declares. ‘Once you’ve verified the transfer, what guarantees us that you will honour your end? You can just sit there with your thumb up your arse. Christ, you can ask for another hundred million. The clock will be ticking, after all.’
‘I have to confess, I have often wondered why anyone would want to, and indeed whether anyone ever has, sat around with their thumb up their arse. No matter, allow me to clarify: at this point, the funds will be in my account, but eminently recoverable. Once I have taken you to the hostages, however, I will be permitted further access to my laptop in order to execute a number of electronic transactions, and that way we’ll both have what we want.’
‘And once you’ve taken us to the hostages, what guarantees you that we will honour our end?’
‘I trust you,’ Darcourt replies. ‘You’re the police.’
‘Imagine for a moment that I’m one of those bad apples you hear about.’
‘Then that would be all the more reason not to answer your last question. Now, are we clear?’
‘Not quite. It’s very short notice. Two nights may not be en—’
‘May not be enough time for you to explore your options and dream up some ingenious scheme to get hold of me and the hostages without paying. It’s a party in a nightclub, for fuck’s sake. The only thing easier for you to organise would involve a brewery. It takes place two nights from now, and if it is suddenly postponed for any reason, then I kill a hostage and we schedule it all again for the next night. You got that?’
‘Yes,’ Shaw says begrudgingly.
‘Good. Now go and talk to whoever you have to talk to. Get me my money.’
‘How do we get back in touch?’
‘You don’t have to. I’ll get back in touch with you. But in the meantime, the way it works is this: if I don’t see mention of the great “Get It Up You Darcourt” party on the news by lunchtime tomorrow, then I promise you, celebrity muff-munching will be the lead item on the evening bulletin.’
The invisible pass
‘They’ll go for it,’ Shaw says to her, once Keen has departed for the emergency meeting with a copy of Darcourt’s call on disc and Shaw’s analysis to back up his briefing.
‘What if it’s a double-cross, another trap?’ she asks. ‘Get even more stars – not to mention a whole bunch of cops – all in one place, then wipe out the whole lot with a bomb?’
‘We’d have absolute control of the nightclub, for forty-eight hours in advance.’
‘Darcourt had access to the same premises several weeks back,’ she reminds him. ‘And he tends to plan ahead further than forty-eight hours.’
‘There wouldn’t be anything in that for Darcourt. If he wanted to take out more celebs, he could do it like he’s done all the others. There’d be no need to offer this deal.’
‘I think you’re right,’ she agrees, thinking of the Baker kidnap, the Lombardy incident, and of Darcourt’s living legacy. ‘His time’s running out and the money is the only thing that would extend his reach beyond the grave.’
Sitting shortly afterwards in a toilet cubicle where no one else can see her, Angelique’s fingers are shaking as she finally gets the chance to type her response to the text that arrived during Shaw’s call with Darcourt. She’s spent so long in a suspended state of apprehension about what might happen if it came to this, all the while just as afraid that it would never get so far. Now it’s real, and she’s setting it in motion the second she presses Send.
The alert was from who she feared, albeit the content at least failed to support her more paranoid thesis. They had seen Darcourt’s ‘trailer’ – who hadn’t? – and with him having made his next move, they wanted an update.
What an update.
This isn’t just betrayal, it might well be treason. Senior cabinet members are still discussing Darcourt’s deal a couple of miles away in Whitehall, and she’s not only feeding criminals the same details, but informing them of the decision she knows the government will make before the ministers themselves have made it.
Christ. She remembers the first time she saw this city, on a midterm long-weekend trip with her parents in 1986, getting Mum and Dad to herself for a change, with James opting to stay in Glasgow now he was old enough to be left on his own. Mum insisting they visit Harrods. Dad predicting, accurately, that all she could afford to buy was a souvenir plastic bag. Downing Street. Westminster. The thrill of seeing these places for real; the wonder of what could be going on right then within those walls.
‘Aye,’ Shaw had concluded. ‘He wants that money, and if you ask me, he’s going to get it. He’s been smart enough to make it appear the path of least resistance to the politicos. He’s done all he can to guarantee both ends. As long as they’re confident we can pull off the exchange and not get stiffed, they’ll give it the nod. Politicians care more about perception than reality. He’s set it up so that everybody’s going to come out of this looking like winners, but it will all be an illusion.’
Trembling in her locked bathroom stall, Angelique is fighting back tears, aware that once she presses Send, then her own illusionist will have to find a way of disappearing Darcourt without trading five other people’s lives for an outside shot at saving just two.
Zal takes the call as he sits in a booth in a large, airy pub on Euston Road, back in the room so as to be secluded, but with a clear enough view through the windows as to be able to watch the station entrance. It’s Angelique, speaking over the sound of traffic, calling from some place outdoors because she can’t talk where she might be overheard. She sounds like she’s barely holding it together as she fills him in on the concise facts of the deal, filling him in also on the fact that Jock Shaw now knows he’s around. This troubles Zal the way an electric bill troubles a guy who owes the mob fifty large.
‘A hundred million,’ he echoes, mulling over Darcourt’s audacity. ‘My old man used to say it was no use being the richest man in the cemetery, but I guess he was wrong. Look, I need to work on this. We’ll talk about it tonight, someplace safe, when you can tell me more.’
‘Tonight? Where?’
‘I’m working on that too.’
Zal sees them only a few minutes later. They’ve come early, intending to beat him to the station, where they’ll attempt to remain unseen while monitoring his approach. Too bad he’s already done this to them.
He finishes his drink, wheels his suitcase across the dual carriageway and proceeds inside Euston Station. He doesn’t know where they are, doesn’t look for them either. Instead he progresses casually through the concourse, stopping in front of the departure board, where he pulls out his ticket and quite unnecessarily cross-refers the information. Even these two assholes can’t have missed him now.
Having advertised himself thoroughly, he wheels his case towards the appointed platform and has his ticket checked by the guard. He makes a point of asking the guy which coach his sleeper berth is on. It tells him on the ticket, but the point is to draw attention to his name, or at least the one he’s travelling under.
Zal drags his case almost the entire length of the platform to the corresponding coach, two from the front. He doesn’t have rear-view mirrors attached to his head,
but if he did, he’s pretty sure that right now he’d be looking at Bullet-Head and Comb-Over roughly fifty yards behind him.
He called his old friend Jerome last night, once he was sure he’d given them the slip by taking a cab from outside the Halton Court Hotel. Zal paid the hack upfront to keep driving while he slipped discreetly away during a stop at a red traffic light, before disappearing into the tube network. He remembered Jerome had played in London a couple of years back with the experimental theatre group he helped found, using what he liked to refer to as ‘a grant’ from the RSGN. Zal needed an actor, somebody Jerome could not only source at short notice, but seriously vouch for too. The only other qualification was that he had to come across as plausibly heterosexual. Zal explained this as a belated but crucial afterthought, prompted by Jerome’s familiarly hammy tones. Zal and a select number of women knew for certain that Jerome wasn’t gay, but you’d have a hard time convincing a stranger of it.
He put Zal in touch with a guy called Maddox, endorsed by Jerome as being ‘from Newcastle, which would mean it was impossible for him to sound faggy even if he was as queer as Leo’. It was reassuring that in an ever-changing world, there were certain things you could always rely on, such as Jerome getting a dig in at their mutual friend Leo, even if Leo wasn’t around to be insulted by it.
A Snowball in Hell Page 37
