A Snowball in Hell

by Christopher Brookmyre

  ‘I’ve got a post-watershed moment lined up right here, chief.’

  Angelique can feel the anxiety dissipate, the closer she gets to taking matters into her own hands. Her fear lay in her ignorance and helplessness, not to mention her conflict about undertaking this level of deception, but Zal has taken away all of those things. She’s still jangling, but that’s simply impatience, and as it all suddenly begins, it turns into sheer edge.

  She clocks him just before he makes his move: guy with a big, shoulder-mounted television camera. There are several other cameramen in the place; Darcourt not only demanded it be televised, but sold it to them as a benefit on their side of the deal. This one suddenly stands out because he’s walking across in front of the stage, his lens not pointed at the show or the audience. He then deposits the rig on the platform and leaps up to crouch along-side it, at which point the sides of the camera drop away to reveal a cluster of plastic explosives arranged cylindrically, wires and detonators daisy-chaining in and out of the arrangement.

  Darcourt stands up straight, a few feet from the edge, holding out a blinking detonator at arm’s length in his right hand. The dancers are the first to notice and respond, scattering in retreat, their Rank Bajin hats and cloaks hurriedly dumped as encumbrances to their flight.

  The audience are still trying to decide whether this is part of the performance when Angelique draws the Walther and shoots him through the hand.

  Cops just materialise from the walls in her peripheral vision, moving in to prevent a stampede, others heading for the stage, guns drawn. Darcourt has dropped the detonator and is holding his hand up, shivering and looking incredulously at the wound. Angelique changes her angle slightly, takes aim a second time and shoots him again, this time taking off his two middle fingers.

  This is when the screams go up, none louder than his, while Raymond Ash’s student band continue to provide their one-fingered salute over the PA.

  Two cops – McGhee and Leitch – ascend the stage, while down among the audience their colleagues block the exits and urge everyone to remain in their seats. They get Darcourt face-down and cuff his hands behind his back, before marching/dragging him through the tunnel. Angelique picks up a cloak and three of the hats then walks briskly through the passage behind them. She pushes her way through the black drapes covering the backstage mouth of the tunnel and drops the garments on the floor as the music is abruptly cut off.

  Backstage, Darcourt is deposited on a chair and his cuffs undone while a bandage is hurriedly located from a first-aid box and wrapped around his profusely bleeding mitt. Shaw stands against another chair, arms folded, a laptop at his feet and his eyes fixed intently on the monster they have landed, doubtless ruminating darkly that the real hunt has yet to begin.

  ‘She shot me,’ Darcourt splutters furiously, his face sweaty and mottled in his pain and shock. ‘She shot my fucking fingers off. Why did you shoot me, you fucking bitch?’

  There are three answers to this question, over and above the reason she actually gives him. One is that she wanted to know whether he would desperately try to recover the digits and thus indicate that a fingerprint ID sensor might be required to stop the gas and release the hostages. Another is that she needed to render him unmistakably identifiable. And the third is simply that she wanted to hear the bastard scream.

  ‘Had to make it look authentic,’ she replies. ‘A hundred million costs a lot of pain, arsehole, and that was just small change.’

  Darcourt looks at her with a venom more chilling than she has seen in two human eyes her entire career.

  ‘A hundred million buys you five hostages,’ he says. ‘But it can just as easily buy four, and you’d still have to pay. Maybe I could even force you to choose who gets sacrificed. How would you like that responsibility?’

  ‘Danny Jackson,’ she replies. ‘In a heartbeat. You called that right, nobody cares about him. Next question.’

  ‘It could also buy just one,’ he reminds her. ‘Now where’s my fucking money.’

  The bandaging complete, Darcourt is cuffed again, in front this time, as Shaw brings forward the laptop. It doesn’t look like Leitch would make much of a nurse, but nobody’s exactly moved by the wounded man’s plight.

  Darcourt is allowed to log on himself in order to verify that he is looking at his account and not some façade cooked up by the police’s geek squad. As arranged, it is only now that he reveals the number, IBAN and Swift codes of the account he wants the money transferred to, preventing the authorities from taking advance measures to freeze it. Shaw makes the call to confirm that they have Darcourt in custody, and a few moments later, the transfer is approved. The British government, which does not deal with terrorists or hostage-takers, oh no, not us, matey, has just paid its most wanted criminal a nine-figure sum.

  Shaw snaps shut the laptop and crouches to put it back in its carry-case. Angelique swallows, feels the adrenaline build. This is it. She checks her weapon, glances at the positions of the other cops in the room: McGhee by the door, Leitch standing behind Darcourt’s chair. Both have their guns holstered. She runs a finger under the pashmina and takes a breath, readies herself to cross that final rubicon into the realm of deception. With one move, she will divert the course of events from the plan Shaw agreed with Darcourt, to the path picked out by Zal.

  With Shaw still knelt on the floor, she draws her Walther and levels it at the back of his head.

  ‘Hands in the air, all of you, right now,’ she orders.

  ‘What the—’

  ‘I mean it,’ she says, pressing the barrel against Shaw’s nape to drive the point home. ‘Both of you: against that wall, hands up high. Chief, turn around, very slowly.’

  ‘De Xavia,’ Shaw demands, ‘what the fuck’s going on? Have you gone native from hanging about with that bank robber?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. One day I hope you’ll understand. No time to explain, but right now Mr Darcourt means more to me than the lives of anyone else in here.’

  With this, she pulls away the pashmina and lets it drop to the floor. Shaw’s jaw drops only slightly shorter at what is revealed beneath.

  ‘Quite a necklace you’ve got there, hen. More bomb street than Bond Street.’

  Angelique pulls out the detonator that has been strapped just below her left breast and holds it in her right hand.

  ‘McGhee. Leitch. Put your guns on the floor slowly and slide them over there, away from the prisoner. That’s it. Now take out your cuffs and secure yourselves to those pipes.’

  As they comply, she removes Shaw’s own cuffs from his inside pocket and attaches one to his right hand, one to her left.

  ‘Radio your men and tell them all to holster their weapons. Warn the snipers outside too. I take my thumb off this button and the explosives blow. If they drop me, I drop this stick and we both die. DO YOU GET ME?’

  Shaw nods. ‘Yes, yes, fuck’s sake. This is madness, Angelique.’

  ‘Get on the fucking radio.’

  As Shaw relays the order with his free hand, Angelique points the pistol at Darcourt.

  ‘On your feet, bawbag. Go and get those hats and that cloak lying on the floor. Put on the cloak and a hat and bring me the other two.’

  Darcourt reminds her nauseatingly of Gollum as he scuttles cravenly off the chair and willingly does as he is bidden while it serves his agenda.

  ‘Now, put one on Shaw,’ she commands. ‘Backwards.’

  Darcourt obeys, very gingerly protecting his wounded hand from unnecessary contact as he does so. The rear drape covers Shaw’s face, effectively blindfolding him. Finally, she puts the last hat on herself, tucking the drape out of the way for the moment so that she can see better. She pushes Shaw forward towards the tunnel, beckoning Darcourt to follow with a wave of the Walther.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Darcourt asks.

  ‘It’s your lucky day, Fingerbob. I’m getting you out of here.’

  ‘. . . Hanson, speaking to you live for ITN from inside
the Tivoli nightclub in London, where I am supposed to be presenting a tribute evening for the victims of Simon Darcourt. However, as you can see, the stage is empty and the event has been abandoned, but the dramatic news is that for Simon Darcourt himself, the show is over. A few minutes ago, a man subsequently identified by police sources as being Darcourt, leapt to the stage carrying what is believed to be an explosive device. At this point, the nightclub just came alive with police officers, so we can assume that some sort of undercover operation was in progress. One of them shot the intruder, and he was very quickly bundled backstage through that tunnel you can see on your screens.

  ‘Now, the latest we’ve been hearing from the... no, wait, something must be happening. The police look like they’ve been alerted to something. They’re drawing guns again. Some of them are gesturing at people to get away from their tables. It looks like they’re clearing a passage, but surely they can’t be bringing their prisoner back out through the club? There is someone coming from the tunnel, though...’

  The Guarantor maximises the window on his laptop to get a better view. He sees three figures in matching hats emerge from the tunnel, single file. The first is a man in a grey suit, his face covered. He’s moving slowly, one hand out in front: evidently, he can’t see. Directly behind him – handcuffed to him, in fact

  – is a female in a black cocktail dress, her face covered by one of the veils he previously saw on those dancers. She is carrying a gun in her free hand and some other metal device is gripped in the cuffed one. There are explosives draped around her shoulders, which will be why the cops don’t shoot her. Finally, falling in at her back so close as to be using her for cover, is Darcourt. He’s got the same mask on, as well as a cloak, but even on these streamed TV pictures, the Guarantor can make out that one of his cuffed hands is wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage.

  The camera tracks them as they progress cautiously through the nightclub, cops lining their route, some training guns on the trio, others engaged in restraining the audience.

  The Guarantor toggles his radio through the police bands, listening for their response. A minute or so later, he hears that the three of them have boarded a dark blue Ford Galaxy, driven by a fourth person, also masked, and are proceeding west, trailed by eight police vehicles and a helicopter.

  He folds up the laptop, puts the A8 in gear and pulls away.

  Chase this light

  Well, isn’t Mademoiselle de Xavia quite the duplicitous little minx? Seriously, I’m starting to believe I might have been giving myself an unnecessarily hard time over Dubh Ardrain, as all my previous deconstructions of the fiasco failed to factor in just what a resourceful and audacious opponent I was up against. Not that I’m about to forgive her for shooting off two of my fucking fingers, but at least I now see there was a reason behind it, beyond gratuitous injury. I had to leave the things, knew in an instant that I’d lost them for good. The digits and blood vessels would only remain viable for a matter of hours. There’s no time and no point thinking about getting them stitched back on.

  Never mind, there are greater things afoot, such as the real revelation of de Xavia’s worth, and it’s not in pointing a gun at her boss, because any desperate nutter can manage that. No, I’m walking behind her and Shaw, about halfway down the tunnel when, just as I’m thinking she’s dragging us all into some foolhardy and potentially catastrophic siege scenario, the whole picture changes in a twinkling.

  A panel silently opens in the wall of the passage, and from it emerge two people, both wearing Rank Bajin headgear. The aperture appears behind the point Shaw has passed, though he isn’t seeing much anyway with that cloth over his face. The first to step through the gap is a woman in a dress identical to de Xavia’s, her doppelgänger outfit completed with gun, detonator and explosives (presumably as fake as the ones in my TV camera). She walks silently in step with de Xavia for the briefest second, during which some swift and subtle business takes place that leaves the newcomer handcuffed to the oblivious Shaw in de Xavia’s stead. Meanwhile, behind them emerges a man in a cloak matching the one she had me wrap myself in, his hands cuffed in front, the right one wrapped in a red-drenched bandage. I now understand that she wasn’t being entirely facetious when she said she shot me to make it look realistic.

  The three of them proceed out towards the stage as de Xavia gestures to me to step into the aperture. She slides the panel back from the inside, and no sooner has it locked into place than I feel a lurch as we begin to descend on a platform, gliding smoothly but rapidly beneath the stage.

  We both step off into a low-ceilinged room, one with thick walls going by the way the sounds of our footfalls are muted. It’s dry and dusty, bare but for some boxes of tatty Christmas decorations. There’s a door at one end, in the direction of the backstage area. De Xavia says nothing, just gestures with her gun to stay put for a moment.

  I look at my watch.

  ‘I would remind you that the gas is released in eighty-two minutes,’ I tell her.

  She shushes me. I wonder what she’s listening for, then realise it’s her earpiece. She’s monitoring the response to the decoys above. We wait in place for a few minutes, saying nothing. I imagine we have quite a few questions for each other, but it’s not only the need for silence that prevents both of us from asking any of them.

  She exhales suddenly, like an athlete psyching herself for her next feat.

  ‘Follow me,’ she says, and who am I to argue?

  She leads me through the door and into a narrow passageway. It snakes along through a couple of tight s-bends, suddenly emerging after the second of these into the dock where the props and scenery came in and out, a bare-brick relic of the venue’s past as a Victorian music hall. The area accommodates a narrow iron staircase, a disused pulley system and a double-wide sliding door. It also houses a cop with a pistol, which he draws as myself and de Xavia emerge from the passage’s last bend and into view.

  ‘The fuck’s going on?’ he demands, flabbergasted.

  ‘Put down your weapon,’ she tells him, levelling her own.

  ‘I can’t let you do this, Angelique.’

  ‘Put it down.’

  ‘I can’t. I have orders not to let anybody through this door, no matter who.’

  ‘Put your gun down, officer.’

  ‘You know I can’t do that. Give it up and stand down before one of us does something we’ll regret.’

  De Xavia doesn’t reply for a second or so. The two of them remain locked in the stand-off, maybe six yards apart, guns levelled. It’s long enough for me to think my little reprieve might be over. Subterfuge and fake explosives are one thing, but we’re talking real bullets now.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. Then she shoots him three times in the chest. Blood sprays the sliding door as he is thrown back against it, before slumping, face-down, to the ground.

  ‘Nice shootin’, Tex,’ I remark. She doesn’t like this.

  ‘Fuck you. There’d be a whole clip with your name on it if I didn’t need you alive,’ she assures me, her voice breaking a little.

  ‘Well, the police want me alive, but I think you may have just resigned from the force. So are you going to let me in on your agenda?’

  ‘You’ll find out in good time,’ she says, hauling open the door. There is a police squad car outside, sitting in a rain-washed yard off a side-street to the rear of the nightclub. ‘But for now, the deal is the same. I want the hostages and you want five minutes’ access to a laptop. Get in.’

  She opens the driver’s side door for me. I hold up my cuffed hands by way of indicating I’m neither free nor fit for driving.

  ‘It’s an automatic. You know where you’re going. Take us there.’

  ‘But my hand,’ I remind her.

  ‘Boo. Fucking. Hoo,’ she growls, climbing into the passenger seat. ‘Drive.’

  It’s fucking agony every time my right hand touches anything, so I grip the steering wheel with my left, pressing my right wrist against the other
side to steady it. The indicator stick is to the right, but I’m fucked if I’m bothering with that.

  De Xavia notes this when we stop to turn right on to Theobald’s Street: a car gets blocked behind us as the traffic in the left-hand lane whizzes past. The driver honks his horn in protest at the lack of notice.

  ‘Try not to draw attention to us, would you?’ she says.

  ‘I’m in a police car,’ I remind her. ‘They never fucking indicate.’

  ‘No hand signals either,’ she mutters acidly, the bitch.

  She switches on the police radio, scans the frequencies to pick up the chatter. The decoy car and its train of pursuit vehicles are heading west along Victoria Embankment.

  ‘Who were your accomplices?’ I ask. ‘Your boss said something about you hanging out with a bank robber. Obviously people who owe you big-time, given the fall they’ll be taking.’

  ‘They’ve got complete deniability,’ she replies. ‘They’re performance artists, showbiz wannabes. They had no idea what they were really doing. They thought it was part of the show, or rather a hijack of the show. They know they’ll get a slap on the wrist, but they also know it’ll be worth it, because they’ll be famous by the end of the week.’

  ‘Just what the world needs,’ I remark. ‘More fame-grasping nonentities.’

  ‘Well, you can hardly complain. You’re the prick who’s creating vacancies in the celeb market.’

  Theobald’s Road becomes Clerkenwell Road, which becomes Old Street, before I turn left on to Kingsland Road at Shoreditch. For the last hundred yards, de Xavia has been tapping away at her phone, composing a text. She holds off and looks up intently, however, when I hang a right under an archway and into the courtyard of four interlinked Victorian warehouses, now converted into a light industrial complex. How, she must be thinking, could he be running this whole scheme from a place like this, housing at least a dozen businesses, a hundred-odd workers and no doubt couriers zipping in and out from dawn till dusk?

  I bring the police car to a halt behind the only other vehicle in the courtyard, a large street-cleaning truck, its brushes tucked in tight to its underside and water trickling from the hose clipped to the rear. De Xavia opens the passenger-side door but I stop her before she climbs out.