Siege: A Thriller

by Simon Kernick

  “OK,” said Arley uncertainly. “But wait, he doesn’t have the children. He told me he was in contact every fifteen minutes with the man holding them.”

  “That doesn’t change anything. Insist on speaking to your family—not just the children, or he’ll know you know that Howard’s dead. And if he won’t go with that—which I suspect he won’t—demand that he send a video message from them, and insist that one of the children says a certain word or phrase, something that tells you that the footage has been taken after you demanded it.”

  “But how will that help us locate them? He’s obviously using a different phone to stay in touch with the man holding the twins.”

  “The man who makes the video will send it via a phone to the man you’re in contact with. He won’t have time to do it all through email. I reckon your man will get him to send the video to Howard’s phone so that he can send it straight on to you, and as soon as he does that we’ve got the other guy’s number, and we’ll be able to track his location.”

  “But he’ll see through it, surely? It seems too obvious.”

  “Not if you sound frightened enough. He’ll think you genuinely want to hear from them, which of course you do. And remember, he’ll be under pressure himself by now, and people under pressure make mistakes.”

  There was a silence on the other end of the line. “Unless, of course, they’re already dead,” said Arley at last. “They killed Howard easily enough.”

  “We can’t think like that,” Tina told her firmly. “I’m on my way to Willesden.”

  Tina ended the call and pulled the car away from the curb. For the first time that evening she felt in control, now that she was actually doing something rather than sitting around watching events unfold without her.

  62

  21:20

  Graham Jones should have been home for dinner at eight at the absolute latest. He’d told his wife that morning before he left for work that he had a business meeting in Birmingham which was why he’d be home at eight rather than the usual time of six.

  In truth, since 1:30 that afternoon Graham Jones had been in the Stanhope Hotel, ensconced in a room on the fifth floor with his lover of more than two years. Like Graham, Victor Grayson was married with children and couldn’t afford for his secret to come out—at least not until his children had grown up and left home. Perhaps then the two of them could live together in peace and quiet. But until that time they had to make do with clandestine meetings at anonymous London hotels where no one would give them a second glance. And today they’d chosen the worst venue possible.

  For the last four hours they’d been trapped in their room as the dramatic events of a full-blown siege played out around them. Victor had stayed remarkably calm, saying that they should stay in the room and wait for help to arrive, which it surely had to do eventually. But then Victor had the advantage of not being expected home until much later. His wife seemed to be a lot more laid-back than Graham’s wife, Carol, who these days acted as if she was permanently suspicious of him, even though he was sure she had no idea about Victor. Carol would have a heart attack if she knew he had a male lover, and who could blame her? It was bad enough losing your husband of more than fifteen years to a woman, but for a conservative, middle-class woman like Carol, who liked to keep up appearances, losing him to a man would be too much to bear. Graham kidded himself that this was the reason he didn’t want her to find out, but deep down he knew it was far more than that. He didn’t want the embarrassment of being outed as a gay man in front of his parents and brother, and he didn’t want a messy divorce while the kids were still young.

  But as time kept ticking by, so the chances of his secret being exposed to the world grew greater. Surprisingly, it was this, rather than being caught by the terrorists who’d taken over the hotel, that scared him the most. He was sure Victor was right when he said that they should stay put, but he also knew how long sieges could last. Days in some cases. He’d read once about one in Hackney that had lasted three bloody weeks. He couldn’t have that. He had to get out. Make a break for it somehow.

  Victor had told him not to be so stupid. That he’d be risking his neck for no good reason. “Text her,” he’d suggested. “Say you’re stuck on the train.”

  But when he’d tried to text, the message had bounced back. He’d tried again every fifteen minutes until eventually he’d realized that the signal had been cut deliberately, leaving him with no means of communication with the outside world, other than the hotel phone, and if he used that he’d have to whisper and the stress he was suffering from would be obvious. Also, Carol was technically minded and suspicious enough that she’d be able to trace where the call had come from.

  Which was how Graham now found himself alone in the hotel lobby, having walked all the way down the emergency staircase from the fifth floor. It had been the most terrifying journey of his life, and Victor had begged him not to make it. At one point he’d even tried to physically prevent Graham from leaving the room, grabbing him in a bear hug. “I can’t lose you,” he’d whispered, tears in his eyes.

  But Graham had made his mind up. “I’ll be all right,” he’d answered. “I promise.” And with that he’d broken free and gone, with barely a goodbye, still hoping that he could come up with a reason Carol would believe for why he was so late.

  Keeping close to the side of the main staircase for cover, he looked over toward the hotel’s front doors, wondering if there was someone guarding them. He couldn’t see anyone, but that didn’t necessarily mean no one was there. One of the glass panes was cracked and it looked as if someone had fired shots through it.

  Thirty yards separated him from freedom, and the heavy silence gave him confidence that no one would try to stop him if he made a dash for it.

  But there was another problem. He was pretty sure Carol would be watching events on the TV. Since she’d been made redundant earlier in the year, she’d become something of a newshound with an addiction to Al Jazeera, of all channels. If he went out the front of the hotel, she might see him on TV, and even if she didn’t, someone would, and his secret would be out. It seemed so stupid under the circumstances to worry about something like this, but he couldn’t help it. So much of his life was based on this one major lie that if it were to be discovered, everything else would come crashing down around him. Right then, he’d rather die than face that happening.

  He’d go out the back. That would be easier. He knew that the Stanhope backed onto narrow streets where TV cameras would almost certainly be prohibited. He could get out without being seen, at least in public. Then one quick call to Carol, apologizing and bemoaning the state of the British railway system—a perfectly plausible explanation given how appalling it usually was—and everything would be fine. The strange and terrible events of this night would be his and Victor’s secret forever.

  From somewhere up at the top of the stairs he thought he heard a moan. It was followed immediately by a barked, unintelligible order. Turning away quickly, Graham made his way across the floor and through a door marked “Staff Only.”

  Straight away his nostrils were assailed by an appalling stench. Holding his breath, he made his way down a narrow, dark corridor, then through another door, and into the hotel kitchens. The smell was far worse in there and it took him only seconds to realize why, as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom. There were bodies, three of them as far as he could see, dressed in chef’s whites and lying on the floor in pools of blood. A wave of nausea overcame him and he had to put his hand on one of the counters to steady himself. Graham Jones had never seen a dead body before, and to see three in such appalling circumstances was a nightmare come true.

  Plucking up the necessary courage, he skirted around them and tried the windows that led out onto an empty courtyard behind the building, only to find them all locked. He needed to get away from the stench of death and breathe some fresh air. After hours trapped in the hotel room, freedom was finally so close.

  Making a cons
cious effort not to look down, Graham stepped over a body and went through another door. He almost tripped over another corpse blocking the way, but managed to stop himself. To his right was a fire door with a push-lever handle. It had to lead outside, and it wouldn’t be locked. It might be alarmed, but right then that was the least of Graham’s worries. He hurried over to it, forcing down the lever and pushing it open in one movement, immediately feeling a welcome slap of frigid air against his face, hardly hearing the clunk as the fully primed grenade dropped to the floor.

  63

  Fox stood in the ballroom satellite kitchen, waiting impassively while Wolf ranted and raved.

  “You were the last person to see him alive, Fox. If it wasn’t you who killed him, who was it?”

  “I have no idea. And why on earth would I want to gouge his eye out?”

  “I don’t know, but it was your idea for us to kidnap him in the first place—” Wolf stopped in mid-flow, interrupted by a dull boom coming from below. “What was that?”

  “It sounded like a grenade,” said Fox, immediately tensing. “I set a couple of them as booby-traps on the exit doors to the kitchen.”

  Wolf checked the portable TV, then leaned over the laptop. “Are we under attack already? You said it would take them time to strike.”

  “What’s the TV showing?”

  “Just the front of the hotel. It all looks the same.”

  “Is there any email message on the laptop?”

  “No, nothing.”

  There was an edge of panic to Wolf’s voice, and Fox knew he was going to have to take charge.

  “If they’ve come in via the kitchen, then they’re on their way up now. Come with me.”

  Fox walked rapidly out of the kitchen with Wolf behind him. Cat and Bear were guarding the increasingly restless-looking hostages, and they both turned around when they heard the door open.

  “Everything’s all right,” Fox called out, more for the benefit of the hostages than anyone else. “One of the booby-traps went off accidentally.”

  Keeping a firm grip on his AK-47, he opened the ballroom doors and went over to the top of the main mezzanine floor staircase, leaning back against the wall to give himself cover as he looked down into the empty hotel lobby. If this was an attack the SAS would have been slowed down by the booby-trapped grenade. There was no sign of them yet.

  He heard Wolf come up behind him.

  “Is anything happening?” he whispered.

  Fox pointed his AK-47 down the stairs, finger on the trigger. “Nothing yet.”

  They waited a full minute. In the background, Fox could hear the faint ringing of the phone in the satellite kitchen. It seemed the negotiators were trying to make contact. If this was a surprise attack, then the element of surprise had long gone. And if it was a full-scale, multi-entry attack, then where the hell was everybody?

  “I don’t think that was the SAS,” said Fox at last, still watching the lobby.

  “Then what was it?”

  “I’m not sure. We need to investigate.”

  “Are you going to go downstairs?” asked Wolf.

  Fox turned around. “I’ve got a better idea. Send Cat. She looks like a civilian, so if it is the military, or the police—and I’m pretty damn sure it’s neither of them—they won’t open fire on her.”

  Wolf’s eyes narrowed and he looked at Fox suspiciously. Fox knew that, after the discovery of Michael Prior’s body, Wolf no longer trusted him. He’d spent a good five minutes interrogating him about Prior, and it was clear that Cat had stirred matters as well. In this paranoid place, with the tension mounting, Fox’s suggestion could easily be construed as a plan to get rid of Cat, yet it wasn’t. Sending her down seemed to him the logical thing to do. She was relatively inconspicuous, unlike the rest of them.

  Wolf looked past Fox into the silence of the lobby. “All right,” he said with a sigh. “We’ll send Cat down.”

  64

  21:26

  In the incident room, events had taken a sudden and unexpected turn. Officers inside the inner cordon had heard the explosion at the rear of the Stanhope, its exact location obscured by the high wall bordering the courtyard, but the officer who’d called it in said he could see a thin plume of smoke rising up.

  Arley glanced at her watch. Her fifteen-minute deadline for calling the kidnappers was up, and she was going to have to make contact again. But she needed more time.

  Tina needed more time.

  One of the secure phones started ringing and Will Verran, the young police technician, who seemed to be looking younger as the night progressed, picked up. “It’s Major Standard for you, ma’am.”

  She took the receiver, conscious of the sound of her heart beating in her chest. “Major Standard.”

  “Hello, Arley,” said the major, sounding so calm it made her almost physically sick with jealousy. “Our spotters tell me there’s been an explosion at the back of the Stanhope on the ground floor. My understanding is it’s some kind of ordnance, possibly a booby-trap of some kind. Have you had any explanation for it from the terrorists?”

  “Not yet, sir. But it only happened a few minutes ago, and we’re going to keep trying them. It seems it might be some kind of one-off incident.”

  “Perhaps,” said Standard, his tone noncommittal. “And you’ve got nothing new on Prior’s location?”

  “Nothing yet, but as I mentioned earlier, the lead terrorist calling himself Wolf has promised we can speak to him. As soon as we do, I’ll let you know immediately.”

  “Good. We’re ready to go in at short notice now.”

  “It may be worth waiting until we can speak to Prior.”

  “Keep trying to talk to him, but if you’re still having no luck in fifteen minutes, let me know. We may have to reassess.”

  She handed the phone back to Will and left the incident room without a word, knowing that her actions were beginning to look odd, but no longer caring.

  She’d got barely ten feet from the building when she dialed Howard’s number.

  “I said fifteen minutes,” snapped the kidnapper, picking up on the first ring. “Not twenty.”

  “I was on the phone to the man in charge of the SAS operation,” she whispered into the phone. “It was a long conversation.”

  “And you have the details of their assault, yes?”

  “I do.”

  “When will it be happening?”

  “Not yet. At the moment they’re waiting until we can find a location inside the building for Prior.”

  “That seems reasonable. Tell me the plan for the assault.”

  “Not until I get visual proof that my family is still alive. Right now. Otherwise I give you nothing.”

  “You’re not in a position to make threats,” he hissed into the phone.

  “It’s not a threat. I just need to see my family.”

  “I’m not with your family, so it won’t be possible.”

  “Then speak to whoever is and sort something out fast, because otherwise I’m not going to go through with this.”

  “I hope this isn’t some sort of trick to determine their whereabouts. Because if it is—”

  “It isn’t, I promise. I just need to see that they’re still alive. And to prove it, I want to hear my daughter say the name of her former primary school.”

  “Impossible. You’ll do as you’re told.”

  “No,” she said firmly, remembering Tina’s advice to establish some kind of control. “I won’t. Not unless I hear from them.”

  There was a pause at the other end of the phone. “I’ll see what I can do,” the man said at last, and the line went dead.

  Arley took a deep breath, turning around, and almost jumped out of her skin. John Cheney was standing right behind her, and immediately she wondered what he’d heard of her conversation.

  But it seemed he hadn’t heard much. “Is everything OK, Arley?” he asked her, using her Christian name for the first time that night.

  She st
ared at him for a long moment, trying to pull herself together, wondering whether she should tell him everything. He’d always had a solid, reliable air about him—the result of his size, and an expressiveness in his eyes that suggested a real sensitivity. She almost said something, then remembered that the sensitivity and reliability hadn’t stopped him cheating on her. It was just too risky to let another person in on her dark secret.

  “Everything’s fine, thanks, John.”

  “You seem to be going in and out a few times.”

  “I’ve got a personal issue I’ve been having to deal with.”

  He thrust his hands in his trouser pockets, shivering against the cold. “It’s not like you to let the personal get in the way of business, Arley. Is it anything I can help with?”

  She shook her head, suddenly wanting this conversation to end. “No, but thanks for your concern. Give me a moment and I’ll be back in.”

  Cheney nodded. “Of course,” he said, giving her an appraising look that lasted a second too long, before starting back toward the incident room.

  She watched him go, paranoid thoughts flying crazily through her mind. How much had he heard? Was he going to say something to Commissioner Phillips about her ability as a boss?

  And most prevalent of all: How long have I got left to save my children?

  65

  21:31

  Scope cursed as he slammed down the phone receiver.

  “Still no luck?” asked Abby.

  He sighed. “No. The lines out are all still busy.”

  This had been the problem for more than half an hour now, ever since the terrorists had killed a hostage in the upstairs restaurant, in full view of the TV cameras. It seemed that plenty of the guests trapped in their rooms had seen it too and were panicking and phoning out. Luckily, Ethan wasn’t one of those to witness the killing. He’d fallen asleep beside his mother just before it happened, and had been sleeping ever since.

  Scope had last spoken to Steve at a quarter to nine, but at that point the paramedic was still trying to find out where the hotel kept the insulin, and was sounding stressed. He dialed Steve’s number again, but got the busy signal. Jesus, how many people were blathering on the phone? And who the hell were they talking to?