He has to give the police full marks for persistence. Hats off. The negotiator keeps on calling, time after time, even though her only reward so far has been incoherent mumbling and yells. Neil has taken to watching the clock, waiting for ‘Rocket Man’. It makes him feel less alone. He’s pretty sure the crazy lad has been watching the clock too, perhaps for the same reason.
The bathroom consists of two cubicles built into a square room with a tiled floor and wood-panelled walls. A vase with sprigs of holly fills one end of the vanity; at the other there’s a basket of hand towels and one of those bottles of scented oil with bamboo stuck in it. He’s never quite seen the point of those. An enormous mirror dominates the basin. He’s careful to avert his eyes from that. The last time he glanced in a mirror it gave him a hell of a shock. The guy he saw was a shambles. Finished. Washed-up.
Oh, how he wishes he could talk to Heather. He wishes it every day, but never more than now. He was a despicable husband and he’ll regret it to his dying breath—which might be today; he has to face that. He imagines her in this room beside him, leaning against the baby-changing table with her arms folded. Heavy brown hair, hazel eyes. He tries to conjure her voice, lilting, teasing. What kind of a scrape have you got yourself into this time, Neil? You can take the girl out of Liverpool, she used to say, but you can’t take Liverpool out of the girl.
She ran the office at the first school where he taught. That’s where he first clapped eyes on her, on his first day as a qualified teacher. He had asked for directions and she promptly left her desk and walked alongside him, chatting all the way. By the time they arrived at the staffroom she somehow knew most of Neil’s life story. He’d worked for a company making medical equipment before deciding on a career change.
‘Why teaching?’ she asked.
‘I had a fantastic chemistry teacher. Mrs Weddell. She inspired me—she’s the reason I’m a chemist. I thought I should pass it on.’
‘Hmm. Nervous?’
‘A bit.’
That was the understatement of the year. His stomach had been squirming for days. Last night he’d only just resisted the urge to buy a packet of cigarettes, though he’d long since given up. She didn’t promise it would all be fine; she was too honest for that. Later, she admitted she’d felt sorry for him. A lamb to the slaughter.
‘You know where I am,’ she told him. ‘Drop by at lunchtime. I’ll be keeping these crossed. And my toes.’
He can see it now. She’s standing with both hands held up, fingers twisted around one another. She has freckles all over her face, and her eyebrows arch high when she smiles. He’s wondering whether there’s a boyfriend in the picture.
The memory brings tears to his eyes. He seems to cry all the time nowadays, daft old sod. If he dies here today, she might never know. She doesn’t even know what city he’s in.
He’s pulling his clothes back over his head when he notices a narrow window above the basin. It’s a horizontal oblong, perhaps two feet by three. Leaving the tap running to cover the noise, he carries a wooden chair across and climbs onto the vanity with an agility he didn’t know he still had. Balancing with one foot each side of the basin, he peers through.
It’s no good. Even if he could open and squeeze through the window—unlikely, he’s no gymnast—he’ll have got nowhere. He’s looking into a windowless space, about the size of a large garage. There’s a double sink, kitchen equipment, an alcove with some freezers and beyond those a door with staff on it—probably a toilet. There’s no daylight, no sign of any windows. By craning his neck he can see another door to the left, but it must lead back into the café. In fact, now he thinks about it, Robert will be lying right behind that.
He’s about to clamber down when he spots movement. He can’t believe his eyes. A door beneath the sink is inching open. There are fingers curled around the edge. It’s creepy, the sight of a disembodied hand in that gloomy room. A person rolls out—onto her knees at first, before getting to her feet. A young woman: slender, very short hair with a floppy fringe, tight jeans. She straightens slowly, clutching her back. If she’s been hiding under that sink all morning she must be knotted like a pretzel. She’s looking all around her, hyper-alert like Neil’s foxes as they slink out from under the hedge. She stretches her neck to one side and the other, rubbing it.
He’s seen this girl before. She works here. She’s wearing the staff uniform, a black T-shirt with tuckbox across her bust. There’s a tattoo; some kind of plant curling up her left arm. Yep, it’s her all right.
When she spots Neil’s face at the window, she jumps. Poor lass. She literally jumps, covering her mouth with the palms of both hands. He waves his arms, trying to let her know he’s harmless, and she stands like a horrified statue, hands still jammed over her mouth.
Someone’s knocking on the bathroom door behind him—Neil, Neil? He hurriedly climbs down and puts the chair back, bundling his shirt, sweater and anorak into his arms.
The knock’s becoming more urgent.
‘Neil! Sorry, you’ve got to come out. Now.’
He opens the door to see Abi standing there. She’s looking strained.
‘He’s paranoid,’ she whispers. ‘He’s decided you’re up to something.’
When he returns to the café, the other hostages are clustered in a tight knot of frightened humanity in the booth. Neil can see why. The lad’s out of his tree again—screaming about how snipers are hiding behind every door and every window and they’re going to blow his head off the first chance they get.
Fair enough. They probably are. Let’s hope they take a pot shot soon.
‘You’ve been letting them in!’ he yells, advancing on Neil.
Neil takes a step back, holding up his hands. ‘See for yourself, there’s no way anyone could get in here.’
The lad doesn’t believe him. He creeps to the bathroom door, rushes inside and spins in circles. When he notices the window, he stops dead, staring up at it.
‘Just a storeroom next door,’ says Neil quickly. ‘There’s no way through there. Nobody can come in or out.’
The lad lays one hand flat on the edge of the vanity, holding his gun in the other. He’s young and fit, he doesn’t need a chair to hop up beside the basin. Any second now, he’s going to look through that window. Any second now, he’s going to see a terrified girl.
That’s when the dogs begin to bark.
Rosie
The place has been quiet for a while. Now’s the time.
She rolls out of the cupboard and onto her feet, ears pricked, watching the swing door for any kind of movement. If he walks in here now, she won’t have time to hide. She will be the fish in the barrel. She may be about to die in the attempt to get her phone. Oh, but it feels fantastic to be out of that hell-hole! It’s a luxury just to be vertical, to stretch the tortured muscles and joints in her back and shoulders, to rub her sore neck. She allows herself several precious seconds to make the most of her temporary freedom.
That’s when she happens to glance up at the internal window. Her heart gives one massive thud, as though a mallet has smashed against the inside of her chest. It leaves her breathless. There’s someone watching her. All she can make out is a sinister silhouette and blurred features—the outline of shaggy hair, perhaps a beard.
He begins waving, gesticulating. After a few moments he abruptly drops away from the window.
She doesn’t move. She’s never been paralysed by fright before—never imagined what it would be like. Before she’s gathered her wits, angry shouts are erupting from the café. That galvanises her. Forgetting about the phone she scrambles back under the sink, pulls the door behind her and curls up again.
She’s fighting to control her breathing. Shh. She lies absolutely still, straining her ears for footsteps or the creak of the door.
Instead she hears another, unexpected sound. It’s faint, perhaps coming from the street outside. But somewhere, not far away, dogs are barking.
Eliza
‘Bloody hell,’ she mutters to Paul, as they watch from the attic room. ‘That’s a high-risk strategy.’
A pair of firearms officers are trying to get closer to the café, creeping out from the drycleaner’s doorway. As they approach Tuckbox they come face to face with the biggest of the dogs. He’s sitting up on his haunches, following their every move. They freeze for a good half-minute before trying to edge past him.
‘Might be okay,’ whispers Paul. ‘They’re moving slowly.’
But this is clearly an excellent guard dog and he takes his duties seriously. Eliza doesn’t hear his first bark, but the other dogs certainly do. Within seconds they’re all in full cry, yapping and baying like a pack of wolves. The little white one is actually springing up and down, all four paws leaving the ground. The officers beat a hasty retreat, but the damage is done. The hullaballoo could wake the dead.
‘This isn’t good,’ gasps Eliza, rushing back to the phone. ‘This isn’t good, this isn’t good, this could be a flashpoint. He’ll be going nuts in there! I’m going to call him, try to calm him down.’
The gunman answers straight away, and she was right. The barking has hurled him back into panic. His first words are high-pitched shrieks, almost unintelligible.
‘Call them off!’
‘There’s nobody, it’s just the dogs.’
‘They’re coming to kill me. Call them off. Call them off! I mean it, I’m warning you!’
His terror resonates in her headset, fracturing his voice into jagged splinters. She’s heard screaming meltdowns like this before. The lizard brain has taken over again. He’s cornered. He’s dangerous.
‘I can hear that you’re scared,’ she says, but he’s still shouting.
‘Call them off! I know they’re outside, the dogs are barking.’
‘I’m a negotiator, I don’t make those decisions, but what I can tell you—’ she pauses, waits for a break in his yells ‘—listen, listen—listen! What I can tell you is that as long as the people in there with you are safe, I’ll keep talking to you. I will keep listening. There’ll be no need for any other police action. Okay?’
‘They’re right outside that door! I’m dead.’
‘No—hey, listen to me for one second! I know the dogs barked, but nobody is coming in.’ She hopes it’s true. ‘Nobody wants this to go wrong. Not me, not you, nobody. We all want the same thing. We all want to find a way out of this for you.’
He’s quieter, but he’s still terrified. It sounds as though he’s shivering.
‘You’re keeping me talking while they sneak up. I can hear them next door too. Through the wall. I can hear them everywhere.’
Paul shoves a post-it note in front of her: Paranoid. Ground him in reality? Focus on what he can see?
‘Can you tell me what’s happening inside Tuckbox right now?’ she asks. ‘What exactly is the situation in the café?’
During the silence that follows, she mentally zips her lips. Silences make her edgy. In social situations—lunch with Richard’s parents, work bashes, the neighbours’ bloody awful Christmas party on Saturday night—she makes it her duty to fill the awkward pauses. She’s the one who thinks of the funny story to tell, who spurts desperate inanities about the weather. Ethan pulled her up on it during one of the simulations in her training. Stop fearing the silence, McClean, for Pete’s sake. It’s one of the most valuable tools in the box. Keep your trap shut. Zip your lips. Give ’em time to think.
She keeps her trap shut now, counting the passing seconds. Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty—
‘Robert’s dead,’ he says.
She exhales carefully, glancing at Paul.
‘Thank you for telling me that. It’s much better that I know.’
‘I killed Robert. Can’t believe it.’
‘Are there any children in Tuckbox?’
‘Um, yeah. Two.’ She detects a note of shame. Perhaps there’s leverage there.
‘And it’s still the case that nobody needs medical help?’ she asks. ‘Including you?’
‘No.’
‘That’s good. That counts for a lot, the fact that everyone else is okay. I know things can happen fast and situations sometimes get out of hand. But since this began you’ve kept things under control, and everyone else is safe. You’ve done well.’
‘Don’t patronise me.’
‘I’m not—’
She winces as the headphones magnify his shout.
‘Are you seriously going to pretend this has all been a bit of a misunderstanding? I killed an unarmed man in his own café. That’s murder, isn’t it? Murder. I can’t come back from this. I won’t be walking out of here.’
‘Why won’t you be walking out of there?’
‘I’m never going to prison.’
Ashwin slides into the room, placing a note in front of her before donning his own headset.
Samuel Ballard. Sam. Dob 10/5/94. Robert Lacey is his stepfather.
Samuel. Sam. She doesn’t change her tone, doesn’t hint at what she now knows. It’s far better if the information comes from him. She’s getting a feeling for him now, for his speech patterns. He seesaws from rage to fear to horror, but he’s no fool. She’s been in danger of underestimating him. Her response needs to be tailored to him. It’s no good being Tigger if he is Eeyore.
‘I’m getting the feeling Robert and you have a history?’ she prompts.
‘You can say that again.’
‘Tell me. It sounds as though a lot’s gone on.’
‘Why would you care?’
‘Because it’s my job. Right now, today, my whole focus is on you, on what’s brought you here today. I really do want to understand what’s happened to you. I want to listen.’
Ethan was right: telephone negotiation is like flying blind. You have to develop a sixth sense. The floodgates are opening. She can hear Sam’s breathing becoming louder, more choppy and uneven, until he cries out. ‘People didn’t see it!’
‘See what?’
‘He plays the fucking saint to a tee. Nobody would listen to me, nobody would help me, they couldn’t see what he was doing to us. Nobody, nobody …’ His voice disintegrates into a long, despairing moan—ohh!—like a heartbroken child. It’s a desolate sound. It tugs at her. When Liam was four, he somehow got lost at a funfair. After a frantic search she found him standing alone in the vast crowd—a tiny figure, completely ignored by passersby as he wailed to himself. She still feels guilty. Sam sounds exactly as Liam did then.
‘What was he doing to you?’ she asks.
‘I don’t want to talk about Robert.’
Paul’s scribbling: YES HE DOES!!
‘Okay, we won’t talk about Robert,’ she concedes, nodding her agreement with Paul. ‘But maybe you could tell me your name? It feels wrong, calling you “you”. I’m Eliza, as you know.’
There’s a crack in the plastered wall of the attic room. It begins near the ceiling, zigzags down the magnolia paintwork and disappears behind a filing cabinet. Her gaze follows its hairpin bends as she counts. Keep your trap shut, McClean. Thirty-one, thirty-two … She’s chewing her lower lip, willing him to answer. Come on, come on. If he is prepared to trust her with his name, she’ll have one foot over the threshold.
‘Sam,’ he mutters at last. ‘Sam Ballard.’
Yes. She gives a silent shimmy of celebration.
‘Is there anything you need, Sam? Anything practical we can deliver to you? How about food and hot drinks?’
A grunt of laughter. ‘Are you serious? We’re in a fucking café.’
‘True.’ She allows herself to echo his laugh, matching his change of mood. He’s shifted gear again. It’s tricky to keep up.
‘There are some things I want,’ he says. ‘I bet they’re asking you, “What are his demands?” Are they? Are they asking that?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, here I come with some demands.’
‘Let’s hear them.’
‘Right. Right. Erm �
��’ He swallows. He sounds nervous. Playing the role of demanding hostage-taker doesn’t seem to come naturally to him. ‘Yeah. I didn’t expect to be here, so I haven’t got a plan worked out, but … okay. I want to talk to Nicola. Face to face. Not on the phone. Face to face, in here. And she’s got to bring Julia with her, okay? I must see my daughter. I must see my daughter. That’s my demand. That’s not negotiable.’
Ashwin has sprung into action: he’s typing into his tablet, skimming through notes.
‘Just so I understand,’ says Eliza, playing for time now, ‘you’d like to talk to someone called Nicola?’
‘And Julia.’
Ashwin is shaking his head, mouthing no way as he highlights something on his tablet and slides it across to Eliza. It’s some notes from the officers who visited Ballard’s address and spoke to the owner of the Holdsworth village shop.
Long-term relationship with Nicola ?? family name. Broke up earlier this year. One child Julia 2 or 3 y/o. Court case? Not sure of outcome.
‘Okay,’ says Eliza, rapidly scanning the message. ‘I’ve heard your request. But you know, Sam, that’s quite a big ask. All I can promise to do is to pass it on and see where we get.’
‘It’s not negotiable.’
‘Let’s start with finding Nicola. What’s her family name? D’you have any contact details?’
To her surprise, this easy question seems to be like a red rag to a bull.
‘Come on! Think I’m stupid? I bet she’s standing right beside you, laughing her head off.’
‘She isn’t. We haven’t had any contact from a person called Nicola.’
The Secrets of Strangers Page 8
