‘I’ve come to get her,’ muses Paul, squinting at his own handwriting along the top of the board. ‘What have you done with her? What did you do to her? D’you think we can assume “she” is Nicola?’
Eliza stands up, walking around the table to join him.
‘I’m not sure we can. Not if he’s already seen Nicola in the café. It doesn’t really fit.’
‘Julia, then? His daughter?’
‘Maybe.’ She gazes up at the board. ‘What did you do to her? I’m beginning to wonder whether something terrible has happened to that child.’
Paul’s job is to be a dispassionate adviser, to keep his emotional distance. He’s not the one pouring his soul into building trust and rapport with Sam.
‘Even if—when—they find Nicola,’ he says, ‘his demands aren’t going to be met. You do know that? You’ll never get the boss to agree to a gamble on that scale. Taking a kid into a murder scene, delivering her up to an armed killer? Heck, no! Can you imagine what the media would have to say?’
‘What if two other children were released in return?’
Paul is shaking his head.
‘This Nicola is obviously a love affair that’s turned to custard. Why d’you reckon he wants to talk to her? Same reason he wanted to talk to Robert?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Right.’ Paul draws his finger across his jugular. ‘And we all know how that ended. This guy’s got nothing left to lose. He might be looking for an audience for his suicide. Or, worse, he might be planning on taking his family with him.’
He’s right. Of course he’s right. She hates the fact that he’s right.
‘Nicola might agree to act as an intermediary on the phone,’ she suggests.
‘She might, if we find her. But that’s also a risk, isn’t it? Speaking to his ex might turn out to be the final tick on his bucket list.’
Right again. They’ve both been involved in crises where a phone call has been used to say goodbye. Eliza turns away from the whiteboard. She’s getting cabin fever. She needs to be out of the room for a few minutes, maybe make a cup of coffee.
‘Nicola can’t have disappeared into thin air,’ she says. ‘I’m sure she’s the key.’
Hurried footsteps rattle on the stairs. The next moment Ashwin’s standing in the doorway. He looks stunned.
‘Nicola,’ he says.
‘Tell me you’ve found her,’ begs Eliza.
‘Um, yes and no. She’s in Tuckbox.’
His colleagues frown at him, doubting.
‘She’s never left that bloody café,’ he insists, gesturing wildly out of the window. ‘She’s the missing waitress. She’s Rosie. Turns out her surname’s Rosedale. Rosie. Geddit?’
Eliza blinks. This simply does not compute.
‘No. That’s not right. Sorry, Ashwin, your intelligence has to be wrong. She definitely isn’t in Tuckbox. I’ve just spoken to Sam, and he’s—’
‘She’s about fifteen feet away from Sam Ballard. Hiding in a cupboard. Texting goodbye messages to her family.’
NINETEEN
Mutesi
The negotiator hasn’t called for a while now. Perhaps the police are scouring the country for this woman Nicola.
The hostages have drawn together in the booth, six adults keeping Emmanuel and Lily as far from that gun as possible. Abigail and Neil sit side by side, a meeting of the immaculate and the shambolic. Lily has fallen asleep at last, sprawled on her mother’s lap. Emmanuel is somehow managing to make himself very small. Mutesi sees his wide eyes peeking out, following Sam as he paces.
Mutesi and terror are old acquaintances. She knows that it has peaks and troughs. She and Emmanuel’s father, Isaac, once spent five weeks hiding among a cloud of flies. Isaac was a very small boy then, just as Emmanuel is now. Every moment was laden with the threat of death. Each morning, when strips of sunrise glittered through the gaps between the boards, she knelt on the dirt floor to bargain with the Lord. At each sunset she thanked him. Yet Isaac and she weren’t in a state of panic for every second of those weeks. They read, they played quiet games and wrote in the dust with sticks, they whispered stories. Sometimes they even laughed—silently, agonisingly, until tears ran down their faces.
She sees the same resilience in these people. After hours of fear their collective lives are beginning to take on new rhythms. As Sam paces, paces, paces, the hostages exchange words of comfort and whispered snippets of themselves. Sam doesn’t seem to hear them, or care if he does. They’re beginning to establish a community. Neil has turned out to be a mine of information on the private lives of foxes; Paige’s husband is a tube driver, their unborn baby is a boy and they’re going to call him Harry; Abigail was suffering from a migraine but it’s better now that she’s managed to get very strong pills from her bag-on-wheels. Her court robes are in there too. She brought them out to show Emmanuel, who forgot his fear for a moment as he tried on the wig.
‘I very nearly died here, long ago,’ says Arthur.
Everyone looks at the elderly man. He’s been quiet until now. When he does speak aloud it’s with great care, as though he has to retrieve every word from his memory.
‘Here?’ asks Mutesi. ‘You almost died here?’
‘Balham tube station. In 1940.’
‘Not now, Arthur,’ says Paige, laying a hand on his arm. ‘Don’t tell them this story. It’s too sad.’
‘Was it the bomb?’ asks Abigail.
‘That’s right!’ Arthur beams at Abigail. ‘You’ve got it! The bomb.’
‘There’s a plaque on the wall at the tube station. What happened?’
‘Well …’ Arthur swallows, taking time to gather his thoughts. ‘The platforms were air-raid shelters, you see? During the war. People used to sleep down there during the raids, the place was always packed to the gunnels. My family too. On the fourteenth of October a bomb landed a pretty direct hit. Tunnels collapsed.’ He swallows again. He seems quite breathless suddenly. ‘Sixty or seventy people dead. Pitch-black, tunnels flooded. Gas too. Horrendous thing. There were children. A girl in my class at school was killed down there. But … you see—’ he peers at Abigail with beetling brows ‘—that was the one night my family didn’t go to the shelter.’
‘Oh! You were lucky.’
‘The one night. It was random chance, you see? Like being in here today. This was a random chance too. Paige kindly said she’d drive me to the clinic this morning. I said okay, thanks, but let me buy you scones and tea in Tuckbox first. I’m always awake very early and so is young Lily. She’s an early bird.’
‘She doesn’t sleep,’ says Paige. ‘Always up by five. I don’t know how we’re going to manage when the new baby arrives.’
‘It’s going to be hell,’ mutters Abigail.
Paige grimaces, moving Lily’s head into a new position on her lap.
‘You okay?’ asks Abigail. ‘Please tell me you’re not going into labour. That’s above my pay grade.’
‘Ow. No. Heartburn. The baby’s shoving everything out of place and Lily’s not helping, she’s heavier than she looks.’
‘I’ve got these for heartburn.’ Abigail fishes in the pocket of her jacket then produces a packet of antacids. ‘Here you go!’
‘Thanks, but I’d better not take anything. I try to avoid chemicals.’
Tenderly, Paige presses her stomach with both hands, as though she really can touch her unborn child. Abigail mutters, ‘Suit yourself.’ For a fleeting moment Mutesi senses rage in her—a stiff shrug, a deepening of the vertical lines around her mouth as she drops the pills back into her pocket. She’s too thin, that girl. Her eyes are shadowed. There’s something wrong, for sure.
The group falls silent, and with silence comes a new cloud of fear. The caged bear keeps on pacing. Three paces, swing around, three paces, swing around.
‘Emmanuel,’ whispers Mutesi, ‘what have you got in your school bag? Is there something to do?’
Her grandson grins, straightens and grabs h
is bag. He and Brigitte rootle in it. There. Coloured pencils and an exercise book. Everyone joins in, talking whispered nonsense about Emmanuel’s tidy handwriting and his brilliant artwork. The scribbles on those pages are exactly what you’d expect of a six-year-old, but the silly conversation lightens the mood a little, makes their captivity seem less terrifying. Sam still doesn’t seem to be listening to them. He’s in a world of his own.
‘This picture is of Alphonse,’ announces Emmanuel, pointing to an orange and black blob.
‘Who’s Alphonse, then?’ asks Neil.
‘My cat! My big ginger cat! Did you see this picture I did of Alphonse, Mum?’
Brigitte doesn’t answer. Poor girl, she can’t. She’s biting on her lips, facial muscles working furiously to stop any sound from escaping. Tears are coursing down her cheeks. Any second now, Emmanuel is going to look around and catch his mother crying.
It’s Neil who comes to the rescue. Neil, who caught Robert as he fell, who persuaded Sam to answer the phone; Neil, who looks as though he hasn’t any other clothes but the rags he’s wearing.
‘Hey, young man, would you draw a picture for me?’ he suggests, with a sympathetic glance at Brigitte. ‘I see you’ve got some very smart pencils.’
Emmanuel is pleased, his mouth pursed with pride as he reaches for his pencil case.
‘What of?’
‘Whatever you like. Surprise me.’
‘Okay.’
Bless you, Neil. Soon Emmanuel’s head is tilted to one side, tongue between his perfect little teeth, fingers gripping the coloured pencils. He’s drawing a stick figure with a red top, green trousers and a comically broad smile. ‘It’s Daddy,’ he mutters anxiously, and Mutesi’s heart throbs. Isaac has flown to Montreal to present a paper on genetics. He’ll be waking up in his hotel room about now, blissfully unaware that his wife and son and mother are in such terrible trouble. Or perhaps he’s already been woken by a knock at the door to find police standing there. Surely they’ll help him to get a flight straight home?
Emmanuel looks so very like his father when he was a little boy. Until now her grandson has lived in a different world—and yet here they are again, hiding from death. He scrunches up his small cheek when Mutesi leans down to kiss it. Suddenly he drops his pencil and turns to hug her, clinging fiercely with all the strength of his arms.
‘Don’t be scared,’ he says. ‘It will be all right.’
She presses her brave grandson to her chest, loving him with all her soul and wishing she could somehow make him invisible. They’re wrapped around one another.
‘Daddy’s going to be flying a kite in the picture,’ he whispers into her ear.
‘Oh good! What colour?’
‘Um. Green and purple and yellow.’
After a little while he goes back to work, drawing what might—with a lot of imagination—be a kite. He’s murmuring to Mutesi as he colours it in.
‘Are you hungry, Grandma?’
‘A bit. Are you?’
He shakes his head, but she sees him glance hopefully towards the cabinets.
‘I think it must be lunchtime,’ Mutesi announces to the world. ‘My stomach tells me so.’
She stands up, ignoring Sam. He doesn’t try to stop her—he still doesn’t even seem to notice—as she raids the kitchen, returning with a haul of ready-made sandwiches, sausage rolls and mince pies piled up on a large oval plate. She’s a firm believer in the healing power of normality. The ordinary little things: the sharing of stories, of food, of smiles, of small comforts. These are the key to survival. These are what kept her from losing the will to live after her country went mad. Brigitte has recovered herself a little now, and is finding more distractions in the school bag.
‘Will you join us?’ Mutesi asks Sam.
He has stopped in his tracks, staring feverishly at a blank stretch of wall. If Mutesi remembers correctly, there’s a newsagent’s shop on the other side.
‘Hear that clunk?’ he asks.
‘I didn’t hear anything.’
He strides across to place his ear against the paintwork.
‘That clunk, sounded like something metal against the wall. It’s them. They use thermal cameras through the walls. They’ll be in there, trying to find a way to shoot me.’
Neil looks intrigued.
‘Really? Thermal cameras? How does that work?’
Sam’s ear is to the wall, his back turned to the hostages. He seems completely engrossed in investigating this new danger. This could be their only chance. Mutesi has a heavy plate in her hands. She might be able to smack him very hard over the head. Then, while he’s stunned, they could all overpower him and snatch away the gun. She moves closer, gripping the plate, willing herself to raise it high and bring it smashing down. She imagines the food falling as she raises it, the violence of the impact with a human skull—crack!—and is horrified.
Abigail has had the same thought. Picking up a glass water jug, she silently skims around the table towards Sam. She meets Mutesi’s eye, glances at the plate and nods. She’s swinging the jug by its handle—it’s above her head—she’s going to do it! Neil too is on his feet, tensed and ready to pile in. Paige is easing the sleeping Lily to one side, preparing to move fast. It’s all come so suddenly, this moment of rebellion.
Lily chooses this precise moment to wake up and protest with an ear-splitting wail. She makes a lot of noise for one so small. Everyone jumps. Abigail and Mutesi drop their arms just as Sam turns around to look.
While Abigail hurries away to fill the empty jug with water, Mutesi lowers herself into the booth, breathlessly nagging everyone to eat. She tries to sound innocent but her heart is palpitating painfully—bom-bom-bom-bom. She’s not a soldier. She can’t break someone’s skull, especially not with Emmanuel’s bright eyes watching her. From now on she will do what she does best: stay calm, and try to keep Sam calm too.
They’re all taking part in the pantomime—pretending that food is the only thing on their minds. Neil is just about take a bite out of a meat pie when he hesitates, glancing unhappily towards the back of the kitchen where Robert’s body lies.
‘It seems a bit disrespectful. You know, tucking into his food while he’s over there.’
‘This was his café,’ retorts Mutesi. She’s still puffing with the stress of nearly attacking Sam, nearly being caught. ‘D’you think he’d want everything to go to waste?’
‘There’s no arguing with my mother-in-law,’ says Brigitte quietly. ‘She persuades people with dementia to eat even when they’re throwing their dinner at the walls. Take my advice.’
Neil shrugs and begins to make short work of the pie. One by one the others join in, all except for Arthur Beaumont, who says he’s not hungry. He looks ashen-faced, poor man. He should be asleep in his armchair at home.
It’s as Mutesi expected: the very act of sharing food brings some calm, even in this strange captivity, with a dead man on the floor and his killer prowling around.
‘I just wish I could get something out there to Buddy,’ says Neil, as he starts on his third sausage roll. Now that he’s begun to eat, his hunger seems insatiable.
‘How did you come by him?’ asks Mutesi.
‘Found him in a squat in Vauxhall. He was with this young couple. They rescued him from a nasty piece of work who used to bash him.’
Abigail sticks out her lower lip. ‘Aw, poor Buddy! He’s had a hard life, hasn’t he? Didn’t the young people want him anymore?’
‘They couldn’t take care of a dog—couldn’t even take care of themselves. They’d run away from home and come to London expecting gold-paved streets. The lad was the kind who’d have pratted about in the back of my class when I was a teacher. He’d have failed every exam, but when it came to the practicalities he was a genius. He managed to wire the squat so we had power. God knows how he did it.’
‘Stealing, really,’ says Paige. She sounds disapproving.
‘Yeah.’ Neil shrugs. ‘You ever lived through
a winter without heating, not even a kettle, broken glass in the windows? We were freezing and it was nice to have a few home comforts for a change. I paid my taxes for years, and power bills. I didn’t feel too much of a criminal this once. Anyway, we all got evicted. The kids were offered a room in a bed and breakfast, and a place on a back-to-work scheme. It was a lifeline for them but they couldn’t take Buddy, so I said I’d have him.’ Neil’s eyes have reddened. ‘Best thing I’ve done in years. Buddy is my buddy. He’s company, he’s warmth, he’s security. He’ll be wondering why I walked in here this morning and never came out again. I told him I wouldn’t be long.’
Out of the corner of her eye, Mutesi sees that Sam has paused in his terrible pacing. He’s watching. He’s listening. At last.
Neil picks up an empty sugar packet. He examines it carefully, turning it around in his hands.
‘It’s my birthday today,’ he says.
None of the adults seem to know how to react. The usual social rules don’t apply; after all, this may also be the day he dies. Emmanuel is the one who behaves properly.
‘Happy birthday!’ he cries brightly, holding his hand in the air.
‘Thank you, young man.’
‘I’ll draw you a birthday card. After lunch.’
Abigail gestures around the café. ‘This isn’t a very conventional party, is it? But happy birthday anyway.’
‘It’s all relative,’ says Neil. ‘I’ve had worse. I’ve had better. Not so very long ago, I went on holiday to Mauritius with my wife to celebrate our joint birthdays. I haven’t always been on the streets.’
‘You don’t seem the type to be—’ Abigail squirms a little. ‘—you know.’
‘A rough sleeper? There are plenty like me, for plenty of different reasons.’ Neil’s playing with the paper sugar sachet, folding it up as small as it will go. His fingers are red and raw, with painful-looking cracks around the nails. That would be the cold. Mutesi makes a mental note to seek out a first-aid kit when she gets a chance.
‘I’ve worked in academia. In industry, in teaching. Had a wonderful wife and two fantastic kids. I chucked it all away, Abi.’ He sighs, shaking his head. ‘I danced with the devil.’
The Secrets of Strangers Page 11
