Текст книги "The Risk of Darkness"
Автор книги: Susan Hill
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“Max,” she said.
He looked bewildered, as if he were not certain where he was or why. Then he said, “Lizzie.”
“Max, I am so sorry.” Jane got up and went to him, put out a hand to touch his arm. He stared at it as if an alien creature had alighted there. “I’ve been saying the evening prayers. Do you want to sit quietly for a minute?”
“Why?”
“You look exhausted.”
“I’ve been walking about. I can’t go home. I can’t go back there.”
“It’s very hard.”
He took a few steps into the chapel. Jane waited. She and Max Jameson had met only once, when she had been to see Lizzie at Imogen House and he had been curt with her, telling her that she was not needed. She had left, understanding, but returned after he had gone, to give the then sleeping Lizzie a blessing.
“I hate this place.”
“The cathedral?”
He gestured around him. “She made me bring her here. Early on. I would have taken her anywhere. I’d have carried her on my back c It was called a service of healing.” He laughed, a small, cold laugh. “I knelt down there. I prayed as well. It might have worked, I’d have tried whatever she wanted. She believed it helped. She said so.”
“Would you like me to say a prayer now c or to pray with you?”
“No. There’s no point.”
“I think there is.”
“Of course you do.”
“I’ll pray. You just sit.”
“Why did Lizzie die?”
“I don’t know.”
“You wouldn’t put an animal through that. Who would? What is this joke?”
“Come on c why don’t you come back to my house and I’ll make some coffee c you can talk if you want to, not if you don’t. You shouldn’t be wandering the streets, you need company.”
“I need Lizzie.”
“I know, Max. If I could give her to you I would. I do know she is with you all the time now in spirit.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Perhaps it will soon.”
Then he said, “You look like her.”
“No.” Jane smiled. “Lizzie had that wonderful long hair c straight and smooth c” Her own was dark red and sprang out from her head, impossible to tame.
“You are young, beautiful c you’re like she was.”
“Come on, Max c come with me.”
“You are alive, though, that’s the difference, and Lizzie is dead. Why isn’t everyone else dead? Why aren’t you?”
Jane took him by the arm and he allowed her to lead him, out of the chapel and down through the side aisle of the empty cathedral. He seemed bewildered, unsure of where to put his feet. She felt afraid for him, his grief and pain were so overwhelming, racking him physically as well as emotionally.
“How long is it since you ate anything?” she asked as they walked down the quiet close.
“I don’t know.”
“I can make you something c It’s up to you. Do you have any family coming for Lizzie’s funeral?”
“I don’t want any funeral. A funeral means the end of Lizzie, it means Lizzie is dead. Don’t you see that?”
“Yes. But Lizzie isdead. Her body is dead,” she said gently.
“No.”
“We go in through this side gate. The security lights will come on in a second.” She took Max’s hand like that of a child, and led him through the garden of the Precentor’s house, along the path which had a trellis to one side, to her small bungalow. Somewhere in the bushes, there was the rustle of a cat or a fox, eyes gleaming momentarily out of the blackness.
The tiny hall was still in a state of disarray. Jane put lamps on in her study, and the gas fire, and held out her hands to take Max’s jacket.
“I don’t know what to do,” he said.
“Sit down there. I’ll make coffee c or tea? And I’ll do some sandwiches c I haven’t had anything myself yet. Just you rest, Max.”
He looked around the room, at Jane’s books, her desk, the crucifix and two candles on the small table. She drew the curtains against the night, left him there and went into the kitchen. The light on her answer-phone was flashing.
“Jane? They’re sending me home tomorrow morning. A district nurse is supposed to come but I shan’t need her. I’ll telephone you c I might catch you between church matters. Goodbye.”
She smiled to herself, recognising that nothing was going to change her mother now and refusing to worry about it. The thought of her returning to the house ransacked by the burglars and muggers was troubling, but she had done what she could and Magda would call on whoever she needed. She was good at that. She put the kettle on, and took out a loaf from the tin.
As she went to the fridge there was the sound of a step, and an arm came round her throat from behind, not choking her, but making it impossible for her to move.
“Max c” she managed to say. “What c?”
“How can you be here? How can yoube here, making tea, cutting bread when Lizzie is there lying dead? What did Lizzie do? Why did your God kill Lizzie? You shouldn’t be alive, I can’t let you live, not now, not after what happened. You’re too like her. You shouldn’t be alive.” He spoke in a strange, soft voice as if he were reciting what he said, had learned it by heart for just this time, this place.
“Max, please loosen your arm.”
To her surprise, he did so. He let her go then pushed her towards the study. When they were inside, he closed the door.
Suddenly, now, Jane felt afraid. Max was out of his mind with distress and people in his state could behave irrationally and wildly. He was angry. She did not know how his anger might explode.
Help me, she prayed, help me. There were no other words, except: Help him.
“Sit down,” Max said.
She did so. It seemed better for the moment, not to argue, not to plead. Stay calm.
“What do you want, Max?”
“Oh, a cosmic question? Let’s ask a simple one. Simple answer. You’re supposed to have those, aren’t you?”
“Not really. I ask a lot of questions too. All the time.”
“You’re not paid for that.”
She smiled.
“I musthave answers.”
“It’s hard, I know—”
He lunged at her, so that she shrank back in the chair.
“How dare you tell me that? How dare you say you know it’s hard. How do you know? Has this happened to you?”
“No,” Jane said. “If you mean, has a person I was in love with or was married to, died, no.”
“Then don’t patronise me.”
“And please don’t you threaten me.”
“Do you believe in it? Really believe in it? Would you die for it?”
“For my Christianity? I believe in it, yes. Whether I’d die for it c I wonder how brave I am. But plenty of people have died for their faith. They still do.”
“You believe Christ was raised from the dead?”
“Yes.”
“And prayer?”
“I don’t believe prayer is a magic trick. We always get an answer but maybe not the one we wanted.”
“Good cop-out.”
“Is that what it sounds like? I just don’t think it’s like a note to Father Christmas c I want, please can I have?”
“Why did Lizzie die? Can you answer that?”
“No. I don’t know c it seems cruel and horrible and pointless c the world often does. Is. I know we can come to terms with things in time and I know that when appalling things happen God is with us in the middle of it all.”
“Sorry, I failed to notice. How stupid.”
“Let me make that drink, then I’ll drive you home.”
“No.”
“Give yourself a break, Max.”
“I’m not going anywhere. Nor are you. Not until your God brings Lizzie back to life.”
“He won’t. There is no point in having this talk now, you’re not fit.”
“Until you can explain to me why my wife died and unless your prayers can bring her back to me, woman priest, you are here and I am here. Maybe for tonight, tomorrow c maybe till we die.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Let me drive you home. If you want to say anything to me, let off your feelings, whatever, that’s fine, but not tonight. You’re distraught, I’m exhausted. Come and talk tomorrow.”
“I want you to lock the door c is there only one door?”
Jane hesitated.
“TELL ME.”
“Yes. One door.”
“Go and lock it. I’ll watch you.”
“Max c”
“I’ll watch you.”
“Please calm down.”
He stood very still, scarcely seeming to breathe, very tense, focused.
She got up.
He took her arm and moved her towards the door with a strength she could not have fought. She turned the key. The door was solid, without glass, the lock an old-fashioned, heavy one. There was also a second, drop-down latch. Max waited. Slowly, she turned the brass knob.
“Where’s your phone?”
“In the study, and there’s an extension in my bedroom.”
“Pull them out of the wall sockets. Give me your mobile first.”
It was in the pocket of her cassock. She wondered how she might somehow dial as she reached to take it out. Before she could, Max grabbed her wrist and held it while with his other hand he found the pocket and the mobile phone, took it out and switched it off.
“Now the others.”
They went into the study, then to the socket beside her bed.
“Are there locks on the windows?”
“Security locks. Yes.”
“Are they locked?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to have the tea now please. And something to eat. You promised that.”
“OK, Max, but please, this isn’t going to achieve anything, it c”
He stood silently, waiting. She went ahead of him into the kitchen. Max followed, shut the door and put a chair up against it. He sat on the chair. She remembered what had happened to her mother, how they had taken everything and then beaten her about the head. She looked at Max Jameson. No, it wasn’t like that. This was about something else.
“I need to tell you something.” She heard her own voice, hoarse as if she had an obstruction in her throat. The obstruction was fear. “I had to go to London urgently c I had a call from my mother c she’s a child psychiatrist, she lives on her own. When I got there, I found the house turned upside down, a lot of things taken c and my mother on the floor in her own blood. She’d surprised them. They thought the house was empty. It was very, very frightening. I c I can’t get it out of my head. Now you. It’s—”
“I’m not a burglar. There’s nothing here I want.”
“I don’t understand what you dowant.”
“Answers.”
“I have no easy ones, Max.”
“Miracles.”
“If I could bring Lizzie back to you I would c I can’t. It doesn’t work like that. God doesn’t. It’s complicated.”
She wondered what she was saying. She had always felt that, on the contrary, everything was not complicated but simple. Not easy, never, but gloriously simple. Now, she knew nothing. Her mind was a jumble.
Say nothing. Say nothing. Just do.
Yes.
She lit the gas, set the kettle on, opened a cupboard to take out the china, the fridge for milk. Think nothing. Say nothing. Just do.
Max sat in silence, hunched down into the wooden chair, watching her.
A strange sense of calm came over her and a sense of unreality, as if she were sleepwalking, but untouchable, unreachable. She cut bread, sliced tomatoes and cheese, found a fruit cake left for her by someone the day she had moved in. The kettle boiled.
When he had eaten and drunk the tea, he would come to, Jane thought, realise where he was, and then things would fall back into place. She would drive him home and make sure he was safe. It was like looking after a child.
“Please come and eat,” she said.
She waited for him to do so. Waited for everything to shift back again to normal. Waited.
Watched. Max watched.
She was like Lizzie. Her hands, cutting the bread, gripping the handle of the kettle. Her eyes. Lizzie.
He knew that she was not Lizzie but he was too exhausted to sort out the confusion that seemed to sway him now one way, then the other, Lizzie, not Lizzie, Lizzie alive, Lizzie dead. Lizzie/Jane, Jane/Lizzie.
He looked around every few moments and wondered why he was in this unfamiliar house, rooms smaller than the one he knew, darker, with more objects, books, furniture and strange pictures. Then he remembered. His mind cleared and it felt as if he had been rinsed through with ice-cold water and his purpose was firm-edged and obvious.
But he felt so tired he wanted to lie on the floor and sleep. Sleep for ever. He could not be with Lizzie any other way. Then he saw her, as he had seen her the last time, her eyes wide and blank, her expression inscrutable, vanishing away from him as he looked down into some other, dark, empty, silent world.
When Nina had died, he had not been there. She had been in hospital, hidden under masks and tubes, attached to machines, yellow and thin and ugly, a hundred years old, the pain dragging her life and looks from her. He had been asleep, unable to remain by the bed to watch, terrified of the moment of her death. By the time he had gone to see her, she had become someone else, waxen and still, in a chapel that smelled odd, of sickly artificial flowers, masking the antiseptic of hospital death.
He had not expected to have to watch another wife die, a wife who had come to him like a miracle and been loved greedily, desperately.
He looked up. There was a teapot on the table, a plate with food.
Inside him was a simmering anger and hatred which terrified him, a strength of emotion he had never known before. It was pure, uncontaminated by anything other than the need for retribution.
She was wiping her hands on a towel. Her red hair was like a halo round her face, her robe topped by the ludicrous white collar, a symbol of everything that he had to destroy. He did not believe any of the things she believed, and yet they had a dreadful power.
“Who do you have?” he asked. She started at the sound of his voice.
He was pleased that he had frightened her.
“You have a mother c who else? Brother, sister, lover?”
“I’m an only child. My father died ten years ago.”
“And did he suffer?”
“I c I’m not sure. He had a stroke c Why?”
“I want you to have felt it. Why shouldn’t you?”
“What makes you think I haven’t? There are people suffering like Lizzie every day, people left behind feeling as you’re feeling.”
Max got up and went towards her. He saw her creamy skin and the red hair, her slim throat beneath the white collar, and raised his hands. Up.
She said: “I know what you want to do to me. But, would Lizzie want me to be dead?”
“Don’t talk about Lizzie.”
“Why not? This is all about her. I can’t believe she would be happy that, because she died, you killed me.” She moved. “Let me pass.”
He hesitated. He wanted to kill her for something other than hatred now, he wanted to know how it would feel. How it would feel to hold his hands round her throat. He had always been a man quick to anger, had terrified people with his sudden, violent rages—Nina had always fled the house. Only Lizzie had not cared. Lizzie had simply laughed. But he had never been angry with her, only with things around her, things to do with himself. And her laughter had been enough.
He let Jane Fitzroy pass him. He did not touch her. She sat down at the kitchen table. She looked small and very young, he thought. A child. Only a child would be so naive. What could she possibly know?
“I’d like a cup of tea,” he said.
She reached for the pot. “Then home?”
“No.”
Abruptly, she began to cry.
Fifteen
Edwina Sleightholme had said nothing when charged with the abduction of Amy Sudden. She had not spoken apart from confirming her name.
Once they had left the helicopter, Serrailler had barely set eyes on her. He wanted to. He wanted to interview her, to drag the truth out of her about David Angus. He was not allowed to speak to her, of course. This wasn’t his patch or his case. All he could do was put in the formal request to interview her at a later date, when the Yorkshire cases were under way.
“Wish you’d stay another night,” Jim Chapman said. They were eating bacon sandwiches, brought up to his room by a willing DC. The entire HQ was on a high, amazed at what had happened, buzzing about the arrest of a woman.
Simon shook his head, mumbling through his bacon. “I’m fine. Hospital said so.”
“Sufficiently fine to drive two hundred miles?”
“Yep.”
“Great, isn’t it?”
They looked at one another in understanding.
“Nothing to beat it,” Serrailler said, “even on a ledge halfway up a cliff face in a storm. But I have to get back. I want my hands on the David Angus file again.”
“It’s her.” Jim Chapman took a huge mouthful. The whole room smelled savoury.
“I know. Got to prove it though. She’s not going to cooperate.”
Chapman wiped his mouth and took a swig of tea. “It’ll have the shrinks on the hop.”
“I can’t get my own head round it. It goes against everything we know.”
“Not quite. Remember Rose West. Remember Myra Hindley”
“Hindley wasn’t on her own, she was drawn into it by Ian Brady. OK, she was corruptible, but would she have done it alone? I doubt it. Same goes for West.”
“What makes them tick? Dear God. I was thinking about my grandson on the way back c kept seeing his face. Defies belief. What kind of woman is this, Simon?”
When he got home just after midnight, the light was flashing on his answerphone. One message was from the dry cleaner to say his suit was ready—otherwise three callers had not left any message.
He stood in the darkness in his long, cool drawing room. Beyond the windows there was a new moon with the evening star, reminding him of the genius Samuel Palmer, the artist he most revered.
Then he thought of Diana Mason. She had haunted him with silent calls the previous year but he had neither seen nor spoken to her for months. In all likelihood she had a new man and another life and he had been erased from her mind. Simon hoped so.
He went to bed exhausted, but his sleep was invaded by the sound of the sea crashing against the rocks and the zip of his car tyres down the motorway, and filled with visions of Edwina Sleightholme’s thin, secretive face and defiant eyes and of the yellow rescue helicopter, veering towards them and away, towards them and away, swaying nauseously through his dreams.
He heard the cathedral clock chime every hour until five, when he turned over to sleep heavily until after eight o’clock.
“Guv c we heard. You got a result?”
DS Nathan Coates was waiting for him.
“The Angus file’s on your desk. I thought—”
“I bet you did. Get some coffees from round the corner and I’ll have a bacon-and-egg bap.”
He went to his desk, which was heaped with papers. Nathan turned reluctantly and headed off to the nearby Greek Cypriot café, which had transformed the lives of Lafferton CID and earned the eternal wrath of the station canteen.
Serrailler flipped through his papers, opened up his computer and, by the time Nathan returned, had zipped through a couple of dozen emails. He lifted the lid of his espresso and sniffed the pungent, fresh coffee. He had brought himself quickly up to speed on the David Angus file. Nathan waited, bursting with suppressed questions and enthusiasm. Serrailler looked at him.
“I take it the place is a hive of rumour and speculation?”
“Yeah, too right. Only, before we get down to it, there’s something else, guv.” Nathan flushed.
“Nathan?”
Simon dreaded his DS telling him he was leaving Lafferton, had promotion to a DI in another force, would be gone by next week. Nathan was enthusiastic, ambitious and hard-working. He would rise fast. The DCI was loath to let him go but knew that he must. He waited.
“Thing is, I ent told anybody here c not yet. We wanted you to be the first.”
Where? The north? The Met?
“Me and Em’s having a sprog.”
Nathan was a brighter shade of tomato. Simon let out a cry of both relief and delight.
Just before lunch, Serrailler called in the core team who had worked on the Angus case.
“It’s not going to be easy,” he warned, looking around. He had to hit the right note—to dampen any over-optimism at the same time as indicating that he felt fairly certain they had got the person responsible. “Sleightholme won’t confess—she’s barely said a word. They’ll nail her up north, of course, because Amy Sudden was in the boot of her car. But both forces are going to have to get good evidence for the two boys. It’ll take everything we can throw at it. We’re looking at hard slog. I’m pretty confident we’ll get there.”
“You could be wrong, guv c the woman might crumble and give us everything on a plate.”
“You haven’t met her.”
“Word is out that you’re a hero, guv c did a bit of SAS stuff.” A small cheer went up.
“Thanks, guys, that’ll be all. Now let’s get on with it.”
Sixteen
He had let her rest. She took a blanket and pillow and lay on the sofa in the sitting room, cramped and afraid but so exhausted that she managed twenty minutes of sleep a couple of times. When her eyes were closed, she turned away from Max and prayed for them both. Several times she had asked him what he wanted from her, what he hoped to achieve by keeping her here but his replies had made no sense.
If Max had slept himself, he had not let her see him do so. Every time she had looked at him, he had been sitting in an upright chair, eyes open, sometimes staring at her, sometimes blankly into space.
As dawn rose, she had made them breakfast from what little food was left in the kitchen. He went to the bathroom but locked her in the kitchen beforehand. When she used the lavatory, he stood outside the door. The window was a narrow slit high up in the wall; she did not even bother to try to reach it.
She now asked him if she could read and answer some letters, and he had agreed, but she was unable to concentrate. In the end, she made coffee with the last of the milk and simply sat, like him, doing nothing and not speaking.
She lost all sense of time, but at what felt like late in the morning she realised that Max was asleep, slumped slightly on to the side of the chair. He had not meant to sleep, she knew; exhaustion had simply overtaken him. She waited. Watched. He slept on. There were dark stains below his eyes. She felt a pang of sorrow for him, an affinity with his misery, which had driven him mad and driven him to this. But she had to resolve things now.
After another ten minutes, very slowly she began to move. She stood up. He slept on. Step by careful step, she went across the sitting room to the door. She was afraid the handle would make a sound or the lock a click as she inched it open. She looked round. Max had not stirred.
She got to the hall. Hesitated. The only thing to do now was make one swift move to the front door, unlock it and run. She calculated how many steps she would have to take, how the key turned. She was shaking now, her heart squeezing in her chest. But she would get out. She had to.
She moved.
He had not been asleep at all. Or else the emptiness in the room had somehow conveyed itself to him. Or the slightest sound had woken him.
As Jane took a step, he had her round the throat from behind and grappled her to the ground.
She screamed, and screamed again, as she had never screamed before.
“Stop that. Shut up. Shut up.”
His hand was over her mouth now and his weight was on top of her. She was terrified that in his pent-up rage, exhaustion and frustration, out of grief and hatred, Max was going to rape her. It was the one nightmare she had always had. She lifted her leg to try to kick or put a knee into his groin but he was a big man and rage was making him like a bull, terrifying her.
“You’re not leaving here,” he shouted deep into her ear. “Don’t do this again. You are not leaving me.”
His hand left her mouth for long enough to let her scream again, one agonised, animal scream.
Seventeen
“Guv?”
“Come in, Nathan.”
“Got a call a few minutes ago c bungalow in the Cathedral Close c gardener reported hearing screams. Uniform went down and they think someone’s being held.”
“What, as in hostage? Doesn’t sound very likely.”
“That’s what I thought. Only, I’m off down there. It’s your patch, I wondered if you’d got any info.”
“No. We don’t get many hostage situations in our nice, quiet neck of the woods. You sure they’re not wasting your time?”
“No, but c”
“No, but you fancied a breath of fresh air away from the paperwork.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
“Take Jenny Lyle.”
“Yeah, between us two we’ll scare anybody into giving themselves up c my face, her—”
“Get out,” Serrailler said cheerfully. The image of the vast backside and washerwoman’s arms of DC Lyle was more than he wanted to conjure up. He hauled out another file. He had put in a call to Jim Chapman to say he was ready to interview Edwina Sleightholme whenever they would let him. He couldn’t wait.
Nathan found himself crushed into his driving seat by the bulk of Jenny Lyle, but he liked her and she was a good detective, with a natural nose for something not quite right. Besides, she was someone else to tell his news to.
She laughed. “Who’s the Daddy!”
“It’s just great.” Nathan banged the steering wheel.
“All planned out, is it?”
“Yeah, only we won’t be able to stop in our flat.”
“Babies aren’t very big.”
“Have you seen all the gear they come with? Em’s sister had one last year, you could hardly get in the door, prams, pushchairs, carrying things, baskets, cots, travelling cots, great bales of nappies. Yikes. I’ve changed my mind.”
They spun into the Cathedral Close.
“Be funny, living here,” Jenny said, heaving herself out of the small car.
“DCI does.”
“Like another world c different century.”
“Nice though.”
“Clock’d drive me nuts.”
It struck the half-hour as they walked along the row of houses. The patrol car was parked a few yards off.
“Here you go. The Precentor’s house.”
“What’s he do then? What’s precenting?”
“Dunno.”
A uniform came out of the side gate and hailed them. They followed him, skirting the large Georgian house by a path beside a trellis up which honeysuckle and roses twined in swags.
“OK c gardener says one of the clergy lives in what they call the garden flat, only it’s more a stone bungalow, down the end. She’s not been moved in long, a Reverend Jane Fitzroy c Gardener was working in the borders near the house, but he had to take a barrowload of compost down to the bin and it was then he heard this scream c proper, terrified scream, he said, frightened him to death. He went to the bungalow and banged, but there was nothing else except maybe someone grunting in their throat. He couldn’t tell, it panicked him c he banged again, then ran and got his phone and called us. Kelly Strong and me were by the canal, got here in five, we went down there—nothing, silent. Only when we started knocking and shouting there was a man’s voice, he yelled out at us. I called through the letter box c couldn’t see anything—there’s one of those felt strips on the other side—but he was in the hall. He said to get the hell out.”
“Who is he?”
“Won’t say.”
“Bloody hell. What’s he want?”
“Won’t say.”
“Gotta be high on drugs then, burglary gone wrong c What’s he sound like?”
“Nice sort of speaking voice—educated.”
Nathan gazed at the bungalow. Neat. Quiet. Prettily placed. He wouldn’t mind living at the bottom of a garden like this, in a bit of a flowery wilderness. Think of a baby growing up here.
The place looked empty and dead, curtains drawn, no movement. Only inside, something had happened, or was happening. There could be the body of someone murdered.
“Wait there. I’m going up to the door.”
The two uniforms and Jenny Lyle stood, as he told them. Nathan crept up the path. There was a silence so deep it terrified him. He pictured Freya Graffham, lying on the floor of her sitting room. He lifted the knocker and set it down, once, twice, not loudly, but as any visitor might knock. Silence. He knocked again and lifted the letter box and pressed his ear to it, desperate to hear some sound, anything living. Nothing.
He knocked again and was turning away when a man’s voice close up to the door on the other side said, “Go away.”
“This is DS Nathan Coates, Lafferton Police.”
“Go away.”
“I’d like a few words, sir, if I can just come in.”
“Please.”
“Just to reassure myself everything is OK.”
Silence.
“We had a report of unusual sounds. I’m sure it’s nothing. Only if you’d just open the door.”
“GO AWAY. If you knock again, or do anything else, I’ll kill her, do you understand that? Tell me you’ve heard what I said, please.”
Silence.
“I c heard.”
“So tell me you understand.”
“I understand.”
“I said, I would kill her. I have a knife, a very large, very sharp kitchen knife, and I will slit her throat. If you do not GO AWAY.”
Nathan backed off from the door, turned and sprinted up the garden to where the others were standing.
“We need to get out of earshot, come on.”
They followed him to the front of the main house.
“He has a knife c and someone, a woman, with him.”
“You sure, Sarge?”
“Yes, and even if I weren’t 100 per cent, it isn’t something to mess with. We need back-up.”
He jabbed the buttons on his mobile.
Fifteen minutes later, the close was lined with police cars. The Lafferton Acting Superintendent was in command, Simon Serrailler preparing to negotiate. Everyone else was standing by.
“I want this kept low-key,” the CO said, “and hopefully we can resolve it quickly. We have no idea what this man wants or hopes to achieve, whether he’s sane or under the influence of drugs or alcohol.
So far as we know he has no firearm. We know he is holding a woman but we don’t know if there are any others. We don’t need any two-way devices or to wire anything up at this stage. We’ll stay back and stay quiet. Simon? Let’s hope we can get this all over before it’s begun.”
Simon went quietly towards the bungalow. It was a calm, warm, sunlit afternoon. There were bees droning about the honeysuckle and roses, a butterfly on the trellis. The contrast between now and the stormy, lowering Yorkshire afternoon overhanging the sea was absolute, but he had the same sensation of being back in the thick of the action and in a heightened state of alert. He had trained as a negotiator and found the week’s intensive course fascinating; ever since, he had wished he would be called in to a major hostage situation to test his skills. This afternoon’s exercise seemed routine and domestic, by comparison.
The bungalow was silent in the sun, the curtains drawn. Nothing moved. Nothing could be seen. He had a sense of foreboding. No house with people in it should be so still. The team waited, looking towards him. Someone leaned out of the window of the big house next door. He could hear the distorted voices from a walkie-talkie.
He stood at the front door and knocked, suddenly and loudly so that whoever was inside would be startled.
He thought he heard a slight scraping sound, but then a blackbird started up from a bush beside him and flew across the garden, making its warning cry and blotting out any noise that might have come from the house. He lifted the letter box. There was a flap of fabric on the other side, so he could see nothing.
