Reconstruction (16 page)

‘You sure you’re not gay, Whistler?’

This wasn’t the response Ben expected.

‘This again?’

‘Just a thought.’

‘Maybe one we should discuss later. Sometime when there’s not a hostage –’

‘Whistler –’

‘– situation I’m supposed to handle without even –’

‘Weiss was gay. Miro Weiss?’

‘– What about him?’

‘That’s his boyfriend in the nursery, Whistler. Miro Weiss’s boyfriend. His name’s Jaime Segura. Ever heard of him?’

‘. . . No.’

‘Neither had I before last night. But he’s heard of you. Is there something you’re not telling me, Whistler?’

Ben ended the call. The policeman came to meet him.

Eliot Pedlar wasn’t much given to metaphor, but he had an apple tree in his garden, and he knew what anxiety felt like. Anxiety was clearing a lawn of fallen apples on a windy morning; the basket in his arms getting heavier every moment, while the constant
thud-thud
spoke of more fruit hitting the ground. It was both the weight and the knowledge that things weren’t getting easier. Every
thud
tugged at something inside him, like a fish-hook in the heart.

His arms were full of his boys, not apples, but that hook tugged all the same.

Until the helicopter landed something approaching calm had settled on this strange grouping. Something like an intermission in an organized event, though without coffee and sandwiches . . . Not that he was hungry. The ordinary appetites belonged elsewhere now; was it less than three hours back he’d been in bed, right hand reaching for his member? That, too, felt like a weird joke, even though the body that had been in his mind back then was less than two feet away now. Some fantasies, it seemed, broached reality, though in kicking their way inside, they took down foundations you didn’t want disturbed. So here he was, in another arguably intimate scenario with Louise Kennedy, and what he mostly wanted was to be far away: with his children, safe at home.

He remembered other daydreams. There’d been a recur-ring fantasy in adolescence of himself as an astronaut, kind of, though hardly the brave heroic astronaut most fantasies rely on. In Eliot’s version, his spaceship was little more than a pod, and his role was to be placed in suspended animation within it; a painless, totally unfeeling state. Then the pod would be boosted into space, its sole purpose to hurtle through nothingness until it arrived – if it ever did – at another planet capable of sustaining life. This would take thousands of years – maybe hundreds of thou-sands. Who knew? And when he reached this other planet, if he ever did, everyone he’d ever known or heard of, along with their hundred-times great-grandchildren, would be dead and forgotten. He’d never see another human again.

It didn’t take genius to understand that this was a variation on every teenaged boy’s alienation issues. More disturbing was the fact that lately he’d been relying on it again, to cast himself into sleep at night.

And now, the nearest thing in the area to a space-bound pod was that helicopter, which had landed nearby and taken off again, carrying some lucky beggar to a place of safety, but leaving Eliot here.

The boys shifted in his arms. He should be whispering comforts but couldn’t bear to fracture the silence. He had sunk to the floor, and the boys were concentrated either side of him, trying to huddle into as contained a unit as possible – to crawl so far inside his embrace, they’d actu-ally be inside him. Eliot was their space pod now, though unable to break gravity’s spell. He was letting them down by not lifting them up. And they were stuck here as long as the Gun demanded.

Louise and Judy were both on the ground too; Louise with her legs tucked beside her yogically; Judy in a squalid heap. It was wrong, doubtless wrong, to be sharing this situation with another frightened victim and feel such dis-like of her, but it was probably human too, if that were an excuse. Judy, he was sure, would see the rest of them in hell if it would set her free. Nor did she have the intelligence to hide this.

And as for the Gun, he was the only one upright. Well, he’d have to be, wouldn’t he? There was vulnerability involved in wielding power; it demanded showing no weakness. Power fed on its own absolute nature. Any flaws would require immediate attention; any chink in the armour need balancing by swift brutality. The boy looked too soft to be playing this role – his cheeks fuzzy; his eyes a liquid brown – but children climbed on to tube trains, their backpacks stuffed with dynamite; young women corseted themselves with Semtex, and headed off to market. There was no reading the mind’s construction in the face, and never had been.

‘– Daddy?’

‘Hush, Gordon.’ And immediately Eliot hated himself for that: what would the Gun do, shoot them for talking? If he was going to shoot them for talking, he was going to shoot them anyway. ‘What is it? What do you need?’

As if there were any way he could meet his children’s needs right now.

‘Gordy needs a wee?’

‘So do I, daddy,’ Timmy said. Then corrected himself: ‘Timmy does too.’

‘Gordy needs a wee
now
?’

Timmy whimpered at this, as if he’d been unjustly relegated to second place, despite being senior by seven minutes. Looking down on them, Eliot remembered a time when he’d only been sure which boy he was holding by checking the crowns of their heads – Timmy’s was off centre. Now approaching four, they were more sharply individual; both fair, like their mother, and both blue-eyed, but Timmy’s nose was slightly squashed; Gordy was thinner of face. And Gordy had the habit – born of coming second, he suspected – of making everything a question, even his statements.
‘I want a drink?’
It sounded like his first language was valley-girl. And now he was slipping into the third person again, which wasn’t a great sign.

Eliot said, ‘Just hold on a minute.’

‘We
can’t
hold on, daddy.’

He could have sworn they said that simultaneously.

‘Please, you make them be quiet,’ the boy said.

‘They need to use the toilet,’ Eliot said.

‘Nobody is going anywhere. You stay where I can see you.’

‘They’re very small boys,’ Eliot said. ‘If you don’t let them go, there’ll be accidents.’ Too much euphemism there. Too much ambiguity. ‘If you don’t let them use the toilet, they’ll wet themselves.’ All over me, he didn’t add.

‘No,’ said the boy.

Louise said, ‘I’ll take them.’

‘No.’

‘It’s just over there, through that door. There are no win-dows, no ways of escape. You can check if you like.’

‘You should not be arguing with me like this.’

‘I’m not arguing,’ she said. ‘You’re in charge. But it’s not going to be pleasant for any of us if you don’t let them use the toilet.’

There was a crackle of energy from outside: an engine firing up, a car leaving –any other time, it would have meant nothing. Now, it reverberated. There were other forces acting; machinery grinding away in the back-ground. There had been two phone calls since the Gun had demanded that somebody called Whistler be sent: the one side Eliot had heard had been negative, uncooperative. The Gun did not want food or drink sent in; was not prepared to let Peter Faulks speak to the hostages. Was not intending to surrender. All he wanted was the man Whistler. When was the man Whistler arriving? Probably Faulks had told him ‘Soon’ . . . Eliot had an image of an avuncular type; someone morally grounded – Morgan Freeman sprung to mind. He would be reasonable and sympathetic, and his calm counsel would make short work of whatever ugly scenario the Gun entertained.

‘They’re children,’ Louise said. ‘Whatever you’re after, they’re not part of this. They have no part in this.’

Recognizing a cue when he heard one, Gordon began crying again.

‘Let me take them to the toilet. They’ll calm down, and none of us will have to listen to this.’

And I won’t get wet on, Eliot silently added.

The Gun thought about it. Judy seemed about to add something; incredibly, she thought better of it.

‘I go check,’ he said at last. ‘If there is a window, I . . .’ Apparently unsure of what he would be, he found the vocabulary at last. ‘I am annoyed.’

‘Wouldn’t want that,’ Louise said, sincerely.

‘I am annoyed,’ he repeated, though the tense was born of grammatical uncertainty. He wasn’t annoyed yet. His gun remained silent.

Without taking his eyes from them, he walked across to the toilet door and kicked it open. What he saw matched Louise’s description: no windows; no ways of escape. Just two cubicles, and a sink in the corner. He returned to the centre of the room.

‘Okay, take them. The door stays open.’

Gordy removed his head from his father’s thigh, and blinked.

‘Go now.’

It wasn’t clear if it was the boys he was addressing.

Timmy too unwrapped himself. The pair looked so sleepy it was heartbreaking. Eliot struggled to his feet, feeling his joints creak in splintery protest, but the twins weren’t waiting. For the first time since the Gun had appeared, both left his side at once, stumbling across to Louise, and taking a hand each.

She was already on her feet. ‘It’s okay,’ she said to Eliot. ‘I’ve got them.’

Yes, he might have said, or No – he didn’t really notice. All this happened at a remove, and ordinary vocabulary was suddenly a foreign language.

‘It’s what they’re used to,’ Louise went on. Perhaps she had noticed his confusion, and felt compelled to explain. ‘They’re here, and I’m their teacher. It’s not the first time I’ve given them a hand.’

This too was a series of statements slightly adrift from sense to Eliot’s ears, but he knew she was trying to bolster his boys by asserting normalcy. Yes, they were here, and yes, she was their teacher. He was grateful to her as she led his boys into the toilet; grateful, too, for a few unencumbered moments in which he could try to take control of his own fears, most of which expressed themselves as a single question. Would he and his boys leave the annexe alive?

The Gun held the answer to this, but wasn’t saying any-thing. Yet.

‘I take it you’ve done this sort of thing before.’

‘We get a lot of training,’ Ben improvised.

The man he’d returned the phone to was Superintendent Malcolm Fredericks, who evidently wasn’t happy about playing switchboard. Other events had contributed to this dissatisfaction. ‘I already have a hostage negotiator.’

And if it was up to Ben, he could get on with it. ‘Being here wasn’t my idea. It’s the man inside who asked for me.’

‘You know him?’

‘I didn’t know he existed until an hour ago,’ Ben said.

‘So why you?’

‘No idea.’

‘Is there any chance I’ll get a straight answer?’

‘I’ve already given several,’ Ben said truthfully. ‘Shouldn’t I be getting on with what I’m here to do?’

Fredericks looked at him, hard. Under other circumstances, Ben might have wilted, but free fall still held him in its grasp – either today would work out fine, in which case Fredericks wouldn’t matter, or it wouldn’t, in which case ditto. But Fredericks, reasonably enough, had his own perspective. ‘I don’t like spies descending on my patch.’

Ben assumed this wasn’t a reference to his mode of arrival. ‘I assure you, nobody wanted this.’

‘So what’s going on? This man’s a terrorist, right? So have you tracked him down just in time? Or just too late?’

‘Even if I knew, I’d not be at liberty to –’

‘No, you lot never are, are you? And when you’ve finished playing your cloak and dagger games, you bugger off back to the South Bank for latte and croissants, and it’s us poor sods left clearing up your mess. There are five innocent people in there, two of them children, and your lot armed the bastard holding them. But you’re not going to be breaking it to their loved ones when this goes arse over tit, are you?’

‘That’s not going to happen.’

‘Is that a guarantee?’

‘What guarantees do you give? Didn’t you have a hostage situation two years back? I don’t remember that ending happily.’

Fredericks flushed. ‘Ther’ve been others since. We’ve done just fine. While your branch of the so-called security services has been sending us into war, when it’s not been failing to prevent bombs on the underground. If those people in there had a choice, you think they’d want you on their case?’

Politics was nowhere Ben was about to wander. Besides, something had struck bells. ‘You said five.
Five
innocent people in there.’

It took the Superintendent a moment to change gear. ‘You didn’t know?’

‘You’re on the ground. I’ve been . . .’ He pointed skywards.

Fredericks stared a while longer. Wondering whether to tell him to fuck off, Ben thought – no policeman liked having to stump up info while being stonewalled in return. But there were lives at stake. Fredericks said, ‘There’s a teacher, Louise Kennedy. She had the chance to escape, but didn’t.’

This was news. ‘Do we know why?’

‘Perhaps she has a sense of responsibility.’

Pretty to think so. ‘Her, I knew about. There’s a man called Pedlar, too. With his twins. Who’s the fifth?’

‘The cleaner. A woman called Judy Ainsworth. I suspect she’s the kind of person easily falls through the gaps where you’re concerned.’

Ben said nothing.

Fredericks said, ‘I didn’t mean you personally. But this is what pisses me off. We have local knowledge. We are, as you say, on the ground. But we have to put up with so-called experts being drafted in as if we’re a bunch of amateurs.’

Ben said, ‘I don’t claim to be an expert. But I have been invited.’ He looked around, and could see, crouched at intervals behind the hedge this side of the footpath, police-men in heavy-weather gear. ‘Time’s passing. Are you giving me permission to go in there?’

‘Do you really need it?’

‘That’s not a conversation either of us wants right now. Sir.’

Fredericks breathed out heavily. This spook wasn’t as bad as the first – seemed to grasp the roots of his anger – but both were playing the same game. And both knew Fredericks couldn’t win. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s get started.’

Ben hid his relief. He was in no hurry to face a gun, but he’d rather be inside before Chapman turned up. One bad man at a time.