Almost Love (40 page)

Chapter Fifty-Seven

Alex could not sleep for long. She was more afraid now than at any time since they’d pulled her out of the van. If Oliver was to be believed, he was almost as much a captive as she was and powerless to help her. Even worse, he seemed to have no spark of defiance or initiative to expend on freeing them. Despite his warnings, she was disappointed that he didn’t show a little more spirit. He was surely being melodramatic when he said that their captors were bound to catch up with them if they tried to escape. What did they have to lose, anyway? Oliver himself admitted that at least one of the gang was trigger-happy and not beyond killing for kicks.

Being deprived of the ability to see had sharpened her other senses. Somewhere far away, in a different part of the house from where she was being held, she could hear a mobile phone ringing. It made her think of her own cellphone. Guiltily, she realised that she had probably left it on her desk at the Archaeological Society. She felt abject with shame. Tom was always telling her to carry it and to leave it switched on. He’d said that she needed to understand that it was for own security; one day she would regret her cavalier attitude. If she escaped from here, she vowed that she would always remember it in future.

The mobile phone downstairs rang until it cut out. There was a brief silence before it started ringing again.

“Answer it this time,” shouted the rough voice of the man who had entered the room shortly after Oliver had re-tied her bonds. “Answer it!” he shouted again. She heard another man shout back at him. The reply was curiously high-pitched, as if the speaker were trying to demonstrate resistance whilst fighting off a terrible fear. The rough voice rapped out another short sentence. It sounded like a command. The other voice replied. This time it sounded more like Oliver’s. It was as if, against all odds, a little of his urbanity had been restored. It almost seemed as if he were taunting his aggressor.

There was another short silence, followed by the sound of a chair falling. This was quickly succeeded by the scrape of more furniture being moved. A glass or cup was smashed. The man stationed as guard outside the room in which Alex was being held stirred uneasily. She heard him walk to the end of the corridor.

“You are all right, Endrit?”

There was no reply. She heard the guard’s footsteps retreat along the corridor. Gradually the sound receded until she could hear them no longer.

There was another shout, pursued almost immediately by a loud cracking noise. It took Alex a moment to realise that she had just heard gunfire. She was truly terrified now and shook as if from shock. She was very cold.

After the shot, the sound of a terrible keening burst in upon her. Once when she’d been out walking with Tom she had heard the unbearable squeal of an injured rabbit. She was reminded of it now. The difference was that she was certain that this wailing, although it sounded inhuman, came from a man. It continued for several minutes, bestial in its agony, until abruptly it stopped.

She heard a door crash open and glass shattering. A warning was shouted. More footsteps were coming up the stairs, several sets of them. Alex shut her eyes behind the blindfold. She clenched her hands, willed herself not to vomit against the gag.

Someone kicked against the door of her room. She heard it splinter and break as if it were made of nothing stronger than balsa wood. Alex tried to pass out, but her mind was too alert. Instead she waited, her whole body tensed against the impact, for the inevitable bullet to strike her. She knew there could be no way out now. She tried to think again of Tom, but her reason had been all but obliterated by her fear.

Someone caressed the side of her face. She flinched and tried to draw away. Even as she did so, she recognised dimly that the touch was gentler than her captors or even Oliver had managed. The hand stroked her face again. It was small, soft and cool. She felt herself being lifted into a sitting position. First the blindfold was removed, then the gag. Alex blinked in the dim half-light. The little lamp was still the only source of light in the room. She tried to focus her eyes on the person who was standing by the bed.

“Alex!” said a soft female voice. “Mrs Tarrant?”

“DC Armstrong!”

“Hello, Mrs Tarrant. We’re glad to have found you. You’re quite safe. I’m going to cut these plastic ties now. I didn’t do it while you were blindfolded in case you struggled and hurt yourself. Are you ready?”

Alex nodded, speechless. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

“Are you in pain? Did they injure you in any way?”

“No, I don’t think so. Not deliberately, anyway. I’m sore and stiff from lying here for hours, and from being tossed around in their van while they brought me here. Otherwise I think I’m OK.” Alex was speaking through her tears, trying to pull herself together.

Juliet Armstrong cut the ties with a Swiss Army knife.

“That’s better. We’re going to call for an ambulance, even if you don’t think you’re hurt. You’re suffering from shock and you may have sustained other injuries as well. They’ll probably keep you in hospital overnight, for observation.”

“I don’t really want . . .” Alex lay back, suddenly too tired to argue or even to make the effort to haul herself from the bed, hateful though it now was to her. She remembered Oliver and the terrible noise that she had heard.

“What’s happened to Oliver?” she asked. “Is he all right?”

Deep inside her she knew what the answer would be even before she had asked the question.

“Mr Sparham has been shot. He was involved in a scuffle just before we broke in. We could hear it as we were approaching.”

Alex noticed now that there was an armed policeman standing in the doorway. The shattered door hung at an odd angle, its hinges half torn off.

“Is he badly hurt?”

Juliet looked at Alex steadily, trying to gauge how much truth she could take.

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Juliet nodded.

Alex’s face crumpled again. Suddenly she felt furious. She wanted to be able to blame someone for this nightmare.

“Did you kill him? The police, I mean?”

“No, he was dead when we got to him. He’d died seconds before. He was shot by one of the men who’ve been holding you. Probably the one that we didn’t catch. We’ve arrested the other one.”

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Tim bit his lip until it was hurting. He was acutely aware of Sergeant Jubb standing at his elbow, impatient and unyielding.

“What now?” he said.

“There’s no option. We go in.”

“What about the threat they’ve made to kill Alex Tarrant?”

“We’ll have to take a chance on it. She is just one person. There are more lives to be saved in there.” He noted the stricken look on Tim’s face and added quickly: “It was probably all bullshit, anyway. How do we know that they’re telling the truth? She might be in there with the other hostages or she might not be under their control at all. No-one’s heard from her, have they?”

“No, but . . .”

“If they were really planning to use her as a bargaining counter, more than likely they’d have got her to speak to us while under duress. Panic in the voice, heartfelt plea, all of that stuff.” He met Tim’s eye steadily. “Believe me, we have to do this now. We’ve got no idea what’s happening to those children in there.”

“Just let me check with my superior.”

As if on cue, Tim’s mobile rang again. He put it on ‘speak’.

“Thornton here. Give me an update. Have you got the children’s home surrounded? Is Guy Maichment there? What about Alex Tarrant? Have you talked to any of the perpetrators?”

“Can we take it one step at a time, sir?” Tim was stalling now, trying to gain extra minutes in which to think. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sergeant Jubb spread his hands, palms up, in a gesture of exasperation.

Tim tried to ignore him and continued.

“Yes, we have about twenty officers hidden beyond the moat that surrounds the Home. We aren’t armed, but armed response are here with” – he glanced at Sergeant Jubb and mouthed – “eighteen of you?” Jubb nodded. “With eighteen armed men. We think that Maichment is here, because his vehicle is parked within the compound, but we’re not certain because the only contact he’s allowed has been via a text message on my mobile. I’ve warned him through a megaphone that we’re accompanied by armed officers, but he may not have been able to hear me.”

“Did he call you?”

“Yes, sir; but I couldn’t answer the call immediately, so I didn’t speak to him directly. As I’ve said, he followed it up with a text message. According to Maichment, Alex Tarrant is not here, but she is being held by whoever these people are, at some location that only they know about. Maichment has asked us to withdraw – to go away from here completely. He is threatening to have Mrs Tarrant killed if we don’t comply.”

“What action do you propose to take?”

“Sergeant Jubb says that we should go in, sir. He says that there is no time left to try to negotiate. We don’t know what might be happening to the children.”

“I expressly forbid you to do that. We don’t know if Mrs Tarrant is inside and I won’t tolerate her being harmed in any way. Or Guy Maichment , either. I have given Superintendent Little my word.”

“You’ve promised not to harm Guy Maichment?” said Tim incredulously. “But you had the warrant signed for his arrest on sight. Sir.” Belatedly he remembered that he was talking to his superior.

“Quite so,” said Superintendent Thornton. Sergeant Jubb raised his eyes heavenwards.

“Is he some kind of idiot?” he hissed.

Tim motioned him to listen. Thornton was still speaking.

“I don’t disapprove of his being arrested, but I do draw the line at exposing him to danger. As Roy Little pointed out when we spoke just now, he may be a hostage himself. The body in the garden may have been placed there to frame him and all of his other actions may be accounted for by his being exposed to duress by his captors.”

Tim groaned. “Heaven give me strength!” he said, sotto voce. Sergeant Jubb grinned wryly. They were on the same side now.

“So what is your instruction, sir?”

“Don’t give up the attempt to parley. I’m organising trained hostage negotiators to be with you.” He sounds like a nineteenth-century general, Tim thought with despair. And he’s about as on the ball as one would be in this situation; he doesn’t seem to understand the urgency at all.

“So, hold off until negotiators arrive. And keep me fully briefed. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir, quite clear.”

“Good. I’ll leave you to it, then. I’m going to continue to supervise the search for Alex Tarrant. Now that I’ve thought about it, I think that it’s highly unlikely that she’s involved in your little fracas.”

He rang off before Tim could speak again.

“Shit!” said Sergeant Jubb. “Is he always like this?”

“I’m not exactly sure what you mean,” said Tim blandly.

“Of course you are. He’s like something out of fucking Z Cars. Where’s he been for the last forty-odd years?”

“What
are
we going to do next?” asked Tim, skating the issue. “We’ll have to obey his orders in fact, if not in spirit.”

“Agreed. Though we may need to respond if the situation changes suddenly.”

“OK, I think you’re right. We may not have any choice.”

Tim was still talking to Sergeant Jubb when three figures quickly crossed to them, stooping as low as they could as they ran. Andy Carstairs was the first to reach the armoured vehicle. He edged his way to the open rear door next to which Tim was sitting and crouched down beside it. The two others hung behind.

“Andy! I thought I said that everyone should keep out of sight.”

“We tried not to be spotted, sir. There’s been no movement in the house that we could see for half an hour, so chances are they didn’t spot us. You were asking for PC Cooper, so I thought you’d want to know that he’s arrived. He’s brought someone with him who has more knowledge of the interior than he does, someone who says he’s willing to lead us in by one of the back entrances. Apparently the wing Cooper stayed in with the lad is more or less separated from the rest of the building, so we could have got trapped if we’d tried to get in by that route.”

“Who is this person?”

“Mr Tarrant, sir. He’s a social worker and . . .”

“I know quite well who he is. He probably
can
help by describing the inside of the house to us. But he’s a civilian. We can’t allow him to endanger himself by coming in with us. How did Cooper manage to pick him up, anyway? He was at the station with Superintendent Thornton earlier this evening. Cooper hasn’t had time to make a detour to Spalding on his way here.”

The untidy figure of Tom Tarrant suddenly loomed above Andy’s head.

“Get down!” Tim exclaimed. “We’re probably being watched and we don’t know if they’re armed.”

Tom obediently crouched next to Andy.

“I heard all of that,” he said. “I don’t think that I owe you an explanation for my movements, Detective Inspector, but, for the record, I phoned Carolyn Sheldrake again. I told your lady colleague that she was Alex’s closest friend. She told me that your colleague had been speaking to her and, after a bit of persuasion, that she had indicated that Alex had been worried about some aspect of her dealings with Edmund Baker. Carolyn didn’t tell me exactly what had been preying on Alex’s mind and I chose not to pursue it further. I don’t have time to think about that at the moment. Obviously I thought that Baker might be able to give some clue about her disappearance. I found his address in a directory of archaeologists that Alex keeps. As you know, we’re staying with friends in Holbeach at the moment, so it didn’t take me long to nip round to Baker’s house. I met PC Cooper just as he was leaving. He told me that Baker’s whereabouts are at present unknown. It was PC Cooper’s idea that I should come here with him.”

“Indeed.” Tim didn’t know whether to be pleased at Gary Cooper’s use of initiative or annoyed that he had dragged a member of the public into what could become a violent stand-off. As if he could read Tim’s thoughts, Tom Tarrant continued.

“He has told me the bare minimum of what is going on here, but I’ve gathered that the children are being held hostage and may be in danger. Under the circumstances, I hardly count as a ‘civilian’. I have a duty of care to those kids that is equal to your own.”

Tim was impressed. He had Tom Tarrant marked down as a fairly effete character; certainly not as someone who could be relied on to keep a cool head in a crisis.

“Very well, Mr Tarrant. We shall be glad of your help, though you will have to let us be the judges of how much risk we’ll allow you to take. This is Sergeant Jubb, who is in charge of the armed response unit.”

Tom exchanged a nod with the Sergeant.

“Time was that I would have disapproved of what you do. But after Dunblane, I realised that people like you can be essential to protect children when there are madmen on the loose. But please tell me,” he added, with only the faintest unsteadiness of voice, “is Alex in there?”

“We don’t know for sure, but we don’t think so, sir.”

Tom’s relief was palpable. Tim decided that this was not the right moment to tell him about the text message.

“I suggest that you describe as fully as you can to Sergeant Jubb the layout of the interior, Mr Tarrant,” he said, and left them to it.