Frankie (28 page)

‘No,' Frankie replied. ‘Jasper is not leaving my arms.'

Andreas bent down so that their faces were level. ‘I'm beginning to have had enough of your demands. Ryan,
take the child. If she speaks again, hit him, hard. If she speaks after that, kill him.'

‘No!' Frankie shouted as Andreas turned away and Ryan started to tussle Jasper from her. He raised his fist and landed a heavy blow on the side of her face. Frankie felt the signet ring on his finger connect sharply with her cheekbone, and she momentarily lost her grip on her child. Before she knew it, he was in Ryan's arms, screaming. ‘Give me my son!' she shouted, jumping up to grab him from Ryan; but she fell to the floor as Andreas brought his knee hard into her stomach, doubling her over in gasping pain. As she crouched on the floor, she felt the hard steel of Andreas's gun against the back of her head.

‘Take the child to the car,' Andreas said to Ryan. ‘Wait for us there. And for God's sake, shut him up.'

Ryan looked awkwardly at the child, then clumsily placed his hand over the baby's mouth. It didn't stop Jasper screaming, but it muted the sound somewhat and forced him to take quieter breaths through his nose. Ryan took the child into the back room, and Frankie heard a door click open and shut. Then silence.

Andreas bent down, grabbed a clump of her hair and pulled her up to her feet. Frankie gritted her teeth as he did so, unwilling to shout out and give him the satisfaction of knowing how much it hurt. He put the gun to her neck and whispered so close to her ear that she could feel his hot, heavy, cigarette breath on her. ‘I want you to know that I like killing people,' he said, the accent in his voice strangely amplified by its quietness. ‘I enjoyed killing your partner, and I enjoyed killing the two women. I'm deeply disappointed that I can't add you to the list.
But I will, if I get the vaguest impression that this is a set-up. I don't care if there are people around. Do you understand?'

Frankie nodded.

‘Good. Walk slowly to the door.'

He removed the gun from Frankie's neck and prodded her in the back. She stumbled forward, regained her balance, then walked into the other room. It was a kitchen of sorts – a grimy stand-alone sink and a rickety old oven – with a back door on the far wall. Andreas grabbed a coat from the table and draped it over the gun that was still pointing in Frankie's direction. ‘Go on,' he said.

Frankie opened the door and stepped out. She found herself at the top of the metal staircase she had seen on the computer monitor, and as she walked down it, her footsteps clattered and echoed from the high brick walls surrounding the courtyard it led to. Andreas nudged her towards a side alley leading out to the main road, then guided her down the street to where a rather nondescript estate car was waiting, its hazard warning lights flashing. The windows were darkly tinted, so it wasn't until Frankie had climbed inside to the passenger seat that she could be sure Jasper and Ryan were in there. Her son was quieter now, and Ryan looked straight ahead, with the occasional flicker of a glance in the rear-view mirror; he certainly made no attempt even to acknowledge Frankie's arrival in the car.

‘Go,' Andreas told him as soon as they were all in, and Frankie heard the locks clunk shut.

It was rush hour and the car crawled interminably slowly through the traffic; Ryan seemed to be getting flustered by the stop-start journey, swearing under his
breath and slamming his hands on the steering wheel; but if Andreas was frustrated, Frankie heard no sign of it from the seat behind her. Occasionally she would look over her shoulder to check on Jasper, but each time she felt the tap of the gun on the back of her head. ‘Eyes forward,' Andreas would say. They were the only words he spoke until they reached Waterloo Bridge. As they did so, Andreas's mobile phone rang. ‘Yes,' he answered, then was silent as he listened to whoever was at the other end. ‘I'll have it in ten minutes.' He flipped the phone shut, and silence fell upon the car once more, broken only by Ryan's swearing and Jasper's whimpering.

As they pulled off the bridge, he spoke again. ‘I think it's time you told me where it is.'

‘Not until we're inside the station,' Frankie said through gritted teeth. ‘I told you.'

She heard Andreas breathe deeply behind her. ‘Ryan, park the car as near to the entrance as you can, somewhere you won't be moved on. Keep the engine running and wait for us.'

‘For
you
,' Frankie corrected him. ‘Jasper and I won't be coming back.'

Andreas said nothing.

Ryan had turned off Waterloo Road into one of the side streets that surrounded the station. He pulled up by the kerb. ‘Stay where you are,' Andreas told Frankie. ‘Don't get out of the car until I tell you to. Ryan, unlock the doors.' They clunked open again, and Andreas climbed out with Jasper. Frankie watched over her shoulder as the blond man walked round the back of the car, his gun still covered by the coat in his arms, then stood beside Frankie's door. ‘Get out now,' he told her.

She opened her door and walked briskly to the pavement. ‘Give me Jasper,' she told Andreas.

‘No,' he shook his head. ‘You get him when I get the necklace. Walk ahead of me and remember: my gun is aimed straight at the child. Don't make me nervous with any sudden movements.'

Frankie didn't reply; she just threw him a vicious look then began walking down the street. Behind her she could hear Jasper starting to cry again but she knew she had to keep her cool. It shouldn't be more than five minutes and she'd have him in her arms; and once that happened, she would never let go.

Within minutes she was walking up the steps to the station's main entrance and heading towards the centre of the concourse under the hanging clock. She turned round and looked for Andreas – he was trailing a few metres behind, his head not moving but his eyes darting in all directions. All around them, busy commuters were hurrying to and from trains, a sea of people crashing like waves into each other. Frankie looked nervously around.

Andreas approached her. ‘Where is it?'

Frankie hesitated.

‘I'm not going to ask you again.' The steely look in his eyes was determined, terrifying.

‘I've hidden it in the ladies' toilets,' Frankie told him.

‘Go and get it. Now.'

‘Give me Jasper first.' Andreas shook his head.

‘I'm not doing anything until I've got my son.' Frankie tried to make herself sound uncompromising, but the words came out more shrilly than she had intended.

Andreas shrugged. He turned and started walking away,
and within seconds it was difficult to keep track of him with all the people criss-crossing between them. Frankie ran past the man holding her baby and stood in front of him. ‘OK,' she told him. ‘Wait here.'

Frankie turned her back on him and hurried towards the stairs that led down to the toilets. Before she descended, she looked behind her: Andreas was watching her intently. Their eyes locked for a moment, then she dragged her gaze away and rushed down the steps.

There was a short queue at the turnstile, and Frankie waited impatiently for the women in front of her to insert their twenty-pence pieces and make their way inside. It seemed to take for ever. Finally, though, it was her turn. She fished a coin out of her pocket, dropped it in the slot and pushed her way through. There were a number of women milling around, washing their hands or fixing their make-up. The cubicle where Frankie had hidden the locket, however, was in use, so she took up position at a sink where she could see it in the mirror, and started fiddling with her hair, damping it down with her hands, all the while keeping a keen eye on the cubicle door.

When it opened, there was a line of women waiting, but Frankie spun round quickly and barged in, knocking roughly into the shoulder of the woman who had just come out. ‘Hey,' she complained, but Frankie ignored her as she slammed the door shut on herself and locked it firmly. There was no time now to gather her thoughts; she just had to get it all over with. And quickly.

She lifted the lid of the cistern. There, floating in the water, was a baby's bottle. And inside the bottle was the locket.

With trembling hands, Frankie fished it out and carefully took the locket out of the bottle, making sure no water got onto the device. Once it was safely in her hand, she pushed it into her pocket, then flushed the lavatory before opening the door and running out, to disparaging looks from the other women.

Frankie tore up the stairs and ran across the concourse to where she had left Andreas and Jasper. The one time she wanted to see the police, there was no sign of them. She had no choice but to trust this Sean Carter, and she knew that as soon as she had Jasper back in her arms the safest place she could be was in his custody. If he didn't show, she was going to have to trust that Andreas wouldn't dare shoot her with so many people around. She would demand Jasper from him, then throw the locket into the crowd – while he was trying to find it, she could make her escape. She had to have Jasper in her arms first, though.

But as she approached the spot, she stopped, a wave of nausea engulfing her.

They weren't there.

She looked around her in desperation. There was no sign. Maybe the police had arrived; maybe they had caught him. But there was nothing to suggest that was the case – the public were just milling around as they had been, with none of the shocked excitement that would have accompanied an arrest. Her eyes wide with horror, she started gasping irregularly, desperately trying to think what to do for the best.

And then she felt something against her back. She recognized it immediately. Andreas's gun. He was inches
behind her. ‘Start walking towards the exit. Now!' he whispered. Frankie stood still, then felt the gun dig further into her back. ‘Walk!'

She stepped forward. Her eyes flickered left and right as she looked for any sign of a police presence, but there was nothing. Her mind was racing: it was all going wrong. Frankie cursed herself for thinking she could deal with this on her own, even though she knew deep down that there was no one else she could have trusted. She considered screaming, but with Jasper still held hostage she knew she couldn't risk it.

The entrance was getting nearer, and it seemed to Frankie as though the crowds were unfolding in front of her. She wished somebody would clumsily bump into her, give her an excuse to grab Jasper from the man behind her, but it didn't happen. Now she was at the top of the steps, ready to walk down; the moment she did so, she would be out of the station, and the police, if they were there at all, would have missed her. She hesitated. ‘Walk!' Andreas told her again, only this time there seemed to be a note of restrained urgency in his voice.

And then, as she was taking her first pace down the steps, there was an eye-piercing flash of light.

Momentarily blinded, Frankie stumbled and felt herself tumble down the stone steps. It seemed to happen in slow motion. Her arm thudded excruciatingly against the corner of one of the steps, and then her head. As she fell, she could hear shouting all around her, adrenaline-filled voices. ‘Don't move!' they were yelling. ‘Everybody get down!'

There were screams. Frankie found herself at the bottom of the steps; she tried to push herself up using one
arm, but a shot of pain crashed up it so she used the other one. People were running away from the stairs, and a group of five or six men had surrounded Andreas and the helplessly screaming Jasper. They wore black and grey riot gear, with thick bullet-proof vests and heavy metal helmets, and were carrying MP5K machine guns – all of them trained on Andreas. The blond man was backing away from them, looking around for a means of escape; but there was none and he clearly knew it. Frankie watched, her muscles frozen with shock, as Andreas allowed the coat covering the gun to fall slowly to the floor. The gun was pointing directly at the baby.

Nobody spoke. Nobody dared, it seemed. Andreas was the first to break the silence. ‘Put your weapons down or I will kill the child,' he said clearly.

The police officers didn't move. They just kept their weapons pointing straight at him.

‘I'm not messing around,' Andreas insisted. ‘You have three seconds.'

Frankie looked directly at her son.

‘Three,' Andreas counted down.

‘Do something!' she shouted at the men surrounding him, but still they stood their ground.

‘Two.'

‘Francesca!' She heard a voice off to her side and momentarily glanced in its direction to see a man in a leather jacket with several days' growth on his face. ‘Stay where you are!'

‘One.' For the first time Andreas's voice had a hint of desperation in it.

‘Stop!' Frankie shouted, and with all the energy she could summon she threw herself up the stairs.

‘Francesca!' The man behind her was calling again, but Frankie wasn't listening; all her attention was fixed on the man holding her child and the curl of his upper lip as he prepared to do the unthinkable. His eyes flickered in her direction as she ran towards him.

And then she heard the shot. It resounded through her like thunder.

She saw Jasper fall from Andreas's arms, naked, as the blanket around him unfurled. ‘No!' she screamed, sounding scarcely human as she caught his tiny body before he hit the ground. ‘Jasper!' she whimpered. ‘Please, no!'

Above her there was movement. Andreas was falling, toppling down the stairs just as she had done only half a minute earlier. She glanced up in time to see a horrific exit wound on the front of his forehead before he fell face down by her side. Behind him a marksman had his gun pressed against his shoulder.

Frankie heard shouting. ‘Get away! Get away!' But she didn't respond. Because in her arms, she realized, Jasper was still crying.

Unharmed.

Alive.

In his mother's arms.

It was finished. Francesca Mills doubled over in exhaustion and emotion, and wept as she had never wept before.