Page 9 of Famous Last Words

Niall makes a note to run the footage of the hostages through the DVLA database, even though he knows he won’t get hits for people with covered faces.

He plays it again, fourth time.

Deschamps is silent as he arrives, and something about it makes Niall shiver. Deschamps does nothing. Merely tracks his targets with the aim of the gun. And then, and only then, does he shout. He likely shepherded them in with the gun unseen, though it’s surprising he wasn’t issuing verbal directions as he did so.

‘OK. Leave it with me,’ he says to Maidstone.

More and more police are arriving. A couple of uniformed officers are scouting out the area. They will be responsible for assembling the inner and outer cordons. The first steps are to evacuate the few houses and industrial units in the immediate vicinity, telling people in the wider area to get to the back of buildings, far away from possible gunshots.

An officer at a laptop in another van raises a hand. ‘ID on one of the hostages,’ he shouts, getting out of the van. Maidstone whips his head around, while Niall listens. The officer comes over quickly to Maidstone. ‘Isabella Louis. Forty-two. Her husband, George Louis, has phoned her in.’

‘George Louis?’ Maidstone says immediately – sharp as a tack: George Louis is in the police.

‘Exactly. He’s on his way here. He worked uniform in Hammersmith before joining the GDPR team. His family owns the warehouse. He couldn’t get hold of her this morning. He’s pretty sure she was headed there to do some job between tenants. Plus, he’s recognized her clothes.’

Niall nods slowly. Who takes a copper’s wife hostage? Somebody with bollocks, that’s who. Not a family man with no criminal history.

‘Has George any known connection to Deschamps?’ Niall says. ‘Can we speak to him?’

The officer is standing with the laptop held in one hand,the other typing. ‘No connection on the force systems. And Deschamps isn’t connected to the warehouse in any obvious way. George doesn’t know him.’

‘Get off the systems and on to Facebook,’ Niall says, his detective instincts bubbling to the surface. ‘Get on Isabella’s social media. We need to know if he took her for a reason. I’m guessing George never arrested him? Not for anything, even speeding?’

‘No.’

‘Got it. We need ID on the others.’

Maidstone nods. ‘We’ve got nothing at this time,’ he says. ‘Look, we need to establish a dialogue.’

‘We need an RVP,’ Niall says, gesturing to the copper standing holding a laptop, squinting at its screen in the sun. The rendezvous point: the place they will gather, assess intelligence, be briefed, and, more importantly, think and strategize. ‘We can’t stand out here. We need to discuss tactics before dialogue. Let’s set one up.’ He points up the road, five hundred yards away – too far for the CCTV to be useful to get a look at the warehouse and Deschamps’s arrival – to the pub.

‘A Wetherspoon’s?’ Maidstone says.

‘It’s better than nothing.’

Niall and Maidstone walk up the street together and across the pub’s car park, past an A-frame board that says ‘TODAY – two for one puddings’.

They walk through the double doors, sunlight to gloom, and Niall is immediately relieved that it isn’t busy. Wednesday morning, and the heat has driven down footfall. An old man with shaking hands sits at one of the tables with a pint, a betting slip and a newspaper full of tips. A family of five – tourists, maybe – are nearby with lemonades. Not much else. Fruit machines. Flyers for food offers.

They approach the bar together. Immediately, Niall’s eyes flick to the taps. And it isn’t Pepsi on draught – it’s Coke. How completely excellent.

‘I’ll set my stuff up there,’ Niall says, indicating a rickety nearby table. ‘You talk to the manager and get everyone out,’ he adds. No one can stay, not even the staff. And Niall finds that most people, when faced with it, don’t need the risks spelling out to them.

‘I’m aware of the next steps,’ Maidstone says frostily.

Niall slides his laptop and a designated mobile out of his bag. Nothing more. Some hostage negotiators want the gold commander on the phone at all times, endless discussions, a whole room full of people listening, but Niall doesn’t. Just him, the kidnapper, the phone line stretching thin between them. An earpiece he’s forced to wear so he can take instructions. He has to record the call for compliance, but rather wishes he didn’t: experienced hostage-takers recognize the second’s delay it causes, though he doesn’t get the impression Deschamps is one of these. No criminal history. Family man. Normal job. Though their baby is young … he begins to ponder postnatal depression in men leading to some sort of psychotic break, just as the patrons begin to leave, shooting curious glances Niall’s way.

And George Louis’s wife. It’s very strange. Niall had assumed Isabella was an accidental hostage, already in the warehouse when Deschamps burst in. But you can never ignore a coincidence in policing, and George Louis is a big-personality copper: aggressive, forthright, and smart, too. He could easily have pissed somebody off.

Niall nips behind the bar and pulls himself a Coke, thinking how much he can rack up on the tab they will have tosettle later. Anyway. The matter at hand: usually, by now, a demand has been made. Or a hostage killed.

He keeps the laptop with the CCTV on open, watching it, wanting Deschamps to come into view. You can learn a lot about someone’s emotional state if only you can see them.

Officers begin to trickle into the pub. Police in riot gear, bulletproof shields, holding MP5s and Glocks, then uniformed coppers and yet more detectives taken off missing persons cases and garden-variety burglaries.

Maidstone arrives, and begins his address: ‘Deschamps is thirty-eight, a writer, a husband, and father of one with no previous. We have no CCTV of him outside the warehouse from this morning, or on the streets: it’s an industrial area with limited cameras. The closest is the pub, and neither Luke nor any of the hostages walked by there. All we have is that initial footage, and this.’

‘You’ve combed every CCTV?’ Niall interrupts.

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