Page 8 of Famous Last Words

It’s obvious where the siege is taking place, two streets back, on a road comprising mostly industrial units but some clusters of houses, too.

‘What’s going on?’ Niall says, hurrying up to James Maidstone, the lead CID detective in charge, known in hostage situations as the silver commander. The gold commander sits in some office somewhere, authorizing things from afar. Niall is the lowly hostage negotiator: here just to communicate.

What most people don’t know – and what Niall learnt from his training, at a kind of shabby boot camp in Surrey – is that it’s not actually about talking. In major terrorism jobs you have two negotiators in: one to talk, and one to merely listen. They’re even called that: ‘the listener’. And theirs is the most important job in the room.

Sadly, budget cuts and a lowly three hostages taken means Niall is both today. He takes a sip of the Coke he brought with him. ‘What’s the situation?’ he asks.

Maidstone turns to Niall. He’s everything Niall is not: a graduate-entry police officer who’s risen quickly through the ranks. He knows things out of textbooks, and looks like it, too: wears shoes he shines and a watch he bought in Dubai. Niall, in battered old trainers, feels as old as time itself.

Maidstone takes a vape out of his front pocket and puffs on it. Niall, who quit smoking twenty years ago, still finds he could reach over and inhale the nicotine clouds from it, right there while it rests between Maidstone’s fingers.

‘Hostage-taker is Deschamps. Thirty-eight. No criminal history at all. A writer. Married to Camilla, who is also his literary agent. They have a nine-month-old, Polly. Not much more information at this time,’ he says.At this timeis his verbal tic.

‘Right. I need information and fast,’ Niall says. ‘What’s the deal with the security guard?’

‘No suspicion. Wants Facebook infamy, I think.’

‘Do you think he’s involved?’

Maidstone makes a face, then pockets his vape. His black suit shines a kind of burnished hot brown in the bright sun, like a black cat. ‘I don’t think so. He’s got loads of followers on there. Alt-right stuff. Put the footage on his feed after calling it in. No connection to Deschamps that I can see.’

‘Fucking idiot,’ Niall says. Maidstone’s eyes flicker slightly. ‘And the hostage-taker? Any history of domestics?’

‘No.’

‘Any contact?’

‘Nothing at this time.’

‘So he hasn’t levied a threat?’

‘No.’

‘So no idea what he wants?’ Niall presses. He checks a clock. Time is already running out. ‘What I need is eyes on him, so I can see his body language, and a line to him, so we can talk. Find out what his agenda is – and what he’s feeling.’

‘OK. Understood. We have CCTV. Let me see what else I can get you. His mobile’s now off, but there’s a landline. I’m getting it set up. I want you communicating within the hour.’ He begins typing – Maidstone gets stuff done, to his credit, and Niall knows he will be getting what he wants soonest.

Viv always says she likes to think his job involves guns and stakeouts and ransoms. She sometimes says things like ‘And why didn’t you blow his brains out?’ or ‘What was the sniper doing?’ The reality is of course different: it is simply that every person, every single human on earth, desperately wantssomething, and it is Niall’s only job to work out what. He plays along when she asks him, though. It’s one of their games. As he thinks of her, he realizes that he forgot to take the bin out this morning – she will be annoyed at him. It’s her most hated task, and he left her to do it. The problem with being a hostage negotiator is that everyone thinks you’re doing something for some smart, Machiavellian reason. But, sometimes, you just forget the bins.

Maidstone leads Niall across the sunlit street to a van that houses a few laptops. ‘We have eyes on live CCTV, look.’

He grabs for a laptop and hands it to Niall, who watches in silence. It’s grainy, hard to make out. A warehouse background of empty shelving racks, only two and a half hostages visible in the frame. They’re seated on wooden chairs perhaps grabbed hastily: their angles are skewed. Deschamps is off-screen.

The most significant thing, to Niall, is the silence and the stillness of it: this can only mean one thing – the hostages are terrified.

He brings the laptop closer to his ear and listens carefully: the sound of shoes on cement. Those footsteps are fast and urgent, the movements of an agitated man, which is not good news.

‘Let me see the moment of entry,’ he says.

‘We have nothing from the street. Inside, we see one hostage is already there. Then we have Deschamps arriving inside, but only into the main frame. Interior camera doesn’t reach the door. And we don’t see how he gets his other two hostages in there.’

Maidstone finds the footage and starts it on the laptop in front of him.

A woman enters the frame. She walks purposefully on-, then off-screen. There’s nothing more for almost thirty minutes.

Half an hour later, Luke Deschamps appears. A small movement at the top of the screen, near the table, and then he walks forwards purposefully, holding the gun out in front of him with straight arms. He shouts, to people off-screen, ‘On the chairs, now, or I shoot!’ Gun in hand, directing their actions. He leaves the screen, then drags three chairs into view. He directs each hostage on to a chair, using the gun, then ties them up deftly, with quick hand movements. All three hostages sit rigidly. Deschamps looks directly up at the camera.

Niall pauses it, rewinds, but he can’t make out that small movement right at the start. He watches again.

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