Page 24 of Captive Hearts
Eleven
Ashley was doing the only thing she knew how to do. Stay on the job. Observe and record the facts.She was placing all this knowledge into her memory banks, for want of access to her notebook, which sat in her pocket.Somehow, she didn’t think Rick would take kindly to her scribbling away, so she simply kept slotting observations into her mind palace. She was memorising the layout of the kitchen. She was retaining all her fellow hostages’ faces, along with all the obvious facts about them. She was trying to keep everything Rick said stored up for later transcription.
Why was she doing all this? To avoid her own guilt. To avoid the singular and sickening fact that Ashley might have just bought a ticket to an early grave for her and Gina so that shemightbe in with a shot at a slightly better job. She couldn’t believe her own stupidity.
Nor could she believe she’d gotten so caught up in this big story that she’d forgotten something more important than her work. That she liked living. As difficult as it was sometimes to grind through the days, she wanted to keep doing it. Yet she’d gotten herself to this point, running as fast as she could, pushed on by her Achilles’ heel, her ambition. Once she’d heard that first police siren, beckoning her toward danger, what could she do but sail towards it, right towards the danger of the jagged rocks.
Ashley didn’t want to look at Gina. She couldn’t begin to imagine how angry the poor woman must be, dragged kicking and screaming into this restaurant, doing a job she didn’t even care about. If Ashley survived Rick, Gina would probably be next in line to kill her.
Rick, his sandwich done, turned to Ashley, breaking into her remorseful thoughts. ‘Right. I’m ready.’
‘For…’
‘That interview.’
‘Oh. Right. OK,’ Ashley said. She turned to Gina, avoiding direct eye contact. ‘Get your gear ready.’
Gina paused, and Ashley felt like she was about to be told to quite squarely fuck herself. But Gina just stood up, switched her camera on, and slipped it onto her shoulder, fiddling with the focus for a moment. ‘Ready.’
‘You’re set?’
‘I’m not an amateur,’ Gina told her, pressing her eye to the viewfinder.
‘No, you’re not,’ Ashley had to agree.
‘Right, I’ll sit here,’ Rick said, plonking himself in a corner of the kitchen.
‘You sure?’ Gina asked. ‘The light’s not great there. Better over in the other corner.’
Rick looked like Ashley felt. Shocked shitless that Gina was questioning the guy with the gun. But Rick decided to accept the advice. ‘If you think so,’ he said and dragged his stool over to the other corner, next to a window with the blinds down. Some light escaped through the blind, but it was still quite dim. ‘Can I open this briefly?’ Gina asked.
Rick was quick to anger. ‘Are you mad? Probably a police sniper waiting out there to blow my head off.’
Gina frowned. ‘Oh. Right. Well, can we get a few lights on?’
‘I guess one wouldn’t hurt,’ he said, turning to his seated hostages. ‘One of you go put on the light, but not too many.’ A guy in chef whites got up and turned on a light over Rick’s head. ‘Right, that’s enough fucking about, let’s get this show on the road,’ Rick said.
Gina put her eye back to the viewfinder. ‘OK, I’m rolling.’
Ashley turned to Rick. ‘I’m just gonna start asking things, OK?’
‘That’s what you’re here for,’ Rick said, smoothing his hair, running two fingers along his little moustache and straightening his black hoody, holding his gun loosely in Ashley’s direction.
Ashley told her eyes not to stare at the gun, and off she went. ‘OK, Rick… Can you tell us how this came about?’
‘What?’
‘The, err, hostage situation.’
‘Oh, yeah, that.’ He took a deep breath, readying himself for story time. ‘So, I used to work here years ago. Sous chef. Well, if you can call it that. Mainly just grating cheese.Anyway, I sold thetiniestbit of weed to a customer round the back of the building, and they sacked me.’He shook his head at the memory. ‘Bastards. So, then I got into arrears with the child support, and my ex cut off monthly visitation. So, I was like, fuck it, no reason to be a good boy anymore.’ A horrid grin appeared under his moustache. ‘So I went full time on dealing.That went fine for a while until I sold to an undercover pig. Went to prison for six months. That was where I got in with some guys who thieved for a living. Second I was out, I was on the job. That was alright for a bit until we got nicked moving some TVs. I got two years for that, worse prison. I got recruited in there by some people who worked for a gang who needed someone to put the boot in occasionally. It was regular money, pretty sweet, until one of the fuckers flipped on us, and I got five years for that one. Then my boy comes to see me in prison, he’s a teenager by this point.’ Rick shook his head. ‘I tell you what,neverhave kids, because the little shit just wanted to tell me all about how much I’ve disappointed him and wrecked his life and ruinedeverything. I swear, I thought he was gonna pin the Kennedy assassination on me any second. I was like, “Boy, we all have shit parents. Take some responsibility for yourself!” If it hadn’t been for that pane of glass between us, I’d have slapped him one.’ Rick took a breath there, his energy depleted for a moment. But then he was back up. ‘But after he’d left, I thought on it. Not much else to do inside but think. And I started to think maybe he wasn’t totally wrong. Maybe if I’d been around for him, it might have been better. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that I knew when things had gone wrong.’ Ashley waited. ‘This place,’ Rick said, gesturing. ‘This is where it went bad. When they sacked me off. If I’d have stayed in proper employment, I would have been alright. I could have been a good dad.’ He looked over at the chefs in the corner. ‘I could have been alright!’
One trembling chef said quietly, ‘None of us worked here then.’
Rick didn’t seem to hear that, looking back at Ashley. ‘So I got out last month, and I decided this place owed me some severance. I came in here with a pal at lunchtime, masks and guns, full nine. If everyone would have just stayed calm and handed over the till money, I wudda left, all this wouldn’t be happening. But of course, the fucking manager wants to be a hero, doesn’t he? Starts arguing with me. I had to clock him. Blood flew out of his nose, it was only a bit, but it went everywhere, people started screaming.’ He shook his head, livid at the audacity. ‘So people start running, including theheromanager. My mate lost his nerve, legged it out the back fire door, set off the fire alarm as well, the dickhead.’ Rick stared unabashedly into the camera. ‘Phil, if you ever see this, when I catch up to you, you’re gonna know about it.’ He turned back to Ashley. ‘I was stuck. I had to start putting bullets in the floor, so the people I had left knew I was serious. By the time I got to the door, there was pigs out the front. And I didn’twanna, but I was forced to round everyone up and lock the doors.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s about it.’
Ashley realised he’d finished his tale. She nodded and said, ‘Mmm, yes. I see.’ She was surprised to find that even now, she had a lot of questions to ask, but every one seemed like it might piss off Rick. Any other day, any other interviewee, she’d ask anyway. But this was no ordinary day, no ordinary interview. He was a short-fused thug with a gun. His story made it clear that he had little empathy for anyone else. In the end, Ashley landed on the safest thing she could think of. ‘So, Rick, you’re in here alone, with a lot of scared hostages. Do you have a plan?’
Rick nodded, a sly smile creeping onto his lips. ‘You’re the plan.’
