Chapter 10
10
‘Niall?’ Deschamps calls, a disembodied voice from inside the warehouse.
A rush of relief moves up through Niall like he’s a champagne bottle somebody has just popped.
‘Yes?’ he says.
Nothing.
‘Yes?’
‘Can you get a message to somebody?’
‘Yes, anything,’ Niall says, moving even closer to the door. He begins to plant the persuasive seeds. ‘We’ve got you coffee here and we’re also more than happy to pass a message on.’ This is the beginning of reciprocity. Here’s what we’ve done for you …
‘OK.’
‘What would you like to say?’
‘Tell my wife …’
‘Camilla?’
‘Yes. Tell my wife that I love her. Her and Polly.’
Niall stares at the peeling paint of the door, listens to the silence around him, the desperate, eleventh-hour proclamation of a man trapped in his own actions. What does it mean?
‘I will,’ Niall says. ‘Anything else you want me to relay?’
Silence.
‘Luke? You could come out – tell her yourself. She’d love that.’
Nothing.
‘Luke?’
Nothing.
Deschamps doesn’t speak again. Silence follows silence follows silence. Niall stays there for half an hour, but, just like that, the communication channel is shut off again, the stream run dry.
Furthermore, when Niall gets back to the RVP, and watches it all back, he sees Deschamps only held the gun down by his side once: when he sobbed, wiping tears away roughly from his eyes with the back of his hand, like a child. The rest of the time, he kept it trained on his hostages.
‘Gold commander thinks we need to go in. And I agree,’ Maidstone says, arriving by Niall and talking quickly. ‘Threat to life. He’s still aiming at them. He failed to engage. Article Two of the European Convention on Human Rights. These hostages have a right to life, Niall.’
Niall heaves a sigh that seems to come right from his trainers. He knows that this is theoretically right, but he doesn’t agree on this occasion that their lives are truly under threat. Something in Deschamps is hesitating, and he wants to listen to it. ‘He said he loves his wife.’
Maidstone looks incredulous. ‘Like a final parting shot? A goodbye? A suicide note?’
Niall appraises Maidstone. How can two people read the same set of circumstances so completely differently? ‘I took it as a gesture of submission,’ he says. ‘He trusted me enough to tell me that. To be his messenger. Of his first message.’
‘He’s issuing goodbyes.’
‘If we go in, he will shoot,’ Niall says, looking directly at Maidstone. ‘If we get him talking, he won’t. He hasn’t shot anyone yet. I want Camilla in.’
‘We bring the wife in, he says goodbye, he shoots them and then himself. It’s Negotiating 101.’
Niall stares at his feet, a hand in his hair. He disagrees that negotiating is this simple. The thing is, Deschamps doesn’t want to be there. The body language, the sobbing. All of it.
That’s what it is. That’s what his instincts say.
‘At the moment, everyone is alive,’ Niall says. ‘We have eyes directly on him. I want to talk to him.’
‘We could hear a shot right now, right this second. We’d get no warning. Bang – and we’d all be done for,’ Maidstone says. ‘Our hesitation would not be excusable.’
‘There are four human beings in there, not three.’
Maidstone turns away from Niall, and he thinks he’s going to actually storm off like a teenager, but he’s looking down at his beeping phone. There are reams and reams of messages on there, emails, calls, texts. Niall ought to be more sympathetic: running a show like this is madly stressful, much worse than being the negotiator.
Maidstone flicks his gaze to Niall. ‘George Louis has arrived. Wants to be in here.’ He turns his mouth down, obviously disapproving. ‘Wants to know what’s going on.’
‘Let him in. It’s his wife in there,’ Niall says. ‘I’d want to be in the cordon. Wouldn’t you?’
‘Relatives at the scene is … Having Camilla Deschamps here is bad enough,’ Maidstone says with the tone of voice of an irritated ex-husband.
‘He’s police. He’ll know how to behave himself,’ Niall supplies.
Maidstone turns away from him, but Niall reaches to touch him on the shoulder. ‘Besides, we need to interview him anyway. Find out what his wife’s like under pressure. If she has any connection to Deschamps. We can speak to him. We might be able to get information.’
Maidstone chucks his phone on to a table, where it skitters. ‘He’s on his way. Bring on George. Bring Camilla, too. Seems I get no say in the matter. Bring the whole fucking circus.’
THE SUN
WHO HAS BEEN TAKEN IN THIS ABANDONED WAREHOUSE IN BERMONDSEY?
Three hostages sit on two wooden chairs in a warehouse in Bermondsey . But what is most mysterious about these events isn’t the man taking hostages: it’s that nobody – not even the police – seems to know who two of the hostages are.
DO YOU KNOW THESE MEN?
Believed to both be six feet tall, broad, white. Look at the CCTV screenshots below and call in if you recognize their clothes.