Chivers shrugged. ‘Up to you.’
‘Up to Mr Akhtar, I would have thought.’
‘Only if we let him have control of the situation.’
Donnelly stared at the screen. ‘I’m open to suggestions.’
‘Look at those shutters.’ Chivers pointed at the monitor. ‘They’ve already been twisted up at the bottom, see? That’s just kids or what have you. Wouldn’t take us long to get through those.’
‘Long enough for him to do something.’
‘We need to get this sorted quickly,’ Chivers said.
‘What we need,’ Pascoe said, ‘is to open a channel of communication with our hostage taker.’
‘At least let us get Tech Support in here.’ Chivers was looking at Donnelly. ‘Get some microphones up on the roof, take a listen to what’s going on in there.’
‘Too risky,’ Pascoe said. ‘If he thinks there’s anything like that going on, he might do something stupid.’
‘We don’t even know the gun is loaded.’ Chivers stabbed at the monitor again. ‘He’s a newsagent, for Christ’s sake.’
Donnelly looked at Pascoe. She shook her head.
‘We do something without really thinking it through,’ she said, ‘and he’ll be the one making the news.’
NINE
Helen listened, waiting and hoping for some reaction.
Akhtar had been in his shop for ten minutes or more, while for most of that time, from the front of the building, a woman’s voice had echoed – crackling and tinny – through a loudhailer.
‘We just want to talk, Mr Akhtar. We need to know that everyone’s all right in there. If we could start some kind of dialogue on the phone, we could begin talking about how we’re going to resolve this. How we can get you what you want without anybody getting hurt.’
When he finally came back into the storeroom, Akhtar was carrying an armful of chocolate bars and bags of crisps. He stood a few steps away from where Helen and Mitchell were chained to the radiator and stared down at them.
‘So, what do you think?’ Helen asked.
‘What do I think about what?’
‘Should we maybe just switch my phone on at least?’
Akhtar blinked, licked his lips.
‘If you don’t communicate with them-’
‘I already said,’ he shouted. ‘When I’m ready.’ He stamped his foot like a petulant schoolboy and shook his head as if clearing it or trying to refocus. Then he smiled suddenly at Helen and Mitchell, calmly opened his arms and dropped the crisps and chocolate at their feet. ‘It’s lunchtime,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid this is the best I can do.’
Helen watched him walk back to the desk and pick up the gun. As far as her stomach was concerned, she did not know where fear ended and hunger began.
‘It’s time to eat,’ he said.
She slowly pulled a chocolate bar towards her with her free hand and tore at the wrapper with her teeth. She bit into it, then nodded towards a packet of crisps. ‘I don’t think I can open that with one hand,’ she said.
Akhtar said, ‘Sorry.’ With the gun still pointed at them, he bent down slowly, opened the two bags of crisps that were closest to him then nudged them across the dirty linoleum floor with his foot.
Mitchell did not seem interested in the food. He never took his eyes off the gun.
‘Can we have something to drink?’ Helen asked.
Akhtar apologised again, the anger having seemingly given way to embarrassment and concern, and hurried back into the shop.
‘You should eat something,’ Helen said to Mitchell.
‘I don’t think I can.’
‘Just a bar of chocolate.’
‘I’d probably be sick anyway,’ he said. He blew out his cheeks and rubbed at his stomach. ‘Butterflies, you know?’
‘Yeah, I know.’ She reached across and laid a hand on his arm.
Akhtar came back in with three cans: Coke, Diet Coke and Sprite. He held them up so that Helen and Mitchell could take their pick.
‘I’ll have the Diet Coke,’ Helen said, ‘if that’s all right. Probably wasting my time worrying about calories while I’m stuffing my face with chocolate, mind you.’ She tried to smile. ‘Might as well make the effort though.’
Akhtar nodded and laughed. He opened the can and laid it down within Helen’s reach, then he raised up the other two, one in each hand. ‘Mr Mitchell?’
Mitchell said he was happy with either.
‘You can have the Coke,’ Akhtar said. He opened the drink and placed it on the floor, then sat back down at the desk. He laid the gun on the desktop and popped the ring-pull on his own can. He looked across at Helen and patted his paunch. ‘I gave up worrying about weight a long time ago,’ he said. ‘All that ghee in everything my wife cooks.’
‘I can’t afford to give up,’ Helen said. She looked at him and swallowed hard. ‘Been struggling with it ever since Alfie was born. Can’t seem to get rid of those few extra pounds, even though I spend half my life running round after the little bugger like a lunatic. Well, you’ve seen how much energy he’s got.’
Akhtar looked away and took a long swig from his can.
Helen was happy to see that Akhtar was feeling uncomfortable. Had she managed to provoke a pang of guilt, or remorse? Perhaps she had simply succeeded in reminding him of his own son. She decided that this could not be helped, that whatever she said, the man would not need to be reminded of the child he had lost.
It was the reason they were there, after all.
She finished the chocolate and started on the crisps. ‘Where did you get the gun, Javed?’
‘What?’
She asked again, kept it nice and casual, as though she were enquiring where he had bought his shoes.
Akhtar reached for the gun and picked it up, felt the weight of it as if holding it for the first time. It looked old. A revolver. ‘A man who came into the shop,’ he said.
Helen waited.
‘I knew he was involved in certain sorts of business, you know? The way he looked and some of the things he said. Same way I got to know the business you were in.’ He slowly turned the gun over in his hand, as though curious himself as to how it had got there. ‘I told this man some made-up stories, told him I was having real trouble with kids in the shop, all that kind of nonsense. He said there were things I could do to protect myself, that it would be easy to get what I needed if I was happy to pay for it. He said there was a pub I could go to, people I could ask. So, for several nights, when I had told my wife I was at the cash-and-carry, I sat in this pub that stank of God-knows-what, trying to look as though I had a good reason to be there, and I asked questions. Eventually I found a man who was keen to take my money and give me what I wanted.’
‘You must have been frightened,’ Helen said.
‘I was terrified, Miss Weeks, I don’t mind telling you. More scared than I have ever been. But in the end it was so easy, that is the terrible thing. Those boys who were in my shop this morning? They can get guns any time they want.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Like that .’ He shook his head. ‘I thought it would be difficult and dangerous, but it was really no different to buying anything else. No different.’ He nodded down to the floor in front of Helen. ‘Like buying crisps or bloody Coca-Cola… ’
Helen knew that Javed Akhtar was right, of course. The war on knives was all but lost, and it was hard to imagine the attempt to tackle gun crime going any other way, when you could buy one in a pub car park as easily as a box or two of dodgy fags.
He might just as well have been at the cash-and-carry.
‘Why don’t you just get rid of the gun?’ Helen asked.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘ Please,’ Mitchell said. The single word was said quietly but was thick with desperation. ‘You don’t need it.’ He rattled the handcuffs against the radiator pipe. ‘We can’t go anywhere.’
‘You don’t have to do anything else,’ Helen said. ‘We can carry on just like this if you want. It’s only the gun that’s making things dangerous. For all of us.’ She nodded reassuringly. ‘You can see that, Javed, can’t you? Just put the gun away… ’