The walkway was secured at both ends, so no advice was needed on sanitising the perimeters of a designated siege area.
Nothing was negotiable on free passage out for a hostage-taker and his victim.
The renunciation of evidence would not happen. An exchange – witness statements ditched in return for a life given – was not an option.
Clemency for a killer – unlikely. Leniency – improbable.
‘Right now I don’t have advice to give,’ Lukas said. ‘I can tell you what I want and what I don’t want.’
‘Tell me.’
‘I want to stabilise the atmosphere, cut the tension, get it stable. Make it so tedious that everyone wants to go to sleep – like it’s taking the drama out of the show. The hostage-taker, what I have on him, he’s young and he’s used to immediate acceptance of what he says, and he’ll reckon himself – saying it vulgar – the dog’s bollocks. He sees himself right now as a central figure in a big theatre. We have to get him down to the ground, and calm him, bleed the adrenalin out of him, then keep him cool. That’s the stabilisation. He’ll threaten to kill because he has no other currency to chuck at us. Cool and calm is what we aim for. The priority for the boy is to have him walk out in one piece. Agreed? We do an assault by your people and we’re on uncertain ground – may win, may lose. An assault is last-chance stuff. The hostage-taker, where’s your priority for him?’
‘Taken alive.’
‘Most of them, ones fitting his profile, want what we call “police-assisted suicide”. It’s easy and quick, and they have a delusion about a legend being born. Alive, and he’s just another number in another cell block, rotting and forgotten. Alive, then, is my aim point.’
‘Do you do timetables?’
‘Try not to.’
‘I don’t have for ever.’
Lukas understood. A deal already in place. Part of a walkway cleared. A clan leader ordering his people to stand aside on this limited patch of territory, and an understanding that the law-and-order guys do their work, hurry, look for nothing else, do not disrupt, get lost. A deal that called for a long spoon, supper taken with devils, not a nice deal, one that stuck in a gullet. A deal that was understandable.
‘It’ll be over by dawn,’ Lukas said. He had the feeling he was regarded as an oracle, had done little to diminish it, and that he knew solutions to whatever problem areas were thrown up. But hostage negotiation, hostage rescue and hostage coordination were not exact sciences. Some people lived their lives on certainties, down to a level of decision-taking on whether to replace with a bayonet or screw-fastening bulb. He knew of no two cases where hostages had been taken that exactly mirrored each other, but, there were basic patterns, enough for him to make up expertise on the hoof. What Castrolami had not asked him: did he have the same excitement as years back? Did he find the processes repetitive and was the light in his eye dulled? ‘I have that feeling, and…’
The shout came down the walkway, hacked into the night air.
‘… it’ll be finished by dawn. What did he shout?’
Lukas strained to hear the voice better and Castrolami had a hand cupping his ear.
He heard the obscenity. The feet came back across the floor and Eddie was heaved upright. He stood, tottered, was supported. The man was at his back and wriggled in his hips and pelvis but stayed close to him. Eddie felt the belt looped round his own waist, then buckled across his stomach. They were a single item, Siamese. One hand was round Eddie’s chest, above the belt, and the other held the pistol against his neck.
His feet, from behind, kicked. He could manage a hop, and went forward. More hops and the space between the inner and outer door was crossed.
Halting, in English, at his ear: ‘They do not answer me. They see you, they will answer me.’
What to say? Nothing. Eddie bit his lower lip. It was broken where his teeth closed on it, and swollen to double size and the pain, brief, was pure. His ankles were trussed, his wrists too, and he could only move at a snail’s pace. He was driven forward… and, God, he wanted to live. He prayed silently, but the bitten lip moved, and they would not shoot. He could feel the body of Salvatore close against him and they were indivisible. The door was pulled open. Eddie blinked.
There were gaps between the sheets, towels, shirts, underwear and dishcloths. None of them stood.
Eddie did. Eddie was exposed. He looked left, saw the barrels of rifles and felt that each aimed at the centre of his chest, above the belt, below the arm, and zeroed – Eddie reckoned – on the place where his heart beat, bloody pounded. He didn’t know if he could hold his bladder. His body was twisted a quarter-turn and he looked to the right and up the other section of the walkway. Light reflected back from the telescopic sight mounted above the barrel and another black-suited figure was prone beside the marksman and had binoculars. The binoculars’ aim and the sight’s and the barrel’s were not on Eddie’s chest but his head. He could feel the pressure of the second head, Salvatore’s, against the back of his scalp, and the forehead moved, made little motions, bucking his own forward and back. Eddie read it. A rifle’s bullet would enter and exit, would not hit one of them but both, and the movements of Salvatore’s head dictated that the sniper’s aim fluctuated between their two skulls. From the other direction, up the walkway, the rifle bullets would go through one chest – one ribcage, one set of lungs or one heart – then into the other.
Prayed again – ‘Don’t let the bastards shoot.’ Realised it: ‘the bastards’ were the marksmen. A fucking jumble in his mind and the marksmen were the risk to his life, not the man hugging him close and holding the pistol to his neck.
The voice boomed in his ear, had stayed with English, and Eddie didn’t know why: ‘I walk out. I walk past you. I walk from the Sail. When I walk I have the guarantee that the whore, Immacolata Borelli, the voltagabbana – the turncoat – retracts evidence. You have a half-hour. Look for the time on your arm. Half an hour. In half an hour, no promise of retracting evidence, he is dead. Believe me, dead. You have a half-hour. You decide.’
Eddie shivered. The cold was on his skin, but the warmth of the night made him sweat. It was a new cold, and it came from fear. The rifles, he saw, never wavered in their aim and were on his head and his chest, and he was perhaps forty paces from them, and they would have a killing range of a quarter of a mile.
He sucked in great gasps of air, would have collapsed if the arm and the belt had not held him.
A man among them pushed himself up. He had been flat on his stomach, went to his knees, then used his hands for leverage. It was the man who was slight and inconsequential, who wore a creased, dusty shirt and crumpled trousers, and who was unshaven and had the short pepper-coloured hair. His face was weathered and worn and had the texture of hardship. He stood at his full height, then arched his spine as if to get stiffness from it… Salvatore breathed hard on Eddie’s neck, beside the pistol barrel. The marksmen had not shifted, nor a big-bodied man who wore a suit and held a pistol loosely, uselessly, in his hand.