A hell of a way to spend a night. Good damn thing he looked down because there was syringe glass on the walkway concrete, and shit from a dog – not the cat’s. A hell of a place to be… He kept the smile in place. An instructor for the training of the Critical Incident Response people had said it was the best smile he’d come across and asked why it couldn’t be carried from the role-play scenarios into the canteen when they ate together. It was an act, had no truth. Fifteen paces taken, then sixteen. Always smile. The boy gazed at him like he was a messiah.
‘You have my word, Salvatore, and my word is my bond, that you can trust me, and that way nobody’s hurt, and we get to go home, and you get a proper bed and some sleep and a meal. What I’m working at, Salvatore, is that every one of us is a winner. You know about winning. You win because you’re smart, Salvatore. I can see that. You’re a big man and smart, a winner.’
He could see more of the boy’s face than the hood’s. Shouldn’t have allowed a personal feeling to intrude in the work – had done, and Lukas saw that as a failure. A small one, but failures totted. Too many small ones and there was weight enough for catastrophe. Catastrophe was the pistol being fired, blood spurting, bone splintering… The boy had a good face. Assault teams, negotiators and co-ordinators all wanted to believe that the target for rescue was worth saving, was of gold-plated value. Found half the time, after a rescue, that they were creeps, useless – some too fucking arrogant to offer gratitude, not that Lukas wanted thanks. Wanted a job done well. Had counted them, had done twenty-one steps, was level with the doorway. It was a good face and a terrorised face.
‘I appreciate you letting me up close, Salvatore. An idiot wouldn’t have, but you’re a smart guy. Can I call you “friend”? I’d like to.’
He wasn’t certain. Lukas stood in the centre of the walkway. The boy and Salvatore, wrapped together, like one, were in the doorway. The pistol had not moved from the back of the boy’s head and he saw that it remained cocked, the finger inside the guard, resting on the trigger bar.
‘I want to talk with you, hear you, and that way I can best be your friend, and I can help you.’
He was not yet certain that the hood would not shoot. Inexact sciences – whether, when, why a gunman would pull the damn trigger. One of many sciences for which there could not be textbooks, only a bedrock of experience, was getting into the mind of a holed-up gunman and anticipating whether he wanted to be in a warm, cleaned-out cell or hankered after a one-way ride to Valhalla. Lukas didn’t know.
He did a little roll of his eyebrows to Salvatore. ‘I doubt he means anything to you, that Eddie, anything at all. Doesn’t mean anything to me. Not smart like you, friend, not a winner. Means a great deal to his parents. Pretty ordinary people, and that’s why I said I’d try to help. They’re not winners either – not like you are.’
He put his hands on his hips, as if he was standing in a bar, talking with a man he knew and respected, and sent a message big and clear, and spoke a confidence.
‘He – that’s Eddie – doesn’t know that the bitch – the woman he came to find – wasn’t prepared to lift a finger for him. I’m not supposed to tell you this… She couldn’t care less for him – could have sent signals, could have opened up channels. She’s not changing her mind. You could have sent bits of him back to her, or all of him dumped on her doorstep, and she wouldn’t have changed. Only word for her, “bitch”, but he, that’s Eddie, has only found that out these last three days, whatever. Hurting him, Salvatore, won’t change her, won’t alter a hard bitch… It’s just what I’m thinking.’
They were in the doorway. From where he stood, he couldn’t have touched the boy. Would have had to take a couple of steps to be close enough, then could have tousled the boy’s hair, pinched his cheek or slapped his upper arm for encouragement, but he hadn’t yet convinced himself that the hood wouldn’t shoot. It all happened, in these situations, so damn fast – was so damn unpredictable.
He thought that at least five rifles were aimed at the little part of Salvatore’s body protruding from the doorway’s recess. Not enough to give the marksmen an aim and have them shoot, and the pistol remained at the boy’s neck. It would be one word, or a short sentence, one movement or gesture that could change it, and the pistol might be moved and might be fired. Lukas didn’t know. He stood, near naked and cold, fighting the urge to shiver, and couldn’t know whether what he said or did would win or lose it. The lips moved. He strained to hear.
‘They will never take me…’
They all say that, friend, he murmured in his mind, and kept the smile. And I don’t know whether I believe you. Have to find out, don’t I? The smile clung to his face.
*
‘They will never take me as a prisoner.’ His voice seemed to growl from deep in his throat. The breath hissed on the back of Eddie’s neck.
He didn’t know whether the smile, six or seven feet from him, was real or manufactured.
‘Not me, not a prisoner. One step, I shoot.’
Eddie felt himself a spectator. The man’s arm was tight round him and the man’s fingers were hard in a fold of his T-shirt, and the man’s bones were against his buttocks, the chest against his back, the head against his own. A spectator, a voyeur, a watcher. He could not relate to the incoherent babble of the man and the breath on his neck and the wet spit coming with it.
‘I kill him. One step closer, dead, him.’
Almost, Eddie thought, the man cried tears, and edged to hysteria. And he was a spectator also when he gazed into the calm face of Lukas. He could see each hair on his head and face, the stubble growth, what was in his ears and nostrils, the curled hair on his chest and at the base of his stomach, visible because the boxers drooped.
‘I shoot him. Do you not believe me? You will.’
The skin was broken by the force used to press the pistol barrel against his neck and Eddie could feel the wet there. Lukas had not moved, had not gone back or forward, and his hands were still on his hips. They were not flexed and there seemed no strategy of deceit about the posture. Lukas was, Eddie believed, in control.
‘You believe me when I shoot him. Not one step.’
He felt comfort given him. The man, Lukas, oozed competence and experience. He didn’t have to speak. He had the calm of a parent while a toddler rages, knows the child will quieten. He’d had an old teacher at school, sixth-form English, forty years in the job and a new headmaster, half his age, had trashed the veteran’s ideas: ‘Experience often clouds judgement, best without it.’ The pupils had thought it bullshit. Eddie valued experience. Valued it big when it was in a smile from a man who masked any trace of fear. A weedy little beggar. No strength to him, no muscle, spindly legs, arms almost emaciated, and that burn mark on his lower lip that came from smoking cigarettes to the filter. Seemed to offer no threat.
‘I tell you, you believe me, I will shoot.’
‘What I believe, friend – I want to call you that, OK? I believe, friend, that you’re a big man, a smart man. Too big and too smart for an accident. I think, friend, you’re hurting Eddie with the barrel. Can we do something about that? Not hurt him… That’s good.’
The barrel was less pressured on his neck, Eddie knew. It no longer gouged. It had an indent, but less force was used.
‘That’s good, friend, and it’s generous. I appreciate that. We have to figure a way out of this.’
‘I shoot. I have no fear.’
‘You have no fear, of course you don’t. Fear is for little guys. Him, Eddie, he’s fit to shit his pants, but he’s not a big guy.’
‘You come no closer.’
‘I’m not moving.’