Bella

Chapter Twenty-two

Somehow it was dawn. It seemed to Bella that they had been left to their fate. She had terrible cramp down her side. The floodlights had lost their brilliance under the door. The loudspeaker had been silent for hours. She had even dozed fitfully. Even Chrissie, having coughed half the night, was asleep, snoring gently, perhaps dreaming of Rupert and her soft bed at home.

Carlos was dozing now, curled up like an embryo. Ricardo guarded the front door still, Eduardo the window. Pablo had his gun trained on her and Chrissie.

How can she sleep so peacefully, Bella wondered.

Eduardo reached out and switched on the transistor, but it spluttered and finally gave out.

They were arguing again now in low voices. Ricardo was obviously the one suffering most; he was desperate for cigarettes and alcohol, his nails bitten down to the quick.

The loudspeaker began again, making them all jump.

‘Take the only way out and surrender. Take the only way out.’

‘I must go to the loo,’ said Bella.

Ricardo looked at Eduardo who nodded tersely. Ricardo undid Bella’s legs and, at gunpoint, led her to the lavatory at the end of the passage. For a second, she was able to peer out of a crack between the boarded windows. The sight cheered her up. Across the grass on the edge of a wood she could see rows of policemen, motionless and intent, with revolvers raised to the window. Other policemen moved around behind rows of sandbags. Beyond were television cameras and television catering vans and hundreds of Special Branch men, and handlers with Alsatians on leads, eyes alert, tails wagging expectantly.

She strained her eyes to catch a glimpse of Lazlo or Rupert.

‘Come on, you’ve been in there long enough,’ said Ricardo. Feeling slightly dizzy, she stumbled back to the living-room, where Chrissie had just woken up, and realizing where she was, had started the interminable coughing and crying. Bella felt her head; she was boiling hot.

‘Why don’t you let her go?’ she said, turning furiously on Eduardo. ‘You know you’re finished.’

Ricardo raised his gun at her.

‘Juan will rescue us,’ said Eduardo quietly.

‘Rubbish,’ said Bella. ‘Didn’t you hear Lazlo saying he’d been arrested, and even if he hadn’t been, you know the kind of man he is, that he’d disown you the moment things got awkward.’

‘Not me,’ said Eduardo, with sudden hauteur, ‘Juan would never let me down, nor I him.’

The day began to take on a nightmare quality. Eduardo was constantly having to rally the others as, over and over again, the loudspeaker made offers of food and cigarettes in return for releasing one of the hostages, all of which were refused.

In all the big kidnapping cases Bella had read about recently, the besieged gunmen had eventually capitulated. But this is different, she thought. It’s a hatred thing, all tied up with Eduardo’s damn machismo. He’ll never give in without a struggle.

At dusk the lights in the living-room went out. Carlos stumbled out to the hall and tried the light switch there. No light came on. ‘They’ve turned the bloody electricity off,’ he shouted.

For several hours they waited, trembling in pitch dark; then, suddenly, brilliant super arc lights blazed into the room, making them all cover their eyes. These lights were switched on, off, on, off, making sleep absolutely impossible. They all moved into one of the boarded-up rooms.

Chrissie seemed to have sunk into a dull torpor, which worried Bella far more than the coughing, sobbing and shivering.

The police are going about it the wrong way, she thought. We’re going to crack before the gunmen.

Another dawn slowly reduced the power of the arc lights. Bella had lost the ability to feel anything.

Ricardo and Eduardo and Carlos were all at each other’s throats. If they start offering them cigarettes today, thought Bella, Eduardo’s going to have the devil’s own job stopping them accepting.

The loudspeaker crackled.

Chrissie woke up. ‘What’s that?’ she said listlessly.

‘It’s Lazlo,’ said Bella.

He was talking in Spanish again.

‘Tell me what he’s saying.’

Chrissie wriggled into a sitting position and listened.

‘He says he’s got something of particular interest for both Ricardo and Carlos. Ricardo first. He wants them to listen carefully.’

Suddenly there was a woman’s voice, pleading, sobbing, beseeching, choking with emotion. Intensified a hundred times by the loudspeaker, it sounded terrible.

Ricardo gave a groan and sat down with his hands over his ears.

‘What’s she saying?’ Bella hissed to Chrissie.

‘It’s his mother,’ said Chrissie. ‘She’s pleading with him to give himself up and let us go free. She says she’s an old woman, and if he gets killed her life will be meaningless and, as she’ll never be able to afford to come to England, she’ll never see him again. Now she’s asking him to think of his sister, who’s about the same age as us. Now she’s saying that Juan has been arrested, and what are five years in prison, which he’ll get if he gives himself up, compared to death when he hasn’t even said his confession.’

She finished speaking and started to cry.

Ricardo got to his feet. ‘Stop it! Stop it!’ he screamed. ‘I can’t stand it.’

‘Pull yourself together,’ said Eduardo icily. ‘Can’t you see she’s been forced into doing it.’

‘Not my mother,’ hissed Ricardo. ‘Never! She would never let herself be forced into anything.’

The loudspeaker began again. This time it was Carlos’s wife. A quieter, more impassioned plea, asking Carlos to save himself because she and the children loved him, and they wanted him back. Again she told him to remember that Bella and Chrissie were only young girls who hadn’t done anyone any harm.

Carlos reacted in a far less hysterical way than Ricardo, but Bella could tell from his still body and clenched fists that he was very much affected.

Nothing for Eduardo, she thought. Probably no-one loved him enough to plead with him to save his life. And what about the mute Pablo, standing motionless beside the door?

There was silence. Then a voice speaking Spanish. Not Lazlo’s this time.

‘We repeat, come out at once, and throw your guns out. Let the hostages out and come out yourselves, with your hands over your head, and you will not be harmed.’

‘Don’t take any notice of those lousy tapes,’ said Eduardo. ‘They’re all rigged.’

He sounded calm but the knuckles were white where he clutched his gun.

‘I’ve had enough,’ said Ricardo. ‘If they’ve got my mother, they’re quite capable of doing things to her. I’m packing it in.’

‘So am I,’ said Carlos.

Bella felt a surge of hope that died almost immediately.

‘No you’re not,’ said Eduardo, his voice suddenly full of ice. ‘We came here to do a job, and we’re going to do it. Later Juan will protect us.’

‘Not if you’re dead, he can’t,’ said Bella.

‘Shut up, you bitch,’ snarled Eduardo.

He waved his gun at Ricardo. ‘Tie their legs up again,’ he said.

Ricardo’s hands were shaking so much it took him a long time to tie the knots.

‘Now blindfold them.’

‘No,’ said Carlos, starting to argue.

‘Go on — blindfold them,’ said Eduardo.

And Bella knew it was the voice of the executioner.

Cold fear paralysed her; her throat was completely dry; she wanted to scream for help, to tell them not to kill her, but as the soft scarf was tied over her eyes, she was incapable of speech.

Someone turned her to face the wall.

She heard Eduardo order Pablo to cover the front door with the sub-machine gun, and Ricardo and Carlos to guard the two windows.

‘They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?’ whispered Chrissie beside her.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Bella.

‘Will it hurt very much?’

‘I don’t think so. They say when the wound’s mortal, it hurts very little.’

Ricardo was arguing again.

‘Shut up,’ said Eduardo. ‘I’m going to do this. I’ll take the complete blame.’

There was a long pause.

No, prayed Bella. Please God, no. She had a sudden vision of Lazlo, of his face softened, holding out his arms to her. Then it seemed to merge with her father with his laughing tawny eyes gathering her up in his arms and holding her, shrieking with delight, above his head. Then she remembered her first night in Othello, and the audience clapping and clapping, and the deafening way they’d clapped the night Lazlo had made her go on after the diamond was stolen. And suddenly the deafening applause seemed to turn into a volley of machine-gun fire, and the next moment she heard a groan and a scream as a body slumped at her side.

‘Chrissie,’ she screamed. ‘You’ve killed her, bastards, bastards.’

She tensed herself waiting for another volley of shooting, but it never came. Suddenly the blindfold was removed from her eyes. She looked down at Chrissie lying at her feet, expecting her to be full of holes, and realized with sudden, incredulous joy, that she was still breathing.

Hardly daring to turn her head, she suddenly saw a trickle of blood coming down the floorboards towards her feet. It slowly impinged on her half-crazed mind that it was Eduardo lying dead, riddled with bullets.

And now Pablo was talking for the first time, in a young, hoarse voice, telling Ricardo to throw all the guns out of the window.

Cautiously Ricardo opened the window, ducking to avoid a spurt of machine-gun fire from the ground, and then threw two guns out. The firing started for a second, then died away. Ricardo picked up the remaining guns and threw them out.

Bella managed to bring Chrissie round, while Carlos was untying her ropes.

‘What happened?’ she gasped.

‘You fainted,’ said Bella. ‘Pablo shot Eduardo. They’re just throwing their guns out.’

Hope sparked in Chrissie’s dull, bloodshot eyes.

But Pablo still held the machine gun. The next moment he shoved it into Bella’s back, making a gesture towards the stairs with his head.

‘Out you go,’ he said.

She had to support Chrissie down the stairs; she seemed very frail; she must have lost pounds. Pablo came to the door with them, still clutching his gun.

Bella turned to them, ‘It’s a trick,’ she said. ‘You’ll shoot me in the back.’

Pablo shook his head.

‘Why did you shoot Eduardo?’

‘To prevent him shooting you,’ said Pablo. ‘He had to, you see. He couldn’t give in like the rest of us. It was a matter of honour. He’s Juan’s youngest brother.’

Then he opened the door and threw his smoking gun on to the grass.

‘Thank you,’ said Bella. ‘I’ll tell them you saved our lives.’

He gave a crooked smile, stood back, and with a curious mock salute, ushered her out on to the grass.

For a minute she was dazzled by the brilliant sunlight, and then the world came back to her in sharp focus. Fifty yards of parched grass stretched out before her. To her left the guns lay in a pile like spillikins. Beyond the grass, the trees and the sandbags began.

It was deadly quiet. There was no-one in sight. A dog barked on the left.

Bella walked slowly and hesitantly on, half carrying the stumbling, trembling Chrissie, tensing her backbone against a possible bullet.

She was only a few yards from the shadow of the trees now, and she realized once more the strength of the operation — the dog handlers, the armoured cars, the television cameras, the ambulances, the hordes of policemen. Next moment she had reached the sandbags and collapsed into the arms of a waiting policeman, feeling his silver buttons against her chest, and a hundred arms seemed to be pulling them both to safety behind the sandbags. Then there were people all round her, and photographers flashing and cameras whirring.

And suddenly there was Lazlo, and she hardly recognized him. She had remembered him catlike, sunburnt, exotic-looking in that white suit. Now he was deathly pale, unshaven, his face seamed with exhaustion, his eyes bloodshot, his jaw quilted with muscles to stop himself breaking down.

‘Oh Lazlo,’ sobbed Chrissie, and collapsed, coughing and sobbing, into his arms.

‘It’s all right, baby,’ he said shakily. ‘It’s all over. You’re going to be all right. You’re safe now.’

Over her shoulder, his eyes met Bella’s.

‘Everything’s all right now,’ he repeated mechanically.

The next moment, like a dog that’s been deprived of its master’s company for days, a figure threw himself on Chrissie, tugging her away from Lazlo, cradling her in his arms, kissing her face over and over again. ‘Oh my darling, my only love.’

It was Rupert.

‘You’re all right? You’re not hurt?’ he went on, pausing and looking down at her.

Chrissie started to laugh and cry at the same time.

‘I’m all right, but I’m so dirty and horrible and revolting.’

‘You’re not, you’re not; you’re mine and you’re lovely.’

Bella turned her head away to stop herself breaking down. And then Lazlo was beside her, and she was overwhelmed with shyness. For a moment, as the crowd pushed him forward and he held her tight against him, she could feel his shirt drenched with sweat and the frantic thudding of his heart. Then she pulled away. There were so many people around and she was so filthy and stinking, and she was so ashamed of her terrible hair. She had rehearsed this reunion with him so long, and now she couldn’t say anything because she was so terrified of saying too much.

‘Chrissie,’ she blurted out. ‘She’s ill. You must get her to a hospital.’ She swayed. Lazlo caught hold of her. Then everyone was round her, offering congratulations. A senior policeman in a peaked hat fought his way through the crowd.

‘Thank God you’re safe,’ he said. ‘What’s happening in there?’

‘It’s quite safe,’ said Bella. ‘They’ve thrown out all their guns.’

‘Are they all alive?’

‘Three of them. Eduardo’s dead. Pablo killed him because he was going to shoot us.’

‘Do you feel up to answering a few questions?’ said the Inspector.

Bella nodded. ‘But I don’t think Chrissie ought to; she needs a doctor at once.’

‘And how’s my star attraction?’ said a voice in her ear.

Bella swung round, and there beside her was the wonderfully familiar freckled face of Roger Field.

‘Oh, Roger,’ she said, her control snapping, and, sobbing, she flung her arms round his neck.