First Response

FULHAM (12.20 p.m.)

Ismail Hussain peered through the window. The street was deserted except for two police cars about fifty yards to the left and another two to the right. Beyond them were an ambulance and a paramedics’ vehicle. He sensed movement across the street and scanned the first-floor windows. He stiffened when he saw that one was open and something was sticking out of it. The barrel of a rifle. He took a step back and bumped into the woman who was handcuffed to him. ‘Get back! Get back! They’ve got guns,’ he said.

She was in her late twenties and he hadn’t realised how pretty she was until after he’d slapped the handcuff on her wrist. He hadn’t even looked at her face: she’d been the last in the queue so was the obvious target. She hadn’t screamed, she hadn’t shown any fear, just turned to him, held up her right arm and asked him what he was playing at. Even when he had ripped open his coat and revealed the suicide vest she hadn’t seemed scared. If anything, she appeared distant, as if her mind was elsewhere. As the hours had passed he’d come to realise that she wasn’t scared in the least. But she wasn’t calm either. There was a tenseness about her, like a coiled spring that was set to burst free at any moment. Her hair was dark brown, an almost chocolaty colour, greasy as if she hadn’t washed it for a few days. Her eyes were dark green but the whites had reddened as if she’d been crying and there was a sickly pallor to her skin. She was wearing a sheepskin jacket a couple of sizes too big for her over a man’s shirt, faded blue jeans that were ripped at the knee and brown Ugg boots.

‘They won’t shoot you,’ she said, as she moved over to the counter with him.

‘How do you know?’ barked Hussain.

‘You’re wearing a suicide vest,’ she said. ‘They can’t shoot you. Don’t you watch TV?’

‘They might shoot me in the head,’ said Hussain. He checked that where he was standing wasn’t overlooked by the marksman.

‘Not through a window,’ she said. ‘Everyone knows that. And you’ve locked the door so they can’t get in. Anyway, they’ll send a negotiator. They always do.’

A telephone began to ring. It was on the other side of the counter, behind the screens, where three post-office workers were sitting. Two were Asian and one was black. Like the dozen customers who were now sitting on the floor by the back wall, they were busy on their smartphones. The black guy looked over his shoulder at the ringing phone.

‘Don’t answer it!’ shouted Hussain.

‘It’ll be the negotiator,’ said the pretty woman. ‘You have to talk to them.’

‘How do you know who it is?’ asked Hussain.

‘That’s what they do. They call you and ask you what you want. Then they negotiate.’

‘They know what we want,’ said Hussain. He waved at the hostages by the wall. ‘That’s why I told them to use their phones. They can tell everyone what we want.’ He waved his trigger above his head. ‘Don’t forget to put hashtag ISIS6 on every message.’

‘They’ll still want to talk to you,’ said the woman.

‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ said Hussain. ‘They release the prisoners or everyone dies.’ The phone stopped ringing. ‘See? They don’t need to talk.’

‘They’ll call back,’ she said.

He stared at her for several seconds and she met his gaze unflinchingly. ‘Why aren’t you scared?’ he asked eventually.

She frowned but continued to look into his eyes. ‘What makes you think I’m not?’

‘You don’t look scared.’

‘Well, I am. I’m terrified. But screaming and crying aren’t going to do me any good, are they?’

‘I suppose not.’

She smiled thinly. ‘You suppose not? Don’t you know? You’re the one running the show.’

‘I wish that were true,’ he said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘But trust me, I want this to be over as much as you do.’

‘So take off the handcuffs and go outside. Then it’ll be over.’

‘They have to release the prisoners.’

‘You really think they’ll do that?’

‘They’ll have to. Or we all die.’

‘You’d kill yourself, and us, just to get some idiot jihadists out of prison?’

‘What do you mean, idiots?’

‘Oh, come on. Anyone who gives up a halfway decent life in the UK to go out to Syria and hack the heads off charity workers isn’t right in the head. You have to realise that, surely.’

‘They’re fighting for what they believe in. That doesn’t make them stupid.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Why do you care?’

‘I don’t, not really, but I’d like to know who I’m handcuffed to.’

‘Ismail. My name is Ismail.’

The woman grinned. ‘Seriously? Ishmael?’

She spelled it out for him and he shook his head. ‘I-S-M-A-I–L,’ he said. ‘It means “heard by Allah”.’

‘It’s also one of the most famous opening lines in literature,’ she said. ‘“Call me Ishmael.” That’s how Moby-Dick starts.’

‘Moby-Dick?’

‘You’ve heard of Moby-Dick, surely. The novel by Herman Melville. About Captain Ahab, the whaler, and his hunt for the great white whale?’

Hussain shook his head. ‘I don’t read much,’ he said.

‘That’s your loss,’ she said. ‘So tell me, Ismail, do you believe that nonsense about getting seventy-two sloe-eyed virgins in Heaven if you kill us infidels?’

‘That’s what it says in the Koran.’

‘And you believe that God wants you to grow that ridiculous beard and not eat bacon?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Why are you being so disrespectful?’

‘You handcuff yourself to me and threaten to blow yourself up, and I’m the one being disrespectful? You know what, Ismail, you are a fucking idiot.’ Hussain opened his mouth to speak but he jumped when the phone began to ring again. ‘You really should answer that,’ said the woman.