Siege

Forty-three

ARLEY FELT A physical lurch of terror that almost knocked her over. ‘Hold on,’ she said, moving further away from the police vehicles towards a nearby oak tree.

‘Your au pair is dead,’ continued the caller, his tone matter of fact, ‘and your husband, son and daughter are being held in a secure location a long way from where I’m calling now.’

‘What do you want?’ Arley whispered into the phone.

‘I’m going to send you a short video of your children with the au pair. Then I’m going to call you back. In the meantime, do not try to trace me. I am in contact every fifteen minutes with the man holding your family. If he doesn’t hear from me for more than half an hour he has strict instructions to execute all of them.’

‘I’m not going to do anything stupid, I promise,’ she said, angered at the note of pleading that had crept into her voice. But she was already talking into a dead phone.

For perhaps the longest few minutes of her life she stood in the cold staring at the phone, ignoring everything around her, before it bleeped to say she’d received a text message from Howard with a video attached. Taking a deep breath, she opened the message and pressed play on the video.

It lasted barely thirty seconds but it was enough to confirm that the people holding her family were utterly ruthless. The frightened expressions on the faces of her children as they were forced to sit either side of Magda’s dead body made her want to throw up.

Don’t panic, she told herself. Think.

The phone rang again, Howard’s name and a photo of him pulling one of his stupid faces coming up on the screen.

‘You’ve seen the video?’ asked the caller.

‘Yes. What do you want?’

‘I understand you are in charge of the police operation at the Stanhope Hotel.’ It was a statement, not a question. ‘You’re going to find out the SAS’s plan of attack, and when they’re aiming to penetrate the building. If your information is correct, your family will be released unharmed.’

‘There is no plan of attack,’ she whispered urgently into the phone, stepping even further into the shadows of the oak tree. ‘We’re still at the negotiating stage.’

‘There will be an attack,’ said the man with a confidence that scared her. ‘And you will find out the details of it.’

‘I don’t think you understand. Even if some kind of attack did go ahead – and there is no guarantee that it will – it would be a military operation, and under military jurisdiction, which means I won’t be party to any of their plans.’

‘Then you will need to find a way, Mrs Dale. This phone is now going to be switched off. I will call you again when the time is right. If you ever want to see your family again, you’ll tell us everything we need to know.’