Reconstruction (13 page)

The pilot was tapping his arm now, pointing at the headset hanging off the dashboard. Ben hadn’t realized his hands were clamped so tightly to his seat’s metal frame; releasing himself, he detached the headset from its hook, and wrapped it round his head – odd how such a simple action felt so dangerous in a way-high electric mosquito, as if concentrating on anything other than keeping air-borne might result in a sudden plummet. He’d developed a whole new relationship with the landscape: it was low enough that he could feel it zipping past, but he was high enough that any sudden encounter with it would be terminal. A helicopter was a collection of thousands of small interlocking parts, any one of which could go wrong at any moment. The same could be said of a washing machine, of course, but you never found yourself bomb-ing above a motorway in one.

But the contraption, it turned out, relied on something other than his thought processes, because it remained on course as he fixed the earpiece into his left ear, his spare index finger into his right, and shouted, ‘Okay.’

A voice told him, ‘We have two names.’

This was Tina, queenliest of all the queens of the data-base – so much so her name seemed wrong: she should have been a Beatrice or a Caroline; something boasting royal precedence. In person she was tall, fiftyish, with stern ash-blonde hair. Over headphones she was equally precise and intimidating. Every syllable clearly defined. Every word knowing its place.

‘Hostages?’ he shouted. ‘Or the hostage taker?’

‘The former. Do you have your BlackBerry?’

‘. . . Yes.’

‘Good. You have e-mail.’

He nodded, then realized what he was doing. ‘Thanks.’ ‘There’ll be more. Keep checking.’

‘Yes.’

‘Good luck, Benedict.’

Because she knew he was no Benjamin, of course. The queens of the database knew everything.

He plucked the earpiece free, and fumbled in the case at his feet for his BlackBerry. As he straightened, a wave of dizziness washed over him – vertigo, which could have its roots in many things (childhood traumas, insecurities; probably sexual confusion, too), but was most infallibly triggered by being really fucking high up. But best not to dwell on that, so he switched his gadget on, and in the comforting buzz its micro-screen emitted, felt connected to the ground once more.

The first of two unopened e-mails had the tagline
Kennedy
; even as he opened it, a third appeared. Deal with that in a moment. First up was Louise Ann Kennedy: b.1975, Chester. Educated there and Sheffield University (PPE), after which she’d done a PGCE at Oxford Brookes, then had a career rethink, and joined a City bank: DeJohn Franklin Moers, where she’d worked her way through several desks – company practice rather than low attention span: DFM didn’t recruit just anybody. Probation over, Kennedy had settled in European Investments, where she’d remained seven years, the middle one in Zurich, and then abruptly quit. Evidently the City-lifestyle and match-ing salary had turned out less attractive than a roomful of preschoolers in Oxford. At first glance less exciting too, but that was before a man with a gun wandered in.

All of this in brief, fact-heavy snatches. Given another half-hour, Tina would come up with a concrete explanation for Kennedy’s downshift, but it wasn’t hard to conjure a reason or two in the meantime. Sex and drugs, those fabulous standbys, filled the gaps in a lot of CVs, and Ben had spent enough evenings in the City to know what was happening when the kids went off to powder their noses. At thirty-two and single, maybe Louise Kennedy had had enough of the work hard/play hard carousel; maybe she remembered being happy doing her teacher training. It took guts to make such a change, and Ben, who planned alterations of his own in the near future, tipped an imaginary hat to her. He’d be meeting her soon, he supposed. And a sudden lurch in his stomach, nothing to do with altitude, prompted the whisper
if she’s still alive
.

Too early for negative thinking, though. The day stretched ahead of him, as immediate and intricate as the landscape unfolding below. He could fuck things up quite handily himself, without dwelling on disasters occurring in his absence. And again he reminded himself:
This man
asked for me by name
. Whatever he wanted, he was unlikely to start before Ben arrived.

The Dalek wasn’t a real Dalek, though by this frayed stage, that wasn’t beyond possibility. The voice was human; its electronic edge simply the tang the loudhailer bestowed.

Hello in the annexe. My name’s Peter Faulks.

Wasn’t this cosy?

Is everything all right in there?

Essentially, the voice – Peter Faulks – was speaking to the Gun, though it was clear that, for the moment at least, the Gun had no intention of replying.

We’d like you to come outside now.

Sounded all right to Louise.

Besideher, Judy moaned. Not in itself unusual, but in place of the usual aggrieved self-interest was the animal undertone a frightened weasel might betray.

Louise said, quietly: ‘It’s important we don’t panic.’

‘It’s all right for you.’

This without logic or sense: in what possible way was it all right for – ‘He’s going to kill me.’

‘He’s not going to kill anybody.’

‘They always do. And I’m the one he’ll pick. It’s obvious.’

‘You’ll frighten the children, Judy. Keep calm.’

‘Why did you come back?’

‘Because of the boys. I’m their teacher.’

Judy said, ‘Their father’s here.’

‘. . . Keep calm. Say nothing.’

Can you hear me? I’d like some acknowledgement you can
hear me.

She said – full voice: she was speaking to the Gun – ‘You have to let them know you’re here.’

‘I know this.’

‘You have to talk to them. Otherwise . . . ’

Otherwise they’d come in anyway. With guns, because that’s what happened these days – you fought fire with fire. It was an equation tested on the streets: bombs went off in tube trains/supposed terrorists were shot dead. The police wouldn’t wait all day on the off-chance this par-ticular terrorist would wander out eventually.

I’m going to read a number. That’s the number I’d like you to
call. Are you ready? Here it is.

‘Do you have a phone?’ Louise asked him.

Peter Faulks’ mechanized voice began reciting numbers. It was like hearing an electric till.

The boy shook his head.

‘Tell him.’

. . . seven eight four . . .

He was holding a gun, and she was telling him what to do. Maybe she’d made the right decision: she was a teacher after all.

. . . nine three. Did you get that?

‘I’ll go and tell him.’

He looked at her.

‘They have to know what’s happening. Else they’ll . . . they’ll come in anyway. Do you understand what I’m saying?’

Eliot said, ‘Lou —’

‘Shut up.’

The boy barely glanced Eliot’s way. He was staring directly at Louise; the gun dangling in his hand like an empty milk bottle.

If you got that, I’d like you to call the number now.

‘I understand enough,’ he said.

‘Okay. If you – if we don’t start communicating, if we don’t start talking, bad things will happen.’ Men with guns will enter. Bigger guns than his. If he understood English, he’d understand what she wasn’t saying, too.

Did you hear that? If you don’t have a phone, we’ll supply
one. But we need to know what you want. If we don’t know that,
we can’t progress any further.

‘. . . So what you do?’

He was asking her? But yes, he was asking her.

‘I’ll go outside, I’ll fetch their phone. Then you can talk to them, tell them what you want.’

And what you’re prepared to do if you don’t get it.

He said, ‘You are my . . . hostages. Hostages, yes?’

Jesus Christ.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘We’re your hostages.’

‘If you go out now, I have one less.’

She said, ‘I’ve already been outside. I came back. Remember?’

‘. . . Why you do that?’

Why had she done that? Because the boys were in her care. That was the answer she’d given Judy, but below it rippled things she couldn’t put a name to: expiation of guilt? A desire to be at the centre of things? What was happening would put her name in newspapers the world over, and going back into the annexe when she could have walked away ensured those reports would show her in the finest light. She’d be a
heroine
; she’d be
brave
; the opposite of an unsung hero . . . She’d be on first name terms with the tabloids. Was that why she’d come back? To be famous? To be
sung
?

‘Because this is my nursery. Because there are children here. In my care. Which means I have to protect them.’

‘You protect them from me.’

‘Yes.’

She was pleased they’d established that much.

‘I do not want to hurt anybody.’

That was good. That was very good. Though didn’t do much to quell unease: if he meant no harm, why was he here with a gun?

We have to know everyone’s all right in there. You do under-stand
that, don’t you?

‘It is too much noise.’

In point of fact, she agreed – you’d have thought it com-forting, knowing there were policemen outside, but the Dalek-voice was disturbing; an intrusion on something that had started to feel private. Loud, unacknowledged instructions were not the way forward. That too was some-thing she’d learned as a teacher. If Peter Faulks had any-thing useful to contribute, they’d all be better off if he could deliver it mildly, over a phone.

‘I’ll go outside. They’ll give me a mobile. A mobile tele-phone. Then the noise will stop.’

It wasn’t so very different to negotiating with an infant. He said, ‘If you do not come back, if you let them come in – I will use the gun.’

She was looking directly into his eyes when he said this. Nothing she saw there suggested he didn’t mean what he said.

‘I’ll come back.’

‘Yes.’

Judy said, ‘I’ll go.’

‘No.’

‘I’ll come back I promise if you’ll let her why won’t you let me I’ll come back just as much as she will –’

Louise slapped her.

Judy screamed; a sudden high-pitched squawk that cut off mid-breath as she covered her mouth with her hand. But the echo of the slap bounced around the annexe a second or two, and if that wasn’t the first time a slap had been delivered here, Louise would have liked to know the details of the previous.

‘Judy. Listen to me. We can all get through this, but you have to stop – ‘ ‘Bitch!’

‘– behaving like –’ ‘
Bitch!
’

In the word was more venom than Louise would have believed possible. There was a man here pointing a gun who didn’t radiate such hatred.

Eliot said, ‘Judy, you’re endangering my children.’ The words would have sounded sensible and appropriate if not for the tremor that revealed his own boiling helplessness. ‘Shut up or I’ll . . .’

He’d, yes, he’d do something. Like what?

‘Stop it. Everyone.’

And the boy, too, said, ‘Be quiet, please. This is not good.’

I’m going to repeat that number now.

More than anything, at that moment, Louise did not want Peter Dalek-voice to repeat that number.

‘I’m going outside,’ she said. ‘I’m going to fetch a tele-phone. And then I’ll come back inside, and we can sort all this out.’

In the seconds that followed, the only sound was the low whimpering of one of the twins – Gordy, she’d bet. Was this also part of being a teacher? Not the immediate identification of the noisemaker, but the insistence on tak-ing charge, even in the face of ridiculous odds.

Then the boy said, ‘Okay. You go now.’

She would go now.

Before – when she’d jumped him, hoping to grab the gun; managing, at any rate, to carry little Amy out of the danger zone – movement had come fluidly. The only comparison she could find was playing squash: she hadn’t played squash in months, but that was the clearest sense-memory she retained of fast-flowing, thought-free motion; where the body takes over from the mind, as if the desired result is hard-wired into flesh. Now, she felt the way she imagined the morbidly obese must feel: her body pinning her to the wall, as if surrendering to a mightier gravity. Why
morbid
anyway – weren’t the fat supposed to be jolly? Pulling herself from the wall was like tearing Velcro from its mate.

One of the twins released a long wail.

‘Hush, darling’: Eliot.

The damned numbers were reciting themselves again: the threes, the fours, the nines; presumably in the same order as before, but weirdly unfamiliar all the same.

The boy said nothing. Judy was breathing harshly: a smoker’s ragged struggle.

The door handle met her hand: the tactile equivalent of one of those
familiar objects from an unusual angle
photograph.

Outside, the world was changed utterly.

Second e-mail.

The queens of the database had been busy, and though Ben knew they did what they did digitally, barely leaving their cocoons without serious enticement (tickets to
Mama
Mia
; happy hour at Gordon’s), it was impossible not to picture them as custodians of a vast library, its shelves stacked cloud-high; its holdings classified according to a system only understood by the precious. Inside its walls, knowledge multiplied and was fruitful, and every time somebody in the outer world used a piece of plastic, or hit the speed-dial, or crossed a border, or had their loyalty card swiped, a new line was written on a page inside an expanding volume; and whenever an order was barked down the corridors where Ben worked, off went the queens of the database: scurrying up and down ladders; foraging through alphabets; scouring the fascinating collection for the titbits that meant the difference between understanding and bafflement.

All of which meant it was a bit of a letdown, this second e-mail, because it didn’t say much. Eliot Pedlar, thirty-six. Worked for a local publisher. Twin boys, Timothy and Gordon; both (obviously) three and a lot. Details to follow. But the very scantiness of the info told Ben this much: that Eliot Pedlar had no criminal record, had never served in the forces, never been a civil servant, never suspected of terrorist affiliation or sympathies . . . Ben wondered what a Venn diagram of those categories would look like. And at the same time felt a twinge of sympathy for Pedlar and Kennedy both; not just for the situation they’d found themselves in, but for the scrutiny they’d have to suffer as a result. Press, eventually, of course. But meanwhile Tina and the queens, because whoever had wandered into their lives with a gun had been on the run from Bad Sam Chapman, which made them Office business for the duration.