by Natasha West
‘You can call me Rick,’ he said. And then he pointed his gun in Ashley’s face. ‘Now, get in the restaurant.’
Ten
Gina should have known it would go this way. What else could possibly happen when they walked up to the gunman, aka Rick, and put themselves in his hands? Only this. She and Ashley had become his replacement hostages. Two for one, what a deal.
‘Sir, I was thinking we might do the interview here,’ Ashley tried.
‘No chance. There’s an armed unit behind you. The longer I stand out here, the bigger the chance they’re gonna take a shot. Now get in, or…’ He put his gun closer to Ashley’s face, and her pupils met in the centre, focused on the barrel of the weapon. ‘Right, OK, Rick. I think there might h-have been a b-bit of a mis-miscommunication here,’ she stuttered, cross-eyed on the gun, petrified. It was the first time during any of this that Ashley had looked genuinely afraid. Meanwhile, Gina had been about ready to poo into her jeans the whole time. It was nice not to be the only coward. ‘Because I was thinking we could just have a quick chat here and then go our separate ways?’ Ashley posited.
‘Ha ha,’ the man sneered. He switched his gun over to Gina, aiming at her down the lens. ‘Get in now, or I’ll shoot her. And her little camera too.’
‘OK, OK, OK,’ Ashley said, immediately backing down. ‘Don’t do that, OK? I’ll come in.’
‘I told you, it’s both of you. So follow me in right now.’
Gina dropped her camera from her shoulder, holding it down by her side. It had felt like it offered protection, separating her from all this. But this was no movie. It was happening; they were going in.
‘I’m, I’m sorry,’ Ashley whispered to her.
Gina shook her head, somewhat forgiving. This part had not actually been Ashley’s fault; Gina had made this decision. She hadn’t wanted to see that woman killed, and she’d walked up here semi-willingly. ‘It’ll be OK,’ she lied. Ashley looked at her disbelievingly.
Rick began to back into the restaurant through the double doors, his head ducked low, his gun switching back and forth between Gina and Ashley. The two women took baby steps toward him.
‘Sir!’ called DI Conway through her too-loud megaphone. ‘What are you doing?’
Rick ignored her. Gina and Ashley, eyes locked on Rick’s gun, kept shuffling until they had passed the threshold of the door. They heard it swing shut behind them, and they were in the semi-darkness of the pizza restaurant, alone with Rick and his gun.
‘Get over there,’ Rick instructed them, gesturing to the side of the door. They moved quickly back, and Gina got a better look at where she was. It was a scruffy place in need of a serious repaint of its red and white interior. Chipped Formica tables were bolted to the scuffed floor.
Rick scuttled over to the entrance door, locking it shut with a dead bolt, being careful to keep the blinds down over the glass. Once that was done, he breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Whoo! That was a bit nuts, wasn’t it?’ he said with a nervous laugh.
Gina and Ashley didn’t say anything.
Rick gestured towards a set of doors behind the counter. ‘The kitchen’s back there.’
‘Is it?’ Ashley said, confused. ‘Are you telling me you’re hungry?’
‘I don’t want you to make me a fucking sandwich, that’s where I’m keeping the hostages,’ he snapped. ‘Actually, a sandwich isn’t the worst idea,’ he conceded. ‘Come on. You can get settled while I make a ham and cheese,’ he told her, adding as an afterthought, ‘I don’t expect you to cook for me just because I’m a man. Fuckin’ feminist, I am.’
They walked into the kitchen, Rick behind Gina and Ashley. In the large industrial steel kitchen, there was a gaggle of people sitting nervously on the floor. Amongst them were some kitchen staff in whites, along with one waiter in a jazzy waistcoat. The rest were obviously patrons, including a middle-aged guy with what looked to be his teenage daughter. There were three women in office-wear huddled together, one of them wearing a giant badge that declared it was her birthday. There were also two young guys with heavy bro vibes sat next to each other. ‘Wait,’ said one of the bros as Gina and Ashley walked in, ‘Didn’t you leave with an old lady? How have you come back with two different women?’
‘Shut the fuck up,’ Rick said casually.
‘I’m just… Is Sandra alright?’ the guy asked nervously.
‘What did I just say?’ Rick asked sharply.
‘She’s fine,’ Gina told him.
‘Hey!’ Rick cried. He held up his gun. ‘Did everyone forget about this? No unauthorised… chitchat!’
No one said anything else.
‘You two, get those vests off,’ Rick said.
Gina and Ashley took off their Kevlar. Rick took the vests, throwing aside one, slipping the other onto himself quickly. ‘Now, join that lot.’ He gestured for Gina and Ashley to plonk down with the rest while he headed for the fridge. While he was rustling about, Ashley looked around at everyone. ‘Hi, Ashley Quick for KTN,’ she whispered.
Gina rolled her eyes.
‘Is everyone alright?’ Ashley asked.
‘We’re OK,’ said the woman with the birthday badge.
‘So, what happened?’ Ashley asked.
‘Is this really the time for interviews?’ Gina asked quietly.
‘I’m not interviewing. I’m just trying to get an overview of the situation.’
‘For your report?’ Gina asked. ‘I wouldn’t be counting any chickens on getting this story on the TV news today. I don’t even know if we’ll be alive for teatime.’
The teenage girl turned to them, shocked. ‘What?’
‘Oh, bloody nice one!’ muttered her dad angrily at Gina, sliding an arm around his daughter. ‘It’s gonna be alright.’ She shrugged him off. ‘Get off, Dad! I’m not a kid.’ Her father took his arm back with a world-weary sigh.
‘Oi, you lot aren’t talking, are you?’ Rick said, mouth full, the rest of the sandwich in his gun-free hand. Everyone shook their heads. ‘Good. Because you’ve got nothing to say to each other, you got it?’ Everyone nodded.
Rick sat down on a stool and silently ate his sandwich. Once finished, he washed his hands and said to Ashley, ‘Right. I’m ready.’
‘For…’
‘That interview.’
‘Oh. Right. OK,’ Ashley said. She turned to Gina. ‘Get your gear ready.’
Gina was confused. They really were going to interview Rick after all? What the hell was the point? But as with basically every other moment of this day, despite not understanding what the hell was going on, she rolled with it and switched on her camera.
Eleven
Ashley was doing the only thing she knew how to do. Stay on the job. Observe and record the facts. She was placing all this knowledge into her memory banks, for want of access to her notebook, which sat in her pocket. Somehow, she didn’t think Rick would take kindly to her scribbling away, so she simply kept slotting observations into her mind palace. She was memorising the layout of the kitchen. She was retaining all her fellow hostages’ faces, along with all the obvious facts about them. She was trying to keep everything Rick said stored up for later transcription.
Why was she doing all this? To avoid her own guilt. To avoid the singular and sickening fact that Ashley might have just bought a ticket to an early grave for her and Gina so that she might be in with a shot at a slightly better job. She couldn’t believe her own stupidity.
Nor could she believe she’d gotten so caught up in this big story that she’d forgotten something more important than her work. That she liked living. As difficult as it was sometimes to grind through the days, she wanted to keep doing it. Yet she’d gotten herself to this point, running as fast as she could, pushed on by her Achilles’ heel, her ambition. Once she’d heard that first police siren, beckoning her toward danger, what could she do but sail towards it, right towards the danger of the jagged rocks.
Ashley didn’t want to look at Gina. She couldn’t begin
to imagine how angry the poor woman must be, dragged kicking and screaming into this restaurant, doing a job she didn’t even care about. If Ashley survived Rick, Gina would probably be next in line to kill her.
Rick, his sandwich done, turned to Ashley, breaking into her remorseful thoughts. ‘Right. I’m ready.’
‘For…’
‘That interview.’
‘Oh. Right. OK,’ Ashley said. She turned to Gina, avoiding direct eye contact. ‘Get your gear ready.’
Gina paused, and Ashley felt like she was about to be told to quite squarely fuck herself. But Gina just stood up, switched her camera on, and slipped it onto her shoulder, fiddling with the focus for a moment. ‘Ready.’
‘You’re set?’
‘I’m not an amateur,’ Gina told her, pressing her eye to the viewfinder.
‘No, you’re not,’ Ashley had to agree.
‘Right, I’ll sit here,’ Rick said, plonking himself in a corner of the kitchen.
‘You sure?’ Gina asked. ‘The light’s not great there. Better over in the other corner.’
Rick looked like Ashley felt. Shocked shitless that Gina was questioning the guy with the gun. But Rick decided to accept the advice. ‘If you think so,’ he said and dragged his stool over to the other corner, next to a window with the blinds down. Some light escaped through the blind, but it was still quite dim. ‘Can I open this briefly?’ Gina asked.
Rick was quick to anger. ‘Are you mad? Probably a police sniper waiting out there to blow my head off.’
Gina frowned. ‘Oh. Right. Well, can we get a few lights on?’
‘I guess one wouldn’t hurt,’ he said, turning to his seated hostages. ‘One of you go put on the light, but not too many.’ A guy in chef whites got up and turned on a light over Rick’s head. ‘Right, that’s enough fucking about, let’s get this show on the road,’ Rick said.
Gina put her eye back to the viewfinder. ‘OK, I’m rolling.’
Ashley turned to Rick. ‘I’m just gonna start asking things, OK?’
‘That’s what you’re here for,’ Rick said, smoothing his hair, running two fingers along his little moustache and straightening his black hoody, holding his gun loosely in Ashley’s direction.
Ashley told her eyes not to stare at the gun, and off she went. ‘OK, Rick… Can you tell us how this came about?’
‘What?’
‘The, err, hostage situation.’
‘Oh, yeah, that.’ He took a deep breath, readying himself for story time. ‘So, I used to work here years ago. Sous chef. Well, if you can call it that. Mainly just grating cheese. Anyway, I sold the tiniest bit of weed to a customer round the back of the building, and they sacked me.’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘Bastards. So, then I got into arrears with the child support, and my ex cut off monthly visitation. So, I was like, fuck it, no reason to be a good boy anymore.’ A horrid grin appeared under his moustache. ‘So I went full time on dealing. That went fine for a while until I sold to an undercover pig. Went to prison for six months. That was where I got in with some guys who thieved for a living. Second I was out, I was on the job. That was alright for a bit until we got nicked moving some TVs. I got two years for that, worse prison. I got recruited in there by some people who worked for a gang who needed someone to put the boot in occasionally. It was regular money, pretty sweet, until one of the fuckers flipped on us, and I got five years for that one. Then my boy comes to see me in prison, he’s a teenager by this point.’ Rick shook his head. ‘I tell you what, never have kids, because the little shit just wanted to tell me all about how much I’ve disappointed him and wrecked his life and ruined everything. I swear, I thought he was gonna pin the Kennedy assassination on me any second. I was like, “Boy, we all have shit parents. Take some responsibility for yourself!” If it hadn’t been for that pane of glass between us, I’d have slapped him one.’ Rick took a breath there, his energy depleted for a moment. But then he was back up. ‘But after he’d left, I thought on it. Not much else to do inside but think. And I started to think maybe he wasn’t totally wrong. Maybe if I’d been around for him, it might have been better. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that I knew when things had gone wrong.’ Ashley waited. ‘This place,’ Rick said, gesturing. ‘This is where it went bad. When they sacked me off. If I’d have stayed in proper employment, I would have been alright. I could have been a good dad.’ He looked over at the chefs in the corner. ‘I could have been alright!’
One trembling chef said quietly, ‘None of us worked here then.’
Rick didn’t seem to hear that, looking back at Ashley. ‘So I got out last month, and I decided this place owed me some severance. I came in here with a pal at lunchtime, masks and guns, full nine. If everyone would have just stayed calm and handed over the till money, I wudda left, all this wouldn’t be happening. But of course, the fucking manager wants to be a hero, doesn’t he? Starts arguing with me. I had to clock him. Blood flew out of his nose, it was only a bit, but it went everywhere, people started screaming.’ He shook his head, livid at the audacity. ‘So people start running, including the hero manager. My mate lost his nerve, legged it out the back fire door, set off the fire alarm as well, the dickhead.’ Rick stared unabashedly into the camera. ‘Phil, if you ever see this, when I catch up to you, you’re gonna know about it.’ He turned back to Ashley. ‘I was stuck. I had to start putting bullets in the floor, so the people I had left knew I was serious. By the time I got to the door, there was pigs out the front. And I didn’t wanna, but I was forced to round everyone up and lock the doors.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s about it.’
Ashley realised he’d finished his tale. She nodded and said, ‘Mmm, yes. I see.’ She was surprised to find that even now, she had a lot of questions to ask, but every one seemed like it might piss off Rick. Any other day, any other interviewee, she’d ask anyway. But this was no ordinary day, no ordinary interview. He was a short-fused thug with a gun. His story made it clear that he had little empathy for anyone else. In the end, Ashley landed on the safest thing she could think of. ‘So, Rick, you’re in here alone, with a lot of scared hostages. Do you have a plan?’
Rick nodded, a sly smile creeping onto his lips. ‘You’re the plan.’
Ashley wondered if that urine was finally going to make its appearance down her leg. ‘Me?’
‘Yes. I spotted you parked out on the road, and I knew you’d be the ticket. See, the thing is, what those coppers out there want is to do me.’
‘They want to… have sex with you?’ Gina asked, baffled.
Ashley sighed and shook her head. ‘Gina, please don’t speak during the interview-’
‘For fuck’s sake, not that kind of “do”,’ Rick interjected irritably. ‘They want to put a bullet in my head, don’t they? First chance they get.’
‘They’ve only tried to talk to you,’ Ashley pointed out. ‘What makes you think-’
‘They can’t risk innocent lives, looks bad,’ Rick explained impatiently. ‘But the second they get the last hostage, I’m fucking dead. They won’t even wait until then if they get a chance.’
‘Rick, you committed a crime,’ Ashley said gently. ‘But you haven’t killed anyone. They don’t want bloodshed. If you tell DI Conway that you want to surrender, walk out with your hands up…’
‘It’ll be me last breath, I’m telling ya,’ Rick snapped at Ashley. ‘Don’t act like you know what will happen, with your cosy little job, reporting on graffiti? You don’t know anything.’
Ashley had to concede, she was utterly out of her depth right now. ‘So how can we help?’
‘You’re my protection. ‘Cos you see, the police, they’re like any other murderer. They won’t do anything while people are actually watching.’
‘So you want us to what?’ Gina said, from behind the camera. It annoyed Ashley, but she decided not to express it this time. Because this wasn’t exactly the moment to train up the newb on dos and don’ts, was it? Gina had a right to spea
k, considering how she’d stuck her neck out for Ashley.
‘I want you to shoot everything that happens, and I want it on the telly, ASA fuckin’ P,’ Rick said proudly. ‘They need to know they’ve got eyes on ‘em.’
‘And then what?’ Ashley asked.
Rick’s grinned slipped. ‘I’m still working on that. I just need to think. I’ll come up with something.’
‘Rick, if you just want us to film you handing yourself over to the police, we can go and do that right now,’ Ashley told him hopefully. ‘I can make sure they just put you in the back of the squad car, no guns fired.’
Rick chuckled. ‘Oh, yeah, right. You think I’m handing myself over for armed robbery? With my record, I’ll get twenty years. No way.’