Voss wasn’t sure why she wanted to know. He’d seen the steely glint in her eye as the fear passed and he didn’t entirely trust her to leave the crisis management to him. But he couldn’t refuse to answer. “They’re on the bridge, coming this way. I’m trying to get the public clear without them noticing.”
And it would work, until the two-way stream of humanity around them dried up at which point someone much dimmer than Juanita Daws would realise something was amiss. What would she do then? Put her knife to her hostage’s throat, probably, and start issuing demands.
She wouldn’t get them, of course. Deacon wouldn’t have let her off this bridge and Voss wouldn’t either. The girls were too dangerous to turn loose. There might never again be as good a chance to comer them as there was here and now.
“Where’s Daniel?”
“On the other side,” said Voss.
“Jack wanted him to talk to them.”
“I know,” said Voss. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. If a policeman with over twenty years’ experience isn’t safe from them, I’m not letting a civilian anywhere near them.”
On the bridge the trail of pedestrians thinned and petered out. For a moment neither of them could see the girls. Then Voss pointed. “There.” His voice dropped half an octave. “Damn!”
Brodie hadn’t seen them because they were not where she was looking, walking up the centre of the perspex tunnel.
wondering why everything had gone quiet. They knew. They’d worked it out while there were still a few people covering their movements and acted with the boldness that was their hallmark, that shouldn’t still have been taking people by surprise.
Where the perspex weather-shield was incomplete they had kicked aside the barrier and dragged their hostage to the edge. The wind whipped their hair as they manhandled her under the rail. Nothing now stood between them and a ten metre fall among vehicles moving at seventy miles an hour. With her hands tied behind her Peris had no means of holding on. Johnny and Em were either side of her, each holding her aunt’s arm with one hand and the railing with the other. If they let her go she would fall. If they jumped she would fall. If she grew faint and swayed, they would not be able to hold her.
There was no longer any question of rushing the girls, or waiting until they tired. Talking, thought Voss, was the only way this could end without a disaster. He reached for his phone.
Across the bridge Daniel said quietly, “I have to talk to them. Let me through.”
“No,” said Constable Batty.
“It’s why I’m here—why Detective Superintendent Deacon wanted me here. Let me do what I came for.”
Batty was resolute. “They have a knife and a hostage, and all three of them could fall in less time than it takes to say it. If you try to intervene they could kill you too. I’m not risking it. We’ll have a negotiator here in twenty minutes.”
“They can’t hold on for twenty minutes! She’s a big woman and they’re two young girls, and the first one who weakens will take the others with her. They want to talk: it’s why they’re out there. They know me. They may trust me when they won’t trust anyone else.”
Batty was unconvinced. But Constable Vickers regarded Daniel thoughtfully. “It is what the chief had in mind.”
“The chief may possibly have changed his mind since getting stabbed,” retorted Batty tartly.
“You wouldn’t get close enough to get stabbed, would you?”
“Mama Hood didn’t breed no heroes,” averred Daniel.
Constable Vickers looked at his colleague. “We have to let him try. There’s nothing to lose.”
Batty was unconvinced. Just then his radio crackled, demanding his attention. He spoke for a moment, then shrugged. “OK. If you want to do this, we’re to let you through.”
Daniel started onto the bridge. “If I seem to be making things worse I’ll come back,” he promised.
By now the footbridge was deserted but for the four of them. His hurried steps rang hollow on concrete. He was aware of eyes on his back as he walked, people wondering who he was and why he was being allowed over the bridge when they weren’t. He felt conspicuous, and had no idea what he would say to the girls when he reached them.
Brodie clutched Voss’s forearm and her lips moved in an almost silent prayer. No one further away would have known what she was saying but Voss heard and was shocked. “For God’s sake!”
She hadn’t meant it for his ears, but she still hoped they would jump before Daniel reached them. “Don’t you understand?” she demanded fiercely. “He’s going to lose them. All of them. Johnny’s waiting till he’s close enough to see their faces and then she’s going to let go. If she can’t have her own way, she’ll do as much damage as she can before she kills herself.”
“She can’t hurt Daniel,” said Voss, uncomprehending. “She hasn’t got a spare hand.”
“You damn fool,” swore Brodie bitterly, “she doesn’t need a knife to hurt him! She just has to make him think they could be saved so it’s his fault when they die. / know they’re going to jump, you know they’re going to jump. But Daniel thinks they’re only going to jump if he gets this wrong. It’s going to haunt him for the rest of his life.”
Johnny let him get almost within arm’s reach before stopping him with a jerk of her head. “That’s close enough.”
Daniel looked at Peris and his heart stumbled. The woman was deeply, numbly afraid and he could do nothing to comfort her. Her life was in the hands of a disturbed and desperate adolescent, and she knew Johnny was capable of killing all three of them just to make a point. She knew the girls had only to relax their grip and she would fall to her death. Her chest had cramped up so she was breathing off the top of her lungs, hasty ragged gasps that caught in her throat and rasped between her teeth. Her face ran with sweat and her eyes were rimed with white. Daniel flicked her a tiny uncertain smile, and somewhere she found the courage to return it.
“Tell me what you want,” he said, his voice thin. “Tell me what you want and let’s end this.”
Johnny was poised on the cusp of triumph and despair. A word, an expression, could send her either way Behind Peris’s back she gave her sister a look Daniel couldn’t interpret; but Em shuddered and clung tight to the rail, round tears like marbles spilling down her paper-white cheeks.
“I want you to get everyone out of the way so we can go back to our car,” said Johnny. “I don’t want anyone to follow. Leave us alone and I’ll let Peris go when we’re safe.”
Daniel moistened his lips. “Fine. I can get that for you. Come back inside.”
Throwing her head back Johnny barked a terse laugh at him. “Daniel, if you want to be believed you need to lie more. The police aren’t going to let us off this bridge. You can promise the moon but you can’t deliver. If we come inside they’ll rush us—and if Peris gets hurt, or if you do, that’s a risk they’re willing to take. Letting us get back on the motorway isn’t.”
Daniel gave a troubled shrug. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. I only know that if you fall you’re going to die, and Peris is going to die, and there has to be something I can get for you that you want more than that.”
“I want my daddy,” whined Em. She was shaking visibly in the wind.
Daniel tried again. “I know you’re scared. You feel trapped, you think there’s no way back. But there’s always a way back. For you, now, it’s just a couple of steps, from outside the rail to inside the rail. I won’t try to grab you. Nothing will change except you’ll be safer and warmer while we look for an answer. What do you think, Johnny? Can you trust me that far?”
He saw her eyes cloud uncertainly as she thought about it. About the paucity of options. About the unavoidable reality that she was on a high ledge over a fast road with policemen at each end. Her gaze slid towards Em, aware that it was not only her life and Peris’s at stake but her sister’s as well.
When her eyes came back she’d reached some kind of a decision. She said, “Do yo
u know who killed my mother?”
It was the last thing Daniel expected. He stumbled for an answer. It wasn’t his conscience that got in the way: with lives on the line he’d have lied like a trooper, earnestly and fluently and entirely without remorse, if he’d had the skill. But since he was old enough to make a moral distinction between what was right and what was merely expedient Daniel Hood had departed from the truth the way most men part with teeth: grudgingly and as seldom as possible. He was as fluent as a man playing the piano-accordion with one hand behind his back. All he had to say was “No,” and he couldn’t say that convincingly. “Er—”
Johnny gave a tired, knowing smile. “Yes. You do.”
Daniel ceded the unequal struggle and nodded. “I suppose I do.”
“How do you know?”
He sketched a one-shouldered shrug. “I had some time to think. Between getting locked in an attic and having more immediate problems to worry about.”
Johnny’s smile turned impish. “Sorry about that. But I couldn’t let you give us up. I’m really not going to prison, Daniel. You do know that, don’t you?”
He found himself shaking with trepidation. “Think about this, Johnny. Don’t make a mistake that can’t be put right later. Ask yourself what your father would want.”
For the first time in the six days he’d known her Johnny’s gaze flickered, less than assured. “We did it for him. Because she hurt him. Will he understand, do you think?”
“I’m sure he’ll try,” Daniel managed. “Whatever’s happened, you’re still his daughters. I know you love him; I’m sure he loves you.”
“He loved her, too,” Johnny said distantly. “My mother. And she betrayed him with a dirty farm-boy, and then she told him. She hadn’t even the decency to lie! She told him to his face what she was doing, and when he started to cry she laughed at him.”
Her voice soared with anger as the dam over-topped again. “Laughed at him! With the tears streaming down his face. My daddy’s the kindest man in the world, and he still loved her after everything she’d done, and she broke his heart and laughed in his face. He ran into the kitchen and came back with the knife. I thought he was going to stab her. I wanted to shout, let them know we were there, but I couldn’t. And he only slashed the damned painting. Then he ran out to his car.”
“You thought you’d lost him.” In that instant their world had convulsed, destroying everything that mattered to them. Distraught, their hearts ground in the complex machinery of adult relationships, they felt helpless and inconsequential. Until, left without alternatives, with the fetid waters of the last ditch closing over their heads, they decided to fight back. To fight for what they cared about, and to fight dirty.
“I thought I was never going to see him again,” Johnny said thickly. “I couldn’t bear it. I thought… I don’t know what I thought. Maybe, that if she was gone he’d come back. I snatched up the knife he’d thrown down and lunged at her. I didn’t even know if I was hurting her -1 didn’t know Em had found another knife and joined in—until suddenly she was on the floor and there was blood everywhere.”
“And you panicked.”
She raised her head and her proud tawny eyes transfixed him. “No. Then I calmed down and saw what we had to do. If she didn’t die we were in trouble; if she did we were two sad little girls who’d just lost their mother.”
It would have been less disturbing if she’d been more emotional. But she spoke as if her mother’s death had been inevitable. Daniel told himself it was a defence mechanism, only by keeping it at arm’s length could she deal with it at all, but it seemed as if she hardly cared. She’d stabbed her mother again and again until she stopped moving, then calmly worked out how to shift the blame elsewhere. It may have been displacement activity, to occupy her mind that would otherwise be overwhelmed by what she’d done, but her attitude appalled him almost as much as her actions.
He fought to keep his voice level. “Did you always mean Nicky Speers to take the blame?”
“Oh yes,” affirmed Johnny. “As soon as I saw we had some explaining to do. So I had to hide the fact that two knives had been used. Do you know about that?” Daniel nodded mutely. “We didn’t do that until she was dead,” Johnny said primly; and if she saw the sick look on his face she chose to ignore it.
“I could have made it clearer. I could have left something of his with her. But I thought it would be too obvious. The police should have suspected him without a row of muddy boot-prints leading across the road. It was only when people started talking as if my daddy might have done it that I realised how stupid the police were, and that I’d have to make it plainer.”
Daniel shook his head slowly. “Superintendent Deacon wasn’t too stupid to follow your trail, Johnny, he was too smart. He knew it didn’t make sense.”
“And blaming my daddy did?” she demanded indignantly.
Daniel went to answer, thought better of it. He was on dangerous ground now, because he knew something about Robert Daws that his daughters didn’t, and though they would have to know it would alter the situation massively and unpredictably if they found out now. And he wouldn’t have to say much, not to Johnny. It might be enough for him to think it. Her father was the only thing in the world this girl held in genuine and abiding regard. She had to be rendered harmless before she discovered he was dead, because at that point she’d go nova.
“Johnny,” he said instead, “can we talk about this later, when everyone’s safe? Let Peris go. There’s nothing more she can do for you.” He swallowed. “Nothing that I can’t.”
Johnny looked incredulously at him then laughed out loud. “Don’t be ridiculous!”
“I mean it,” he insisted, surprised and a little offended. “I’d be a pretty good hostage. You know I’m not going to come over all Sylvester Stallone. I’ll stay with you till you’re ready to leave here.”
“That’s not a hostage, it’s a baby-sitter. Oh, go home, Daniel,” said Johnny dismissively “We’ve nothing left to talk about.”
Her arms were growing tired. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could resist the wind tearing at her. Trying to make it easier she shifted her stance, linking her arm through Peris’s to hold the rail with both hands.
Peris felt her move and thought she was going to fall. Her eyes found Daniel’s and clung to him and she whimpered. He wanted to grab for her, knew he mustn’t. One sudden move and they’d all be gone.
Johnny jerked her aunt’s pinioned arm. “Shut up, you bitch.” Beneath her the lights of the speeding vehicles blurred one with the next in a river of light. The temptation to just let go and let it bear her away was mounting.
“They’re going to do it.” Freeing himself from Brodie’s talons, Charlie Voss fumbled urgently in his pocket. “They’re going to jump.”
She put her hand to her mouth, whispering through the fingers. “What do we do? What can we do? Rush them?”
He was already dialling. “No. We’d never reach them.” He spoke tersely into the phone. “We have to stop the traffic. Get the signs turned on. When they go, I don’t want them going through someone’s windscreen.”
Daniel didn’t know what else to say, what else to try. “Johnny—look at me. Look at me! Don’t look down.”
After a moment some weary impulse of obedience made her do as he said. He nodded shakily. “Good. Now listen to me. You’re not doing this. We’re going to find another way.”
Johnny shook her head, the chestnut curls whipping her face. “It’s too late. Even if we got off this bridge I don’t know where we’d go. We set out to find my father, but I don’t really know how and I don’t know how I’d face him if we did. I told you, he still loved her.”
“Daddy loves us,” said Em’s little voice, cold and surprised. “We’re going to be together.”
Johnny looked at her with compassion. “I’m sorry. I don’t think so.”
“You promised!”
“I thought I could make it work. But it got complicated
and I’m too tired. I’m sorry, Em. I think it ends here.”
“Please …” Daniel was almost in tears. “Tell me what you want. Anything! I’ll find a way …”
Em sobbed steadily, her face against Peris’s sleeve. Some of the sobs were words. “I want my daddy—”
He might have got somewhere with Em. He might have convinced her he could deliver things that her sister knew were impossible. He opened his mouth to try, then shut it again. Suppose she believed him. Suppose she scrambled quickly under the handrail to dash her tear-streaked little face against his chest. Johnny couldn’t hold Peris on her own: the woman’s body would veer out over the drop and she would fall. Daniel wanted to save them. He wanted to save them all. But he couldn’t sacrifice Peris to save her kidnappers.
“I want my daddy,” wailed Em.
Daniel bit his lip. They didn’t know. That wasn’t within his gift either, but they didn’t know. If he could carry it off. If he could lie and not betray himself. “All right,” he said carefully, “that we can do. Would it help? If the police brought him here? Could we all leave together?”
From the quick, startled-deer glance she gave him it seemed the possibility hadn’t occurred to Johnny. She thought about it now. She’d been without hope, ready to die; after that, the prospect of being reunited with her father was bright enough to eclipse everything that waited behind it. Or almost.
“The police think he’s a murderer,” she said, thinking aloud. “If they knew where he was they’d have arrested him.”
Daniel was ashamed of himself. That was something else he mustn’t let them see. “7 know where he is. Where he’s been for the last fortnight. I can arrange it for you to see him. That’s a promise.” The fact that none of those statements was an actual untruth gave him no comfort at all.
Johnny’s expression remained doubtful. Yet this was why she’d taken a hostage—because she believed it could buy her what she wanted. Only now the deal seemed on could she see the flaws in her reasoning.
Em couldn’t. Em thought they’d somehow turned defeat into victory and were going to get everything they wanted; and if she didn’t quite understand how, well, she hadn’t
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