Authors: Tom Graham
‘Not really, Guv,’ said Annie, looking to Sam for help.
‘He means just stay put and he’ll talk to you later,’ Sam said quietly to her.
Gene turned his scowling face towards the church. ‘What’s happening in there?’
‘Same as before, Guv,’ said Chris. ‘Nobody’s come out, nobody’s gone in.’
‘Well
that’s
about to change,’ declared Gene, and he reached inside his filthy coat for his trusty Magnum.
‘Wait, Guv,
please
!’
Sam pleaded with him. ‘Think of the hostages.’
‘What hostages?!’ Gene scoffed. ‘It’s been two days, they’ve probably all died of starvation by now. Either that or they’ve suffocated on the pong of their own accumulated number twos. All them pensioners cooped up like that – God Almighty, I’ll bet it reeks in there worse than the geriatric ward down at central hospital.’
‘Do you
really
want to provoke Carroll into pulling the trigger?’ Sam insisted. He jabbed a thumb in the direction of a pack of reporters lurking about on the fringes of the siege. ‘Think what
that
lot
will do to you if you kick off a massacre here today.’
Gene went to push past him, but Sam insisted.
‘Five minutes, Guv. Just give me five minutes.’
‘To do what, Tyler?’
‘To try some diplomacy.’
‘Diplomacy?!
This
is diplomacy!’ Gene barked, brandishing the Magnum. ‘Diplomacy goes bang. And Henry Kissinger said that! Or was it Charles Manson?’
‘I’ll go in there unarmed, Guv, I’ll speak to Carroll. He can’t have slept for two nights, he hasn’t eaten, he’s probably high as a kite by now, but I might just be able to make some sort of contact with him. Who knows, I might even be able to get close enough to get that gun out of his hand. But
please
, Guv, let me try before you go steaming in there. Just let me try!’
Gene stared stonily at the church for a moment, then shot a glance at the nearby reporters.
‘You know it makes sense, Guv,’ Sam prompted him.
At last, Gene let out a resigned sigh.
‘Five minutes,’ he growled.
‘Thanks, Gene. You’ve done the right thing.’
‘Five minutes, then the balloon goes up.’ Gene waved the Magnum at him. ‘
This
balloon. You reading me, Tyler?’
‘Loud and clear,’ said Sam, and without delay he threaded his way through the maze of parked police cars, making for the church. He caught a brief glimpse of Annie’s face – pale, concerned, preoccupied, confused – the face of somebody who fears they are losing their grip on reality.
I know just how she feels
,
Sam thought to himself, and then he focused his mind on the job at hand.
He passed through the gate that lead into the churchyard and made his way cautiously past the gravestones. Reaching the doors of the church, he hesitated. Sam batted dust from his jacket, creating billows in the air around him. He shook yet more dust from his hair, and knocked clouds of it out of his trousers. He was going to look like a tramp walking in there – but then again, Mickey Carroll wouldn’t notice anyway. The man was probably hallucinating by now, driven to the brink by fear and insomnia.
‘Yes, he’s frightened, Sam,’ said a soft, childish voice.
The Test Card Girl was sitting atop a stone cross in the graveyard, dangling her legs like she was on a swing. Her face was deathly pale, her cheeks rouged with two pink circles, her large eyes pretending at innocence.
She was surrounded by a bobbing sea of black helium balloons, hundreds of them. Every headstone on the church yard had its own balloon neatly attached to it by a length of string. It was like a sideshow in death’s own carnival.
Sam glanced back at assembled police officers and press surrounding the church – but they seemed completely oblivious to both the Test Card Girl and her morbid array of funereal balloons. He caught sight of Gene peering sceptically across at him, then turning to a uniformed copper and shouting something – but no sound came. A patrol car revved its engine and pulled away, but in complete silence. It all seemed to be happening in an alternative reality. The only sound to be heard was the Test Card Girl’s mocking voice, and the dry, rubber squeak as the black balloons nudged against each other in the breeze.
‘Mr Carroll is very, very frightened,’ she said. ‘And you know why, don’t you, Sam.’
‘Clive Gould came for him,’ said Sam, his own voice sounding shockingly loud in this unnatural silence. ‘Carroll escaped. But Walsh didn’t.’
‘That’s right. He didn’t escape. And what happened to him was all … very horrid.’
‘And what
did
happen? Why did Gould kill Walsh and mutilate his body like that? Why does he want to kill Carroll, and Ken Darby?’
‘It
is
rather puzzling, isn’t it,’ the Girl said, putting a finger to her cheek and rolling her eyes skyward as if looking for inspiration. ‘What could it all mean, I wonder?’
‘Gould wants Annie. He’s come here for Annie. Why does he give a damn about three retired coppers who used to be on his payroll?’
‘Umm.’ The Girl play-acted deep concentration.
‘Don’t mess me about, you little brat! You know!’
‘I do?’ She frowned, then pulled an expression of sudden enlightenment. ‘Now you come to mention it, Sam – I
do
!’
And with a barely perceptible motion of her hand, the balloon tethered to the cross she was sitting on suddenly came loose and went sailing sadly up into the grey, overcast sky.
‘Lost souls …’ she sighed, feigning sadness. ‘So many lost souls … Where do they all go?’
Sam felt a sudden wave of repulsion at the sight of those damned balloons. As if in a nightmare, he felt that at any moment they would transform into something else – dead faces, perhaps, or bloodshot, disembodied eyeballs staring out in silent agony and terror.
Appalled, furious, disgusted, Sam tuned away, refusing to be toyed with any longer. But without warning, he found the Test Card Girl suddenly standing directly in front of him, her blank face turned upwards towards him, her dark eyes glittering.
‘Mr Gould is coming here,’ she said softly.
Sam froze. Stiffly, he said: ‘For me?’
‘Not yet. That comes later. No – today, it’s Mr Carroll he’s coming for,’
‘Why?’ Sam’s voice had fallen to a tense whisper. ‘Why is he coming for Carroll?’
‘The same reason he came for Mr Walsh. The same reason he’ll come for Mr Darby. He needs them, Sam.’
‘… For what?’
The Girl’s mouth twisted into a tight smile: ‘To live.’
Sam wanted to back away from this grotesque mockery of a child, but his feet refused to move. The Girl seemed to understand his feelings at once.
‘You’re very frightened,’ she said, ‘just like Mr Carroll.’
‘I’m not frightened.’
‘Oh yes you are. I can hear your heart beating from here. Tell you what, Sam – why don’t I keep you company?’
She slipped her small, icy hand into Sam’s and closed her fingers gently around his.
‘We can go in together,’ she said. ‘That’ll be nice. Won’t it, Sam?’
Before he could answer, she reached out with her other hand and pushed the door of the church. It creaked open on its old hinges.
‘Come on then,’ the Girl said brightly. ‘Let’s see what’s going on in there, shall we?’
And still holding Sam’s hand, she led the way inside.
Led by the Test Card Girl, Sam stepped through the church doors and into the aisle. Their arrival was silent – unnaturally so – and went completely unnoticed.
Gene’s heartless assertion that the hostages would have starved to death by now was not quite accurate. They were clearly malnourished, but had survived on the vicar’s meagre supplies of tea, biscuits and tap water. The wretched collection of cold, hungry and dishevelled pensioners were huddled together near the altar. With their headscarves and mittens on, and their frightened, staring eyes peeping out, they looked like refugees from a war zone. Too terrified and confused to even think about making a break for freedom, they had clustered together where they had been ordered and stayed there, waiting.
But the vicar himself was not with them. He was slumped over the Bible in his pulpit, and at first glance Sam thought he might be dead. But no – his long, slow snores could be heard echoing about the church. It was this sound that told Sam that the Test Card Girl’s strange, enveloping silence had vanished – and when he glanced down at his side, so had she. But his fingers were still cold from where her icy hand had held them.
There was no sign of the Test Card Girl, and for several moments there was no sign of Carroll either. But then Sam glimpsed movement, up in the pulpit just behind the snoring vicar. Carroll was moving about uncertainly, muttering to himself, babbling.
Sam decided that the moment had come to announce his presence.
‘We need to straighten everything out here, Michael,’ he said. At once, Carroll’s face popped up behind the still-sleeping vicar. He was unshaven and unwashed, with gaunt cheekbones and big, black bags under his eyes. It was the face of a Victorian lunatic in Bedlam.
‘They want to storm this place,’ Sam went on. ‘In five minutes, they’ll come piling through those doors. But we can sort it all before that. We can end this thing calmly, with nobody getting hurt. We can end this thing like men, you and me.’
The pensioners at the altar stirred and looked round. One of them whimpered. But they were all too worn out and frightened to utter a word.
‘You know me,’ Sam said, walking slowly down the aisle. ‘We spoke before. Let’s speak again. Nice and civilized.’
Carroll grabbed the vicar by the throat and hauled him upright, bringing the poor man to spluttering, startled wakefulness. He thrust the gun against the vicar’s head.
Sam raised his hands: ‘I’m alone and unarmed. If you want to point that thing at somebody, point it at me.’
‘I’m not leaving here,’ Carroll cried out.
‘Neither am I,’ answered Sam. ‘You and me, we’ll stay right here. But let the others go.’
‘I don’t want to be alone!’ Carroll howled suddenly. ‘He’s out there, he’s after me, and
I don’t want to be alone
!’
‘I know who’s after you, Michael. He’s after me too. And
I’m
after
him.
I’m going to find him, and destroy him – and you’re going to help me. Please – we need to work together. We need to help each other if we want to survive!’
But Carroll wasn’t listening. He jabbed the gun into the vicar’s ear and hissed at him: ‘Read it! Read it out!’
Looking as haggard and exhausted and unshaven as the man holding him captive – but not nearly so crazed – the vicar looked down at the open Bible on the lectern before him. He sighed. In a voice that indicated he had been made to read this passage out for Carroll over and over again since the siege began, he recited:
‘Have mercy upon me, for I am desolate and afflicted. The troubles of my heart are enlarged. O, bring me out of my distresses.’
The vicar’s eyes flicked up towards Sam. He was waiting – hoping – praying, perhaps, that Sam would make a sudden move and save him.
‘Look upon mine affliction and my pain, and forgive all my sins.’
Sam kept edging closer to the pulpit, still holding his hands up. He was trying to read Carroll’s face for signs of sanity behind that outer mask of crazed terror. But Carroll’s eyes had the glassy, inward-looking quality of the hopelessly deranged.
‘O keep my soul and deliver me …’
The pensioners huddled at the altar were starting to take notice now. They watched Sam with the same desperation as the vicar.
‘… For I put my trust in thee.’
‘Amen to that,’ Sam said. ‘I understand what that passage means to you, Michael. You’ve come here for sanctuary. You saw how Pat Walsh died, didn’t you – you saw Clive Gould kill him – and you came here because you hoped it would be safe. Holy ground. A haven. You thought you could find your salvation.’
‘Again!’ hissed Carroll, and the vicar resignedly began to read out the psalm once more:
‘Have mercy upon me, for I am desolate and afflicted …’
This time, Sam talked over the top of him as he read. He kept his attention fixed on Carroll all the while, not looking away, not even blinking, and spoke in a calm voice:
‘I’ll be straight with you, Michael – I don’t think this place will keep you safe. Gould will come here. He’s on his way right now.’
‘
Look upon mine affliction and my pain, and forgive all my sins
.’
‘Your sins,’ said Sam. ‘That’s what Gould represents to you. He corrupted you, didn’t he? He turned you into a bent copper, a bought man. You fell so far that you were even prepared to cover up the murder of a fellow officer!’
‘I had no choice!’ Carroll cried. ‘If I hadn’t done it, I’d have ended up just like Cartwright!’
He violently shoved the vicar aside and waved the gun about wildly in a shaking hand.
‘
I had no choice! None of us did!
’
And now Sam began to suspect that it wasn’t
him
Carroll was addressing, but
Him.
Carroll’s eyes were turned upward. He stared this way and that at the ceiling, as if appealing to an invisible judge.
‘I know I did wrong, but I don’t deserve this! Not
this
I don’t!’
‘Michael, it’s not you Gould really wants,’ said Sam, raising his voice to be heard. ‘It’s me he’s after. Help me. We’ll work as a team and we’ll beat him. He’s still weak. He’s getting stronger, but he’s not there yet. We can smash him to pieces, I know it! We can destroy him, and then it will all be over. We’ll be safe.
You
will be safe!’
Carroll shook his head, his face screwed up in a childlike expression of abject misery. ‘No, no, no, he wants
you
but he needs US first!’
‘For what?’ Sam demanded. ‘Help me, Michael! Help me understand so I can defeat him! You and Walsh and Darby – what does Clive Gould need you all for?’
But Carroll was too far gone to pay attention. He was banging the lectern with his pistol, like a hellfire preacher in a lawless Wild West town. The vicar cowered in the pulpit. The pensioners at the altar sobbed and grizzled.