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