Deep Hurt - Eva Hudson Page 0,34

contents clanked and jangled when it hit the tiled floor.

Although Ingrid didn’t dignify Gurley’s accusation with an answer, she doubted she would have been safe to drive. Mercifully, he told her there was a cab waiting for them. “Where are we headed? An airstrip?” she called through the bedroom door. “Did Foster try to steal a plane?”

Gurley cleared his throat. “I still think that theory was a good one. But no—the sighting was in some place called Willesden. I checked on the map—it’s not that far from here. If you could just hurry it up.”

They’d made the trip in a little over ten minutes through the empty streets of northwest London. During the cab ride Ingrid had fired questions at Gurley he couldn’t answer.

“I just got a call telling me the location. You would have too, if your goddamn phone hadn’t been switched off.”

Now, at just after four-thirty a.m., they were both leaning against an unmarked police car in a side street just off Willesden High Road that had been sealed off at either end. They’d both refused DCI Radcliffe’s offer of a seat inside a car parked further away from the property the team was staking out, not wanting to be so far away from the action. They still felt the police were trying to sideline them.

After fifteen minutes of being ignored by pretty much every law enforcement officer in the vicinity—and there had to be at least two dozen uniformed officers and another dozen detectives—Ingrid was beginning to regret her decision not to wear a sweater beneath her jacket. Eventually Radcliffe approached them, a grim expression on his face.

“We’re waiting for the hostage negotiator to arrive.” Radcliffe looked as if he hadn’t made it into his bed at all the night before. The shirt beneath his crumpled jacket was badly creased and there was a long greasy mark snaking down his tie.

“Why?” Gurley snapped.

“Because none of us has had the appropriate training,” he answered in a dismissive tone.

To his credit, Ingrid thought, Gurley didn’t react. “I meant, why aren’t you just going in? You’ve evacuated the neighboring houses, right? Foster isn’t armed, so why not storm the place with all the manpower you’ve got?”

“We don’t know he isn’t armed. Just because he’s not likely to have a gun, doesn’t mean he hasn’t got a weapon. You are a little gun-focused.”

Ingrid had to admit Radcliffe had a point. Foster could have easily purchased knives and other tools to use as weapons. They didn’t know what they might be dealing with. “Have you made any contact with him at all?” she asked.

“We’ve got a couple of tech guys inside the property right now, rigging up a speaker system so that we can communicate without the whole street hearing.” Radcliffe glanced up at the nearest cordon, just fifty feet or so from where they were standing. A few people had started to gather, eager to know what was going on. So far no journalists appeared to have heard about the incident. “The vultures are circling,” Radcliffe said. “I expect pictures have already been sent from onlookers’ mobile phones to all the major news outlets. The camera crews will be setting up before you know it.”

“All the more reason to settle this swiftly. You have a SWAT team ready to go?” Gurley had started pacing. It seemed to Ingrid that he might go in himself if Radcliffe continued to refuse to.

“We have two vans of Specialist Firearms Command officers at the ready.”

“So do it now.”

“Save your breath. We’re not going in now. And we won’t until we’ve exhausted all other options.”

Ingrid shuffled sideways so that she was standing between Radcliffe and Gurley. “Who called it in?”

Radcliffe looked at her, non-plussed for a moment by her question. “One of the other residents in the property. It’s an HMO—house of multiple occupancy,” he explained. “Houses crammed with lots of rooms that have basic cooking facilities—usually a two-ring hob and a kettle—but with shared bathrooms. They used to be called boarding houses in the old days. Or bedsits. Anyway, some bloke saw the boy coming out of the bathroom on his landing wearing a pair of Spiderman pajamas.”

“I assumed Foster had dumped the boy’s pajamas when he stole the clothes from the laundromat,” Ingrid said.

“Well then you assumed wrong. They haven’t been found anywhere.”

“Is that resident still around? Can we speak to him?”

“He’s been taken to the local leisure center—it’s where we’re keeping all the people that have been evacuated. I could arrange for a