I Am Watching You(60)

Oi! You! Stop now . . .

Even as he ran, Matthew was planning to let the child off with a warning. He had done this several times. The lad was fast but short. Just a kid. But Matthew never got the chance to be lenient. The boy panicked and bolted over a fence and down a bank to the railway line.

Matthew shouted for him to stop but the boy ran across. It was a live line.

It was a terrible sight. A terrible smell.

Matthew was badly burned while pulling the child from the live rail.

I should never have chased him, he told Sally. If I hadn’t made him panic, he would be alive. Two packets of cigarettes, Sally. Two sodding packets of cigarettes.

You were just doing your job. His wife stroked his hair. He always remembers how tenderly she stroked his hair as he talked and talked – all night.

And so Matthew turned his back on his job. Turned his back on supermarkets who wanted him to chase shoplifters, no matter their age. No matter their motive.

He decided to set up his own business, imagining that it would be better to pick and choose who he helped.

The only problem, as Mel so frequently reminds him, is that he is bored. Cut off from the really important cases. Not many people come to a private investigator with important cases. Too often it is missing people, who disappear because they do not want to be found. And wives worried about their husbands playing away.

Matthew fumbles in the glovebox and finds a forgotten chocolate bar. Good. Sugar. He is now remembering the negotiators’ course. Being so surprised by the statistics. That the majority of hostage situations are actually resolved without injury. Of course, that was before suicide attacks. Before the new wave of very different crimes.

The team in Spain will hopefully be doing it by the book – old-school, just as Sally guessed. They would be praising Karl for keeping things calm. Keeping Anna safe. Well done. You are doing great. This won’t be forgotten. That you are keeping everyone safe.

Matthew closes his eyes and wishes it were him. In the police van. On the phone. In charge.

Never use the word ‘surrender’, they were taught. ‘Coming out’ was the preferred phrase. Let’s talk about how you can come out safely, Karl. How we can help you out of there safely.

During one of the seminars, Matthew asked how they were supposed to respond to demands. Didn’t hostage-takers always make bonkers demands? A getaway car? A helicopter? And money. What was the official police response to ransom demands?

Never say no, the instructor advised. Just say, I’ll look into that for you, Karl. Negotiators should always appear to pass requests through other people, so any negativity or delays do not seem to be their fault. I’m so sorry, Karl. They’re telling me that’s not possible at the moment. Let’s talk about what is possible. How we keep everyone safe. That’s going to really count for you. I’m doing my best for you, Karl, I promise.

Matthew is still about fifteen minutes from Ella’s house and can no longer bear the wait. He pulls into a layby. He has to know what all this blessed talk of pictures is about. He pulls out his phone and calls up Twitter. The images are everywhere. Shots from several different angles, of Karl with a gun to the head of a blonde woman, presumably Anna, at the window.

Matthew feels his heart race as he forces himself into that professional gear: the place where you fight the fear and the panic and you switch on your analytical brain. OK. What does this mean? What needs to be done?

He begins to analyse all the pictures as swiftly as he can. What do they really say? What is really going on? The problem is that in all the shots Anna has her back to the window.

Matthew finds maybe half a dozen different photographs taken from slightly different angles, and frowns. Feels his brain burning, sparks flying as involuntarily he makes connections he does not yet understand. In the force, he learned to trust his gut when this happened. To relax and look and wait.

It is a bit like that series of posters – Magic Eye – where you have to stare and relax your eyes until you almost go into a trance to see the three-dimensional image appear. Relax. Trust your natural ability.

He is flicking between all the pictures and doing this same thing. Something is not quite right . . .

He skims through the messages circulating on social media. The comments are meant to be kind but are seriously unhelpful.

OMG is he gonna shoot her?

There are some messages on Twitter from the police, too, in Spanish and in English, asking people not to take and share photographs, but it is clearly making no difference.

Jesus. A shambles. Matthew skims again through the range of pictures, this time searching news-agency coverage. Some seem better quality, taken by a long-range lens, possibly a press photographer? But most look as if they were taken on phones, perhaps from the window of upper-floor flats opposite the block where Karl is holed up. And then he finds a different shot taken from much higher up. Maybe the top floor of a block of flats, looking down at the window from a different, sharper angle. Now, at last, Matthew sees what was troubling him in the other photographs.

He takes out his iPad to call up the same image and to zoom in a bit. Even as he is dialling Melanie’s number he is emailing this image to her. She has to make sure the Spanish team have seen this.

Jesus Christ . . . they need to see this.

Five rings before Melanie picks up. ‘Mel. I’m sending a photograph over right now. Karl at the window with his hostage. You have to get a message through to the Spanish team.’