When Helen woke suddenly, it seemed as though one corner of the room was alive with light. She blinked and saw that Akhtar was watching television in the dark, his shoulders slumped and his hands clasped together in his lap. The colours danced across his face. The flickering reds and blues gave expression to his face where there was none and showed up the wetness around his eyes.
They flicked to hers, and he seemed shocked that Helen was awake.
He said, ‘I’m sorry.’
Helen said nothing. Thinking: sorry for waking me up? For the dried blood on my neck?
For this? For all of… this?
She closed her eyes again, and though she could not be sure how long she had slept or what had been a dream and what had not, the next thing she was fully aware of was the shape of him standing over her with a mug of hot tea and a packet of biscuits. A polite cough and him saying, ‘Some breakfast.’
He stepped away, left the tea and biscuits on the floor within reach of her, and sat down.
The gun was on the table.
‘I meant to say thank you,’ he said. ‘For what you said on the phone last night, I mean. For not telling them what had happened.’
Helen reached for the tea. Her mouth tasted foul and she was glad of the scalding liquid to wash it away. She glanced down at the spatters of blood dried brown against the linoleum next to her, and the broad smear of it that led out into the shop. Akhtar had still been questioning himself the night before as he had unlocked the handcuffs and dragged Stephen Mitchell’s body out of the storeroom. He had stayed in the shop with it, while Helen sat shivering, with one arm hugging her legs to her chest, wishing that she had both hands free to block out the noise of him muttering in Hindi or shouting at himself. He was weeping, high-pitched like a woman, when sleep had finally overtaken her.
‘I am very grateful,’ he said now.
Helen nodded, but the smile was much harder to plaster on and keep in place than before. An innocent man was lying dead among yesterday’s newspapers because Javed Akhtar believed the world was conspiring against him. Because he had gone out and bought a gun. Helen would still say and do whatever it took to stay safe, of course. She would do her best to sympathise and forge a bond with this man who held her prisoner, to convince him that she could help, that she was on his side. She would take his side if need be.
But she would never forgive him for Stephen Mitchell.
‘Why did you lie to them?’ he asked.
‘I didn’t really think about it,’ Helen said.
It was almost the truth. Instinct had certainly kicked in quickly, but she had known very well what might happen if the officers running the operation outside thought that a hostage had been killed or injured. She knew that there would suddenly be huge pressure to intervene, to use such force as was necessary to resolve the situation quickly, before the second hostage was also killed.
Before they lost one of their own.
She knew what could happen once that kind of intervention was authorised. Once the bullets started flying. She had done the only thing she could think of to prevent that happening, and though she had been well aware that the lie she was telling could end up costing her career, she had also known that it might just save her life.
It is not my time to die.
Or my baby’s time to lose his mother.
‘It was the sensible thing to do,’ she said.
Akhtar drank his tea and began to talk about how, by this time on an ordinary day, he would normally have been up for four hours already. He told her that he would have driven to work, then delivered the papers and laid out any new stock that was needed before opening the shop. He talked quickly, trying a little too hard to keep things light, while Helen tucked into the biscuits. She realised suddenly that she was ravenous.
Alfie would be up and about by now, she thought, full of beans and demanding to be fed. Would Jenny have been shopping? Would she have the things in that he liked best?
‘So, what do you think will be happening?’ Akhtar asked, suddenly.
Helen looked up. She had not really been listening. ‘Sorry?’
‘Out there.’
He sounded genuinely anxious now, and looking at the tightness around his mouth Helen felt a peculiar rush of elation. Thinking that he damned well deserved to be. She was a trained police officer, for God’s sake, and there were dozens more outside his poxy shop who would happily tear his head off given half a chance…
The feeling was short-lived. She needed him calm and reassured, and her bring-it-on confidence evaporated when she saw the speckles of blood on her tights and thought about Stephen Mitchell’s wife, waiting and hoping somewhere outside.
Denise, who liked a glass of wine and didn’t mind telling people what she thought. Who wanted to wait just a little while longer before she and Stephen had their kids.
‘I don’t know what’s happening out there,’ Helen said. ‘Sorry.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘I’m sure they’ll be calling soon.’
Akhtar smiled and reached for the remote. ‘We can find out, maybe.’ He turned the sound up on the television, then stood to angle the set so that Helen could see the screen. ‘Good idea?’
They watched for a few minutes until, on the half-hour, Breakfast Time handed over to BBC London for what the smarmy presenter called the ‘news where you are’. The local anchor looked serious as a stock shot of an armed police officer appeared behind her.
‘There are no new developments this morning in the armed siege at a newsagent’s in south London. Overnight, there had been unconfirmed reports of a gunshot from inside the premises, but police have so far refused to comment. They have assured reporters in the last few minutes that both hostages, including an unnamed police officer, are alive and well, and that everything possible is being done to resolve the situation quickly and peacefully.’
Another picture. A different expression. An interview with a local gymnast.
‘So,’ Helen said.
Akhtar grunted and went back to his tea, as though the story they had just heard about had nothing whatsoever to do with him. He nodded towards the television. ‘Shall I leave it on?’
‘I don’t mind.’
‘We might as well.’
It was almost surreal, Helen thought. As though he were trying to restore some level of normality to the situation. However incongruous that notion might be with one of them handcuffed to a radiator, one armed with a gun and another growing cold in the next room.
‘I can never usually watch at this time,’ he said. ‘The shop is always so busy, you know?’
So Helen brushed the crumbs from her bloodied skirt and they sat, like any other two people enjoying their breakfast, and watched the rest of the morning’s news.