Rising Angels, Falling Apes
an excerpt

Thurrock sat in the trailer feeling an ever growing sense of unease. The appeals for thie woman had been running practically non stop for hours and there was still nothing. They'd had several phone calls from women born on that day, but when an officer went round to investigate, they were found not to have the birthmark mentioned, or to have different coloured hair, or in one case, having been born a man!

He looked anxiously at his watch, it was already two thirty in the aftternoon. They had less than five hours to find this woman and bring her here, before they started shooting the kids. Although Tim thought that was probably a bluff. They'd probably be able to bargain for more time due to the fact that Robert Ashley was here.

Gordon had been pleasantly surprised by Mr Ashley. He'd been expecting a jumped up arrogant little bastard, but instead got a charming, charismatic friendly young man who seemed to have come to terms with his fame a long time before, and was quietly content to just enjoy it whilst it lasted, but wasn't going to grieve for it once it had gone. He oozed self confidence, but without appearing conceited or arrogant. He'd waited for Gordon to introduce him to all the members of his team, and then spent ten minutes siging autographs for various people, never hurrying them along. Always engaging each one is a small amount of small talk and seeming to genuinely take an interest in them. And to top it all off, he'd accepted a cup of the revolting police coffee and had drank it all without a single grimace or complaint, whilst chatting with the police constable who'd brought it in for him and was currently studying his face as if she was looking at an apparition of Jesus. His easy going manner made Gordon feel quite envious of him. He would have given anything to have that. Still, each to their own, as they said. Where would the world be if everyone was alike, after all?

After the preliminary's had been taken care of, Gordon asked the extra members of the team to go, leaving just the headquarters staff and himself and Tim in the van. Ashley immediately became far more serious, sensing the change in the room.

“So, what's going on?” He said.

“Good question. We're not entirely sure I'm afraid Mr. Ashley.”

Ashley waved a hand at him and said, “It's Rob, please.”

“Okay, Rob. It's still very much a mystery from our end. We received the instructions to fetch you at around seven yesterday evening. Since that time, we've heard nothing from inside. There's been no gun shots, thank god, and also no shouting or the sound of any kind of commotion.”

“Was there any of that before then?”

“There was a bit yesterday, yes. We think that some of the kids may have tried to break out, but were prevented from doing so and were punished for it.”

“Killed?”

“I don't believe so. Like I say, there haven't been any gun shots at all. Of course that doesn't mean that everyone in there is all right, but at the moment we have no reason to think otherwise.”

“How do you know for sure that they have guns?”

“The teachers saw them. They were led out of that part of the school at gun point.”

“And they're certain the guns were real?”

“Well, no. None of them have actually seen a gun in real life so it is possible that they weren't real. But I believe that it would be sensible to assume that they are.”

“Right. Are you in contact with them?”

“We have a mobile number for their leader, a man calling himself Pol.”

“Pol? You mean as in P O L?”

“Yes. Does the name mean anything to you?”

Ashley thought for a moment then shook his head. “No, I can't say it does, sorry.”

“Pity. It would have been good to have some kind of connection at least.”

Tim spoke up. “Have you ever heard of an organisation called 'The Family'?”

“The Family? No, I can't say I have. What is it? Some kind of mafia thing?”

“That's the thing, we have no idea. Pol mentioned it once, that he and his associates where part of something called The Family, but we probably wouldn't find out much about them. He was right too, we've been looking all day and nothing. Not a single reference to anything even remotely relevant.”

“It must be very frustrating for you.”

“It is.” Gordon said, “If we could just find out something about these people, anything. We might have something to bargain with then. Maybe find some family members and bring them in to help, but at the moment there isn't anything. We have a photo fit of this Pol, that the school headmistress did for us.” He dug around in his pile of paper work and handed a sheet over to Ashley. “We can't find anyone similar on our database, so it looks like if he has a criminal record, it isn't in this country. We've passed it onto Interpol but it could be weeks before we get anything useful out of them.”

He paused for a moment whilst Ashley examined the drawing. “Do you recognise him?”

Ashley shook his head again, “No. I've never seen this man before in my life.” he saw the look on Gordon's face and said, “I'm sorry. Truly I am.”

“It's okay Mr Ash, sorry Rob, it's not your fault. It's just been a frustrating few days, that's all.”

“That's okay. I understand.”

“So what happens now? You planning on storming the building like they did in Russia?

“God no. If we did that they'd all die, I'm sure of that. Pol told us that the place was rigged with explosives and booby traps that would get anyone who tried to get in. About an hour ago, an SAS guy had a go and breaking into one of the small windows in the biology lab. There was some kind of cheese wire device rigged across the floor inside. They're not sure if they're going to be able to save his right leg. He managed to crawl back out, but he'd lost so much blood. From what they could get from him, not only have they rigged the place, but they've painted everything so that it can't be seen under infrared light. Therefore, no night vision equipment. The paint just absorbs the light and nothing gets reflected. So it looks exactly the same as the background.”

“Within minutes of him getting back outside, the window was boarded up with one of the desks from the lab. It's almost like they were expecting him to go in that way and were sat there waiting for him. He says that he didn't see anyone though, so I wonder if they would have let him bleed to death, or whether they would have given in and helped him back outside.”

“What about some kind of gas?”

Gordon shook his head. “Can't be done. There's no way to get enough gas in there to knock them out before they realise what's going on. If the bad guys realise what's going on then they might start shooting the kids anyway. Besides which, they say they have the place rigged so that the place will blow sky high if we try to free the hostages in any way. We've had dogs sniffing around it, and they definitely do have explosives in there. We just don't know how much at the moment.”

“So where does that leave us? And me?”

“Well, we're still looking for this woman who's involved. Until we find her there's nothing much we can do anyway. In a short while we'll call them to let them know that you've arrived. Hopefully they'll give us some idea of what they want you for. It should at the very least show them that we're trying to help and make them give us a little slack. Hopefully that means that we'll be able to extend the time limit if we need to.”

“The time limit?”

“Yeah. They gave us until seven tomorrow evening to find you and this Scottish woman.”

“And what if we didn't turn up?"

"Then they were going to start shooting the kids.”

“Jesus!”

“Yeah. So you can see why we were anxious to have you here.”

“So they can shoot me instead?”

Tim laughed. “No, of course not. I'm sure that they don't have anything like that planned for you. What would be the point in that?”

Gordon interjected. “We don't know what they want from you Mr Ash, sorry, Rob, but if they just wanted you dead, they could have gotten to you some other way. Hell, the amount of money this operation must have cost them, they could have hired a hit man to do the job. No, there must be another reason that they need you. It could even be that they're huge fans and just want to meet you once, or want your autograph.”

“I'd have felt a little more comfortable if they'd rung my agent and told her so. We could have met for a drink in a bar, or something civilised like that.”

Tim laughed, when they looked at him, he said, “What? It was funny.” He stopped smiling when the red phone rang behind Gordon. They all turned to look at it. Ashley looked from it to the faces of the other men, realising that this was the important phone, the one that connected them to the gang in the school. Tim looked at him, said, “Don't say a word.” Then lent over and picked up the phone. Gordon put on his head set.

“Hello Pol, it's Tim here.”

The unheard caller talked for a considerable amount of time. Ashley saw Tim's face turn pale as the blood drained from it. After a few seconds he said, “Pol, please. You can't blame us for trying. You're holding kids for god's sake.”

He fell silent as he listened some more then he looked up at Gordon in shock. Ashley wondered what was going on. Something bad, obviously. Tim turned ashen white and dropped the phone back into its cradle, then Gordon ripped the headset from his head and the two men rushed from the van. Gordon shouting a quick, “Stay here.” over his shoulder.

Ashley turned to the technicians and saw the same shock echoed in their faces. “What the hell's going on?” he said.

The tech just shook his head, then turned back to the monitors. Ashley thought that he was going back to work, but he reached up and pressed a button on the one in front of him, changing the view to a TV type channel. Ashley was horrified at what it showed. A teen aged boy was being forced out of the top of a doorway onto the flat roof of what was obviously the flat roof of the school. He fell over at the top and was roughly pulled to his feet by the man who'd exited the door after him. Ashley recognised Pol from his photo fit picture. The boy was pushed to within two feet of the edge. Ashley could see that he was crying, the tears being forced out of eyes that were blackened and trickling past cuts and abrasions on his cheeks. The man stopped behind him and raised a pistol to the back of the boys head. Ashley looked away and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block the image out, but he couldn't stop himself from hearing the report from the gun when it was fired. The image on the monitor had been silent, there was no audio feed, which meant that the sound was real and had come from not very far away. It echoed off the nearby buildings and was immediately followed by several loud screams.

One of the technicians started mumbling to herself, “I can't believe it, I can't believe it. How could they? How could they?” and burst into tears. One of her colleagues left his seat, crossed over to her and hugged her hard. Ashley wished that he'd thought of that. Not because it'd make her feel better, but because he wanted to be hugged too. Wanted someone to reach into his head and remove that horrible image. Make it not have happened!

It took a while for him to find the courage to look back at the screen. When he did, the image was empty. The roof devoid of any living thing. The boy's body had obviously fallen to the floor after the shot, and there was no trace that he had ever been there.

A few minutes later the red phone started to ring again. It rang once, twice, three times. Ashley got up and went over to it and was on the verge of picking it up when Tim rushed back in and over to the table, giving him a desperate look before picking up the phone and saying in a breathless voice, “Yes, Tim Roberts.”

This time Ashley could hear the voice on the other end, although it was speaking softly and he couldn't make out any words. There was just a soft drone. It seemed to be emotionless and he wondered how anyone could be so calm after having done that to a child.

He found a chair and sat down on it, hugging himself to try to come to terms with what had happened as Tim finished listening and put the phone down again.

The door opened and Gordon returned, his face full of shock. He saw Tim standing by the phone and said, “Did he call back?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“He said that he trusts that we've learnt our lesson and that we won't try anything similar again."

Gordon gave a gasp of exasperation and said, "That arrogant fuck!"

Ashley couldn't help but agree.