The Hostage: BookShots (Hotel Series) Page 7

  ‘Even after what he did to Mr Harlington?’ Roscoe looked deep into Jocasta’s eyes. He felt sure Jackson Harlington had been involved in the boy’s kidnap and that was what was driving these revenge attacks.

  The elevator doors opened and Roscoe stepped out ahead of Jocasta Harlington. Crossing the glass footbridge that leads from the elevator to the infinity pool, Jocasta stopped.

  ‘Jackson wasn’t Joseph’s father.’

  ‘Did he know that?’ replied Roscoe, startled but not totally surprised as he fit the pieces together in his mind.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘When did Jackson discover he wasn’t Joseph’s father?’

  ‘The month before he disappeared.’

  Roscoe turned away from Mrs Harlington and looked out across the royal park opposite the hotel. Suddenly it all made sense.

  ‘Jackson was a powerful man, in every sense of the word,’ Jocasta said. ‘I feared him every second of the day, especially after he found out about Joseph. But although he wasn’t Joseph’s father, I never believed he would do anything to harm him. I couldn’t think that. Ever. Until today.’

  A desperate cry came from the other side of the roof terrace and Roscoe quickly ran across the bridge to the shallow end of the pool. What he saw stopped him instantly.

  Kneeling at the far end of the pool was the unmasked killer. In front of him, Peter Savage floated in the pool, his throat cut.

  Blood traced the water.

  The killer gripped Savage by the hair, pulling his head above the water to stop him from drowning and allowing him to slowly bleed to death. Roscoe could see Savage was still alive.

  ‘Joseph. It is Joseph, isn’t it?’ Roscoe said, the calmness in his voice at odds with the horror rising inside of him. ‘This has to stop. Why don’t we start by pulling Inspector Savage out of the water?’

  He started to take small steps along the edge of the pool, towards Joseph Harlington. As he did, Jocasta came forward and stood motionless by the shallow end. She looked lovingly at her son’s face, which bore such a great resemblance to her own, for the first time in sixteen years. Water gently lapped his hands, washing away Savage’s blood.

  Tension rising within him, Roscoe continued to walk towards the killer. ‘Joseph, let’s pull Inspector Savage out of the pool.’

  When Joseph Harlington looked up and fixed his eyes upon him, Roscoe felt afraid. Never before had he seen such depth of hatred.

  ‘Come one step further and I will blow his brains out.’

  As Savage fought for his life, his blood spreading across the pool, Roscoe kept talking. ‘Joseph, let’s get him out of the water. I can help you.’

  Almost imperceptibly he edged forward.

  ‘I told you not to come any further. You should know by now when I say something I mean it.’

  And then Joseph ripped a gun from the back of his belt, pressed the barrel into Savage’s temple and pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 24

  SAVAGE’S HEAD EXPLODED into the infinity pool. Screaming, Jocasta Harlington collapsed to her knees.

  ‘Joseph, no. No more. Stop this. Please!’ she cried.

  Standing at the top of the pool, Savage’s brains and blood splattered across him, Joseph looked at his mother for the first time.

  ‘I told him not to come any further.’ He turned to Roscoe. ‘I did tell you not to come any further.’

  ‘Is that it now, Joseph?’ asked Roscoe, struck by his childlike logic. ‘Have you done what you came to do?’

  Still holding the gun, Joseph looked down at Savage’s shattered body floating in the pool.

  ‘He was one of them. Every week he would come. Same time each week. He was the worst. He liked to beat me first. And then he’d rape me. He’d make the others watch. And then he’d do the same to them.’ He looked at his mother. ‘Sixteen years ago he was the one who took me from our house. He loved to tell me that.’

  ‘God help us, Joseph, no more. Let it be over now,’ pleaded Jocasta, getting to her feet. ‘Please let it be over.’

  ‘He told me how you all moved away. How you’d sold our house. How you didn’t live there any more. How I could never go back home. That you didn’t want me. Can’t you see that for me it can’t ever be over?’

  ‘That’s not true, Joseph,’ Jocasta sobbed. ‘I never stopped thinking about you. Every single day. I wanted nothing more than for you to come home. Let me take you home now.’ Reaching her arms out to her son, she started to walk slowly down the side of the pool towards him. On the opposite side, Roscoe took his chance to do the same.

  ‘You’ve got no idea!’ Joseph shouted at her. ‘We were never let out. Day or night. We were trapped in a dungeon. After Savage, Duncan would only come every couple of months. I always thought he only really got involved for the money. Dad’s money.’

  Joseph could see his mother stepping forward.

  ‘Don’t come any closer!’

  He started frantically waving his gun in the direction of first Jocasta and then Roscoe. ‘Or you!’ he screamed at Roscoe, pointing the weapon directly at him.

  ‘Joseph, this has to stop now,’ said Roscoe.

  ‘Winn was there every day, abusing us,’ Joseph continued. ‘Every single day. Keeping us chained up. Taunting us. Beating us. Telling me every day my father never wanted me.’

  ‘That isn’t true!’ cried Jocasta.

  ‘But he let them take me. I know he did. They told me. Over and over. He let them take me!’

  ‘No, Joseph,’ sobbed Jocasta. ‘He wasn’t even your father.’

  As Joseph turned back to her, Jocasta ran desperately down the side of the pool towards her son.

  CHAPTER 25

  ‘STOP!’ SHOUTED ROSCOE across the pool, but it was too late.

  ‘He wasn’t even your father!’ Jocasta was screaming. ‘He was an evil, evil man and I’m glad he’s dead. He’s not part of you and he never was.’

  She was standing in front of her son, placing herself at his mercy, as Joseph raised his gun. He pointed it directly at her.

  ‘He wasn’t my father?’ he asked. ‘So that’s why he wanted me gone. That’s why he let them rape me over and over. That’s why he hated me.’

  ‘But he’s gone now, Joseph. And I can look after you.’

  ‘It was you who did all this to me. If he had been my father he would have loved me. It’s all your fault.’

  As Roscoe saw Joseph’s finger start to squeeze on the trigger, he hurled himself across the side of the pool, landing on Joseph and knocking him to the ground.

  As they fell, the gun fired into the air and flew free.

  In a split second Joseph was on his feet and scrambling across the ground to reach the weapon. Roscoe rolled over and up but Joseph already had the gun in his hand. Pointing it at Roscoe and then at his mother, he climbed onto the wall surrounding the infinity pool.

  ‘Joseph, no!’ cried Jocasta Harlington, stepping towards her son. ‘None of this is your fault. None of it!’

  ‘Stay back. Both of you, stay back or I’ll kill you.’

  ‘Let me help you!’ screamed Jocasta.

  ‘It’s too late, Mum,’ he said, stepping to the edge of the wall.

  Roscoe charged forward to grab hold of him but, as he did, Joseph opened his arms and fell backwards off the wall of the fortieth floor.

  CHAPTER 26

  AT THE FRONT of the new Tribeca Luxury Hotel in the Mayfair district of London, a crowd had remained outside throughout the day. The growing numbers of news reporters were joined by members of the public anxious to witness events unfolding. When Joseph Harlington climbed onto the wall surrounding the hotel’s infinity pool, cameras and phones were once again pointed skywards. Within minutes, images of him falling through the air and landing on the immaculate lawns of the new hotel were posted online and viewed worldwide. The crowd watched with a mixture of horror and ghoulish delight as Joseph’s body hit the ground, close to that of the hotel’s owner, Jackson Harlingt
on. Almost immediately, speculation raced around the world that the second body was that of Harlington’s missing son, Joseph.

  Stepping round the edge of the pool, Roscoe moved towards Jocasta Harlington. Neither of them spoke a word as he put his arms around his employer’s widow and she began to sob. As the pair slowly walked away from the poolside, Roscoe turned back and looked one last time at the body of Peter Savage floating in the pool’s red water.

  Jocasta’s daughter, Jacqueline, was standing at the crossing to the glass footbridge.

  ‘It’s all over,’ Roscoe said to her.

  She stepped forward, taking her mother into her arms.

  Jocasta Harlington sobbed on to her daughter’s shoulder as Roscoe led the pair across the bridge and back to the elevator bank. Standing inside the elevator, he helped Jacqueline support her mother, noticing she had yet to shed a single tear.

  When the doors opened to the hotel lobby, almost everyone had been evacuated and the police had taken control. Oscar Miller walked over to help and Roscoe watched as Jacqueline and Miller guided Jocasta across the lobby towards a waiting paramedic.

  Anna Conquest was sitting on one of the designer armchairs adorning the lobby. Feeling suddenly exhausted, Roscoe walked over and went to take the seat next to her.

  ‘You’ll get blood all over that chair if you sit down in that state. And my guess is that it wasn’t cheap.’ Anna smiled at Roscoe as he collapsed backwards into the chair. ‘You ready for an after-work drink?’

  ‘I’d kill for one,’ said Roscoe, ‘but there’s something I’ve got to do first.’

  CHAPTER 27

  ROSCOE WALKED BACK down the two flights of stairs to the hotel control room he had raced up earlier in the day. Fingerprint sensors gave him access to the room and when he entered it seemed almost strange to him that everything was exactly as he had left it. Even his cup of coffee remained untouched. While chaos had reigned across the hotel, the centre of its security operations had remained unscathed.

  He logged back into the hotel security systems and began scrolling through the security footage of the past twenty-four hours. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for but he knew Joseph Harlington must have had some way of accessing the hotel. And once he was in the hotel, how had he had such extensive knowledge of its layout and who would be where?

  Roscoe rubbed his eyes and thought some more. However horrendous Joseph Harlington’s past life had been, he had escaped six weeks ago. So where had he been since? And who had helped him? Roscoe felt sure the answers to his questions lay hidden in the security footage.

  On screen, Roscoe watched the Harlington family arrive the previous day. Nothing appeared untoward as they were dropped in the hotel parking lot. There was Michael Duncan unloading their bags, leaving them with a bellboy and driving away. Roscoe watched the Harlingtons make their way up through the hotel – across the lobby, a conversation with Anna at reception, walking to the elevators and finally arriving on the twenty-fifth floor. Jackson Harlington led them down the hall to the Royal Garden Suite and all three entered the rooms, the door closing behind them. The suite’s private chef accessed its kitchen soon after five, and left a little after nine. And after that, nothing.

  Roscoe thought perhaps he was wrong.

  He kept scrolling through the footage, but still nothing happened.

  Until 3 a.m.

  Then the door to the Royal Garden Suite opened.

  And out stepped Jacqueline Harlington.

  CHAPTER 28

  ROSCOE WATCHED JACQUELINE Harlington walk down the hallway, pass the elevator bank and enter the stairwell. After descending twenty-eight flights of stairs, she appeared in the underground parking lot and walked quickly to its staff entrance. Using her father’s access-all-areas passcode, she opened the door.

  In stepped Joseph.

  She hugged him tightly, then brother and sister walked quickly back across the parking lot. Ten minutes later, having climbed the stairs, they appeared on the thirty-eighth floor. Jacqueline followed her brother as he opened the door to the Presidential Suite and the pair disappeared inside. When the time stamp read two minutes after four, Jacqueline exited the room and the door was closed behind her.

  Jon Roscoe leant back in his chair. He didn’t need to see any more.

  CHAPTER 29

  Two Days Later

  Stanley Samson was sitting up in his bed in the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. Beside him in a chair was Aunt Jessie, who had baked him fresh chocolate-frosted doughnuts that morning. Two days before, Stanley had been rushed to the hospital and straight into surgery. He had suffered a substantial loss of blood but luckily his internal organs and stomach had not been severely damaged – seeing Stanley eat his third doughnut, Aunt Jessie was certain of that.

  Roscoe put his head round the door. Seeing them both there, he smiled.

  ‘Is everybody decent in here?’

  ‘Jon, come in,’ said Aunt Jessie. ‘Will you have a doughnut?’

  ‘I’m fine right now, thanks, Aunt Jessie,’ he said, sitting on the edge of the bed, ‘although it looks like Stanley is more than making up for me.’

  They all laughed as Stanley said, ‘I’ve got to build my strength back up.’

  ‘Is that right?’ said Roscoe.

  ‘So, what happened?’ asked Stanley.

  Roscoe had come straight from New Scotland Yard, his old place of work and home to London’s Metropolitan Police.

  He hesitated for a moment, thinking of the past three days.

  ‘Jon?’ asked Aunt Jessie.

  ‘They’ve questioned Mrs Harlington and Jacqueline. And Oscar Miller. And they wanted me to corroborate everything they’ve said. It was pretty simple, really. We all saw the same things in the hotel. It would appear that by the time Joseph killed his father, Duncan and Winn were already dead. He’d been waiting for Richard Winn in the kitchen since early in the morning; my guess is he killed him and then hid the body. When you arrived, Aunt Jessie, he was brutalising an already dead man.’

  ‘That man was getting what he deserved,’ said Aunt Jessie.

  ‘Probably so,’ said Roscoe. ‘Michael Duncan had been next on his kill list. After dropping off Oscar Miller, Duncan had gone up to one of the staff bedrooms. Joseph was waiting for him. He had plenty of time to prepare the body and strap it to the chair. Then he had at least two hours to get to Winn’s house to free the other hostages. When he got back to the hotel, he waited. Then it was time for the boy who’d been held hostage for the past sixteen years to become the hostage-taker. He waited for Oscar Miller to go down to the Harlingtons’ suite and he followed him. And then show time on the balcony. Once he’d killed Jackson Harlington, he headed down the stairs to retrieve Duncan’s body and get ready to spin him into the elevator. That’s when he ran into you, Stanley.’

  ‘I could have had him, you know, Jon.’

  ‘Less of that,’ reprimanded Aunt Jessie. ‘He almost killed you, Stanley.’

  ‘And after the kitchen, he made his way up to the fortieth floor. He wanted us to know where he was going as he needed Savage to come after him. He knew Savage would have to – if Joseph walked out of the hotel alive, Savage’s life and career were over. The moment Savage saw Michael Duncan spinning in the chair he only had one choice. He had to head up to the pool on his own, as he knew he had to kill Joseph. But Joseph was waiting.’

  ‘What I still don’t understand, Jon, is how he was so well prepared,’ Aunt Jessie said. ‘How did he know his way around the hotel? And where had he been for the last few weeks?’

  ‘Some things we’ll never know, Aunt Jessie,’ said Roscoe, as he thought of the early-morning security footage he had deleted from record to protect Jacqueline. ‘What we do know is Jackson Harlington was a vile man. To be instrumental in what happened to Joseph takes a depth of evil none of us can understand. If he was willing to do that to a boy who was raised as his son, what must he have been doing to his wife and daughter in the years that follow
ed?’

  ‘You’re so right,’ Aunt Jessie agreed. ‘Those poor, poor women.’

  ‘Maybe now their suffering is over and perhaps they can look forward to the future,’ said Roscoe. ‘The plan is to open the hotel in three weeks’ time and there’s a lot of work to be done before then. I hope you’re going to be fit, Stanley? I’m going to need you to be back at full strength.’

  ‘Don’t worry, boss, I’ll be back fitter than ever,’ said Stanley, taking a bite out of his doughnut.

  ‘I could do with some of your powers of recovery,’ laughed Roscoe, turning to Aunt Jessie with a smile. ‘You know what? I think I might have one of those doughnuts.’

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