West End Lane

Prologue

Usually West End Lane is a peaceful street with Victorian style houses and happy families in West Hampstead, London. Even though it is essentially not a suburb but a part of the inner boroughs of London, there is something quite suburban about it. When you walk down the street it feels like you have left behind the noise and congestion of the city to breathe fresh air in open spaces. Maybe if one ever flies over the area, for the sake of a bird’s eye view of the city, the houses, cars and people hurrying along their way on the street would just seem plain, common and normal to an everyday English setting.

But this particular day the traffic had been held up. Honking could be heard down by the tube platform. Loud sirens and policemen speaking using large mikes accompanied this. The narrow West End Lane was unbearably crowded. Especially, at one particular place.

Samantha Russell was shivering in the left corner of the room. She was scared out of her wits. But so were the other three people sitting near her. Julia Brown was shifting her gaze swiftly from the door to the people around her with a frenzied look in her eyes and Aashish Kapoor was fidgeting with his fingers sitting across her. Mary Taylor on the other hand was staring blankly at the wall in front of her fighting back tears. Or at the most, trying to.

All the other people in the room, who were the employees, were made to sit at the other end of the room.

The atmosphere in the room was quite silent compared to the commotion going on outside. The only noise in the room attributed to the voices of two men who could only speak loudly. Or so it seemed.

One of the two men looked worried. He was trying to find an appropriate solution to the problem he had gotten himself into and at that moment an idea seemed to occur to him. He screamed something to his accomplice and after exchanging a few words managed to acquire the approval he was hoping to get.

The four people in the left corner stared at the screaming men in horror as one came towards them and pointed his gun at one particular person.

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