by Mayo, Simon
There was a brief, shocked silence, followed by scattered, guttural howls. Then came the scraping, the pushing back of a hundred chairs, and Hari lurched forward. For this moment only, the advantage was his.
He rounded the pillar.
He ignored his sisters.
He pushed his grandmother out of the way.
He stabbed Amal Hussain in the neck.
83
EVERYTHING HAPPENED AT ONCE.
Horror. Joy. Terror. Hussain fell against the pillar, his knife clattering to the marble. One hand clawed at the concrete, the other his neck. Deep-red arterial blood seeped between his fingers. Hari kicked his feet away and he slid to the floor.
‘Guess what,’ said Hari in his ear. ‘It was a trick.’
Hari assumed Hussain’s ferocious stare represented rage and humiliation but he didn’t ask. And Hussain couldn’t speak anyway.
His grandmother had scrambled into a crouch where she put arms around her girls. One under each. They looked from Hari to Hussain and back, their gaze unsure where it was safe to rest. The looks of anguish, confusion and surprise played on repeat. Hari dropped to his knees, threw his arms around all three. His head clear, his mind racing, he barely registered the familiar smells of Pears soap and strawberry shampoo. He hadn’t known what he was going to do, didn’t have a plan. But since the glass wall line-up, it had all seemed clear. The real danger was now. If the other citizens saw what he had done, he wouldn’t make it outside. And neither would his family. Somewhere at the back of his thinking he was aware that he’d probably killed a man. But a man who had said he’d kill his sisters. Now, a new clock was ticking.
‘Stay close, Nana, stay close, girls. I’ll get us out.’
Their terrified faces held a thousand questions, but they asked none of them. Three swift nods.
The cathedral rang with screams. A man and a woman on the front row took a few steps forward to help the stricken priest but were pulled back by others. Their sleeves were tugged back with frantic gestures. The priest was dead, his killer wiping the knife on his vestments. So they turned and joined the surge for the exit. Those in the middle of the rows began pushing those on either side to move faster. Some tried to clamber over the chairs, forcing themselves forward. Most fell on top of the people already there, a few fell into gaps. A young woman in a denim skirt shrieked as a flailing man in a bright yellow T-shirt collapsed on top of her, both of them crashing to the ground. A snapping and splintering sound. Wood or bone, it was impossible to tell. The man hauled himself up, the woman curled, arms held over her head, expecting to be crushed. An elderly man with medals pinned to his blazer stooped to help her up but she didn’t respond.
As the crowd surged towards the glass wall, they were confronted with six citizens, arms wide, knives held like swords. The back two rows of the congregation realized the danger first, pushing back against the advancing front rows. The middle rows were crushed. A reddening man in a khaki shirt, head high in the scrum, battered and pushed the shoulders of the man in front, trying to relieve the pressure on his chest. Pushed forwards and backwards, many more lost their footing.
The screams and shouts, magnified by the cathedral’s cavernous walls, reached a new intensity. They all knew now there was a killer behind them and six more in front. On what had become the front line, the mayor, white-faced, had stepped in front of his wife, lifting his chair as a shield against the advancing Kamran. He made a few stabbing gestures with it, like a lion-tamer keeping his beast at bay. But his grip was weak. Kamran kicked the chair from his grasp, hauled him closer by his chain of office, then drove the Böhler into his heart. The mayor fell. Collins took his wife.
The front line stepped back again, regardless of who or what was behind them. Hands and shoulders were grabbed. Shouts of ‘Jesus help us’. Gregor, grinning broadly, slashed at a tall blonde woman. She leant back, pivoting fast. The cut across her chest wasn’t deep but her white blouse flooded red. Before he could follow up, Gregor was floored, crashing to the ground. The white-haired man in the grey robes from the book stall had rugby-tackled Gregor at speed, then followed up with a flurry of punches to his face and neck, the knife spinning away under the chairs. Red Head stepped over, stabbed the cleric three times in the back, then hauled him away. Gregor scrambled to his feet, a nod of thanks to his rescuer.
The old man’s gesture of defiance ignited a fire in some. The American in the blue suit had fought his way to the front of the line. He wore a Stars and Stripes badge in his lapel, held a one-metre brass candlestick in his hand. It had a broad base, an elegant stem and a sharp metal point for securing a candle. He swung hard at Gregor on the forehand, then at Red Head on the return. Both men stepped back then rushed him. The American had to choose: the terrorist who had been tackled by the cleric or the one that had killed him. He managed a savage upward thrust at Red Head, piercing him behind his jawbone, fixing his tongue to the roof of his mouth, before Gregor stuck his Böhler in the American’s gut.
The citizens advanced towards the altar, attacking anyone they found in front of them. Each had their given targets but, in the melee, execution had become an imprecise science. The congregation now broke into three sections; one group of worshippers spilled left, another right. Small groups gathered fleetingly behind each pillar, judging distances, reaching, clasping. As the citizens passed, ones and twos peeled away, sprinting and stumbling for the glass wall and the exit. The third group had to retreat. Faced with four advancing attackers, they walked backwards into the choir stalls. The rabbi, his helpers and the man in the blue kurta were all in this group. Some shouted at their attackers, some cried, most were silent. Gauging the odds, glancing at the flanks, watching the others escape.
Hari hadn’t moved. One arm around his grandmother, the other around his sisters, they held on to the column like a ship’s mast in a storm. He had told them to pray. Their heads were down, his nana was singing quietly. He watched the advancing citizens, and if he leant left, he could watch the posturing Binici. He glanced at Amal Hussain, bleeding out. Gone soon.
There were no rules. Binici had his butcher’s shop and, as he was closest, he worried Hari the most. As soon as he left the altar and walked forward to the choir stalls, he would see the dying Hussain. Second pillar on the left. Just by the little Indian family. The clock was ticking. He looked to the exit, to the glass wall and the now empty steps beyond. An empty thoroughfare. No one moving. Lockdown. Maybe the police were nearby. Maybe they weren’t. He would assume nothing, he would do everything himself if he needed to.
From one of the middle rows, two men and a woman, suits and dungaree shorts, had reached the column in front of Hari. They looked at him, he waved them out. They crawled their way along the aisle. Past the font. Past the kaleidoscope window. Past the book stall. At the last column they dropped flat and moved, commando-style, along the polished marble to the door. They reached it together. They scrambled through. They turned left to the steps and the triumphant angel.
‘We can do that,’ Hari said.
He leant left. Binici wasn’t there.
‘OK, get up,’ he said. Millie looked up a fraction of a second before Amara. Hari managed a smile. ‘We’re going to walk out. Stay close.’ She nodded. The sisters helped their grandmother to her feet.
The old woman took Hari’s hand. Hers were trembling. ‘Take the girls, Hari. I’m too slow.’ Her voice barely a whisper.
Hari shook his head. ‘We’re walking out, Nana. You’re CPI-M. Remember? You’re coming with us.’
He saw some steel return to his grandmother’s eyes. She squeezed his hand, then suddenly pulled it hard. Her eyes, magnified by her glasses, were bright circles of fear.
‘That man,’ she managed.
Hari spun round. Binici had run round the back of the altar and choir stalls. To the east wall. Where he caught sight of Hussain, then Hari, then the girls. Where he changed course. Knife in hand. He pointed it at Hari, his face twisted.
‘So
you’re the fascist!’ he yelled. He marched closer. ‘Traitor and fascist!’ His strides got longer. Each step fuelled his rage.
Hari pushed the girls and his grandmother behind him, reversing into the pillar. The girls were backs to the concrete, his grandmother was back to the girls, Hari was back to his grandmother. He held his knife in both hands. A knife with Hussain’s blood on it. He said nothing. He hoped that dying or dead Hussain, three metres away and lying in his own lake of blood, would speak for him. Give Binici a reason to hesitate. It seemed to work. Binici stared at a glassy-eyed Hussain then turned his head to Hari. His countenance changed again. He lowered his knife.
‘I should kill you for this,’ he said. ‘Gut you like a pig. But, actually?’ He looked again between Hussain and Hari, then nodded slowly, as though impressed by his own reasoning. ‘The boy who killed Amal Hussain? He will have a haunted, terrified and terrible life. So many will want to kill him. There will not be a moment of peace.’ He gestured with his knife. ‘For him, or his family.’
Hari felt his grandmother shaking behind him.
Saw shadows at the glass wall.
84
FAMIE WATCHED FROM the ruins. Hunter and Espie, backs against the cathedral wall, had hesitated. Probably, guessed Famie, at Espie’s suggestion. A few centimetres from the door, they had stopped, their sharply defined shadows falling just shy of the glass wall. Armed response was surely no more than sixty seconds away. There were heavy door slams coming from everywhere, the sounds bouncing around the walls making it impossible to judge numbers or direction. All they had to do was wait. But inside, the screaming continued, and when the glass door crashed open and three people escaped, Famie saw Hunter say some words to Espie. Espie nodded. They went in.
Famie had promised she’d not follow Hunter inside. Both women had known she wouldn’t keep her word. As soon as Hunter threw the glass door open, Famie ran to the top of the steps where Sophie and Sam had been. Jumped down four and crouched.
‘Armed police! Armed police!’ Hunter and Espie’s voices rang out together. Full-throttle, urgent, commanding. Even from outside, up on the steps, theirs were two voices echoing sharply above the fury. They weren’t armed of course, Famie knew that. They had tasers and cuffs, not Heckler & Koch MP5s. But they were disrupters. They would change the story. Famie wondered if she’d met braver women in her life.
Three more terrified escapees ran out. Two had head wounds, the other bled from the thigh. They too ran down the angel steps. Famie wondered if she should direct them some other way – the terrorists had all arrived from there, maybe there were more lying in wait. But what did she know? And why should they trust a stranger outside, when so many were killing inside? She kept quiet.
Hunter and Espie stepped out of Famie’s eye-line and she inched down to the bottom step. The repeated shouts of ‘Armed police!’ seemed to have encouraged those near enough or fast enough to make for the door. Four more now, running, almost tripping. They ran past Famie.
‘How many injured?’ she called after them. They ignored her. Kept running.
Inside, the screams continued. Through the open door she saw three men run towards Hunter and Espie. Both women crouched, fired their tasers. Famie heard the rattle, saw two men fall. The third slowed, dipped, picked up one of the dropped Böhlers. A knife now in each hand, he held his arms wide and advanced on the officers.
From her left, the old graveyard side, Famie at last heard the boots. Heavy steps. Running fast. Three men, black caps, body armour, submachine guns held at the ready. They pulled up just short of the glass wall. They saw Famie together, swung their guns together. She raised her hands, and spoke fast.
‘Famie Madden from IPS! Two officers just went in. They’re under attack. Eight men, all with knives, didn’t see any guns. I’ll back off.’ She stood and ran up the steps.
When she was at the top, she turned. The police were inside. Advancing as a unit, guns raised, more shouts, then they stepped out of her view. A single shot, then two more. Staccato, metallic thuds magnified into small explosions by the extravagant proportions of concrete. More escapees. Sirens. Cars arriving fast now. Three police vans screeched into the car park, two Range Rovers behind. Three more armed officers sprinted to the cathedral door. They took a beat outside the glass door, then ducked inside. More shots.
Famie followed. As she knew she would.
Inside was chaos. Smoky, acrid chaos. Hunter was down, stomach wound, Espie cradling her. Shouting in her radio. The tasered men had been shot in the head. Knocked-over chairs, bodies sprawled over and under them. Famie counted five. Some moving and crying, others silent. The first armed police group edged their way along the right-hand pillars, the second pushed from the left. Fallen orders of service served as stepping stones through the blood.
Beyond the chairs, in front of the choir stalls, the congregation. Corralled. Cowering. Retreating behind the knifemen, who were retreating behind the police. And above them all, a huge tapestry of Christ, now with an arc of blood splatter.
Where are you, Hari?
85
AT THE FIRST police shout, Binici had flinched, ducked. A final look to Hari. ‘This is your doing,’ he snarled.
‘I hope so,’ said Hari.
Binici ran towards the glass wall; Kamran joined him, to his left, Teeth to his right. Two officers, one black, plainclothes, the other white and uniformed, had run to the centre of the nave, lit by the blues and greens of the kaleidoscope window. Seeing the onrushing knifemen, they crouched, then pointed yellow tasers.
Hari’s heart sank. That’s not armed, he thought. That’s pretending to be armed.
The two officers jerked their weapons between the assailants but the gap between them kept closing.
Is that all you have?
The black officer fired first, quickly followed by her uniformed white colleague. The electrodes hit. Kamran and Teeth fell, Binici lunged. The black officer took a knife to her side and fell, the white officer smashed her baton on to Binici’s arm.
She was moving in for a second strike when a man pulled Hari away from the pillar, grabbing his shoulders. The man in the kurta. Fifty, maybe older. Shaved head, light brown skin, a trimmed, short white beard. Pained eyes. He stepped back, wary of the Böhler. He took in the twins, the old woman and the dead man.
‘Who are you with?’ he said. A hoarse, urgent whisper.
‘I’m with my family,’ said Hari. ‘And I’m with you.’
Another look at the girls. The despairing eyes of the old woman. ‘Then come with me. All of you.’ And he ran, looping back around the choir stalls.
Hari stuck the knife in his belt, grabbed his grandmother’s hand, then Millie’s. Amara took her grandmother’s other hand. One more look at Binici fighting the white policewoman and they followed the man in the kurta. They dropped a step. They were beyond the altar, at the foot of the tapestry. A small chapel had been constructed behind three-metre-high black steel bars. Another altar, lower, smaller, more humble. Twenty chairs and piles of kneelers. A bronze statue of Mary. A sign in a wooden frame that said ‘Lady Chapel’. A small gate to allow access. And behind the bars, at least fifty terrified, silent souls.
Those that could, sat or lay on the floor. Standing, you could look over the high altar, through the nave and out to the glass wall and steps. See and be seen. Sitting, you saw bars. You disappeared.
Three women instantly recognized Hari. Pointing. Stage whispers. ‘He’s one of them! Keep him out!’ They pushed back from the bars. ‘He still has a knife!’
Hari raised his hands. ‘I came with them, but I am not with them. I am here to protect my family.’
The man in the kurta pushed the gate open, ushered them all inside, then turned a large brass key. ‘He killed one of them. Maybe he can protect us.’
‘Or maybe he’ll kill us all!’ said a woman, her voice straining.
‘I am with you!’ Hari urged again. Then, to a sceptical-looking couple in his path, ‘You
must believe me!’
They held on to each other, kept their distance as well as they could.
The rabbi and his helpers were there, sitting on the embroidered cushions, praying. Around them, agitated men and women listened. Any silence managed to be both encouraging and ominous. Cries and crashes were all greeted with fear and flinching. Others were on phones, whispering teary messages. One of the women who had hissed at Hari was now saying goodbye on hers. All of them looked at him with troubled, fearful faces. Millie, Amara and the old woman were pushed straight to the back. Here the tapestry reached the floor, its thick weave in blocks of green and yellow, divided by a crucified Christ in greys and blacks. There was a small gap between tapestry wall and the altar. They sat with their backs to the tapestry, their feet against the concrete altar.
Hari glanced at the bars. They were wider at the base, tapering to an elegant, flattened top. Decorative certainly but strong. Bolted together. A surprising sanctuary. They were climbable but the assailants, when they came, would have to work together. He knew Kamran and Teeth were down, Hussain obviously, Binici possibly. They all knew he had a Böhler. Maybe they wouldn’t bother with these people in their cage.
He found the man in the kurta. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘When we’re out of here, I’ll tell you what happened.’
The man almost smiled. ‘One day then,’ he said.
There were shots. Deafening in the confined space.
Not a taser, thought Hari. Not this time. Come and get us.
But the running steps and shouted instructions that followed did not belong to the police. Hari gripped the knife again, stepped back from the bars. He knew he should drop to the floor or hide behind the altar but for a crazy second he thought it cowardly, and then it was too late. The voice he recognized was Gregor’s, and seconds later he and Collins ran in front of the bars. They pulled up fast, saw Hari immediately. Gregor looked momentarily confused but Collins got it straight away. Her eyes narrowed, her blood-splattered face turned predatory.