Three Hours : A Novel (2020)

by Lupton, Rosamund

  Neil’s message said that Mathew is still conscious, that he’s been wounded in the head and foot, but the bullet can’t have hit his head, must have hit something else first, which is lucky, Neil said.

  Still conscious. She’s been holding on to it tightly. Lucky.

  She claps her hands. ‘Luisa and Zac, thunder and lightning, please.’ But Luisa doesn’t move, her camouflaged face pinched into green and brown streaks of anxiety. Her twin, Frank, is in the library and she’s staring at her phone, waiting for him to ring her or reply to her texts.

  Tobias is in Old School too, Neil told Daphne that, and although terrified for him, she’s glad he’s not on his own. Tobias was meant to be playing his flute in tonight’s performance; a soundtrack for the good and noble characters. She and the kids had debated whether Macbeth was allowed a few of Tobias’s flute notes at the beginning of the play, before he’s turned wicked. Later, Tobias’s flute was to have been the soundtrack to the little Macduff boy being murdered.

  Sally-Anne has remained in her position at the locked doors to the glass corridor, phone and nail gun to the ready, determined in spite of everything that the people in Old School will still escape to the theatre; there’s a kind of courage in her hopefulness that Daphne admires but cannot share, because it’s impossible with a gunman in the corridor – a gunman who’s prepared to shoot, who has shot Matthew – for any of them to reach the safety of the theatre.

  ‘We carry on, everybody,’ she says, her voice loud with far more confidence than she feels. ‘We rehearse this play and we do not let the bastards stop us. Okay, everyone? We carry on!’

  A few nods, everyone apart from Luisa looking at her now.

  Still conscious.

  ‘Zac, thunder and lightning, please.’

  Lucky.

  Zac claps his hands, a quietly human noise, not the ear-splitting, heavens-in-outrage thunder, but they could hardly have a loud bang at the moment.

  ‘Witches, please …!’ Daphne calls, because they haven’t heard Zac clapping and have missed their cue or because they’re too shocked to carry on.

  Zac strobes a bright light across the stage for lightning, the same light that Sally-Anne plans on shining into the bastards’ faces if they attempt to storm the theatre.

  Sophie and Tracey walk on to the stage, hunched with upset and fear, poor loves, but the third witch, Antonella, strides out with attitude. All three have goosebumps despite the central heating.

  She can’t see the expressions on their faces because they are wearing black balaclavas. They have black sashes over their hessian tunics, with the Daesh insignia in white; in this production, the witches are terrorists radicalizing Macbeth.

  It was Rafi who asked for them to be called Daesh, the pejorative for Islamic State. She doesn’t know if it was Rafi who had the idea that this was a play about radicalization; a group had come to Daphne with it, excited by the idea. She’d thought it was fantastic. The witches lure Macbeth in and start the corruption of a man into somebody evil. The murders won’t happen for a while yet, all the witches are doing here is planning to meet Macbeth upon the heath, a seventeenth-century dark web.

  Dear God, what if the gunmen actually are Daesh terrorists? And storm in here and see themselves shown as witches? Being portrayed as weird sisters won’t go down well with Daesh.

  Oh for heaven’s sakes, be rational, Daphne. Why would terrorists attack their non-religious school in the middle of the countryside?

  But someone wicked has. Someone has shot Matthew Marr and is terrifying the children and staff in Old School.

  On stage the three girls start the play, shakily at first but gradually sounding less afraid, the nursery-rhyme rhythm of the opening familiar and calming, as if by performing the words and actions they’ve rehearsed they can find a safe space.

  Was the man who shot Matthew a good man once? If so, how was he corrupted? She wants to know what they are up against; the evil they have to contend with.

  Rafi told her once that for him it isn’t Macbeth and Lady Macbeth who are the frightening characters, but First Murderer, Second Murderer, Third Murderer, men without names; unknown killers in the darkness.

  Part Two

  * * *

  To think of time – of all that retrospection,

  To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward.

  Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)

  8.

  9.38 a.m.

  Three miles from the school a helicopter lands on a snow-covered field. It is fifty-three minutes since a gunman fired at the local police officer as he drove towards the school; twenty-two minutes since the head teacher was shot.

  Detective Inspector Rose Polstein gets out of the helicopter, running under the still-spinning blades, snow whirling around her, slapping her face, billowing her dress and hair, stinging her ears. Before she gets into the waiting Land Rover Discovery, she’s sick, attributing nausea to the bucking helicopter journey and morning sickness, not nerves. She puts a mint into her mouth and gets inside the vehicle. Simon Letwynd, working for Bronze Commander, drives her towards the command and control centre near to the school, set up a few minutes ago. She and Letwynd have never met each other. Snow scuds against the windscreen, tyres only just gripping.

  In a major incident, command is structured into bronze, silver and gold tiers, with roles allocated by task not rank. Rose thinks the impersonal metallic system is not only practical but helps foster a sense of rational order being imposed over something chaotic; hard metals a bulwark against unknowable extremes.

  ‘How many children and staff are still in the school?’ she asks. Since getting into the chopper she’s had limited communication.

  ‘Our current information is seventy-one in three locations – Old School, the theatre and the pottery room,’ Letwynd says. ‘Plus one hundred and twenty junior school children, between four and ten years old, hiding under the cliffs on Fulmar beach with ten adults. The beach is accessible only by the school path and by sea. High winds and snow have delayed the rescue boats. We have a helicopter flying over the beach and there’s no sight of a gunman.’

  Letwynd will have been briefed en route to the school as well as during the few minutes after arrival.

  ‘Any change to the situation in Old School?’ she asks.

  ‘The gunman is still in the corridor and hasn’t fired again. The head teacher is badly wounded in the library with thirteen sixth-form students. We’ve been unable to get medical attention to him; paramedics are standing by. There are a further twelve sixth-formers and three members of staff in a classroom further along the corridor and the deputy head, Neil Forbright, on his own in an office on the same corridor.’

  ‘Any kids still missing?’

  ‘Rafi Bukhari, sixteen, and Jamie Alton, seventeen.’

  ‘What about the children in the pottery room?’

  ‘In the middle of woodland. Pedestrian access only. Large glass windows. A class of sixteen seven-year-olds and their teacher. We have no communication with them. Armed teams are on their way to get them out.’

  Rose feels sick again, winds down the window, the icy air blowing against her face although she’s already shivering hard. Take a breath, Rose, for fuck’s sake. Take a breath.

  ‘The rest of the hostages are in the theatre,’ Letwynd says. ‘Twenty-two kids and two teachers.’

  Rose doesn’t correct him, doesn’t say that they are only hostages if the gunmen want to use them as bargaining tools, if the gunmen actually have an interest in keeping them alive.

  She believes an understanding of psychology is crucial in effective police work and eight years ago took time out from the police service to do a degree in psychology, followed by an MSc in investigative forensic psychology at London South Bank University, before rejoining and rising rapidly to Detective Inspector. At thirty-one years old, she’s widely regarded as an exceptional police officer.

  Her role in this attack is to predict what the gunmen are g
oing to do next and help other officers find out who they are, using her expertise both as a detective and as an investigative forensic psychologist.

  ‘The theatre has security doors and no windows,’ Letwynd says. ‘Safest place in the school. The vast majority of students and staff were evacuated from the New School complex, situated near to the main road. There are other outlying small buildings, but they are simply storage sheds and so forth, not occupied apart from the gatehouse, where PC Beard has taken refuge.’

  ‘He’s unharmed?’

  ‘Yes. Just his radio damaged. He spoke to someone in Bronze Command on his mobile. He described the sound of a rifle and said it definitely came from the woods, but he didn’t see the shooter and can’t tell us anything more. The windows in the gatehouse are bricked up so he can’t see anything. He apologized for not being able to help and said not to waste any resources on him. We’ll get someone to his family when we can but we’re already stretched. We’ve told him to stay put in the gatehouse.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘The CCTV camera on the gatehouse was painted over early this morning, so even if we can get hold of the footage it won’t give us anything on the shooter.’

  ‘Do we know what kind of weapon was used to shoot the head teacher in Old School?’

  ‘From Neil Forbright’s description of the sound in the corridor, it was also a rifle.’

  ‘We still only know of two shooters?’

  ‘Yes, the one who was hiding in Old School and another who fired from the woods at PC Beard’s car. Neil Forbright told us that the head was followed through the woods. The timings suggest this gunman shot at the police car and then followed the head. We’ve started searching for him using surveillance drones and helicopters but we’re being hampered by snow and by press and sightseers, who’ve got drones in our airspace.’

  ‘You’re telling them to get the hell out of the way?’

  ‘Less politely. I heard you trained in the States on school shootings?’

  ‘Six months. Always had an interest.’

  A horror, more like, that the same thing could happen here; and with terrorist attacks on the increase in Europe, a fear that a school would be a target.

  ‘Anything on phones?’ she asks.

  ‘We’re working with mobile phone companies, but it’ll take time.’

  ‘And vehicles?’

  ‘We’re using drones to check the school car parks for a vehicle not belonging to staff or sixth-formers.’

  ‘Can we secure the perimeter?’

  ‘We’re attempting to, but it’s huge and open.’

  Her phone rings; it’s Stuart Dingwall, a senior officer in the South West Counter Terrorism Intelligence Unit, a colleague who she knows well and likes.

  ‘We’ll be there in five, Stuart,’ she says. ‘Anything to suggest a terrorist attack?’

  ‘Nothing that’s been on our radar. My team’s been speaking to evacuated teachers and to governors and the school has a robust Prevent policy; they’re all certain that no students have been radicalized.’

  ‘An outside attack?’

  ‘I think it’s a stretch but I’m not discounting it.’

  ‘Anything more on the explosion in the woods?’

  ‘A student saw it and informed the head and deputy head. It sounds rudimentary; a small amount of low-grade explosives. Possibly a pressure-cooker bomb, made from that article, “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom”.’

  The article came out a few years ago and gave any wannabe bomber step-by-step instructions to whip up his or her very own bomb. It could be deadly if the bomber had powerful explosives, but not in this instance.

  ‘If it is a terrorist attack, then it’s not a sophisticated one,’ Stuart continues. ‘A couple of rifles, an ineffectual home-made bomb and some paint on a CCTV camera. It seems amateur.’

  ‘Yeah, let’s hope so.’

  But she feels disquieted because why set off a bomb in the middle of the woods? All it did was alert the police to a possible attack. It doesn’t make sense.

  ‘Something feels off to you?’ she asks Stuart.

  ‘A little, yeah.’

  ‘We’re almost there.’

  Through the driving snow, she sees mast-mounted infra-red CCTV cameras and antennae sticking up from police mobile command and control vehicles. They are parked next to rapid response paramedic vehicles, behind them cars and vans belonging to armed police and counterterrorism. The emergency vehicles have arrived recently, no snow yet accumulated on their roofs and windscreens.

  The emergency drills are paying off in this impressively fast deployment and Rose realizes that the drills are as much about the logistics, how to implement an as-fast-as-humanly-possible response, as about what to do once they’re there.

  ‘Relatives are at a leisure centre five miles away. We have two police officers with them,’ Letwynd says.

  He parks the Discovery and she gets out. ‘You left in a hurry?’ he says, noticing now that she’s wearing a dress without a coat. Because her coat, gloves and scarf are all on a chair in St Michael’s hospital maternity department. There was a ‘Turn Off Your Mobile’ rule, which she’d obeyed, but kept her pager on – nothing about pagers in the rules –

  School attack. A chopper waiting.

  Too urgent and too warm in the hospital to stop and think about her coat; bloody freezing now.

  There are three mobile command and control vehicles next to each other, each with an on-board generator for power, able to receive and view footage from remote deployable static cameras, body-worn cameras, helicopters and UAVs. They have advanced communication systems for instant sharing of data and video.

  The briefing is being held in the first vehicle, occupied by Bronze Command, then Rose and her team will occupy the one on the left-hand side. She guesses the third is for the heads of armed units or counterterrorism, perhaps both.

  While Gold Commander is in overall command and sets the strategy (basically: rescue the kids and staff, arrest the perpetrators, secure and preserve evidence) and Silver Commander is the tactical adviser on how to achieve that, it is down to Bronze Commander to actually implement the plan. Gold Commander and Silver Commander are both off site, but Bronze Commander is the person on the ground and has been assigned officers, including armed officers and specialists.

  As Rose hurriedly walks with Letwynd, she passes the Trojans – BMW SUVs with yellow stickers marking them as armed response vehicles. She can feel the heat from their still-warm engines. Nobody’s inside, their gun safes emptied of Glock pistols, Heckler & Koch assault carbines and SIG Sauer automatic rifles.

  ‘They’re doing a dress rehearsal of Macbeth, apparently, the kids in the theatre,’ Letwynd says.

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How fucking amazing is that?’

  She wonders for a moment how many stories are playing out here simultaneously, connected by time and place.

  A middle-aged black woman, who’s also hurrying towards the command and control vehicles, holds out her hand.

  ‘Dannisha Taylor, hostage and crisis negotiator,’ she says. Rose takes her hand, notices its warmth and strength.

  ‘DI Rose Polstein.’

  Rose opens the door of Bronze Command’s command and control vehicle and they go in.

  *

  It’s almost as cold as outside, snow tracked across the floor. Computer systems are being set up, two screens already operational, the vehicle crowded. Bronze Commander, a man in his fifties with red hair and florid face, sweating despite the freezing weather, is pinning a large plan of Old School up on the wall. Rose, like virtually every other officer, has never met him, doesn’t know his name, but he’ll be referred to by everyone as Bronze Commander, keeping things as simple as possible. He points at the plan of Old School.

  ‘He’s in a long interior corridor with an L-shaped bend. There are no windows or skylights and no other access short of digging a bloody tunnel to him. S
o no way to mount a surprise attack. If we attempt to storm the Old School building, he will have time to open fire before we take him out.’

  So that’s why he chose Old School, Rose thinks, rather than New School which had many more students and staff, because he could seal himself and his captives away from both the road and escape, and from the police.

  ‘Given these facts,’ Bronze Commander says, his hand slapping the plan of Old School on the wall, as if angry with the layout, ‘we only go in if he starts firing.’

  A young woman staring at a monitor, wearing a headset under a hijab, puts a hand up to request silence and everyone falls quiet.

  ‘UAV’s picked up the second gunman,’ she says.

  They cluster round her screen. The picture from the police drone, a UAV, starts fuzzy, snow falling and branches of a tree obscuring part of the image, but she adjusts the digital zoom and the image becomes clearer: a man in army combat fatigues, his face hidden under a black balaclava, pointing a gun. She moves closer in towards the gun; stills will be taken and blown up later, but even at this distance it’s clearly a semi-automatic. The gun is braced against his right shoulder, a finger on the trigger. Ammunition belts are looped around him.

  ‘Move the drone out,’ Letwynd says.

  ‘Jesus,’ someone whispers.

  In front of the gunman is an old brick building with large windows. The pottery room. Half a row of what look like clay tiles have been formed at the bottom of the windows. Someone’s hands are putting in more tiles, crouched down so you can’t see a face. The tiles are protection, Rose realizes, the teacher is trying to protect them. The gunman is standing ten feet or so from the pottery room, his semi-automatic trained at the windows and their soft clay tiles.

  For a few seconds, there is silence in the crowded vehicle; the air seems to alter, to grow damp and heavy.

  ‘The children aren’t visible, they are probably crouched down, perhaps underneath tables,’ Bronze Commander says, ‘but he’s tall and his weapon is powerful. With that trajectory, he can kill them from where he’s standing. We must now assume that the gunman in Old School also has a semi-automatic.’