‘Your daughter is the older boy’s girlfriend, isn’t that right?’ a woman asks.
‘Yes, she is,’ Hannah’s father says. ‘And I didn’t like that, not one bit, I’ll admit that because what father likes his daughter having a boyfriend, if we fathers are honest? But if it has to be someone, I’m glad it’s Rafi, and that’s what I’m going to tell her. When this is over.’
‘So, she’s safe, your daughter, then, he’s not going to shoot her, is he?’
‘My daughter’s in a class with Rafi and she likes him,’ another father says. ‘So, I don’t think it’s those boys. But it could be connected to them. ISIS or ISIL or Islamic State, whatever the hell they’re called, they could’ve found out that the school took them in and now our children are being punished. Like a country who takes in refugees, it makes you a target.’
‘But how would ISIS even know?’ a mother asks.
‘There was that article in the local paper, wasn’t there? When Matthew Marr went to the Dunkirk camp. And when the brothers came to our school.’
‘And that goes online. So, they’d find out that way,’ a mother says.
‘And then they could’ve looked into the school further, found out about the smoking and drinking and sex, and they wouldn’t like that.’
‘None of us like that,’ a father says. ‘But it’s what teenagers tend to get up to.’
‘But ISIS punish people for unmarried sex and for drinking, don’t they?’ a mother asks. ‘For not being modest even, for not covering up.’
‘Here, nobody minds what the girls wear,’ another mother says. ‘I mean, in the summer, their clothes are really skimpy …’
‘And the school has gay staff and nobody minds, but they’d mind,’ a father says. ‘They kill men for that.’
‘We felt so pleased with ourselves, didn’t we?’ a mother says. ‘For choosing this school. For our liberal values.’
‘Always said that lax was the word for it,’ a suited father says. Next to him, a much younger woman in jeans, second marriage, Beth guesses, puts her hand on his arm but he continues. ‘Girls in ridiculously short skirts, boys in whatever they like too, transgender and gays all at the school. In your face. It would antagonize them.’ His young wife tries to intervene, but he shakes her arm away from him. ‘If the school had made them obey a few rules of normal decency, Charlotte would be safe.’
* * *
In the theatre, despite the kids’ faces being camouflaged in case they have to hide in a hurry, and the gunman being only a few hundred metres away, they are miraculously rehearsing. And yes, lines are being fluffed, cues are missed, but it’s as if the kids are holding on to this one strand of continuing normality with Daphne prompting and encouraging and keeping the rehearsal on track.
Sally-Anne is still at her place by the foyer doors, standing guardian with her nail gun, in case everyone in Old School can run down the corridor to safety; as if that is still possible.
The actors are starting tedious dialogue about Norwegians but Daphne’s grateful for tedious Norwegians and dreads the violence that’s coming. Why hadn’t she chosen a different play? A comedy. A musical. Oliver would be fantastic right now, all that ensemble singing and dancing, but no, she’d pushed for Macbeth. And not only because Rafi Bukhari had brought his father’s copy from Syria but had never seen it performed – not only that, as she’d made clear to the committee deciding on the annual school production, no, not just that; she’d thought they should do this play because of its universal themes which every young person should have as part of their cultural heritage. Yes, she’d spouted all that utter claptrap. What universal themes, for heaven’s sakes? Murder, tyranny, terror? Which of them, apart from Rafi and Basi, had any of those things as a theme in their lives?
Sophie, Antonella and Tracey, her three witches, are waiting in the wings. The girls have taken off their balaclavas and their sashes with Daesh insignia. It’s not imaginative any more to portray the witches as Daesh terrorists because what if it is Daesh attacking the school? The girls in their sashes would be murdered first. And if the gunmen are Daesh but can’t get in – the theatre’s mercifully solid walls and security doors – then they don’t want to imagine, more than they have to, the terror in Old School.
The three girls are waiting for Zac to hit a gong for thunder, a compromise between an inappropriately loud bang and an inadequate handclap, but Zac doesn’t do anything, is just sitting there, holding his phone. Daphne claps her hands loudly and the witches go on to the stage. Sophie and Tracey are taking their cue from Antonella and no longer huddle, but are attempting to stand tall; good for you, girls.
As they begin their lines, Daphne goes to Zac at the back of the auditorium. Luisa is next to him and she can hear their argument as she approaches.
‘I hadn’t even noticed he wasn’t here,’ Zac says. ‘Not till his mum phoned me the first time.’
‘But why’s she asking you?’ Luisa asks.
‘Are you all right, Zac?’ Daphne asks him.
‘Jamie’s mum hasn’t heard from him; keeps texting me in case I have.’
‘But he was in the CDT room in New School,’ Daphne says. ‘He was evacuated.’
‘No. He didn’t get to New School. Nobody knows where he is.’
Daphne feels terror for Jamie.
‘He’ll have heard the siren,’ she says, because surely he would have done, the racket it made, enough to wake the dead, he must have heard it. ‘So, he did what he’s meant to do, which is hide. And that’s what he’ll be doing now.’
‘You’re meant to tell,’ Zac says. ‘You’re meant to hide then tell. He should have phoned, said he’s okay.’
‘Maybe he doesn’t have his phone on him or it’s out of charge,’ Daphne says, comforting herself as much as Zac, but it’s not working because she still feels terror for Jamie and guilt because she should have known this before, should have been worrying about him all this time, even if worry doesn’t do any good.
‘Why’s Jamie suddenly your responsibility?’ Luisa asks Zac. ‘I mean, what are you supposed to do about it?’
Since hearing about Frank in the library Luisa has hardly spoken but it’s as if possessiveness of Zac animates her.
‘He was my friend,’ Zac says. ‘And hey, mission accomplished, he’s not any more or I’d know where he is, I’d know if he’s okay.’
Luisa looks startled. Zac has never called her out on it before, but Daphne had noticed the countless small slights that a couple can inflict on a former friend who isn’t wanted by one of them. Jamie had been stoic and sad, just getting more anxious about his props.
‘It wasn’t me,’ Luisa says. ‘Victor was the reason you stopped hanging out. Because of that thing at the after-party at Easter.’
It astonishes Daphne that even with this happening, Luisa can think about some teenage drama at a party. Zac seems equally taken aback.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ he says to her. ‘We’ve got a fucking gunman in the school, Jamie’s mum can’t get hold of him and neither can I and you’re worried about whose fault it is I’m not friends with him? About some stupid thing months ago?’
Luisa looks shocked; Zac never gets angry, never shouts. ‘Victor left ages ago,’ Zac continues. ‘And I knew Jamester was lonely but still didn’t … Should have been a better friend.’
‘Frank hasn’t emailed me for ten minutes,’ Luisa says; the twin whose nerdiness used to embarrass her. They sit stiffly side by side, then Zac puts his arm around her and she leans a fraction into him.
On stage the witches continue.
FIRST WITCH Here I have a pilot’s thumb,
Wrecked as homeward he did come.
THIRD WITCH A drum, a drum;
Macbeth doth come.
Oh hellfire, Daphne thinks, the tedious Norwegians have finished and the violence is about to start; a spreading evil that leads to children being murdered and men not being able to walk at night, and the world turning dark even in daylight
.
10.
9.58 a.m.
A police surveillance drone, with a live feed to a screen in Rose Polstein’s command and control vehicle, keeps watch on the gunman outside the pottery room. Their teacher is still putting in her clay tiles. It’s been an hour and thirteen minutes since a gunman shot at the police car, forty-two minutes since the head teacher was shot, and no more shots have been fired. The gunman in Old School continues to walk up and down the corridor. There has been no more communication with the BBC or anyone else.
‘Why aren’t we just going in there and rescuing the kids?’ Thandie asks. ‘Why the hell aren’t we doing that?’ Energetic, athletic and impatient, Rose bets Thandie regularly goes to a gym and beats the hell out of a punchbag.
The answer: because the gunmen threatened to shoot the children if they see police and there are still drones above the school. They must wait until the gunmen cannot watch them from the sky and even then there are no guarantees.
Because looking at the plan of Old School, which they all have, the corridor has no windows or skylight to surprise him and take him out before he can open fire; because the windows in the library and English classroom are too small for the kids to escape through; because he almost certainly has a semi-automatic and if the police storm the building, how many will he kill?
And because the children in the pottery room have no means of escape, are corralled into a single place with large windows, and he most definitely has a semi-automatic pointed at them. The police marksmen will have to shoot a part of his brain, the medulla oblongata, so there’s no involuntary muscle movement and he can’t press the trigger; but the medulla oblongata is only 3 cm by 2 cm. The marksmen have to get closer, and they can’t, not yet, not until they know they’re not being watched.
And because the safest way for this to go would be a negotiation so that the captives are set free, unharmed.
‘We have our job and we leave the armed units and everyone else to do theirs,’ Rose says to her. ‘We have to trust in their skills and experience; trust they know what they’re doing; that’s how this has to work.’ Jesus, she’s turned into her former boss, who was a patronizing bastard, but it’s true. ‘We have our own job to do,’ she repeats.
In order to predict what the gunmen are going to do next, and whether they can negotiate, they need to know who the gunmen are. A list of suspects with a grudge is being winnowed down – anybody the police have been able to speak to, anyone who is definitely not at the school – and they are left with three names: Jed Soames, the disgraced former PE teacher, and the two expelled sixth-formers, Malin Cohen and Victor Deakin.
Detective Constable George Hail ends a phone call with other officers who are working off site. George is less nervous now, his round face almost pink again as he’s got stuck into the job.
‘Jed Soames has been found at his ex-wife’s. Malin Cohen’s mother said he was at work in the local café, but he’s not there and hasn’t shown up for the last two weeks. There’s a girlfriend they’re trying to track down and an incident in the States that’s being checked out.’
‘Thanks, George. And Victor Deakin?’ Rose asks.
‘He isn’t at college but his first class isn’t for another ten minutes. They can’t get hold of his parents. His mother has a Mini convertible. There’s a Mini convertible parked in Junior School car park.’
‘They’re making the Mini a priority?’ Rose asks.
‘Yes.’
But it could easily belong to a member of staff. Throw a stick at a car park and it probably hits a Mini or falls on to the convertible roof.
Police drones are photographing number plates in the school car parks and the surrounding area, but nearly all are partly or fully hidden by snow and slush; maybe they’ll get lucky and get a partial match.
But the attack might not be motivated by a personal grudge. The more Rose has found out about this school, with its strikingly liberal ethos, the more she’s feared it could be a target for terrorists.
‘Amaal, did you find anything significant in today’s date?’
‘Not yet. I’m checking lesser-known nut-job anniversaries.’
‘We’ve got through to Rafi Bukhari, the boy who saw the explosion,’ Thandie says to her. ‘He’s in the woods.’
‘Thanks.’ She takes the phone, puts it on loudspeaker.
The sound of the wind howling through trees; she thinks she can hear branches creaking and she feels the disconnect between herself with her screens and her computer, her bottle of mineral water, the safe interior of this purpose-built vehicle, and what is happening outside.
‘Rafi, my name is Rose Polstein. Are you okay?’
‘Fine.’
‘You saw the explosion in the woods earlier?’ she asks.
‘Yes.’
‘Did you see anyone?’
‘No. But I didn’t look.’
A loud gust of wind and it’s hard to hear him.
‘Rafi?’
‘I just ran.’
‘Do you think someone could have been hiding?’
‘Maybe.’
The bomber could have been hiding close by and used a garage door opener or key-fob to detonate the bomb. Or he might have been nowhere near the woods, the bomb being detonated with a timer; an alarm clock or a kitchen timer would do it.
‘Do you know if Hannah Jacobs is safe?’ He sounds very young to Rose. ‘Are junior school on the boats? Please, I have to know.’
‘Junior school are getting on to the boats now and we’re flying a helicopter over the beach to keep them safe. I’ll let you know when they’re away. I don’t know about Hannah, I’m sorry.’ The identity of the captives is not her area of responsibility; her task is to help find the identity of the gunmen, help negotiate and predict what they are going to do.
‘Sorry. Gotta go,’ Rafi says to her.
She guesses it’s because she’s answered the only two questions that matter to him, and because he’s saving precious charge on his phone.
‘Be careful,’ she says, about to add more, but he’s hung up and in the sudden quiet she feels that she is skimming surfaces, gleaning information and imposing rational thought, but far from the heart of what is happening here.
* * *
Rafi is running and phoning Hannah again, each time the same vertiginous desperation that she’ll answer him, but again she doesn’t. She’s run out of charge, that’s all, or she saw it was him and doesn’t want to talk to him, because she hates him for abandoning her; hopefully that’s why. He rings her landline, because maybe she’s safely at home by now and the landline won’t show it’s him so she’ll pick up. The answerphone clicks on. Not at home.
As he runs on towards Old School, the gatehouse now in sight through the trees, the wind drops for a few moments and he hears the rustle of an anorak. His rational mind that’s paid attention in therapy says Fuck’s sake! It’s just your PTSD!, but the frightened part of him that hasn’t paid any attention tells him to run and he races to the gatehouse, a hundred feet away through the woods.
Spruce trees have grown right up against the back wall of the gatehouse and he squeezes between the wall and the trees; his heart’s pounding away like a punk band drummer and his chest’s going in and out like a demented pigeon’s and then he sees a fishbone pattern of bricks in the back wall and it calms him that over a hundred years ago a person built this detail. In Arabic, Daesh sounds like the word to crush and trample; builders and architects are the absolute opposite of Daesh.
He’s listening, but the wind’s picked up again and around him everything’s creaking and rustling, too noisy to hear an anorak. There’s a CCTV camera on the gatehouse wall; he can just see yellow paint under the covering of snow.
He edges round the gatehouse and sees a police car skewed at an angle to the side of the drive. The windscreen has a bullet hole and around it are thousands of cracks, like dense spiders’ webs, clouding the glass, but he can just make out that the car is empty. The
police officer is probably inside the gatehouse. It’s safe in the gatehouse, thick walls and no glass windows. Like the theatre. That would be the safest place to go to. Hannah would think to go there. She’s sensible, she’d think to do that. Benny was doing the dress rehearsal this morning.
He phones Benny. After two rings Benny answers.
‘Rafi? You okay, bro’?’ He hears the warmth in his best friend’s voice and then other people in the background and Benny saying, ‘It’s Rafi!’, and people are calling out to him, saying, ‘You on a boat, Rafi?’, ‘You’ll miss your cue, bro’!’, ‘Hey, Rafi, you’re missing the fucking dress rehearsal.’ But they all sound frightened.
‘While you’re on your boat trip, we’re rehearsing Macbeth,’ Benny says.
‘Is Hannah there?’ he asks, no time to explain about not getting on a boat.
But Benny can’t hear him over the wind and he has to shout, ‘Is Hannah there?’ and he’s afraid that the man after him, who isn’t even real, will hear him shout.
‘No, she’s not. Sorry.’
‘D’you know where she is?’
‘No. You okay?’
‘Yeah. Gotta go.’
She could still be on her way home. Who’d know? Her first lesson was English and Charlotte does English too and he has her number in his contacts so he texts Charlotte.
It’s Rafi, do u know where Hannah is?
Moments later Charlotte texts back.
Am in Mrs Kale’s classroom but she’s not here. Think in library w Ed Frank & other people
In Old School. In the library. Not safe. He sprints through the falling snow towards Old School.
Before his father and brother were murdered he didn’t think someone he loved could die, as if him loving them meant that couldn’t happen, even in Syria with bombs exploding and evil let loose, even there. After it happens, you know there’s a price tag attached that’s unpayable so you don’t love anyone new. But he’d thought in England it was safe to fall in love.
Three Hours : A Novel (2020) Page 12