Three Hours : A Novel (2020)

by Lupton, Rosamund

  He reaches Old School and crouches down. The friendly building has turned hostile, the shuttered windows looking blankly back, the bricks rough against his cheek, a gargoyle mocking him as he stoops beneath it.

  He hears a twig snap. Above him, brick dust falls with the snow so that the snow is turned orange. The wall has been shot at; he’s been shot at.

  And his rational mind says, Fuck’s sake! It’s not a bullet hole, it’s just a crumbly old building is all, and you just imagined a twig snap because there are no fucking twigs here, just like there was no man in an anorak. You are highly stressed and hypervigilant and paranoid with delusions.

  And his fearful, irrational PTSD self tells him to run again and already he’s running, around to the side of the building. There’s a PE equipment shed, next to the side wall of Old School; a gap just wide enough for him to hide.

  * * *

  Inside Matthew Marr’s head, a rising tide takes away memories and he is trapped on a spit of land. He knows that he recognized the gunman in the corridor, but his name has washed out to the encroaching sea, a sea that is blood or cerebral fluid, pieces of medals and bones on the sea floor.

  The gunman spoke one word and that word explained everything but the sea has covered it over.

  High above him, a kite without a string, is a single brightly coloured memory of the day with a china-blue sky, Old School bright with clematis, the call of a pied flycatcher, and the answer is here on this day but he cannot take hold of it.

  The children in the pottery room are in danger, but he no longer knows the reason. He tries to ask Hannah, bending down close to him, but he cannot form the words. He thinks he hears a helicopter.

  Through a gap in the shutters lights from a helicopter slice into the library, and Frank thinks that help must be coming, but then the lights go and they are in almost darkness again. As the sound of the helicopter fades they can hear the footsteps. Frank’s mobile is down to 3% charge and they’ve agreed to use it only for an emergency now.

  At the back of the library Tobias has his earphones on, his hands held tightly over his earphones as if he can double-block out what’s going on as he rocks to and fro. Tobias is different from all of them, has been since Reception. They’re all protective of him. Esme puts her hand on Tobias’s to comfort him, but he flinches and she takes her hand away.

  Mr Marr’s face is paper white and his eyes keep closing, like he’s finding it really hard to stay conscious, and then he forces them open again. Hannah and Ed are next to him. The ambulance people are emailing them what to do, but she isn’t sure it’s helping. Sometimes he makes sounds, like he’s trying to speak, but no one can understand.

  Their friends in the English classroom along the corridor feel like they could be a mile away. They have three adults with them and no one is hurt and everyone has phones and Jacintha is reading them poetry. She has typed up poems and sent them to Frank’s laptop, as if poetry can help; maybe it can but not when your headmaster is so badly injured and so close to you, at least it can’t help Frank right at this moment. The people in the English classroom have desks to barricade the door, not tables that are fixed to the floor with old Victorian bolts.

  His phone rings and he doesn’t recognize the number so he answers, in case it’s the police, in case it’s help on the way.

  The wind in the background is really loud and it takes a few moments before Frank can hear Rafi talking to him. And he’s annoyed because Rafi is not the police and is using up charge and how did he even get his number? And then he hears what Rafi’s saying. He’s not on a boat being evacuated to safety, like everybody thought, but is at the back of Old School looking for Hannah; of course he is, all chivalrous in shining armour, winning his spurs in the stories of old, and Hannah will be so amazed and thrilled and he’s the person that has to tell her that her boyfriend is in fact a knight.

  ‘Hannah, it’s Rafi on the phone. He’s looking for you. He’s outside Old School.’

  He said it all kind of deadpan but everyone turns, though it’s not him they’re looking at with amazement, it’s Rafi, who obviously can’t see them, but Frank can.

  ‘Tell him I’ve been evacuated,’ Hannah says. ‘Tell him I’m safe.’

  Oh, it’s all too fucking selfless. No, untrue, unfair. He’s jealous, is all. Jealous, jealous, jealous; and it’s not just of Rafi making Hannah glow like that – seriously, she’s glowing like she could take off, like she’s got rocket fuel burning inside her – no, it’s jealousy that you could be brave like that, like Hannah and Rafi. Do people who are going to be heroic have a kind of radar for one another before they actually prove it, because what are the chances of the two of them being like this?

  ‘Hannah has been evacuated,’ he says to Rafi, who thanks him, sounding so happy, and then he hangs up; 2% charge left now.

  Though clearly Rafi was already heroic because he brought his little brother from Syria to England when he was only fourteen, all those awful things that they had to escape, which he hardly ever talks about but they all know it was bad. He’s crying now, for Rafi, because putting his nasty jealousy to one side, Rafi is really great and he’s had a terrible time and he does things like put everybody’s phone numbers into his contacts, because he’s friendly to everyone, and then some arsehole shit-face gunman is probably going to kill the girl he loves, who he’s come back for, is probably going to kill all of them, has already badly wounded Mr Marr who was the person who rescued Rafi in the first place.

  He didn’t tell Rafi about Mr Marr, just couldn’t. Crying too because he’s afraid and isn’t a hero and because he can never make Hannah glow like that and if he dies today then he’ll never have the chance to become braver and better and meet a girl a bit like Hannah and make her look like she’s got rocket fuel burning inside her.

  * * *

  The wild relief is energizing and Rafi is standing, wanting to run, shout – She’s alive! Safe! He’ll go to the theatre and be with his friends – Fuck! Join in the rehearsal! He remembers when all he and Basi had in the world, which was basically his pocket, was fifty euros, a laser pointer and his dad’s battered copy of Macbeth, treasured because it belonged to Baba and because it was where they were going, the land of Shakespeare, so it was a double talisman.

  She’s safe, she’s safe, she’s safe!

  There’s a direct route from here to the theatre, but even forgetting his phantom PTSD pursuer, the psychotic illusion in his head who snaps invisible twigs, he might be spotted by the real gunman in Old School.

  The woods aren’t far from here and there’s a small winding path through the trees which comes out at the back of the theatre. There’s a fire-exit door and his friends will let him in.

  He hears the sound of a helicopter and he sprints to the woods, hoping that the helicopter will be a distraction if the gunman looks outside. Glancing up through the snow, he sees the yellow POLICE flash on the helicopter. Snow eddies and whirls around the helicopter, and for a moment it twists round and round in the sky as if it’s losing control, and then it rights itself.

  He reaches the woods and the trees feel safe to him, hiding him. His phone buzzes – a text from Detective Inspector Rose Polstein.

  Junior school safely evacuated on boats. Where you should be. When this over expect bollocking.

  Find somewhere to hide and stay there till we can get to you. For that bollocking.

  He loves this police officer, this Rose Polstein, for telling him, for keeping her word, as if it’s her doing that Basi is now safe.

  He tries to ring Basi but it goes straight through to message. Maybe there’s no reception on the boat or he’s run out of charge because he’s been feeding all the animals that live inside his phone. For once he agrees with Mr Lorrimer that Basi should only use his phone for emergencies, but for Basi his animals are an emergency.

  He sends him a text:

  I love u

  This evening, when everything is safe – because this is England and things wi
ll be safe again, safe is the normal everyday here – he’ll read Basi a story as usual. He imagines Basi sitting on his lap, the comfortable warmth and weight of him, and he’ll tell him that he knew Miss Price would look after him, and the other teachers and the coastguards, the police, everyone. People to fear in other countries, who’d set dogs on them and beaten them and stopped their boat from landing, weren’t like that in England. He knew people would take care of Basi; that’s why they’d risked so much to try and get to England; that’s why Rafi could leave him.

  He’ll text Rose Polstein when he gets to the theatre, tell her that he’s okay.

  Snow is falling more heavily, covering everything white, and the woods look beautiful to Rafi. Even when he imagined his phantom pursuer earlier he felt safe in the woods, the trees protecting him, but Hannah is afraid of them.

  ‘Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood – all English people are scared of woods.’

  ‘What about when you got older? “Lord of the Rings”?’ he’d said. ‘Cool trees.’

  ‘Not trees, Ents who speak Entish.’

  ‘“Game of Thrones”?’

  ‘Fucking weird trees with faces.’

  ‘Shakespeare’s comedies. You can be a different gender in the woods.’

  He remembers Hannah’s eyes as she smiled and nodded, her long shining hair falling in front of her face. He’s told her Syrian folk tales and she’s told him her fairy tales, and they sound completely crazy, both sets, when told to the other, and no wonder she’s afraid of woods – little children being abandoned and following breadcrumbs, a cannibal witch with children in a cage, a wolf waiting on the path.

  This morning they’d met up before school started, like every other morning, to go for a walk in the woods, because they wanted to be alone together, although Hannah says alone together is an oxymoron, and they’d lost track of time and had to run and then it had started to snow.

  He hasn’t tried phoning Hannah again because he just wants to be happy that she’s safe; because that is enough.

  * * *

  In the leisure centre cafeteria, Beth Alton has one hand holding on to the edge of the Formica table, as if she needs to keep hold of something, everything physically precarious, her other hand holding her phone that Jamie doesn’t ring.

  The large room around her has come more into focus. On the far side, at the tables of junior school parents, a mother tries to rock a baby to sleep, her movements jerky; a father has a toddler on his lap who’s watching cartoons on an iPad, headphones much too big for him. It’s only when she sees how young the junior school mothers and fathers are that she realizes how long ago it was since Jamie and Theo were that age; since she was. It goes in a blink, she wants to say to them, warn them, all of it, just a blink.

  The older male police officer asks a group of junior school parents to go with him. Beth watches them leave the room, footsteps springy with relief. She assumes that these elect parents have children who are now safely evacuated, what other reason could there be for them to leave? Elect, why did she think that? As if there was some kind of Calvinist salvation and the cafeteria is purgatory. Do Calvinists believe in purgatory? Or is that just a Catholic thing? She absolutely believes in purgatory now, knows first-hand all about purgatory, and it has a linoleum floor and Formica tables and no windows and a phone that doesn’t ring. Doesn’t ring.

  Calvin, Mum? Really?

  His voice is smiling and it feels so real that for a moment he’s here in this terrible place.

  At the table next to Beth there are two mothers who are clearly friends, clutching at each other’s hands, both manicured, so that their long shiny nails in different bright colours interweave, their faces pale. She can’t hear what the dark-haired woman is saying, but she catches ‘Antonella’ a few times; so, she is Antonella’s mother. She feels fury, hot and urgent, with this manicured woman as if it’s her fault her daughter broke up with Jamie. Wrong. Wrong. She just wishes Jamie was still in love and happy, so that he’d have that to hold on to while this terrible thing is happening.

  Steve, the young man, holding his mobile, raises his voice: ‘My fiancée is on one of the boats with the children, they’ve got away.’

  The room quietens instantly, as if for a moment it’s all their children who are safely on boats. And then questions erupt from junior school parents whose children are on the boats, and the parents whose children are still in danger feel the contrast.

  ‘Milly’s terrified of the sea,’ a young mother says, crying.

  ‘They’re being very well looked after,’ the woman police officer says. ‘The boats are very stable and they’re all wearing life jackets. The lifeboat men will take good care—’

  ‘We never go on seaside holidays,’ the mother says. ‘We go to the Dordogne. There’s a river and Milly likes rivers and she’s been canoeing with the school on an inlet, but the sea really frightens her.’

  Beth doesn’t want to listen; doesn’t want to feel blazing outrage that this woman can be talking about her Dordogne holiday and canoeing when Jamie is hiding and in danger.

  You worry too much about me, Mum, you really do.

  I know. You’re right. But now I am really worried and it makes all those other times seem so stupid.

  Worrying that his ex-girlfriend, this Antonella, had broken his heart, and him being lonely and too shy and not confident, and none of those things matter to her, not one bit. And never will again.

  11.

  10.10 a.m.

  The police still do not know if the gunmen intend to make demands and negotiate or if they are waiting for a yet larger audience, perhaps for more countries around the world to wake up and follow the siege (siege the word being used by the media).

  Four drones, all operated by off-site amateurs hoping to cash in by selling photos, malfunctioned because of the snow and crashed to the ground; but there may be more above the school. A severe weather warning has been issued; the storm is closing in with blizzarding snow and strong winds which will hamper the search. It will also make flying helicopters virtually impossible and impact their hunt for a possible third gunman.

  Hopefully, there’s no third attacker to be found and Rafi is safe. But Rose will keep her word and give him a bollocking when this is over for not being evacuated with junior school, for adding to the stress of their job, for being so bloody inconsiderate. Do you have to be sixteen to be so idiotically, wonderfully courageous like that? She wonders if she or Jonny would leave safety and return to face a gunman on just the supposition that the other might be in danger. She thinks that they would, but it’s hardly likely to ever be put to the test. Jesus, Rose, focus.

  Stuart Dingwall, senior officer in counterterrorism intelligence, comes on the line.

  ‘Rose? Stuart. One of our surveillance UAVs found the remains of the bomb and sent us footage. It’s pretty much covered in snow but there’s enough to confirm our guess that it was a pressure-cooker bomb; but not powerful. Two teachers heard it and thought it was firecrackers. A girl on TV said she thought it was a bonfire and a pigeon scarer. What I don’t understand is why set it off in the first place? Do you have any idea? Because logically I can’t think of a reason.’

  Rose has wondered that too, because apart from Rafi, it didn’t frighten anyone, if that’s what it was meant to do; all it did was alert the school and the police. But she now believes the woods were significant.

  ‘I think the school was meant to go into lockdown,’ she tells Stuart. ‘The bomb made the woods appear dangerous so that the decision was made not to evacuate children and staff through the woods but to stay inside school buildings. One gunman was already hiding in Old School. I think that the other gunman, who shot at PC Beard from the woods and then followed Mr Marr through the woods, wanted to reinforce the idea that the woods were too dangerous for the children and staff to go into. Again, he was keeping everyone inside buildings; corralling them inside.’

  ‘And junior school would have bee
n a soft target if they’d stayed inside their building.’

  ‘Exactly. Pure bad luck for the bombers that it was Rafi Bukhari who saw the small explosion and knew what it was and got junior school evacuated; probably the only person in the school who’d do that. But I don’t think our bomber necessarily banked on it being seen by anyone – it’s a large woodland, and classes were about to start so most people would’ve been inside.’

  ‘But if nobody saw the explosion, shooting at PC Beard from the woods would make the point that the woods were dangerous.’

  ‘Yes. I think the explosion may be part of some kind of game we don’t yet understand, that links to the rifles as a misdirect. I think it tells us something about the mindset of one of the gunmen.’

  ‘And you’re working on the mindset?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She ends the conversation.

  ‘Victor Deakin hasn’t turned up to college,’ George tells her. ‘And there’s no sign of Malin Cohen either. Teams are en route to all suspects’ houses.’

  ‘I’ve got an evacuated teacher on the line,’ Amaal says. ‘Gina Patterson wants to talk about Victor Deakin, one of the boys who was expelled.’

  Rose puts the phone on speaker.

  ‘Gina, my name’s Detective Inspector Rose Polstein. What can you tell me?’

  ‘We all just thought it was for his EPQ, what Victor wrote, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe that’s why Matthew expelled him, maybe it’s Victor doing this. I mean I don’t think it is, I can’t believe that, but he only joined us in Year Eleven and most of our kids have been at the school for years, since Reception, so we know them really well and they absorb the school ethos, but Victor—’

  ‘What did Victor Deakin write?’

  ‘It was a rape fantasy. He said it was for his EPQ, extended project qualification, which was on sex offenders. He told the teacher who found it that he was just getting into the mindset of a sex offender. His tutor confirmed he was doing an EPQ on that. He said he just chose the name Sarah because it was a common name. But there’s a girl called Sarah in the year below.’