Three Hours : A Novel (2020)

by Lupton, Rosamund

  ‘Seriously?’ Tracey asks.

  ‘Yes,’ Daphne says. ‘We’re not going to let them stop us. We will pick up from where we left off. Duncan, Lennox, Malcolm and Donalbain on stage, everyone else ready for your cues.’

  Behind her, Zac is walking up the steep banked steps of the auditorium, fast, as if he can outpace his thoughts; reaching the top and no way out, so back again; and as he gets closer Daphne sees his body shaking as if he’s in freezing water.

  * * *

  Dannisha Taylor, lead hostage and crisis negotiator, has joined Rose’s team in their command and control vehicle. She’s sitting close to Rose and Rose is grateful both for her composure and for her lemon soap smell, which is helping to relieve her nausea. Dannisha has told her she has five children at home, five, bloody hell. There’s something reassuring about being close to Dannisha.

  Rose will use her training and experience in forensic psychology to assist Dannisha with negotiation. She has briefed Dannisha on what they know so far about Victor: he wrote a violent rape fantasy that he managed to explain away; he is off-the-chart bright; he was expelled from the school but they don’t yet know the reason; he didn’t want to be at the school in the first place.

  Now they have Victor’s mobile number, Dannisha has a channel of communication.

  Dannisha types a text.

  Can we talk?

  ‘Nothing confrontational and not giving away that we know who he is,’ Dannisha says. ‘A place to start.’ Rose nods and Dannisha sends the text.

  ‘Do you think he knew we’d find out who he is?’ Dannisha asks.

  ‘Yes. He’s using his own mobile and his mother’s car is parked in Junior School’s car park. If it wasn’t for the snow we’d have found out his identity sooner.’

  ‘He could be tremendously idiotic,’ Dannisha says.

  ‘I’d go for tremendously arrogant. I think he wants us to know who he is.’

  ‘Yes, I agree with you.’

  There’s a live feed to their command and control vehicle from the police team outside Victor Deakin’s house. Rose is glad they had the foresight to dispatch teams in advance to all the suspects’ houses, not wasting any time, especially in appalling driving conditions. A neighbour has told them that Victor’s parents are away, a riding holiday in Chile. Rose thinks Victor Deakin planned this for when there were no parental eyes on him.

  She watches the screen and for a few moments she isn’t in the cramped police vehicle but hurrying along an icy path, a shortcut across the lawn, footprints in snow; other officers are at the back of the house. The sound of a battering ram against the door. A burglar alarm shrieking. Then footsteps, lots of footsteps, doors banging, voices. They’re in.

  Perhaps they’ll get lucky and find a journal or letter outlining what Victor Deakin intends to do and the name of his accomplice; or failing that, perhaps he’s confided in someone and they will find something to lead them to that person, or maybe he’s been seeing a therapist and they’ll find a note of an appointment, a contact number, and she’ll be able to get a psychiatric evaluation. But if that isn’t the case, if they don’t get lucky, no journal, no confidant, no therapist, then it’s Rose’s job to help find the ID of his accomplice and predict their behaviour.

  Her team and other officers are talking to Victor’s teachers and fellow students, anyone that can help. Under normal circumstances the gunman’s identity would not be made known, but nothing about this is normal and they have to find out everything they can about Victor Deakin as quickly as possible.

  ‘Who’s computer forensics lead at the house?’ she asks.

  ‘Lysander Kiehl,’ Thandie tells her.

  Rose is glad it’s Lysander, his surname redundant not only because of his extraordinary first name, what were his parents thinking, but because of his reputation as being mind-blowingly brilliant on computers. Getting into Victor’s computer and what he’s been doing online is a way of getting inside his mind; it could well be Lysander who finds out what Victor Deakin intends to do.

  On Dannisha’s phone Victor has marked the text as read.

  ‘Okay, let’s try calling him,’ Dannisha says.

  She phones Victor Deakin’s mobile; all calls are on speakerphone. The call goes through to message but he hasn’t recorded a message, just silence, wrong-footing the caller.

  ‘You said he didn’t want to be at the school for sixth form?’ Dannisha asks.

  ‘That’s right. Neil Forbright said Victor thought it infantilized him,’ Rose replies and she thinks the word is telling.

  ‘I’ve got a lad in the theatre,’ Amaal tells Rose. ‘He knows something about Victor but he’s in a state. Name’s Zac Benton.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She takes the call. ‘Zac? My name’s Rose. You all okay in there?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He’s breathing too fast; she needs to calm him.

  ‘You’re rehearsing Macbeth?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where’ve you got to?’

  ‘Duncan’s palace in Act One.’

  His breathing sounds a little slower.

  ‘You’ve got something to tell us about Victor Deakin?’ she asks.

  ‘I don’t know. I hung out with him and Jamie for a bit, but that was ages ago.’

  ‘Jamie Alton?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell me anything you know about Victor? Can you do that, Zac?’

  ‘Jamie was Victor’s friend but then he wouldn’t see Victor any more. Said Victor was psycho. And now Jamie’s missing.’

  The boy’s voice is jumpy and his breathing too fast again; so his fear is for Jamie not himself.

  ‘I didn’t make sure Jamie was okay. I’m his friend, used to be really close to him, but …’

  ‘We’re doing all we can, Zac. I promise you that. Do you know why Jamie called Victor psycho?’

  ‘It was after this thing in Exeter, at Halloween.’

  ‘Can you tell me about that?’

  ‘Yeah. Victor threw a brick through a shop window. Jamie said he’d brought the brick in his messenger bag, that he’d planned it, but Jamie didn’t know anything about it till it happened. The shop alarm went off. Jamie told Victor to run away, but he wouldn’t, even though Jamie kept saying the police would be there any minute. Victor peed through the broken window but Jamie said the police can’t have known about that because they didn’t charge them.’

  ‘Was that what upset Jamie? Vandalizing a shop and getting arrested?’

  She thinks there’s more to this.

  ‘Victor made it look like it was all Jamie’s fault, but in a mind-fuck way – sorry. He told the police not to be hard on Jamie, not to blame him, that he was older and took full responsibility for it. Jamie said the police lapped it up. They didn’t believe Jamie when he said he’d had nothing to do with it, they thought he was pathetic and Victor was this really decent guy protecting him.’

  ‘And Jamie stopped being friends with him?’

  ‘Yes. Said I was right about him, because Victor had done all sorts of weird shit, Jamie just hadn’t really seen it before.’

  ‘What kind of weird shit?’

  ‘There was an after-party at Easter. Victor said he’d got Rohypnol and was going to put it into Aysha’s drink.’

  ‘Is Aysha at your school?’

  ‘Yes, but she’s been evacuated – because I wondered, when I heard about Victor – anyway, I got angry with Victor about the Rohypnol, but he said loads of girls fancied him so he didn’t need to use Rohypnol, said that was why it was a fucking joke. Jamie had believed that, most people did. But the thing is, I knew Aysha didn’t like him.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I told Aysha and she left the party. Even if it was a joke, it was a sick joke. But after the shop thing, Jamie saw what he was really like.’

  ‘Did Victor have other friends at school?’

  ‘Yeah. But nobody close, nobody he stayed in touch with after he left apart from Jamie, and
then not him.’

  ‘What about Malin Cohen?’

  ‘Not when they were at school but maybe after they both left, I don’t really know.’

  ‘Do you know how Victor gets hold of people?’

  ‘Snapchat mainly. I was on his group Snapchat for a bit, before he left.’

  After ten seconds, a Snapchat message disappears.

  ‘Did you screenshot any of them?’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘Do you remember any?’

  ‘Not really, they were just weird. He used the Face Stealer app. Like, where you can merge your face into someone else, like Einstein or Hitler or whatever? There was one where he had shark teeth where his mouth should be, black holes instead of eyes. Freaky. Sometimes he used WhatsApp too, with a voice-changer app, like for a joke. Will you find Jamie?’

  ‘We’ll do everything we can, I promise.’

  She ends the call with Zac.

  An update comes through from a police officer at Victor Deakin’s house. This briefing is going to all personnel. In the background, they can hear drawers and cupboards being opened; the room’s being ransacked.

  ‘We’ve found ammo for a semi-automatic and ingredients for a pressure-cooker bomb,’ the officer says.

  ‘What about a laptop?’ Rose asks; because she’s pretty sure that whatever Olav Christoffersen, the IT teacher, found on Victor’s laptop got him expelled.

  ‘Just a desktop in his bedroom.’

  ‘Have we got hold of Olav Christoffersen yet?’ she asks George.

  ‘He was evacuated and is driving home. He’s not answering his mobile.’

  ‘Do you know what car he drives?’

  ‘A Renault Clio.’

  ‘So he’ll be going slowly in this. We need to send an SUV after him and get him on the phone.’

  * * *

  The air in the library has changed; it is staler, like you’re breathing in other people’s fear. A shutter that isn’t properly secured bangs against a window as the wind gusts outside and Hannah startles. They are all jumpy with fear. The sound of his footsteps and his phone ringing, but he doesn’t answer it. Then the phone stops and it’s just his footsteps.

  The last of Frank’s mobile charge was used up on letting Tobias call his mum; they cannot talk to anyone outside the library now.

  Mr Marr has lost consciousness again, as if he’s slipping in and out of two worlds, Hannah thinks, but he was always so fully present in this one, the captain of the ship, and she knows he’s trying to stay with them, knows how much effort it probably is for him just to keep breathing.

  The ambulance people keep telling them what to do by email, and they’re making sure Mr Marr is warm, that his airway is clear, that he’s still in the recovery position, and it feels comforting that they’re doing everything right, even though they can’t really help him at all, and she thinks the ambulance people understand that and are telling them all this to help them as much as Mr Marr.

  He’s big, that’s what Hannah thought when she heard it was Victor Deakin. Six foot and heavy; so, what will happen if he shoves the door?

  FICTION A–C and FICTION D–G are the latest door fortifications; Mrs Ramsay joined by Jo March, Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Eyre, Maggie Tulliver and Dorothea Brooke; all those women with their many sisters and friends and enemies and poor-choice husbands barricading the door. But how substantial will they be against Victor Deakin if he tries to get in?

  Frank’s twin, Luisa, emailed him a little while ago from the theatre, all happy, saying, ‘It’s good news because you’re not the target, he’s done what he came for.’ Like shooting Mr Marr was the end of it, so they could all relax and soon it would be over. But he hasn’t got what he came for because he’s still in the corridor. And what does it mean, getting what he came for – shooting Mr Marr? Because that means he’s a cold-blooded would-be murderer, or hot-blooded, temperature of his blood not really the issue, what matters is that he’s willing to kill and if he’s tried to do it once, then she thinks he’ll do it again, she thinks that’s what he’s building up to as he walks up and down, imagining it, like Christmas Eve and putting out your stocking, getting all excited.

  No one’s said it yet but they feel the huge distance between the people who are safe in the theatre and everyone in Old School with the footsteps, especially all of them in the library with Mr Marr’s poor white face, his injured head and foot, and blood soaking into the floorboards and the rug. Nobody who isn’t here will ever understand, just Rafi, when before none of them could really understand him.

  ‘Mr Forbright’s emailed,’ Frank says. Brave Frank with his laptop is still near to her and Mr Marr, still near to the door. ‘He says the police want any information we have on Victor Deakin.’

  There’s silence as people wonder what information they have that can help. Hannah didn’t know Victor Deakin, just saw him around. He wasn’t a loner though, wasn’t creepy – well, clearly he’s completely fucking creepy, but not the kind of creepy that gives you warning he is going to shoot someone.

  Dad would call him a nefarious fiend, a degenerate devil; Great-Grandpa’s words would be called into use. Dad thinks words are like watches, you hand them down to the next generation and use them on special occasions – Stupendous! Balderdash! – and words for monster men too – unholy scoundrel, diabolical. Great-Grandpa was in the war, when they had to coin words with bigger meanings.

  Esme at the back of the library says, ‘He went on the school surf trip but went too far out, wouldn’t come back, so wasn’t allowed again.’

  Hannah thinks of salty air and waves and escape.

  Other people are pitching in with sports he does, as if putting together his personal statement or sports BTEC, because what does it matter that he abseils and goes free running and rock climbing? Why couldn’t he have free run between two really tall buildings and missed or fallen off a cliff face or surfed into the open ocean and never come back? But he’s here. Just outside the library.

  And how did he even get a gun? It’s not like Somerset is Alabama, not like you can just pop into a supermarket and stick a gun in your trolley with some ammo. How’s he done that? How did he know how to do that? Her thoughts are sounding highpitched in her head, getting panicky; she’s got to keep calm, she must be brave and undaunted like Maggie Tulliver and Jo March and Elizabeth Bennet, but she’s just plain terrified Hannah Jacobs looking at a pile of books against a gunman.

  She thinks of Rafi – the flashing joy that he’d come for her, loves her – and for a little while, despite everything, she feels euphorically happy, weightless, floating above the library and the nefarious fiend in the corridor. But Mr Marr is bleeding and the footsteps are outside and she feels weighted down all over again by fear and shock and just the horror of it, really, the terrible awfulness, like the footsteps flatten her.

  Rafi must be okay, must be, because he’s out in the woods, not here in the library with the diabolical man, and yes, there were shots heard in the woods earlier, but they were near the gatehouse, and the woods are huge, and Rafi can hide and be safe.

  * * *

  It’s snowing harder; the wind’s making the trees bend like air has muscle. Snow has covered the path and Rafi cannot find his way back. There’s nothing familiar, everything blanketed white.

  He turns and runs in the opposite direction. Surely he’ll find a landmark he recognizes and then the path. The wind blows snow at his face, making his eyes smart, and he feels tears and he thinks of Mama, as if the tears came first, before he thought of her, but that’s not true because she’s always there, and he thinks love lives inside his face, behind his eyes.

  Not enough money for her, just him and Basi; ten thousand euros each to go via Italy, the safest route, the people smugglers said. And oh for fuck’s sake, people are bored of this story, all that tugging misery, and you get fed up with desperate people and he gets that, he really gets that, because he’d rather binge-watch a series on Netflix or listen to Spotify or
play Xbox or hang out with his friends too, who wouldn’t?

  But sometimes he tells parts of his story, and Hannah and Mr Marr and Benny and some of his other friends have listened. He hasn’t told them all the details, because some things Assad and Daesh did no one should have in their heads. They know he had to leave his mother behind but he hasn’t told anyone that on the Journey he’d sometimes thought she was with him; that he’d felt her hand in his as they ran from gangs or police with dogs and rubber bullets; heard the sound of her voice, gentle and quiet, encasing the shouts of men, softening them with her love for him. A woman’s shape near, but not too close, and she was there; and then the woman would turn or they’d get closer and she was too old or had short hair or was too tall and how could he ever have thought she was his mother? It was just him and Basi and he had to keep his six-year-old brother safe, that was all that mattered.

  For six months looking after his brother was this huge responsibility, yes, but it was also protection against his own grief and loss. Getting to safety in the UK was not an unshouldering of a burden, it was sudden exposure to his own childishness and wanting Mama.

  Right from the start Mr Marr had understood. In the Dunkirk classroom, he’d checked with Rafi about Basi: ‘Do you think he’s up to learning some maths today, Rafi, or maybe a story?’ Small things. Important things. And in England he must have spoken to his foster parents, or perhaps they understood too, not to strip the responsibility of Basi away from him, because it is also the skin that protects him.

  He left Mama, but he loves her. He left Hannah, but he loves her too. He is someone who leaves the people that he loves.

  But he will get to Basi. He just has to find his way through the woods.

  * * *

  Basi is getting colder. If he leans against the side of the boat his shivering makes the boat shiver too, and the oars make a rattling sound, like the wind against the door. He hopes Ratty isn’t as cold as him; fur is probably warmer than an anorak.

  We’ve done much worse, Little Monkey, Rafi will say when he gets here, and they have done worse but Rafi was with him.