Three Hours : A Novel (2020)

by Lupton, Rosamund

  He wishes he could light a fire to keep warm. Mama and Rafi burnt rubbish when they slept outside, broken chairs and tables and things that had once not been rubbish at all. They were waiting for buses to take them out of east Aleppo. The day before, the buses along the road had been like his plastic snake with different joints that wiggle and each joint was a bus, but he’d been too ill to go, so they waited one day, and then there weren’t any more buses. Lots of people wanted to get warm by their fire so they all budged up but there wasn’t enough room for everyone. He was still ill so he got a good place.

  Rafi will be here soon and then he’ll rub his arms and his legs and do hot potatoes and they’ll do some star jumps and get warm together.

  * * *

  The wind is strengthening and the snow getting heavier. Coastguard and police rescue boats with the junior school children and staff have arrived safely further down the coast and Rose feels a moment of relief from nausea. She thinks of Basi, and Rafi, who is responsible for their safety, somewhere out there in the snow, and the nausea returns. The worsening weather is hampering their efforts to search for a third gunman and to spot any hostile surveillance drone.

  She looks at the feed from the police surveillance UAV above the pottery room; she can’t see the teacher at the window – perhaps she’s looking after the children inside.

  A police imaging specialist took a still from earlier footage of the gunman, blew it up large, and saw the antenna of a two-way radio protruding from the top right-hand pocket of his army cargo trousers, the earpiece most probably hidden under his balaclava, confirming how the gunmen are communicating.

  Victor Deakin hasn’t taken Dannisha’s calls or answered her texts. A police SUV is looking for Olav Christoffersen.

  Lysander, lead computer forensics officer, phones from Victor Deakin’s house. His call is going to all senior officers.

  ‘Victor Deakin ordered The Anarchist’s Cookbook from Amazon and downloaded a PDF of “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom” from Inspire, the online magazine for Al Qaeda.’

  ‘Anything on guns?’ an officer asks.

  ‘I’m sending everyone the emails now. Victor arranged to meet a man four weeks ago in London. His email address is an alias – we’re trying to unpick it and it looks like it’s most probably Ukrainian. The week before this meeting Victor made three withdrawals of £2,000.’

  Six grand, a lot of cash, but Dad drives a new Jeep, Mum a new Mini convertible, holidays in Chile; a teacher’s told them a rumour about the family losing all their money, a rumour that is patently false. Their son clearly had a fair whack in the bank to go shopping for rifles and semi-automatics.

  ‘Did Victor do all this on the regular net?’ Rose asks Lysander.

  ‘Yes. A Gmail account. Google searches. Inspire is easily found on a basic Google search, with a PDF download on how to make a bomb, open to anyone. The Anarchist’s Cookbook has an Amazon sales ranking and blurb telling you that it has illustrated chapters on the home preparation of weapons and explosives. It probably provides the ingredients on a dropdown menu.’

  ‘How hard was it for you to access his computer?’ Rose asks.

  ‘No security at all, and it auto-filled his passwords on every site.’

  ‘Too easy,’ Rose says.

  She thinks of the rifle shots to misdirect them away from the semi-automatics.

  ‘I think the obvious information could be a decoy for what he didn’t want found,’ she says.

  ‘I’ll look for what he’s hiding,’ Lysander says.

  And it’s not just the rifles, it’s using his own mobile, not a burner, his mother’s car parked in full view. Rose thinks he enjoys playing them; likes being cleverer than they are.

  ‘I think Victor Deakin wants to feel superior and in control of us,’ she says to Dannisha. ‘I think we could use that. We play to his ego.’

  ‘Okay, let’s try,’ Dannisha says. She types

  I really want to know all about you Victor. Tell me why you want to do this.

  Moments later Victor texts back.

  You wouldn’t understand moron

  Can you explain it to me?

  Waste of time you’re all cretins fucking retards

  I’d really like to hear what you’ve got to say.

  Just said, waste of fuckin time cretin

  I want to know what’s going on inside your head.

  Yeah right, like you’ll get it

  He’s texting back quickly now, caught up in it.

  You’re clever then?

  Don’t fucking patronize me

  Rose types and Dannisha nods.

  Have you got Jamie Alton?

  Would you like to know?

  Yes. Will you tell me?

  Ok

  Twenty seconds later another text from Victor.

  Not yet

  They wait, but no more texts come through. Rose’s team have been focusing on their own work, not allowing themselves to be distracted, and Rose is impressed with them.

  Thandie puts down her phone. ‘Malin Cohen’s ex-girlfriend said he’d been loaned a motorbike by a mate.’

  A motorbike is easier to hide than a car. Perhaps you could get a motorbike to go off-road on trails through the woods.

  ‘They’re retrieving Victor’s mobile phone data,’ Amaal says. ‘Not the content but the numbers. We should know who he’s been contacting.’

  * * *

  It’s as if the cafeteria has been holding its breath and with the news that it’s Victor Deakin, not terrorists, attacking the school, the room has exhaled. Hannah’s father’s face is no longer pinched tight, his fingers uncurled a little.

  And Beth cannot endure their relief, the sharp contrast to her own feelings.

  Hannah’s father must realize because he looks at her with kindness. ‘It’s not good news for you?’ he asks; an unselfish, thoughtful man to even notice. She shakes her head.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he says.

  Has Victor hurt you, Jamie?

  She cannot bear to think of him hurt. She wills her phone to ring. The windowless cafeteria is closing in on her. Ten minutes till Mike’s train gets in. When she told him about Victor, he made a sound like a cushion being plumped up, a sigh of feathers against air, as if someone had held him up and punched him in all directions, but he didn’t want her to know.

  Mike’s mother’s small car can’t get through the snow, so he’s asking a neighbour they barely know to break in through their kitchen window. Jamie could still have left a message on their home landline; hope a soap bubble, untouchably fragile.

  ‘Victor Deakin’s just getting revenge,’ the father in the Mumford & Sons sweatshirt is saying. ‘He shot the headmaster for not letting him stay at the school. But he’s got no reason to hurt the children.’

  This has already been said but it’s as if repeating it will give it more solidity, make it more valid.

  ‘The police will make him see that, won’t they?’ Antonella’s mother asks, colour back in her face. ‘They’ll reason with him that it’s nothing to do with the children.’

  Other voices join in, ‘Of course they will.’

  ‘He’ll let them go.’

  ‘He’s got no reason to punish the children.’

  ‘They’re not a target.’

  But Jamie is a target. He’s got a reason to hurt and punish Jamie.

  It was the 31st of October, early evening, when she got a call from the police in Exeter saying Jamie had been arrested. Jamie, who’d never even had a detention at his previous, strict school, who’s never even given in his homework late.

  When she and Mike arrived at the police station, Victor and his father had already left.

  They talked it all through that evening, Mike and Jamie and her, glad that Theo was at university, so their attention could be entirely on Jamie; all of them were shocked because she and Mike had liked Victor too – liked him! They said Jamie had to stop all contact with Victor; and Jamie, feeling utterly betra
yed by his friend, agreed. Victor had left the school months earlier, so no reason that Jamie needed to ever see him again.

  I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I never thought he was violent, never imagined he could be dangerous.

  Me neither, Mum, and I was his friend.

  I should have told you to ease away from him; should have warned you to be careful.

  She sees Victor as a caged snake, and the cage door opening.

  Around her a conversation has started about why Victor had to leave. A father is saying it’s because his parents couldn’t pay the fees and the school wouldn’t give him a bursary, which Beth already knows.

  ‘No, that’s not true. He was expelled,’ a mother says, a parent-governor and chair of the charity committee, who up until a few minutes ago had been mute with fear. ‘It was nothing to do with the fees. That was the story he put about and people believed it but it wasn’t what really happened.’

  But that’s what Jamie thought and other people Beth knew at the school too, not that she knows many people, but they all said the same: the house and cars were being defaulted on and repossessed; it was the fees.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ a father says. ‘Whatever the reason he had to leave, he’s got nothing against our children, that’s the important thing.’

  ‘He was expelled for writing rape fantasies,’ the parent-governor says. She pauses a moment, not meeting anybody’s eye. ‘We were told during a governors’ meeting. But not in any detail. He’d gone by then, wasn’t allowed back on to school property, so we thought it was over. We never thought, any of us, that he’d attack anyone. Hurt anyone.’

  Beth should have made friends with this woman, not been intimidated but made herself into a confidante, because then she’d have been suspicious of Victor and would have protected Jamie; would have known she had to do that.

  ‘Do you think he’s a danger to the girls?’ Hannah’s father asks. ‘Do you think he’s going to harm one of them?’

  The room has constricted with tension, this new information pulling them taut, tendons in hands and shoulders and necks tightening.

  The young female police officer comes towards her. ‘Mrs Alton?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Detective Inspector Polstein would like to speak to you. There’s a car for you downstairs.’

  ‘Has something happened to Jamie?’

  ‘I don’t have any information, I’m sorry.’

  She goes with the police officer; the air too heavy to breathe.

  As they walk down the stairs, Beth feels the chill and sees through the windows that it’s snowing heavily. It’s been snowing all this time. She should have known it was snowing and this cold before, should have realized that Jamie might be outside and frozen. She tells him to wear a coat, but he hasn’t, not for years, just a hoody.

  On the way to the exit, they walk past a room with a clear Plexiglas wall alongside the corridor. Inside a pregnant mother sits on the floor, rocking to and fro; nobody going to her. Just outside, a young father is playing with a toddler, winding up a clockwork Postman Pat van. He sets the Postman Pat van going along the corridor and the toddler chases it. The toddler is laughing; the father’s face is so white that she thinks he’ll pass out. She recognizes him, but cannot place him.

  Press are gathered outside the leisure centre glass doors, a crush of them with cameras and sound booms, a police officer standing guard. She’s ushered away from them, to a goods entrance at the back.

  * * *

  In the library, Matthew Marr is losing his vision and each breath is harder than the last. He wants to do something, anything, to help the kids but he cannot move or speak. He forces himself to stay conscious, to stay with them. His hearing isn’t damaged; he can hear the footsteps walking up and down, up and down, and someone is talking about Victor Deakin.

  Fragmented images wash ashore on to the part of him that is still able to remember: a vicious rape fantasy; a diary on a computer.

  He feels anxiety for Jamie Alton but doesn’t know why.

  He sees again that day with the china-blue sky, Old School bright with flowers, a bird calling. Darkness clouds around it, hiding something. He tries to go nearer – Come out! Come out! Show yourself! – but whatever it is retreats further into the darkness and he knows only that it evokes terror and guilt in him.

  * * *

  Beth Alton is in a police Range Rover, driving through heavy snow. She is in the back, like she’s a child or a prisoner. She remembers going home from the police station in Exeter, Mike driving, her in the passenger seat, Jamie in the back, utterly bewildered and so hurt by Victor, and she wished she’d told Jamie to swap places with her.

  It was Halloween and they’d driven past houses with skeletons dangling from front doors, ghosts and devils in porches and windows; the more frightening the house, the more welcoming to children, and she remembers the paradox.

  When they got home, their conversation about Victor continued, punctuated by the doorbell ringing. Mike wasn’t in the mood for trick-or-treaters but she and Jamie handed out Quality Streets. She looked at the mothers of little witches and superheroes standing close to their children; easy to keep them safe at that age when they are still within touching distance. Jamie’s phone kept pinging with Snapchats and WhatsApp messages from Victor, which Jamie didn’t answer.

  As it got later the kids got older and the masks turned into a Hannibal Lector, a Munch Scream, a devil.

  I heard you on the phone that night, Jamie. You were talking to Zac and you were saying, like you were laughing, ‘He’s a psycho!’ and Zac would have thought you were smiling, from your voice, but you weren’t.

  No.

  Victor’s mask was his face.

  Deep, Mum.

  Don’t tease me, Jamie …

  Sorry.

  I thought you’d see more of each other, you and Zac; become close friends again.

  Like in Year Ten?

  Yes.

  I’m in the sixth form, doesn’t work that way any more.

  But if Zac had been your best friend again …

  I’d be safe now?

  Yes.

  Zac’s not like Captain America.

  No. I know. I’m not being logical.

  Never been your strongest suit.

  No. Please ring me, Jamie. If you can. Please.

  A message from Mike on her phone – the neighbour broke in, there’s nothing from Jamie on their home answerphone.

  Jamie isn’t hurt. He’s still hiding, that’s all, still hiding, and in a building, not outside in the snow, which is why he can’t even text her because a glowing screen might give him away. And he doesn’t wear bright clothes any more, so that’ll mean he’s less conspicuous.

  A gust of wind batters the police Range Rover. Out of the window, the snowflakes are thick and frenzied, each one an insubstantial feather, weightless, but massed together they are piling on to trees, fences, hills of grass and ploughed fields, everything weighted down and smothered; the landscape being suffocated.

  * * *

  The storm has hit, a white-out and gale-force winds making flying the police helicopters virtually impossible but the pilots want to keep searching the woods for more gunmen. A police SUV has found Olav Christoffersen, who’d pulled over on the side of the road, unable to drive further through the snow; he’s getting into the police vehicle and will be on the line any moment.

  ‘Not yet’ was Victor Deakin’s last text and there’s been nothing further from him about Jamie Alton. Rose thinks he’ll be enjoying the suspense.

  ‘Olav Christoffersen is on the phone,’ George says, his face pink with relief at accomplishing his task.

  Rose takes the call, putting it on speaker.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I started driving home. Not thinking straight. I always turn off my mobile when I get in the car, just habit. To be safe. So stupid. I just didn’t think—’

  ‘Mr Christoffersen—’

  ‘It’s Victor Deakin?’ Olav Chris
toffersen says. ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes, we’re sure. I need to know about the events leading to Victor’s expulsion.’

  ‘You know about the rape fantasy, which he said was part of his EPQ?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘After that Matthew asked me to search his laptop. Victor had given permission but even so I was reluctant – I’d believed him about the EPQ and I’d never searched a student’s laptop before, we’re not that kind of school.’

  His Scandinavian accent is more pronounced as his anxiety comes through.

  ‘I found a journal and more rape fantasies about other unnamed girls.’

  In the background Rose hears a heavy vehicle rumble past, muffled by snow.

  ‘Have you still got them?’

  ‘I deleted the fantasies immediately. It was an emotional reaction, shouldn’t have done. Matthew told me that too. But I, well, I just couldn’t bear it for those girls, what he said about them, to still exist, even in type on a laptop.’

  ‘What can you remember?’

  ‘They were sadistically violent. But it wasn’t just that. Just. My God. It was the way he referred to the girls, like they were disposable, like toys for him.’

  ‘And his journal?’

  ‘The entry that disturbed Matthew most was typed by Victor the same day he’d written apology letters to Sarah and her parents. In his journal, he said Sarah should be grateful for his attention, and he was outraged at having to apologize. He called Sarah and her parents worms plus a whole load of expletives.’

  ‘Can you remember any of his exact words, including expletives?’

  ‘“A load of fucking worms think I should fucking grovel to them, fucking cunts.” That was one line. And then more of the same. Violent, vicious.’

  ‘Do you remember the letters he wrote to Sarah and her parents?’

  ‘Yes. He was very apologetic, said he regretted it all terribly, hated himself for causing upset. He was charming and self-effacing. The letters were totally believable, that’s why I hadn’t wanted to search his laptop, because I’d read the letters. Matthew was shaken by the difference between his journal and the letters. Said in his entire teaching career he’d never had a student that convincing and manipulative.’