Three Hours : A Novel (2020)

by Lupton, Rosamund

  ‘There was a student on TV earlier,’ Bronze Commander says. ‘She saw a glint coming from the high ropes course in the woods just before 8.20 which might have been binoculars.’

  ‘If so, it doesn’t mean it was a third man,’ an officer says. ‘Most probably Deakin keeping watch.’

  ‘A scramble though,’ Rose says. ‘For Deakin to see PC Beard’s car and then get in position to take the shot.’

  ‘But doable,’ the officer says.

  Rose nods, yes, doable.

  ‘Let’s run the rest of that scenario,’ Bronze Commander says. ‘Victor Deakin shoots at PC Beard from the woods and then follows the head teacher. He sees there are children in the pottery room. When Jamie Alton has shot the head teacher in Old School they swap places. It’s Jamie Alton who goes to the Junior School building where Basi Bukhari sees him. Junior School has been evacuated but Alton knows about the young children in the pottery room from Deakin. He goes to the pottery room, where our drone picks him up.’

  Rose has been considering this scenario and she thinks it potentially has flaws.

  ‘It’s tight,’ she says. ‘For Alton to swap places with Deakin and then get from Old School to Junior School in the time. The head teacher was shot at 9.16, Rafi thinks Basi saw a gunman at 9.30.’

  ‘But again it’s doable,’ an officer says. ‘Even if Alton spent five minutes swapping over, he’d still have had nine minutes to cover a mile, which is fine for someone reasonably fit even in snow.’

  ‘Yes, but I think the shooter Basi saw must have searched Junior School first and found nobody before he started randomly shooting at a window in a rage.’

  ‘Then maybe the swap-over was quicker and he ran faster, or he simply fired for the hell of it without searching first,’ another officer says.

  Rose hopes they’re right and there’s no third gunman.

  Lysander comes on to the screen; he doesn’t bother with preliminaries.

  ‘Deakin’s been on the dark net, using Tor,’ he says.

  The so-called ‘onion’ router, because of its layer-within-layer of complex encryption.

  ‘He visited a site which has Russian PKM machine guns for sale but didn’t buy from there,’ Lysander continues. ‘He also spent time on a site called “How to Make Your Gun Shoot Like It’s Fully Automatic – in One Easy Step” and “Fire-Power Enhancement”, which sells the necessary equipment. Using bitcoin he made a payment to “Fire-Power Enhancement” for an amount that would equal two sets of the equipment.’

  ‘Send out an alert to all units that we think both gunmen have converted their guns into fully automatics,’ Bronze Commander says.

  In the Las Vegas massacre, Paddock’s converted semi-automatics fired 800 rounds a minute.

  In effect, they have machine guns.

  15.

  11.10 a.m.

  In the library, Frank is next to Ed, their backs against the books and the door. He hasn’t tried pushing it again, perhaps he won’t try again. Please let him not try again.

  It’s funny, up until today Frank and Luisa have never been close, not in the way that twins are meant to be, no secret language, nothing like that, but earlier she emailed him that she loves him, which she’s never said before, or anything like it. He’s always thought Luisa was embarrassed of him; perhaps she still is but it doesn’t matter.

  He thinks the footsteps are outside Mrs Kale’s classroom and feels guilty for his relief that they’re not outside the library door, tries to justify his relief as knowing that the English classroom has desks as a barricade, so more protection than they do, but knows that isn’t the truth.

  Hannah is with Mr Marr, stroking his face lightly, and Frank can tell she feels useless, that she thinks stroking his face isn’t helping, but if it was him he’d like it, and not only because it would be Hannah doing it, but because another person’s touch is comforting, and he thinks Mr Marr can feel the kindness in it.

  When Luisa and people in the theatre emailed them questions about Mr Marr, they said that he’s injured but will be okay, because they need to believe that.

  A new email on his laptop from Benny in the theatre.

  ‘Benny’s spoken to Rafi,’ he says and his voice is startling to himself and to everyone else in the library because no one has been talking and if they do so it’s in whispers.

  ‘He wanted Rafi to come to the theatre, but Rafi said he couldn’t. Said his little brother’s missing.’

  ‘Basi wasn’t evacuated?’ Hannah asks him and he wants to lie to her but can’t.

  ‘No, he wanted to be with Rafi, so Rafi’s in the woods on the way to find him, but he’s lost.’

  In his semi-consciousness, Matthew Marr hears Frank talking about Rafi and Basi and fear jolts him, adrenaline coursing through him.

  His mind flicks through images: Scylla and Charybdis, the Cyclops, the drowned men and their wooden Ithacan ship; he remembers talking to Rafi about Odysseus’s voyage, comparing it to Rafi and Basi’s journey, their Circe the broker in Syria who said the route was safe.

  But those dangers are past. New dangers now.

  He’d thought they’d been evacuated but they’re in danger and it’s linked to Victor and the diary and to a word spoken in the corridor.

  Rafi told him about a devil in the Quran called Iblis, with immense hubris, but whose only power is to cast evil suggestion into men’s hearts. Why is he thinking of Iblis?

  He sees the day with the blue sky, Old School bright with flowers, a bird calling.

  He doesn’t know what this day means, but he sees the darkness surrounding it and it’s hiding something.

  He feels someone gently stroking his face, and forces himself to go into the darkness, further and further, and it brings him to the school corridor with the photos of boy soldiers.

  It’s darker than normal, the lights are switched off, the corridor dim. Hannah is with him; she was waiting for news of Rafi, maybe about to go and find him because she loves Rafi too. He’s talking to the policeman in their gatehouse. Tobias is next to him and he’s trying to hurry Tobias along.

  A door closing.

  Which door? Must be the door to the drawing room, which he thought was empty.

  Footsteps in the corridor behind them.

  Hannah goes into the library, but Tobias isn’t moving.

  The footsteps continuing, getting closer.

  A click. The cock of a gun.

  He makes Tobias go into the library.

  He turns to face the man behind him.

  A balaclava covering his face. He’s pointing a rifle. Another gun, like a machine gun, strapped to his chest. The rigidity of hatred, so that the guns and his hate are the same. He takes a step away from the gunman, his back against the wall; by his head is the display case of medals.

  ‘Please,’ he says, dropping his phone, betraying his fear. ‘Talk to me. Tell me why you’re doing this.’

  ‘Collaborators!’

  Jamie Alton’s voice.

  Stillness, time waiting.

  The subtle press of a trigger.

  The bullet travelling faster than its own sound.

  Collaborators

  Shrapnel made of gallantry.

  Collaborators

  Those boys dying so that this wouldn’t happen.

  The benevolent order of things destroyed.

  He was outside Old School seven months earlier, the sky a perfect china-blue above him, the front of the building bright with white and purple clematis flowers, the call of a pied flycatcher; summer term, the start of the second week. That morning Olav Christoffersen had told him what he’d decrypted on Victor’s laptop, shown him the journal, and he’d instantly expelled him.

  Jamie Alton came up to him, distraught, tears streaming down his face.

  ‘Please let Victor stay. Please.’

  But he couldn’t possibly do that.

  ‘It’s not his fault his dad lost their money,’ Jamie said. ‘You have a bursary fund, use that to pay his f
ees.’

  So that was the story that Victor was spinning.

  ‘They don’t look poor,’ Jamie said. ‘But their cars are on HP and the house is already remortgaged.’

  ‘Jamie—’

  ‘You pay for the Bukhari brothers, so why not Victor?’

  ‘This is nothing to do with money, Jamie. I can’t have him in the school. He’s done something wicked.’

  ‘He told me you’d come up with something. An excuse. Why should the Bukhari boys be here instead of him?’

  ‘Jamie—’

  ‘He said you’d rather pay for fucking Muslims to be here but not one of your own! They’re not even English! Don’t belong here!’

  And he heard Victor’s voice in Jamie’s, in this boy who was normally gentle and quiet.

  ‘Like I said, this isn’t about fees. He’s done something unforgivable. You need to stay away from Victor.’

  He’d attempted to comfort him, at one point trying to put an arm around him, but Jamie, silently tearful, had shaken him off. He’d just expelled his only close friend and at that moment he hated him. But Matthew didn’t think that would last. And without Victor at the school Jamie would surely rekindle his old friendships and make new ones.

  And he hadn’t really thought Jamie needed to stay away from Victor, because even if Jamie wanted to continue the friendship he was certain that once Victor left the school he’d leave younger, shyer, more innocent, less clever Jamie behind him. A belief based on twenty-five years of teaching young people that was appallingly wrong.

  They’d stayed friends; and the crying boy in April, loyal to a vicious older boy, vulnerable to him, had been turned into the man in the corridor, rigid with hatred.

  Collaborators

  The school is being attacked for taking in Muslim refugees.

  But surely they’ll just target him, please God let them just be violent towards him.

  * * *

  Despite the open door, the command and control vehicle feels more cramped to Rose, people’s breath and body odour close up against her. It’s now been two hours and twenty-eight minutes since the first shots at the police car; one hour and fifty-seven minutes since the head teacher was shot. Victor hasn’t pushed at the library door again but she fears he will.

  Lysander and Stuart, senior officer in counterterrorism intelligence, come on to the screen. This briefing is going to all senior officers.

  ‘On the dark net I have uncovered multiple communication channels between Victor Deakin and Jamie Alton and an organization called “14 Words”,’ Lysander says. ‘They are both members of this organization.’

  ‘14 Words is a white supremacist terrorist group,’ Stuart says. ‘Its name refers to the fourteen words: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children.” It calls for “White Jihad”. Its particular hatred is against Muslims.’

  ‘The girl whose drink Victor wanted to spike with Rohypnol is Muslim and the vandalized shop is owned by a Muslim couple,’ an officer says.

  ‘How many Muslim students and teachers are still at the school?’ Bronze Commander asks.

  ‘Just Rafi and Basi Bukhari,’ another officer replies. ‘Five Muslim students were evacuated from New School and two from Junior School.’

  ‘Why shoot the white head teacher and terrorize non-Muslim children and staff?’ Bronze Commander asks.

  ‘As well as hating Muslims and other non-whites for, as they see it, polluting the gene pool,’ Stuart says, ‘the group has also threatened liberal journalists and MPs and others who they think condone the eradication of the white race. In this case it’s a school taking in Muslim refugees. In their eyes, the staff and pupils are collaborating in white genocide.’

  ‘Even seven-year-olds?’

  ‘Probably. And they’d want to punish the parents too.’

  Rose thinks of Jo Cox, the white MP and advocate for compassion towards Syrian refugees who was murdered by a white supremacist terrorist.

  ‘14 Words was formed as a splinter group from National Action, a neo-Nazi group banned for being a terrorist group in the UK in 2016,’ Stuart Dingwall says. ‘It is affiliated with Scottish Dawn and NS131, banned under UK terrorism laws in 2017. It has links to far-right terror organizations in the USA, Europe and Australia, several of which have planned or carried out terrorist atrocities.’

  The more Rose found out about this school which, like so many others in the UK, has the freedom to worship whichever god you want, or none, has openly gay teachers and multicultural liberalism, the more she’s feared it could be a target for terrorists, both white supremacists and Islamic State, with their shared hatred for inclusivity and tolerance. ‘Our people’; you cowardly inadequate bastards have so much in common.

  And it makes her furious because the school has a fantastic kind of innocence, if innocence is openness uncorrupted by prejudice, and she admires whoever fought for it because you don’t get this thoughtless tolerance without people taking risks, putting themselves on the line. Who was the first teacher to openly declare she was lesbian to the kids and then give them their geography homework? (Though in a school like this they probably don’t believe in homework.) And now a school that should represent a microcosm of the UK, diverse and tolerant, is being punished for it.

  ‘Since the end of June, Jamie Alton has had an online alias: “Aryan Knight”,’ Lysander says. ‘Using the alias Aryan Knight, Alton started interacting with 14 Words in August. Deakin was already a member of this terrorist group and the initial traffic between 14 Words and Aryan Knight was on Deakin’s computer on the dark net.

  ‘14 Words sent Alton links to white supremacist forums, blogs and propaganda videos. I’ll send you the details. As well as the online interface, I am pretty certain there were also face-to-face meet-ups, using codes for places and people.’

  Usman Pabey, a young IT forensics analyst, joins the briefing.

  ‘I’ve been working under Lysander’s direction. At the beginning of September, Alton increased the security on his own laptop. By the end of September he was having near-constant interaction with 14 Words on his own computer as well as Deakin’s, at one point receiving up to forty messages a day from them.’

  ‘So we can pretty much chart a textbook radicalization process,’ Stuart says.

  ‘Radicalization explains how Victor Deakin persuaded Jamie to join him in this attack,’ Rose says. ‘Victor would have groomed him first and he was lonely, probably depressed, so vulnerable to radicalization.’

  Beth Alton was right, Victor alone wouldn’t have been powerful enough to utterly change her son. Victor needed an organization to get Jamie to cross a line into murder and be a wingman for his attack. It was probably Victor who came up with the nom de guerre ‘Aryan Knight’ for Jamie.

  ‘14 Words vet all new recruits,’ Stuart says. ‘They’re paranoid about being infiltrated. Alton would have had to have a personal recommendation by Deakin.’

  ‘A week ago, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram accounts were set up in the name Aryan Knight,’ Usman says, ‘with the banner “100%” or “18”; so far there’s been no activity but we’re monitoring the accounts.’

  ‘100% means pure Aryan blood,’ Stuart Dingwall says. ‘18 corresponds to the first and eighth letter of the alphabet, which are the initials of Adolf Hitler.’

  ‘How does this affect negotiation with Jamie Alton?’ Bronze Commander asks.

  ‘Negotiating with a radicalized terrorist is extremely difficult,’ Dannisha says. ‘Sometimes impossible. We are up against intensive brainwashing. We don’t know how extensive.’

  Rose looks at the screen that shows the pottery room; it’s snowing too hard to see anyone at the window. What would she say to Camille Giraud if she could speak to her? Could she tell this sensitive, brave art teacher that they can get her and the children safely out?

  Only if there is something left of the boy Jamie Alton used to be; only if they can talk to that boy. Jamie did apparently break away fro
m Victor Deakin on the 31st of October. Did Victor instruct Jamie to say he’d broken off their friendship? Ask him to broadcast that he thought Victor was a psycho? It would be safer for his plan if nobody linked the two of them, if there was no reason for anyone to watch Jamie in the run-up to the attack. And Halloween, with its devils and ghosts, masks and disguises, is a date Victor would have chosen to deceive people; there’s a vicious playfulness to it.

  But maybe on that one evening Jamie saw Victor for what he really is and tried to go back to his parents, to his old friend Zac, his liberal school and family tugging him back to the boy he used to be. And perhaps a part of that ‘old Jamie’ remains and he can be reasoned with and he’ll let the children and their teacher go. But she fears it’s unlikely.

  ‘Detective Inspector Polstein?’ Bronze Commander asks.

  ‘I think our chance of getting through to Jamie Alton, that there is anyone left to get through to, is very small.’

  ‘Have we been able to establish any communication?’ Bronze Commander asks.

  ‘He hasn’t answered his phone to his parents or to us,’ Dannisha says. ‘His mother has a special ringtone; if his ringer is on he’ll know it’s her calling.’

  ‘Get the parents to keep on trying, and we do too,’ Bronze Commander says. ‘What about Victor Deakin? Does belonging to this terror organization tell us anything more about what he intends to do?’

  ‘Being a member of a white terrorist organization might be good news in one way,’ Stuart Dingwall says. ‘As Inspector Polstein said, Deakin is intelligent enough to know the police will shoot him dead if he opens fire. Unlike radical Islamist terrorists, where suicide is frequently part of the plan, far-right terrorists often aim to survive.’

  Rose knows he’s right; the Michigan State University report confirmed it. And you only have to think of far-right terrorists in the dock following an atrocity: the murderer in Pittsburgh, the murderer in Charlottesville, the murderer of scores of young people in Norway raising his – very much alive – arm in a Nazi salute.

  ‘Victor won’t die for any cause other than himself,’ Rose says. ‘And as I said, psychopaths rarely commit suicide. But he could still want to go out in what he sees as a blaze of glory.’