Three Hours : A Novel (2020)

by Lupton, Rosamund

  ‘But how did he know to look for Rafi outside?’ Rose asks. ‘How did he know that he wasn’t in a building or evacuated?’

  ‘We know at least one teacher on the beach phoned a colleague at the school and said Rafi had left the beach,’ Stuart says. ‘Rafi himself phoned a friend with that information, maybe more than one. So other staff and kids knew and information leaks. It’s probably out there on the net, a news site or social media, and this organization will be scanning everything to do with the school, gleaning information.’

  ‘Or he could have just got lucky,’ Rahman says. ‘He went back up the high ropes, keeping watch again, spotted someone moving in the woods and went after him. If he hadn’t already seen it was Rafi Bukhari, he did when he got closer.’

  ‘And then Rafi managed to lose him,’ Rose says.

  ‘But he knows that Rafi is out there, not protected,’ Rahman says. ‘And he’s hunting for him now.’

  Talking as if he exists because the scenario makes too much sense; it points, almost conclusively, to a third terrorist on the school campus. After the purchase of the silencer and subsonic ammo was discovered, there was little doubt, but now Rose thinks there’s none. She needs to check anyway.

  ‘With a suppressor and the subsonic bullets, would firing the gun make any noise?’

  ‘Yeah, a bit,’ Safa Rahman says. ‘But hard to detect from any distance.’

  ‘What sound would it make?’ Rose asks, but she thinks she already knows.

  ‘Like a twig snapping.’

  * * *

  Rafi limps through the blizzard, yelling Basi’s name and waiting for Basi to call back, but there’s just the sounds of the storm. His face has been cut by shrapnel, stinging as he wipes blood and snow away so his eyes are clear to look for his brother. Maybe Basi was outside Mrs Cardswell’s classroom when he saw the gunman, maybe he’s still there.

  His phone vibrates, Rose Polstein, and he answers.

  ‘Do you know something about Basi?’ he asks.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. Not yet. Rafi, you absolutely have to hide until it’s safe. There is another terrorist in the school grounds who we think is armed. We think that you are a target.’

  Rafi hangs up and tries to run round the side of the building to outside Mrs Cardswell’s classroom, his leg so painful he gasps in snow.

  But he’d have seen Basi when he was in her classroom earlier. Unless Basi was crouched down outside the window, hiding.

  He reaches the outside of Mrs Cardswell’s classroom; a yellow life jacket is lying half buried in the snow under the window frame. Where’s he run to? Which direction? But Basi’s light shallow footprints have long since been filled in.

  Rose Polstein wants to help, he rates Rose Polstein, but the police can’t help find Basi, he was stupid to even hope that they could. They can’t fly a helicopter in this snow, and even if they did, Basi would run away because helicopters drop barrel bombs. And if they send in police to look for him, Basi will hide from them, because of France, because they set dogs on him and a dog bit his cheek, and the policeman waited before calling the dog off. He’s terrified of police.

  He phones Mr Marr; he’s wanted to talk to him all through this, since he first left the beach, but thought that he mustn’t because Mr Marr has so many other kids to look after. In the camp, he’d thought about Mr Marr’s kind face, remembered his thoughtful eyes and his reassuring voice and what he said, the promise he’d made, and even though Rafi didn’t think he could, he’d kept it. And he’s not a kind face in their memories but a loving man in their lives.

  Mr Marr doesn’t answer. He doesn’t answer. Mr Marr would talk to him if he could. Pain is muddling his thoughts, taking up too much room in his head. Why isn’t he answering?

  But he can’t worry about Mr Marr, not till Basi is safe, just like he couldn’t worry about Hannah earlier, not till he’d got Basi to the beach, because he’s not big enough to worry about more than one person that he loves at the same time, and later he will hate himself for that, but now he just has to find Basi.

  He could be in the woods near to Junior School or further away if he ran for longer, or not in the woods at all but on the path down to the beach. And the snow is so dense he can barely see in front of him.

  He stumbles and falls heavily, pushing the jagged piece of metal shrapnel deeper into his right thigh. The same leg that was broken in Aleppo when the building collapsed on top of him. He lies on the snow, panting, trying to overcome the pain and get up again.

  He remembers Mama’s slender fingers broken and bruised from digging for him, Baba’s hands bloody, but both of them smiling like it was the happiest day of their lives as they pulled him free.

  Baba is dead and he left Mama behind; nobody digging for him now.

  Only him to look for Basi.

  He gets up, dragging his injured leg behind him.

  There’s so much snow falling around him, like it’s isolating him in his own tiny spot in the world.

  * * *

  In the shed the noises are getting closer. Basi takes his hands out of his anorak sleeves and puts them over his ears, but he can still hear the creaks and groans. He closes his eyes and remembers the noises of the sea at night, the boat creaking, the black sky raining wet darkness on to them, and you were so frightened and cold you didn’t think anything good could ever happen ever again. Then Rafi turned on his laser pointer and shone it up at the darkness and made a magic shimmery tunnel of falling raindrops from their boat right up into the top of the black sky.

  ‘It’s all right. Don’t worry. I’ll come and find you.’

  He must’ve told Rafi where he is; must’ve done.

  * * *

  Two minutes ago, the young police UAV operator with a headset under her hijab, who’s been hunting for a terrorist drone in the relatively small space of sky above the pottery room, spotted a dark shape amongst the snow but it disappeared. They are taking stills from the footage and enlarging the image to decipher what she saw.

  There’s still time, Rose says to herself, thirty-eight minutes until Jamie Alton opens fire.

  ‘The girl on TV, who saw the glint at the top of the high ropes course, does anyone know where she was speaking from?’ Thandie asks.

  ‘The library,’ Amaal says. ‘She was trying to get medical help for their head teacher.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Rose says. She has a sudden glimpse into one of many stories that are playing out simultaneously here and she feels again this sense that she isn’t at the heart of things; that she is skimming surfaces and imposing metallic rationality but what is happening is human and extreme and she wants to leave this vehicle and go into the school itself. Which will accomplish what, exactly, Rose? Bloody hell, stop being so self-indulgent and focus on what you’re here to do.

  Rose’s team and other officers have spoken to staff but none of them can give any information on 14 Words, none of them even knew of its existence, let alone that a pupil was involved. The police told them they had to keep the information about 14 Words confidential. ‘But not from the kids inside the school, surely?’ Neil Forbright had said to her. ‘They deserve to know who is attacking them; to be trusted.’ She’d told him that actually, yes, it did include them. But she thinks that the teachers as well as the kids are not used to being obedient, and she likes them for it.

  An officer has spoken to the gardener who saw a possible intruder outside the maintenance shed but he couldn’t give a description; the man’s back was towards him, his hood up.

  * * *

  The stench in the library is stronger: vomit and urine; fear and captivity. The footsteps are coming towards them. They stop outside the door. They are all holding their bodies rigid and still, holding their breaths. Hannah joins Ed and Frank, sitting next to them, with her back to the books and the door, the three of them squashed together. She’s worried about leaving Mr Marr but the main thing is to stop the gunman getting inside, because she thinks the first person he’ll kill will be Mr Ma
rr.

  She feels a shove against her back, and she and Ed and Frank push back.

  She thinks of people smugglers trying to shove Rafi and Basi down into the hold, where you would be drowned first or suffocated by the fumes of the engine, hundreds of them below deck. Rafi had held on to Basi and pushed back.

  The door doesn’t open any further.

  He knocks on the door, tap-tap, like he’s asking to come in; a joke.

  Soon he’ll realize it’s their bodies pressing against the door and he’ll shoot; splashes of purple, a wrecked time machine, a smashed lighthouse lamp, and everything going dark.

  She thinks of Dad’s arm around her and his voice, Courage, mon brave; and she must tell him that she’s had him with her all through this, because they’ve been growing a little apart, not in big obvious ways, but in small important ways, and now she knows they haven’t really grown apart at all.

  If she’s going to die, it’s easier to think about Dad. No one can take away the time she’s had with him, years and years together and memories and words handed down like watches.

  But she and Rafi have only had four months and the gunman in the corridor and the ones she imagines in the woods, hunting down Rafi, could take away all the unlived months, secretly she’s dreamt of years and ever after, and they could steal it all before it’s even happened. She thinks of the people that they were this morning, running through the woods holding hands like two in-love young skeletons, bones touching, and in love was true, they were, they are, but there’s no future round the bend in the path; no this afternoon, this evening, tomorrow, and all those days after that will disappear before she’s lived them.

  The footsteps leave, but he’ll come back again.

  * * *

  Lysander starts an on-screen briefing.

  ‘We can’t get any further with the heavily encrypted transactions, not in the time that we have. But Usman’s just got something.’

  Usman comes on to the screen. Rose thinks that he is shaking. Bronze Commander and Stuart Dingwall have also joined the briefing.

  ‘I’ve decrypted another time-delayed announcement,’ Usman says. ‘It refers to Victor Deakin and Old School. It’s scheduled to go public on the Aryan Knight social media accounts at 12.00 midday today, twenty minutes before Jamie Alton’s announcement. I’m sorry, it wasn’t as heavily encrypted, I should have deciphered it faster. It’s really bad.’

  He turns the computer screen so they can all read it.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ someone says.

  The only fucking way this country’s ever going to get turned around is if there’s a fucking bloodbath and at 12.00 it’s a bloodbath in Old School, in the library & classrooms, a nasty, messy motherfucker.

  A lot of people are waking up in this country and smelling the fucking coffee and deciding they want this country back from Muslims and all you SJWs and snowflakes and libtards will wake up.

  We might be too late, if they do wake up, but I think we can get it done. But it ain’t going to be nothing nice about it.

  When we go on operations, there’s no leaving anyone behind. I guarantee when we go on this mission those little fuckers in Old School are going bye-bye. Before I leave this worthless place, I will kill.

  I will die but I will become IMMORTAL.

  They have fifteen minutes till Deakin opens fire in Old School.

  ‘I tripped an alarm on the announcement,’ Usman says. ‘They know we’ve seen it.’

  Rose sees that Safa Rahman in his grey combat uniform is talking hurriedly to other members of the elite counterterrorism armed unit and she imagines them fast-roping down from their helicopters through the skylights of Old School, bursting in through the windows, but the plans of the building haven’t changed and the gunman is still in an interior corridor without windows or skylights to surprise him.

  There are thirteen students in the library, and the badly wounded head teacher, twelve students and three adults in the English teacher’s classroom, and Neil Forbright on his own. If Rahman’s unit storm the building, how many will Deakin kill with his converted semi-automatic before they take him out? She cannot see how this will be accomplished without terrible loss of life.

  Not your job. As she told Thandie, they have their job and they leave the armed units and everyone else to do theirs. Her role is to help find out who’s doing this and why they’re doing this. That’s where she might have value, though she thinks there’s precious little she can do now. Not her call to make.

  Do your job.

  She recognizes some of Victor’s words in the time-delayed announcement: Before I leave this worthless place, I will kill. He’s copied them from Eric Harris’s journal, one of the two gunmen at Columbine High School.

  ‘Do you recognize any of the message, Stuart?’ Rose asks. ‘He’s lifted some of it from one of the Columbine shooters.’

  ‘A whole load’s taken from Patrick Stein again, with a few personalized tweaks,’ Stuart says.

  And it bothers her again, because it makes no sense that a narcissistic psychopath would use other people’s words.

  ‘14 Words have tweeted part of the bloodbath announcement,’ Lysander says. ‘Again it’s via proxies and aliases. They’re using bots to get it to trend.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Bronze Commander says. He takes a moment and his voice is calmer. ‘We’re taking it down?’

  ‘Yes.’

  But it will already be growing exponentially on the internet with humans now retweeting.

  ‘Why are they making it public?’ Bronze Commander asks.

  ‘Maybe because they have nothing to lose now,’ Rose says. ‘They know we saw the timed announcement so they’re trying to take back some ground. Or maybe they want it out there.’

  ‘To create more terror?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes.’

  * * *

  In Matthew’s office, Neil Forbright has received an email from Frank in the library. The gunman tried to get in again; then he knocked at the door, like a joke. He is no longer human to Neil but satanic; a demon hunting for souls. Psychiatrists can dress him up any which way in scientific terms but he is something evil, connected to times when the devil roamed the world and came knocking at your door. Only now he has a gun and the door is in a school with kids the other side. And it makes it worse, it does, the kids’ courage.

  Tonya has just sent him a link on his phone. He clicks on it. It’s a tweet.

  14 Words.abc @14words.bca

  The only fucking way this country’s ever going to get turned around is if there’s A FUCKING BLOODBATH. At 12.00 it’s a BLOODBATH IN OLD SCHOOL, in the library & classrooms, a nasty, messy motherfucker

  His phone rings and he answers.

  ‘Mr Forbright? It’s PC Beard. Tonya’s sent you the tweet?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We need to go for my plan straight away. Tonya and the other adults in the English classroom agree.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘He probably won’t spot me but even if he does, I’m just in a PC’s uniform, even got the helmet. Not like the armed lot – he’s more likely to laugh at me than start firing at anyone. I’ll be Bobby the retro policeman to him.’

  ‘Do the police even know about this plan?’

  ‘I am the police, Mr Forbright. We have strict ways of doing things. Playing “ring the doorbell and run away from the gunman” isn’t one of those ways. They would almost definitely try and stop me.’

  ‘Because he’ll kill you.’

  ‘I’ll be running away by the time he gets to the door. Not fast, my wife’s roast dinners haven’t made me a running machine, but there’s plenty of bushes to hide behind. He’ll chase after me for a bit, hopefully, and then he’ll return to you lot, but you lot won’t be there any more.’

  ‘What if he finds you?’

  ‘This is my community, my patch. And from what I know of your school, it’s a special place, a smaller version of England; lots of different nationalities, any religion you like,
nobody’s fussed, takes in refugees – Sorry, going on. No time for that. But the thing is, I want to help. When you hear the doorbell, good and loud, that’ll be me – as if anyone else will be ringing the doorbell.’ He actually chortles. ‘Tell everyone to wait for the doorbell, and then count, what do you think, to twenty? To give him time to get to the front door?’

  ‘Depends how quick he is. Maybe fifteen if he’s fast.’

  ‘Yes, I think he’ll be fast. Count to fifteen and then run like the wind to the theatre. I’ll tell Tonya and you tell the kids in the library?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You need to go with them, all right, son? They’ll need someone they trust to be with them. I’ll tell that lovely lady Sally-Anne in the theatre to let you in. She’s been waiting.’

  And this is what evil does, Neil thinks. It exposes your fear and cowardice, your vulnerability and your fragility, makes you confront your mortality; but it also finds courage and selflessness that amaze Neil. He thinks of white type on a white screen, the poem’s beauty invisible until the background screen is turned black.

  * * *

  In the library, Hannah checks Mr Marr is breathing and he is, but so faintly that she needs to put her hand on his chest to feel it move. Ed and David are taking books away from the heaped barricade; Ed passes books to Frank, David to Esme, and then they carefully put them down on to the floor, trying to make no sound.

  The book barricade dwindles.

  The door is visible.

  The footsteps are getting louder. They’re coming towards them.

  The footsteps stop outside the door. Does he know he can open it? One shove and he’ll be inside.

  She just wants to live so badly. Because it’s all out there, Rafi is out there and university and all of it. And Dad needs her. He still thinks that she needs him more than he needs her, but it’s changing, the pattern, the parabola, so she can’t not be here any more.

  The footsteps move away; he doesn’t know he can open the door.

  Ed and David pass the last of the books, Frank and Esme gently putting them down.

  Everyone is taking off their shoes so they’ll just be in their socks and not make any noise. Hannah’s socks are still damp from running through the woods this morning. She takes off Frank’s anorak, which rustles, and her bangles that will jingle; lots of the girls are doing that, dangly earrings too, just in case.