Three Hours : A Novel (2020)

by Lupton, Rosamund

  Zac bangs a gong for thunder and Luisa strobes a bright light across the stage as lightning for the entrance of the three witches, the instruments of darkness.

  Sophie, Tracey and Antonella stride out on to the stage. They are wearing the black balaclavas again and have put on the black sashes, but must have turned the sashes inside out, because now they have white supremacist symbols on them of a swastika and a raised white fist – most probably done with Tippex, Daphne thinks. The audience applaud; she hears Donna shout ‘Brava!’

  ‘People from New School are on TV,’ Frank says, looking at his laptop.

  Everyone looks at their screens, the theatre people sharing theirs with the library kids and the ones in Jacintha’s class whose mobiles ran out of charge.

  News sites and social media sites have footage of a coach and four minibuses, all with CLIFF HEIGHTS CO-ED SCHOOL 4–18 written on the side, and teachers’ cars arriving at The Pines Leisure Centre. Someone at the leisure centre must have filmed this, sold it perhaps.

  Daphne sees colleagues getting out of their cars, which are crammed full of children, and although she already knew they were evacuated, seeing it now makes it newly uplifting, because that really is the word for it, like watching this momentarily lifts her out of this appalling thing that’s happening to their school. The kids too are buoyed up by this footage, their bodies less tense, voices lighter as they spot their friends.

  ‘There’s James and Maddy.’

  ‘Sarah Jennings. Lucy Carver.’

  ‘Look at the Year Eights, they’re strutting!’

  ‘Not all of them, some are in tears, look.’

  ‘Where’s Anna and Young Fry?’ Josh asks.

  Daphne looks for the two young children. It was the sixth-formers who nicknamed Davy ‘Young Fry’ because Davy loves his murderer’s line, ‘What, you egg? Young fry of treachery!’ and they’d all got into the habit of asking where Young Fry had got to, which was often, as he has the knack of never being where he’s meant to be. Last week Daphne had found him with the sixth-formers on an illicit fag break, though not himself smoking, small mercies; she’s suspected his mother wanted him in a school play to wear him out.

  ‘I found Anna fast asleep on my fake-fur coat last week,’ Antonella says. ‘Curled up like a kitten.’

  Unlike her stage brother, who will one day make a fantastically exuberant Puck, Anna is a dreamy little girl, easily tired.

  ‘I can’t see any junior school class,’ Josh says.

  ‘There’s no little kids there,’ Caitlin says. ‘They’re all too tall.’

  ‘They were doing art in New School this morning, right, Daphne?’ Tracey says.

  ‘Yes,’ Daphne says. And she’s certain of this because she had everyone’s timetables to schedule the dress rehearsal. ‘We’ll see them in a minute, I’m sure.’

  Everyone looks for young children on their screens; phone screens are too small so they cluster round people with iPads and laptops.

  ‘Maybe they didn’t go to art, maybe they were in Junior School and got out with the other children on the boats,’ Antonella says.

  ‘But I was going to pick them up from the art room in New School,’ Tracey says. ‘In time for their cue. You emailed me, Daphne.’

  They’re going to other news sites, searching the footage for young children.

  Daphne sees Tonya, the headmaster’s secretary, and Donna, Old School’s receptionist, looking very anxious, almost in tears.

  ‘They’re in the pottery room,’ Tonya says. ‘Anna and Davy, with their class. Matthew went to warn Camille when this first started.’

  ‘They didn’t get out?’ Tracey says.

  ‘I don’t think so, no,’ Tonya says.

  The theatre is quiet, appalled.

  ‘Surely Jamie, Victor even, won’t go after young children,’ Zac says.

  ‘They probably don’t even know they’re in the pottery room,’ Josh says.

  Please God, let them be right.

  * * *

  The shape in the snow that was earlier spotted above the pottery room has been identified as a military-grade UAV. It seemed to have vanished but they reran their footage and tracked it dipping below the treeline and out of sight. They hope that the dense snow has got into its engine, that even though it’s military grade it’s crashed to the ground; but it could be waiting, hiding.

  ‘We don’t go in yet,’ Bronze Commander says. ‘We still have eighteen minutes till Alton opens fire. We need to make sure. Search again.’

  Rose has often been under time pressure in her career, but time has always been digital before, not seconds as grains of sand running through an hour glass.

  But the kids and staff from Old School are safe. Astonishingly, they are safe. And Victor Deakin hasn’t returned. They’re searching for him in the woods, but aren’t hopeful of finding him in these conditions. They’ve tried phoning PC Beard but he must have turned his phone off – sensible when he’s hiding in a woodland with a gunman on the loose.

  Would they have stopped PC Beard’s plan if they’d known about it? (And they only found out about it from the teachers once they were safely in the theatre.) She doubts it, because of all potential options, and she cannot believe there were any good ones, it surely carried the least risk to the kids.

  She goes to the open door, needing the icy air and physical separation to think. She’s still troubled by the language Victor used in the announcement about the bloodbath in Old School. Because why would Victor Deakin use words from a teenage attacker at Columbine, with no obvious motive beyond world fame, and a Kansas white supremacist terrorist with a hatred for Muslims? Maybe he couldn’t be bothered to come up with his own words; taking the piss out of the organization he’s supposedly killing for because he’s superior to them; superior even to a supremacist group – only a narcissistic psychopath could go that far.

  But there might be something important here: perhaps Victor Deakin thought they might decode his announcement about Old School – it wasn’t as difficult as the Jamie Alton one – and left them a clue, as if this is a game; but she can’t yet figure out what it is.

  * * *

  Rafi hardly has any strength left, his right leg barely able to support him, but he pushes himself on towards the car park and Basi in the boatshed.

  I love you. Just three words that are the spoken soul of you, that make the unseen spine of who you are in the world. I hate you is only three words too but isn’t enough; you can’t say I hate you and leave it at that, you have to say why, but I love you are three words complete in themselves.

  He checks behind, but cannot see anyone following him in the driving snow.

  In the Dunkirk camp, he worried every time he returned to their shed with food that he’d lead men back to Basi. He’d told Basi only to answer the door to their knocking code but didn’t tell him the reason he couldn’t call out that it was him; that his fourteen-year-old’s voice would also mark him out to the paedophiles. In the camp, he always had his hood pulled forward to hide how young he was.

  He tries to run, but the snow is too deep and his right leg keeps giving way, so hobbling is the best he can manage; a fast fucking hobble but he will get to Basi.

  * * *

  In the theatre, Hannah’s phone is charging in a floor socket next to her seat. They’re all watching the dress rehearsal. Some of the audience don’t really know what’s going on, apart from people like her doing English A level, but they didn’t want their friends to start over.

  Her phone buzzes and she sees she’s got an Instagram message from someone called Aryan Knight: a photo of the front page of the Sun newspaper.

  1 IN 5 BRIT MUSLIMS’ SYMPATHY FOR JIHADIS

  It buzzes again with another photo of a newspaper front page.

  MUSLIMS TELL BRITISH: GO TO HELL!!

  Hannah shows her phone to Benny and Frank. More photos of front pages ping on to her phone.

  MUSLIMS ‘SILENT ON TERROR’

  JIHADIST
KILLERS ON OUR STREETS

  HUNDREDS MORE UK MUSLIMS CHOOSE JIHAD THAN ARMY

  Daphne sees kids around Hannah and goes over. She looks at the Instagram photos on Hannah’s phone and puts her arm around the girl’s shoulders as more and more of them come on to her screen. Other kids are gathering around Hannah.

  ‘Why are they sending us this bullshit?’ Frank asks.

  Daphne starts to say something then stops. But they are all looking at her, and this is the kind of school where the kids are included, treated as independent and responsible.

  ‘We are being told why our school is being punished,’ Daphne says.

  Daphne has felt the kids’ camaraderie as an almost tangible thing; the kids in the theatre pouring their energy and love into their friends from Old School, bonding them tightly together. But with these headlines something different is happening; the kids from Old School no longer look vulnerable but angry, all the kids now enraged that white supremacists are doing this to their school; to Rafi and Basi and Anna and Davy and Mr Marr; and she feels this fury as energy, a wild thing, that has nowhere to go.

  * * *

  Rafi is nearing the car park. The pain from his leg and the cold are making him shudder uncontrollably. He sees that blood has soaked through his jeans and is falling on to the snow. He has told Hannah Syrian folk tales and she’s told him her fairy tales, part of their childhoods so part of themselves. He thinks of Little Red Riding Hood being followed by a wolf; Snow White being taken into the woods to be murdered; red and white, blood on snow, a breadcrumb trail.

  He’s so cold and tired that he finds it hard to lift his arms to take off his hoody. He manages to take off the hoody and then his shirt, his bare arms trembling. He wraps his shirt around his injured right leg, tightly despite pressing at the shrapnel, to absorb his blood so he won’t lead anyone to Basi. He puts the hoody back on again but it is covered in snow, freezing against his bare skin.

  He walks a few more paces towards the car park, but is too cold and exhausted to walk any further. He sinks down on to his knees and then he crawls through the thick snow towards his brother. His legs are becoming numb, his hands aching with cold as he crawls.

  ‘You should be Young Seward, you know that, don’t you?’ Hannah said to him.

  She knows that he admires Young Seward the most of all the characters, because he doesn’t run away. ‘Had he his hurts before?’ his father asks, when he’s told his son is dead. ‘Ay, on the front,’ the man replies. He died facing evil, not running away. He wants Baba to be proud.

  His mobile buzzes and he thinks it’s Hannah but it’s an Instagram photo of segments of a newspaper, with the name Katie Hopkins.

  Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants

  Show me bodies floating in water, I still don’t care. Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches. Bring on the gunships, force migrants back to their shores and burn the boats.

  He is crawling like a cockroach but this journalist is wrong. He is not like a cockroach, he is like Young Seward. And he will reach Basi.

  * * *

  The shed is getting darker and the blackness smells of monsters, their mouths with rotting things inside, and they are going to bite his face with their dagger-teeth. He hears them creeping towards him.

  He didn’t tell Rafi where he is.

  He puts his hands over his mouth, trying not to make any sounds as he cries, but he hears moaning noises, like he’s a little baby not a boy, but he can’t stop.

  Rafi won’t be able to find him.

  They’re not monsters but a man with a gun. He pushes his fist into his mouth so the man won’t hear him cry, but he’s juddering and he’s making the boat judder too, making it creak, and the man with the gun will hear him and shoot him.

  There’s no Ratty in here, nobody with him. His phone is open but it’s dark and won’t switch on and inside all his animals are starved.

  * * *

  In the theatre, everyone is looking at their screens; the news is reporting that one of the attackers is called ‘Aryan Knight’.

  ‘A fucking knight?’ Frank says.

  Knights are decent and brave; Arthurian knights and their quests, Chaucer’s gentle knight on a pilgrimage, Rafi coming back for Hannah, and the gunmen are the opposite of everything that is decent and brave and gentle.

  ‘He’s trending on Twitter,’ Luisa says.

  ‘Probably not Aryan Knight himself,’ Josh says. ‘Probably needs both hands on his fucking gun.’

  ‘It’s just bots retweeting, not real people,’ Antonella says.

  But real people will be reading it now. Frank puts his arm around Hannah, trying to stop her shaking, as they read Aryan Knight’s retweets:

  Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

  Thank you to respected columnist Katie Hopkins of Daily Mail.com for her powerful writing on the UK’s Muslim problems.

  Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

  The politicians of the U.K. should watch Katie Hopkins of Daily Mail.com on @FoxNews. Many people in the U.K. agree with me!

  Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

  The United Kingdom is trying hard to disguise their massive Muslim problem. Everybody is wise to what is happening, very sad! Be honest.

  Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

  In Britain, more Muslims join ISIS than join the British Army.

  Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

  We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people. If we don’t get smart it will only get worse.

  Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump

  Just out report: “United Kingdom crime rises 13% annually amid spread of Radical Islamic terror.” Not good, we must keep America safe!

  * * *

  There are fourteen minutes until Jamie Alton opens fire. A police UAV operator has just spotted the terrorist’s drone back up over the pottery room.

  ‘They’re now retweeting Trump’s retweets of Jayda Fransen,’ Stuart says. ‘Deputy leader of Britain First.’

  ‘We still can’t stop it?’ Bronze Commander’s frustration is evident.

  ‘They’ve got software which is creating aliases very fast, as fast as we take them down,’ Lysander says.

  ‘They’ve retweeted Britain First’s response,’ Stuart says.

  Britain First @BritainFirstHQ

  THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES HAS RETWEETED THREE OF DEPUTY LEADER JAYDA FRANSEN’S TWITTER VIDEOS. DONALD TRUMP HAS AROUND 44 MILLION FOLLOWERS! GOD BLESS YOU TRUMP!

  Rose remembers that the white supremacist murderer of the MP Jo Cox – mother of two young children, wife, daughter, sister and friend – shouted ‘Britain First’ as he killed her.

  She wonders what would have happened to seventeen-year-old Jamie Alton if the president of America and mainstream newspapers hadn’t fostered hatred against Muslims? Perhaps there would have been a brake on his mental deterioration and brainwashing; perhaps he would have had more of a chance against it. But there’s no point now going down this path because it is too late.

  Police attack drones are being launched to take out the terrorists’ drone. Her team and Dannisha watch the screen, but she turns away.

  Not your job.

  She goes back to the open door, looks out at the snow. Victor has orchestrated all of it, she’s sure of that, so it’s Victor behind retweeting Trump. And that makes sense because even if Victor thinks him moronic, and she expects that he does, at least he’s a world-famous wielder of immense power; but that’s far from the case with Patrick Stein and Eric Harris, whose words Victor has appropriated.

  Again, she wonders if Victor has given them a clue. But if he has, then he’s confident they won’t understand; that he can outplay them.

  ‘The BBC’s just got a message,’ an officer says on screen. ‘Pull back or we kill now. The message includes a YouTube link.’

  He presses the link and YouTube footage plays, which must have been taken by the terrorists
’ drone. It shows Jamie Alton pointing his gun at the pottery room.

  ‘It’s been posted on to Aryan Knight’s Instagram and YouTube accounts,’ Usman says. ‘We closed it down, but it had already gone viral.’

  A man in a balaclava pointing a gun at children, of course it went viral. Victor has not only orchestrated the violence but also how it is shown; releasing this footage to heat up already febrile news coverage, guaranteeing airtime around the world.

  * * *

  In the theatre, they are all on screens watching a repost of Aryan Knight’s YouTube video. Most kids are sharing, even if they have a working mobile of their own, because they want to be close to someone else. Daphne and Sally-Anne watch on Sally-Anne’s iPad.

  From high up Daphne sees their school, the snow falling, the beautiful woods, and then further in to see the pottery room where Anna and Davy are. It must be taken from a drone with a camera; but why?

  The camera moves down through the falling snow. Through the branches of trees, she sees the pottery room’s huge windows, with something filling them, tiles she thinks, but the snow is too thick to be sure. And then the drone turns and she is looking at a man in army clothes, his face covered by a black balaclava, ammunition belts looped round his body. His gun is pointing at the windows of the pottery room.

  The large theatre is silent. Daphne has never heard it so quiet, even when she’s been alone here. And in the quiet, all their phones and iPads play the sound of the wind outside the pottery room.

  ‘Mr Marr is dying,’ Hannah says. ‘He’s bleeding and he can hardly breathe, he won’t be able to, not for much longer. Frank lied to protect you all, we all did, but I think you should know.’

  On stage Caitlin, playing Lady Macduff, and Josh, playing Ross, start their scene, jumping ahead; perhaps they don’t care or perhaps they can’t remember – as if it matters.

  ‘You must have patience, Madam,’ Ross says.

  ‘He had none,’ Lady Macduff replies. ‘His flight was madness … Our fears do make us traitors.’

  Little Anna is meant to be holding Lady Macduff’s hand, Davy scampering around and not doing as he’s told, while First Murderer waits in the wings, and Daphne must stop this rehearsal. She stands and gestures to Caitlin and Josh to stop but they ignore her. Normally she’d like it that they are not biddable, that the kids here think for themselves, are not in awe of authority – even kids like Caitlin who you’d think would do as they’re told are not like that at all – but she really needs them to do as they are told now.