by Mick Herron
Gordy shrieked, and flung himself around Eliot’s left leg while Timmy wordlessly, breathlessly, grabbed his right, though Eliot didn’t fall – instinctively, he wrapped an arm round each child, recoiling as far as he could without actu-ally stepping back; tried to make himself a shield, a wall, anything bullets bounced off. And already his mind was splitting sideways, as if he were twinning too; one half saying This isn’t happening this doesn’t happen this is an ordinary Tuesday in South Oxford while the other informed him, coldly, clinically – with something almost satisfied in its tone – that this was real and this was true, and this man held a gun.
‘Please. You will open the gates.’
‘Don’t hurt my children,’ Eliot said.
‘You will open the gates, yes?’
He wasn’t aiming his gun at Eliot – he held it loosely by his side, as if it were a pint of milk or a banana or . . . or something else, anyway, and both seemed to grow wise to this at the same moment, because no sooner had Eliot allowed the fact to take shape than the man – the boy – looked at the instrument in his hand, and a change swept over him, as if he’d put on new knowledge, which was power. Now he raised the gun, and now he was pointing it at Eliot.
‘You will open the gates, yes.’
Power turned questions into statements.
Eliot said, ‘Please, we were just passing, don’t hurt my –’
‘The gates. You will open them.’
‘Please –’
He couldn’t look down. His boys were clinging to him, one leg apiece, and his world had shrunk to this small bubble, just big enough for the five of them: himself, his children, this stranger, that gun – but he couldn’t look down; couldn’t tear his eyes from what might blow his world apart to what made it worth living in.
‘The gates.’
The gates. It was only now the word penetrated – the Gun wanted him to open the gates. The gates were the nursery gates, and were securely locked; there was a key-pad security system, and the number wasn’t given out to parents, so what made the Gun think he knew how to open them? Though he did, of course – he’d been watching the cleaning woman’s hand as she punched the numbers with her stubby finger, and could still see the pat-tern she’d made: four swift jabs on the keypad – a diagonal downward slash, left to right, then another figure, obscured by her hand . . .
‘What do you want?’ he asked, and the words came out a whisper.
‘Open the gates.’
Timmy said, ‘Daddy –’ ‘Hush, Timmy. Everything’s all right.’
‘Gordy wants mummy,’ Gordon said.
‘Everything’s all right,’ Eliot said again. He was amazed his voice sounded so steady – amazed he hadn’t burst into tears, actually.
Cued, primed, ready, Gordy started to cry.
‘Please. I do not want to hurt you.’
But even as the boy spoke the words, the gun twitched in his hand, as if to underline that it wasn’t the boy in control of getting what he wanted.
‘Gordon –’
Timmy was tugging wordlessly at his trouser leg – soon, very soon, the high-pitched keening would begin.
‘Timmy –’
‘The gates.’
Eliot said, ‘Don’t,’ because he couldn’t keep the word in.
The boy raised the gun level with Eliot’s face. His expression was a mask; an otherworld disguise behind which Eliot’s future hid – all he’d ever miss of love and laughter; of beauty, food and sex; the whole mishmash squandered in less than a second by this pretty zombie with a trigger . . . And then the gun twitched again; not to release the gram of lead that would reshape Eliot’s world, but just to indicate where they were, these famous gates under discussion. Three yards or so from where they stood.
Gordy had quietened, but only because he was aching for breath, and Timmy was vibrating at a pitch possibly audible to neighbourhood dogs. Manoeuvring them to the gates was like learning how to walk with kitchen chairs roped to his legs. The keypad waited: twelve hostile plastic buttons in four rows of three: 1–9, 0, #, *. He wondered momentarily what * was for, then decided there were more important things at stake. ‘I don’t know the whole number,’ he began, but let the remainder fade unspoken. He suspected there was a language issue here, even beyond the obvious – that one of them spoke Gun, and the other didn’t. He suspected that explanations of numerical security systems, even if delivered at a level of coherence currently beyond him, wouldn’t meet with sympathetic understanding. He suspected there was a bottom line, which was that he opened the gates. Anything below that line, he didn’t want to know about, ever.
Eliot released Timmy’s hand, though Timmy didn’t want to release his . . . Hush now, he said, or maybe only imagined he said. Timmy whimpered, and Eliot squeezed his shoulders briefly, then brought his hand up to the keypad.
A diagonal downward slash, left to right . . .
He keyed 1, 5, 9.
Then another figure, obscured by her hand . . .
He had no idea what happened if you hit the wrong key. If it worked like an ATM you got three goes, though he couldn’t remember that ever happening to him . . . And in lieu of swallowing your card, what happened here, exactly? An alarm sounded? Overhead, or in the local police station? Which wasn’t far – was five minutes’ walk – but might as well be the other side of Oxford if he pissed off the Gun . . .
Who was looking at him, waiting.
‘Is open, yes?’
‘Not yet,’ Eliot said.
The cleaning woman’s hand had lifted again after punching the 9, he was sure of that. Trying to recapture the moment he shut his eyes, but all that came to mind was the long dark barrel of the Gun. He reopened them in a hurry, and stabbed the 2.
When the right code was entered, a green light flashed on the keypad, and the gate’s lock released.
That didn’t happen.
He pushed the gate anyway, and felt only unforgiving resistance.
Across the nursery compound, beyond the second set of railings – over towards the annexe – somebody moved.
She wasn’t sure what made her turn. It wasn’t the children’s squalling – too much her daily background to ring alarm bells – and it wasn’t Eliot pushing the gate, because she’d turned in time to see that. Maybe it had been his finger hitting the keypad: not a sound she’d expect to carry. But more critically, not a sound she’d been expecting at all: neither Claire nor Dave would be here for a while. So that was it, then; a quiet noise that shouldn’t be happening made its way across the morning, and reached Louise before she reached the annexe.
Eliot was pushing the gate. His children were wrapped round him, one leg each, and a man she’d never seen before was holding a toy gun at his head – why would he want to do that?
The sky blackened for half a moment, and broke clean open the next.
The man jabbed at Eliot with the gun that wasn’t a toy, and Eliot stabbed the keypad again; puncturing numbers that would unlock the gate . . . Louise felt her legs give as tomorrow’s headlines unfolded: a man with a gun on nursery grounds – the fact that no children were here yet was a detail. He could shoot them all, and wait for the kids to show . . . He could do any number of things, but he had to get through the gate first.
Her legs were given back to her, and she ran.
The gate didn’t lock if you punched the wrong number in, or it would have fused shut long ago: you couldn’t persuade the children it wasn’t a game, though the keypad was technically out of their reach. So no bells would ring, either here or with the local police, and as far as Louise knew, you could keep entering numbers forever until you hit the right combo . . . And Eliot knew the number, didn’t he? He’d watched Judy open the gate earlier, so he’d be through any second. Unless Louise got there first, and locked the gate from the inside.
But the first gate she reached was the internal one that she’d locked behind her just moments ago, in that version of the world in which guns did not appear. And the key wa
s – the key was where it always was: in the right-hand pocket of her jeans; a pocket which refused to cooperate as she tried to jam her hand into it and pull her keyring out. An everyday action, not to be attempted under exam conditions. Less than a hundred yards away, Eliot was attacking the keypad again: either he didn’t remember the code, or his finger was shaking on account of the gun at his temple. Or he was deliberately getting it wrong. Would a man do that, with a gun to his head, his children at his side? Louise didn’t know; all she knew was her keyring wouldn’t come free of her pocket, and she swore again, and then it did, but snagged a loose thread on the way out, and she had to tug until the thread broke, and punched her own breast when it did . . . She dropped the keys. Eliot looked towards her, his face a desperate mask. The man with the gun looked too. It occurred to her, with all the finality of unpleasant fact – a bank statement or hangover – that he could shoot her through the railings before she reached them. She picked the keys up anyway. Something else had just become clear to her, as it maybe already had to Eliot; that there were situations in which bravery ceased to have relevance – when your fate was no longer in your hands, you did what was needed. He might shoot her before she locked him out. But if she didn’t lock him out he could shoot her anyway, and then he’d be inside, and the children would be arriving soon.
On her third, or possibly fourth, attempt, the key fitted the lock. Tumblers fell, springs tightened, the lock did the opposite of what it was built to do. The gate swung open, and Louise all but fell into the outer part of the compound just as Eliot took a fifth crack at getting the numbers right.
* * *
A diagonal downward slash, left to right . . .
He keyed 1, 5, 9.
Then another figure, obscured by her hand . . .
He’d tried 2, tried 3, tried 4. There was method here, and he was reluctant to abandon it, but the Gun had become more assertive, had begun grinding into his temple, and it was difficult not to respond to this increased pressure in the standard manner: forget order, and do something random instead. He hit 8, and pushed the gate. Nothing happened. Except that his children wrapped themselves more tightly round his thighs, and the image that invaded him – of his blood and brain spraying their infant faces – had all the force of premonition.
‘Open the gate? Yes?’
‘I’m trying, right?’
Across the compound, Louise was coming through the other gate, the one that divided the nursery grounds. Except she’d dropped the keys, and was having to scrabble around for them . . . This was what it did, fear: it turned you into a butter-fingered dolt – except, however scared Louise was, she was heading this way. Hoping to what – prevent their entry? And if that happened, what would the Gun do? The blood and brain image recurred, followed swiftly by another: of the Gun trained on Gordy, on Timmy . . .
He keyed 1, 5, 9.
The Gun might shoot them all anyway, but something could happen between now and then to prevent it. Keep trying.
Without taking his eyes off Louise, Eliot hit another but-ton: never knew which.
And pushed the gate.
This is what happens in dreams.
In dreams, things of vital importance reveal themselves. Life is full of vital importances, but rarely do they manifest as buttons that need pressing, or doors at the far end of corridors, that have to be reached at all costs . . . And in dreams, the buttons turn into carrots or coathangers, and remain unpressed; and the corridors elongate (of course), and the doors are forever unreached.
In dreams legs turn to lead, and the floor sucks at the feet. The ability to move forward decreases in exact pro-portion to the need to do so.
In real life, exactly the same thing happens.
Louise dropped the keys as the gate swung open; flung them to the ground, as if the force of the action would propel her forwards. But her legs wouldn’t move properly; her muscles wanted to relax – wanted to flop her on to the ground, as if she were one of those little finger puppets on a box, held upright by the tension in its strings. When a thumb is applied to the base, the puppet collapses in a tangle of joints . . . The taste of old pennies filled her mouth. Ahead of her, Eliot was pushing at numbers again, as if this was all he would ever do.
Fuck . . . run . . .
And she did. It was like breaking free of gravity; a sud-den loosening. No distance at all to the outer gate – she’d be there in less than a moment.
Her heels on the path tattooed the morning; drilled through every other noise – the passing car heading up the road; the gravel shifters over the meadow. Eliot looked up again. So did the man with the gun. Then Eliot’s expression changed from fear to something unreadable, as if he’d just slipped over the edge of one large event and landed in another. Without looking back at the keypad, he jabbed it with a forefinger. A green light blinked on Louise’s side of the gate about half a second before she got there. And the boy with the gun raised it, and aimed at her through the railings.
Eliot’s elbow twitched, and the gun was pointing else-where – up at the blue nowhere. It didn’t go off.
And Louise slammed into the gate, fumbling for the lock mechanism; a matter of flipping the latch across, sealing this danger outside.
But her thumbs were butter. It was dreamland again, where simple tasks subdivide into previously unencountered complication, and limbs and joints you’d once enjoyed control of become strangers. She’d never locked this gate from the inside; never had occasion to. Had been shown how, but the memory was swallowed by the situ-ation: the gun behind the railings which might be pointing anywhere; the way Eliot leaned his weight into the gate just as her fingers discovered how to work the catch . . . For a moment, everything was happening the way it ought to on waking: that emergence into a reality if not ideal, then at least bargained for. And then the weight on the gate was too much for her, and that happy ending slipped from her reach . . . The gun was at Eliot’s head, she distantly registered. That noise she’d been hearing was English, filtered through a mouth born to other languages. Push. Push or I shoot your boy. He would shoot the boy. The fact that he hadn’t specified which was a detail you could hardly blame Eliot for: besides, Louise was beyond blaming now – the gate, so immovable seconds ago, was swinging into her, and the latch she’d just triggered was slamming a bolt into thin air, an inch or so from its socket. She felt gravity taking over again. The ground reached out and took her.
Push. Push or I shoot your boy . . .
He hadn’t known how he might react to guns – forced to answer a questionnaire on the subject, his pen, like any man’s, would have hovered over the box marked Hero, but he had too much self-knowledge to tick it. Yet seconds ago, Eliot had angled an elbow into a gunman’s arm to throw him off his aim.
Push or I shoot your boy.
And then he’d pushed the gate, to open it, like he was told.
All this time, his boys had been hugging his thighs, tugging him different ways: left right; up down – he wanted to hunker and shield them with his body; rise up and smite whoever’d do them harm. But when the threat had been made, it had been his head the gun was pointing at, so what did that say? Whatever it was, for the moment it went unspoken: the gate was opening; Louise was falling to the path. And Eliot was tumbling through the gate, Timmy and Gordon attached to him like small moons, dragged onwards by his movement, and all three of them still unshot – though that, too, remained in the balance, because the Gun was coming with them, one hand on Eliot’s collar, shoving him forwards so he tripped over Louise’s prone form, taking the boys down with him.
Another nursery accident. How many little bodies had this path seen, sprawled and screaming? But don’t think about that; check, instead, that the boys are okay – that this is just the usual tumble, with no bones broken. And then look, for one brief moment, into Louise’s eyes, which are inches from yours, and share the horror. There are five of you here; six, if you count the weapon. But for an instant only two of you count. If you’re to come t
hrough this alive, you need each other.
Eliot blinked. Louise’s gaze left him; turned, instead, to the Gun.
The boys clutched him again, and he felt himself dragged down.
She’d never been this close to a gun – stupid: nobody had ever been this close to a gun; nobody with a normal life, and ordinary aspirations. Eliot’s boys were crying, but that seemed a long way distant; much closer was the gun itself, which was this side of the railings now. While Louise gazed into its mouth, the boy holding it – the only one among them on his feet – closed the gate. That, at least, was normal; everything else had rattled free of its holdings, scattering reality around her like spring rain.
He was brown-eyed, black-haired – this a curly mess; tucked behind his ears, and dropping below his jacket collar – and his toffee-coloured skin was smooth as milk. Under other circumstances, Louise would have wanted to touch his cheek. Even holding a gun, he looked nineteen; clean-shaven, he’d have got away with it. But his stubble was grown-up stubble; his eyes weren’t simply exhausted, they were adult-exhausted – he had seen stuff, been places. And all this, he was bringing with him into her nursery.
‘You’re the lady?’ he asked.
‘. . . What?’
‘We go inside now.’
‘Who are you?’
‘We go inside.’
The gun twitched in his hand.
Eliot was trying to lever himself up, keeping one arm folded round each of his boys. Not so long ago – less than twenty minutes – the biggest problem in Louise’s world was the Incident, and the undiscovered ways in which it might come back to haunt her. Now this: thanks, Eliot.