Three Hours(28)
She can’t see the expressions on their faces because they are wearing black balaclavas. They have black sashes over their hessian tunics, with the Daesh insignia in white; in this production, the witches are terrorists radicalizing Macbeth.
It was Rafi who asked for them to be called Daesh, the pejorative for Islamic State. She doesn’t know if it was Rafi who had the idea that this was a play about radicalization; a group had come to Daphne with it, excited by the idea. She’d thought it was fantastic. The witches lure Macbeth in and start the corruption of a man into somebody evil. The murders won’t happen for a while yet, all the witches are doing here is planning to meet Macbeth upon the heath, a seventeenth-century dark web.
Dear God, what if the gunmen actually are Daesh terrorists? And storm in here and see themselves shown as witches? Being portrayed as weird sisters won’t go down well with Daesh.
Oh for heaven’s sakes, be rational, Daphne. Why would terrorists attack their non-religious school in the middle of the countryside?
But someone wicked has. Someone has shot Matthew Marr and is terrifying the children and staff in Old School.
On stage the three girls start the play, shakily at first but gradually sounding less afraid, the nursery-rhyme rhythm of the opening familiar and calming, as if by performing the words and actions they’ve rehearsed they can find a safe space.
Was the man who shot Matthew a good man once? If so, how was he corrupted? She wants to know what they are up against; the evil they have to contend with.
Rafi told her once that for him it isn’t Macbeth and Lady Macbeth who are the frightening characters, but First Murderer, Second Murderer, Third Murderer, men without names; unknown killers in the darkness.
Part Two
* * *
To think of time – of all that retrospection,
To think of to-day, and the ages continued henceforward.
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1855)
8.
9.38 a.m.
Three miles from the school a helicopter lands on a snow-covered field. It is fifty-three minutes since a gunman fired at the local police officer as he drove towards the school; twenty-two minutes since the head teacher was shot.
Detective Inspector Rose Polstein gets out of the helicopter, running under the still-spinning blades, snow whirling around her, slapping her face, billowing her dress and hair, stinging her ears. Before she gets into the waiting Land Rover Discovery, she’s sick, attributing nausea to the bucking helicopter journey and morning sickness, not nerves. She puts a mint into her mouth and gets inside the vehicle. Simon Letwynd, working for Bronze Commander, drives her towards the command and control centre near to the school, set up a few minutes ago. She and Letwynd have never met each other. Snow scuds against the windscreen, tyres only just gripping.
In a major incident, command is structured into bronze, silver and gold tiers, with roles allocated by task not rank. Rose thinks the impersonal metallic system is not only practical but helps foster a sense of rational order being imposed over something chaotic; hard metals a bulwark against unknowable extremes.
‘How many children and staff are still in the school?’ she asks. Since getting into the chopper she’s had limited communication.
‘Our current information is seventy-one in three locations – Old School, the theatre and the pottery room,’ Letwynd says. ‘Plus one hundred and twenty junior school children, between four and ten years old, hiding under the cliffs on Fulmar beach with ten adults. The beach is accessible only by the school path and by sea. High winds and snow have delayed the rescue boats. We have a helicopter flying over the beach and there’s no sight of a gunman.’
Letwynd will have been briefed en route to the school as well as during the few minutes after arrival.
‘Any change to the situation in Old School?’ she asks.
‘The gunman is still in the corridor and hasn’t fired again. The head teacher is badly wounded in the library with thirteen sixth-form students. We’ve been unable to get medical attention to him; paramedics are standing by. There are a further twelve sixth-formers and three members of staff in a classroom further along the corridor and the deputy head, Neil Forbright, on his own in an office on the same corridor.’
‘Any kids still missing?’
‘Rafi Bukhari, sixteen, and Jamie Alton, seventeen.’
‘What about the children in the pottery room?’
‘In the middle of woodland. Pedestrian access only. Large glass windows. A class of sixteen seven-year-olds and their teacher. We have no communication with them. Armed teams are on their way to get them out.’
Rose feels sick again, winds down the window, the icy air blowing against her face although she’s already shivering hard. Take a breath, Rose, for fuck’s sake. Take a breath.
‘The rest of the hostages are in the theatre,’ Letwynd says. ‘Twenty-two kids and two teachers.’
Rose doesn’t correct him, doesn’t say that they are only hostages if the gunmen want to use them as bargaining tools, if the gunmen actually have an interest in keeping them alive.
She believes an understanding of psychology is crucial in effective police work and eight years ago took time out from the police service to do a degree in psychology, followed by an MSc in investigative forensic psychology at London South Bank University, before rejoining and rising rapidly to Detective Inspector. At thirty-one years old, she’s widely regarded as an exceptional police officer.