Three Hours(29)

Her role in this attack is to predict what the gunmen are going to do next and help other officers find out who they are, using her expertise both as a detective and as an investigative forensic psychologist.

‘The theatre has security doors and no windows,’ Letwynd says. ‘Safest place in the school. The vast majority of students and staff were evacuated from the New School complex, situated near to the main road. There are other outlying small buildings, but they are simply storage sheds and so forth, not occupied apart from the gatehouse, where PC Beard has taken refuge.’

‘He’s unharmed?’

‘Yes. Just his radio damaged. He spoke to someone in Bronze Command on his mobile. He described the sound of a rifle and said it definitely came from the woods, but he didn’t see the shooter and can’t tell us anything more. The windows in the gatehouse are bricked up so he can’t see anything. He apologized for not being able to help and said not to waste any resources on him. We’ll get someone to his family when we can but we’re already stretched. We’ve told him to stay put in the gatehouse.’

‘Good.’

‘The CCTV camera on the gatehouse was painted over early this morning, so even if we can get hold of the footage it won’t give us anything on the shooter.’

‘Do we know what kind of weapon was used to shoot the head teacher in Old School?’

‘From Neil Forbright’s description of the sound in the corridor, it was also a rifle.’

‘We still only know of two shooters?’

‘Yes, the one who was hiding in Old School and another who fired from the woods at PC Beard’s car. Neil Forbright told us that the head was followed through the woods. The timings suggest this gunman shot at the police car and then followed the head. We’ve started searching for him using surveillance drones and helicopters but we’re being hampered by snow and by press and sightseers, who’ve got drones in our airspace.’

‘You’re telling them to get the hell out of the way?’

‘Less politely. I heard you trained in the States on school shootings?’

‘Six months. Always had an interest.’

A horror, more like, that the same thing could happen here; and with terrorist attacks on the increase in Europe, a fear that a school would be a target.

‘Anything on phones?’ she asks.

‘We’re working with mobile phone companies, but it’ll take time.’

‘And vehicles?’

‘We’re using drones to check the school car parks for a vehicle not belonging to staff or sixth-formers.’

‘Can we secure the perimeter?’

‘We’re attempting to, but it’s huge and open.’

Her phone rings; it’s Stuart Dingwall, a senior officer in the South West Counter Terrorism Intelligence Unit, a colleague who she knows well and likes.

‘We’ll be there in five, Stuart,’ she says. ‘Anything to suggest a terrorist attack?’

‘Nothing that’s been on our radar. My team’s been speaking to evacuated teachers and to governors and the school has a robust Prevent policy; they’re all certain that no students have been radicalized.’

‘An outside attack?’

‘I think it’s a stretch but I’m not discounting it.’

‘Anything more on the explosion in the woods?’

‘A student saw it and informed the head and deputy head. It sounds rudimentary; a small amount of low-grade explosives. Possibly a pressure-cooker bomb, made from that article, “Make a Bomb in the Kitchen of Your Mom”.’

The article came out a few years ago and gave any wannabe bomber step-by-step instructions to whip up his or her very own bomb. It could be deadly if the bomber had powerful explosives, but not in this instance.

‘If it is a terrorist attack, then it’s not a sophisticated one,’ Stuart continues. ‘A couple of rifles, an ineffectual home-made bomb and some paint on a CCTV camera. It seems amateur.’

‘Yeah, let’s hope so.’

But she feels disquieted because why set off a bomb in the middle of the woods? All it did was alert the police to a possible attack. It doesn’t make sense.

‘Something feels off to you?’ she asks Stuart.

‘A little, yeah.’

‘We’re almost there.’

Through the driving snow, she sees mast-mounted infra-red CCTV cameras and antennae sticking up from police mobile command and control vehicles. They are parked next to rapid response paramedic vehicles, behind them cars and vans belonging to armed police and counterterrorism. The emergency vehicles have arrived recently, no snow yet accumulated on their roofs and windscreens.

The emergency drills are paying off in this impressively fast deployment and Rose realizes that the drills are as much about the logistics, how to implement an as-fast-as-humanly-possible response, as about what to do once they’re there.

‘Relatives are at a leisure centre five miles away. We have two police officers with them,’ Letwynd says.

He parks the Discovery and she gets out. ‘You left in a hurry?’ he says, noticing now that she’s wearing a dress without a coat. Because her coat, gloves and scarf are all on a chair in St Michael’s hospital maternity department. There was a ‘Turn Off Your Mobile’ rule, which she’d obeyed, but kept her pager on – nothing about pagers in the rules –