Three Hours(31)

‘Probably,’ Bronze Commander says. ‘There are still numerous drones above the school, which could belong to the press or sightseers, but the attackers may also have one up there. We need to clear them. At present, our snipers are too far away from the pottery room and visibility is too poor to take him out cleanly. We risk wounding him before killing him and if he puts any pressure on the trigger he can inflict multiple civilian casualties. It would also tip off his pal in Old School, who’d open fire too. Until the drones are down we cannot risk going any closer; not unless we have no other option. Detective Inspector Polstein, what’s your opinion?’

Jesus, is that all the time she has? Fuck.

‘This is on the fly, with little to go on,’ Rose says.

‘Your best guess?’ Bronze Commander says.

Get it together, Rose. Focus.

She separates herself mentally from the noise and activity, her brain finding its space for concentration, emotions pushed aside. In the US, she’d spoken to people who’d been involved in school attacks, including local law enforcement officers, FBI officers, students, teachers and psychologists. But none of those attacks, on the face of it, were anything like this one.

‘This is not a typical school shooting, when shooters go on the rampage from the off, killing as many as possible,’ she says. ‘They have only shot at two people, both of whom are adults, and significantly haven’t fired again after shooting the head teacher. There are two interpretations of this. The first is that they want to enter into negotiation, which means they are prepared to release the children. If this is the case, they may have demands that they want to make, probably using the BBC, as they have phoned a warning message to them. The second interpretation is that they want us to think exactly what I just outlined, and are playing for maximum airtime.’

‘Publicity?’ Bronze Commander asks.

‘Yes. They want this story playing out live, everyone glued to their TVs and tablets and phones, with the shooters as the stars of the event. They want to be trending on Twitter and TV programmes interrupted with updates. The longer this goes on, the bigger the audience. Any attack that is unfolding live attracts very large numbers.’

‘And when their audience is big enough?’ an officer says.

‘We hope they make demands and don’t start a televised tweeted killing spree?’ Bronze Commander says and Rose nods.

‘The two adults they’ve shot at are both figures of authority,’ she says. ‘A police officer and a head teacher. I know that we’re already investigating anyone who has a personal grudge against the school, but it’s also possible that these authority figures may represent something – a political system, a religion, a country even.’

‘So, a terrorist attack?’ Bronze Commander asks.

‘It’s a possibility, yes.’

There really should be a different noun to terrorist, she thinks, especially when they attack children; inadequate cowards springs to mind. Evil bastards too, of course, but also cowards. At moments like this she realizes that she really went for her job out of rage.

‘I think that one of the gunmen is highly manipulative and if we do negotiate he will attempt to play us,’ she says. ‘We’ve seen that with the misdirect of using rifles when they have semi-automatics.’

‘One of the gunmen?’ Bronze Commander asks.

‘It’s unlikely there would be two manipulative people working together – one would be dominant, the other subordinate. Even if it’s a terrorist attack with a defined goal, we cannot treat the gunmen as a single unit.’

Dannisha Taylor, lead hostage and crisis negotiator, joins the discussion. ‘I agree with Detective Inspector Polstein. Their personalities and individual motivations will be different, and they’ll need different negotiating tactics. But it will be difficult to establish a communication channel.’

A priority for the tech teams, working with mobile companies, is to get the gunmen’s mobile phone numbers and any other comms data.

Rose studies the gunman outside the pottery room. His build is obscured by the webbing and weapon, he could be scrawny or muscular, slim or heavy, impossible to tell; his face is obscured by the black balaclava, just his eyes showing through the slits in the fabric. She remembers a description from Macbeth which she did at school many moons ago, ‘false face’.

‘If they have a surveillance drone watching us, who’s flying it?’ an officer asks.

‘The gunman in Old School?’ Letwynd suggests. ‘No one knows what he’s doing in the corridor.’

‘And the gunman outside the pottery room could have an earpiece under his balaclava,’ another officer says. ‘For a mobile or walkie-talkie.’

‘I’d guess at a two-way digital radio, harder for us to monitor,’ Bronze Commander says. ‘There may be more gunmen, but these two bastards haven’t been shy about being seen so I’m hopeful that there aren’t. The weather’s set to get worse, a storm’s moving our way and visibility may well become atrocious, so we hunt as hard as we can now.’

Alongside the physical search of the school by police surveillance drones and helicopters, counterterrorism units are monitoring internet chatter and they are getting info on all mobiles operating within the school campus.

‘Will they react to seeing a helicopter?’ an officer asks.