Three Hours(39)
It astonishes Daphne that even with this happening, Luisa can think about some teenage drama at a party. Zac seems equally taken aback.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ he says to her. ‘We’ve got a fucking gunman in the school, Jamie’s mum can’t get hold of him and neither can I and you’re worried about whose fault it is I’m not friends with him? About some stupid thing months ago?’
Luisa looks shocked; Zac never gets angry, never shouts. ‘Victor left ages ago,’ Zac continues. ‘And I knew Jamester was lonely but still didn’t … Should have been a better friend.’
‘Frank hasn’t emailed me for ten minutes,’ Luisa says; the twin whose nerdiness used to embarrass her. They sit stiffly side by side, then Zac puts his arm around her and she leans a fraction into him.
On stage the witches continue.
FIRST WITCH??Here I have a pilot’s thumb,
Wrecked as homeward he did come.
THIRD WITCH??A drum, a drum;
Macbeth doth come.
Oh hellfire, Daphne thinks, the tedious Norwegians have finished and the violence is about to start; a spreading evil that leads to children being murdered and men not being able to walk at night, and the world turning dark even in daylight.
10.
9.58 a.m.
A police surveillance drone, with a live feed to a screen in Rose Polstein’s command and control vehicle, keeps watch on the gunman outside the pottery room. Their teacher is still putting in her clay tiles. It’s been an hour and thirteen minutes since a gunman shot at the police car, forty-two minutes since the head teacher was shot, and no more shots have been fired. The gunman in Old School continues to walk up and down the corridor. There has been no more communication with the BBC or anyone else.
‘Why aren’t we just going in there and rescuing the kids?’ Thandie asks. ‘Why the hell aren’t we doing that?’ Energetic, athletic and impatient, Rose bets Thandie regularly goes to a gym and beats the hell out of a punchbag.
The answer: because the gunmen threatened to shoot the children if they see police and there are still drones above the school. They must wait until the gunmen cannot watch them from the sky and even then there are no guarantees.
Because looking at the plan of Old School, which they all have, the corridor has no windows or skylight to surprise him and take him out before he can open fire; because the windows in the library and English classroom are too small for the kids to escape through; because he almost certainly has a semi-automatic and if the police storm the building, how many will he kill?
And because the children in the pottery room have no means of escape, are corralled into a single place with large windows, and he most definitely has a semi-automatic pointed at them. The police marksmen will have to shoot a part of his brain, the medulla oblongata, so there’s no involuntary muscle movement and he can’t press the trigger; but the medulla oblongata is only 3 cm by 2 cm. The marksmen have to get closer, and they can’t, not yet, not until they know they’re not being watched.
And because the safest way for this to go would be a negotiation so that the captives are set free, unharmed.
‘We have our job and we leave the armed units and everyone else to do theirs,’ Rose says to her. ‘We have to trust in their skills and experience; trust they know what they’re doing; that’s how this has to work.’ Jesus, she’s turned into her former boss, who was a patronizing bastard, but it’s true. ‘We have our own job to do,’ she repeats.
In order to predict what the gunmen are going to do next, and whether they can negotiate, they need to know who the gunmen are. A list of suspects with a grudge is being winnowed down – anybody the police have been able to speak to, anyone who is definitely not at the school – and they are left with three names: Jed Soames, the disgraced former PE teacher, and the two expelled sixth-formers, Malin Cohen and Victor Deakin.
Detective Constable George Hail ends a phone call with other officers who are working off site. George is less nervous now, his round face almost pink again as he’s got stuck into the job.
‘Jed Soames has been found at his ex-wife’s. Malin Cohen’s mother said he was at work in the local café, but he’s not there and hasn’t shown up for the last two weeks. There’s a girlfriend they’re trying to track down and an incident in the States that’s being checked out.’
‘Thanks, George. And Victor Deakin?’ Rose asks.
‘He isn’t at college but his first class isn’t for another ten minutes. They can’t get hold of his parents. His mother has a Mini convertible. There’s a Mini convertible parked in Junior School car park.’
‘They’re making the Mini a priority?’ Rose asks.
‘Yes.’
But it could easily belong to a member of staff. Throw a stick at a car park and it probably hits a Mini or falls on to the convertible roof.
Police drones are photographing number plates in the school car parks and the surrounding area, but nearly all are partly or fully hidden by snow and slush; maybe they’ll get lucky and get a partial match.
But the attack might not be motivated by a personal grudge. The more Rose has found out about this school, with its strikingly liberal ethos, the more she’s feared it could be a target for terrorists.
‘Amaal, did you find anything significant in today’s date?’