Three Hours(60)

Which room will he choose? Neil prays to God it’ll be this one, but fears it will be the English classroom, their barricade of desks giving way and Jacintha’s poems turned bloody with bullets; he cannot think of dead children and staff, he simply cannot, so he thinks instead in cowardly metaphors. Or he’ll choose the library first because Matthew is in there, and he’ll want to finish the job of murdering him and because the library has the greatest number of children.

But Matthew may already be dying, and he can’t be with him.

He unlocks the door, because if the motherfucker with the clicking heels starts firing, he’s going to ignore the police’s instruction to ‘stay put’, and go out and tackle him. Motherfucker, when was the last time he’d used that word, any aggressive pejorative adjective, against anyone but himself? Anger is a new emotion and he welcomes it; like a freak gust of wind, abrading his fear so that he feels clean of it.

He is deputy head, responsible for the children in this school, and must step up to the mark.

But how can he overpower a man with a gun? He’s not armed, nor is he strong and athletic. How can he help them?

*

In the library, the shutter is banging and banging as the wind outside builds. Mr Marr has lost consciousness again. Hannah is checking his pulse, which is getting harder to feel.

Everyone is quiet, listening to the shutter and the footsteps which are coming back towards them. Click-click click-click; does he know that his footsteps are like time beating? The footsteps stop outside their door.

If this is how she’s going to die – ‘if’, still a great big ‘if’ – then it’s nothing like she’d imagined. Not that she’d imagined it often, she’s not maudlin that way, but when she did she’d imagined long dusty roads or an ice age come early, civilization gone, her and a band of fellow survivors toughing it out as long as they can with a few books and a flute; not the school library on a normal day.

The footsteps haven’t moved away. He’s still outside. Keep thinking about dystopian novels; frankly it’s a bit embarrassing that the only way you could imagine your own death was to have the entire planet dying as well.

The door creaks. He’s pushing it.

She wants to speak to Rafi; tries to believe it’s really good that she can’t because his last impression of her would be that she’s not at all brave. And that might be stupid, but it’s all he’ll have to go on about her, and she wants him to remember them running through the woods this morning, even though she was wheezing like an old geezer in a tartan dressing gown, because they were happy and she was unafraid.

A book falls from the pile as he pushes against the door. The pile is budging. He must be putting his whole weight against the door.

Good that she can’t speak to Dad too, because she’d break down and that would be awful for him, awful for her. She was quite calm on TV with lip-glossy Melanie, speaking normally, smiling even. He’ll think that’s how she feels, hopefully he’ll think that.

There’s a gap now, he’s opened the door a tiny way.

Ed goes to the door and sits down with his back pressed to the books, using his body to shore up the barricade. Frank joins him, pushing back, and the door doesn’t open any further.

A minute later, the footsteps walk away.

*

A young officer comes on to Rose’s screen, one of Lysander’s computer forensics team.

‘A tweet’s trending,’ the officer says. ‘It says the gunman inside the school is a psychopath. The news channels are picking it up.’

‘Who tweeted it?’ Bronze Commander asks.

‘We’re trying to trace the source.’

And the question they’re asking, but not out loud, is if there is a leak inside the investigation? Is someone feeding information to the media? Rose hasn’t met the majority of officers involved, but she trusts her colleagues; when kids’ lives are at stake, she totally trusts them.

‘Beth Alton has been held up because of snow,’ Thandie says. ‘There’s a Portakabin ready for her when she arrives.’

‘Tonya, the secretary inside Old School, is on the phone,’ George says. ‘A kid in her class has seen the tweet.’

*

Matthew’s office is getting colder, the wind blowing in even through the shuttered windows. Neil has received another email from Frank in the library; the gunman tried to push his way in, but after one minute gave up.

One minute never used to seem long to Neil, the difference in the softness of a boiled egg, but now he knows how long each of the sixty seconds lasts when there’s a gunman the other side of the door, as if he’s taken control of time and stretched it.

Neil fears that next time he won’t give up; that he’ll shoot the kids against the door, because they won’t move. They might be vomiting they’re so frightened, he knows that’s what’s happening in the library, but they’re still against the door.

How much time can Neil give to the children if he goes out and tackles the gunman? He will be shot, so how much time? And if it’s a minute or two, will they feel long minutes to the kids? Because if they did, then it would be worth it. Or would the horror at seeing their deputy head lying in the corridor, like a betrayal in its own way, Neil thinks, would that contract the time they had left to them?

His phone rings and he answers it.