Three Hours(66)

Beth thinks of her kitchen with the police in it; their breakfast things still piled up in the sink. Jamie hadn’t eaten breakfast, had left early, rushing out to a waiting car, a friend giving him a lift this morning he’d said, not saying which friend, and she’d just been pleased and didn’t pry. She called goodbye, but not I love you, because she’s become wary of doing that, worried about getting it wrong. But she’s done everything wrong. Because with a different mother, this wouldn’t be happening.

She looks through the windows of the Portakabin, as if something will change, make all of this different, but there is just thick snow.

She has to face the truth, has to do that, because it’s all her fault. She didn’t know that Jamie had taken Victor’s calls again; that Victor had somehow clawed his way back into Jamie’s life. She didn’t see how lonely and unhappy Jamie must have been; didn’t prevent Victor from doing this to her son.

‘We just need to talk to him,’ Mike says. ‘He wants to talk to us. Doesn’t want to be doing this.’

‘I know.’

It’s intensely comforting to have another person who knows Jamie like she does, who’s known him since he was a six-pound-two-ounce scrap of a baby, who knows that he is good.

‘I’ve told them he’d never hurt anyone,’ Mike says. ‘I told them it’s Victor behind this, not Jamie. Check again.’

They both hang up as they did a minute ago to check that Jamie hasn’t phoned or texted while they’ve been talking, knowing that he hasn’t, knowing that their mobiles would beep and vibrate if a call or message was coming through, but not trusting the knowledge.

Mike rings back.

‘Nothing,’ he says.

‘No.’

‘I told them he never even had toy guns, just the Nerf ones with the foam bullets, and water pistols, Super Soakers, and that’s nothing like boys who want air rifles and BB guns or toys that look like the real thing. I told them it was Victor who’d have made him hold one. I told them he doesn’t even play violent Xbox games; he likes that building-cities one.’

‘And he likes drawing too,’ Beth says.

Beautiful intricate pictures. But it feels indulgent to her, this conversation, as if they’ve been good parents.

‘The police asked me if he’s depressed,’ Beth says.

‘He wants an eighteenth-birthday party and he wants to do really well in his exams, that’s not being depressed.’

‘I think that might just be a brave front,’ Beth says. ‘Maybe for us. I don’t know if he is or not.’

She thinks sadness and loneliness led him back to Victor, and then Victor did something terrible to him.

‘I think it must’ve been Victor who turned him against us, made him even more isolated,’ she says.

‘He didn’t turn against us.’

‘He doesn’t talk to us any more, Mike. He hasn’t spoken to me, not really, not properly for almost six months. Hasn’t taken my calls when I ring him at school. Most of the time, he doesn’t even come out of his room.’

‘He spoke to us after that thing in Exeter at Halloween; we were up half the night talking, just like we always used to.’

‘But it was us talking, he was just listening.’

‘He spoke to Zac.’

‘Not for long. A few minutes maybe.’

And it sounded like he was laughing but his face wasn’t smiling, just pretending to. But she’d believed he was fine, that it would all be all right, because she’d wanted to believe that.

‘He’ll talk to us now. He’ll want to talk to us.’

‘But what if he—’

‘They’ll shoot him, Beth, if we can’t talk to him.’

‘No. They can’t. He’s not going to hurt anyone.’

‘I know that, darling. But the police don’t know him, don’t know us. Check again.’

*

Snow is blowing inside the command and control vehicle, George’s shoe wedging the door open, but only the cold air stops Rose’s nausea. Still wearing Thandie’s jacket, she is gradually appropriating her team’s clothing.

Rose knows that for the kids and staff trapped inside the school, the confined space will be getting smaller; quiet sounds will have a new volume as the world constricts around them. But at the same time this event is expanding with increasing numbers of police and counterterrorism officers, journalists and cameramen not only in the UK but all over the world covering the story live on TV screens, radio and internet news where social media brings it to an ever-growing audience.

Neil Forbright has told them that Victor Deakin tried to get into the library but gave up; Rose thinks he got bored, or was toying with them, and fears he’ll try again.

They haven’t yet been able to talk to Victor Deakin’s parents; the police in Chile are trying to locate them but Rose thinks this may well be over before they are found. Matthew Marr told them about the rape fantasies and she thinks the violence and hubris probably fitted with personality traits they’ll have seen in him since childhood. But surely they wouldn’t have gone away on holiday if they had any inkling he could do something like this? No, he’s most probably been on model behaviour for months, convincing them that Matthew Marr exaggerated what he’d done, that the childhood behaviours that worried them were now a thing of the past, that he’s been keeping all his psychology appointments.