‘Yes.’
‘Can you tell me about them?’
‘He just walks up and down this length of corridor, apart from when he has a cigarette break and then he sits right up against the library door; the kids in the library could smell the smoke. Does that tell you anything?’
‘Possibly, yes.’
She can’t share most of the information she has, but she will talk to him about the footsteps, because she thinks he’s owed that at least and because he might help build a profile.
‘I think that he’s either deliberately trying to intimidate you—’ she says.
‘Because we are less likely to fight back?’
Oh Jesus, please don’t let them fight back. There might have been a chance for some of them against a rifle but not against a semi-automatic.
‘You really mustn’t attempt anything yourselves, do you understand, Mr Forbright? We don’t know what weapons he has.’
‘Right … And the other reason?’ Neil asks.
‘It could be that he gets bored easily, he’s walking up and down to keep moving, to keep himself psyched.’
‘That helps actually. Makes him seem less in control.’
‘What can you tell me about Victor Deakin?’ she asks; the last in the list of expelled students.
‘Victor joined the school in Year Eleven and was expelled just over seven months ago.’
‘Why was he expelled?’
‘I don’t know, I was off sick again at the time; depression. I’m sorry.’
‘Did Mr Marr say anything to you about it?’
‘Just that he’d left. If it wasn’t an ongoing issue, then he wouldn’t have bothered me with it. Matthew tries to take as much off my plate as he can. But Victor wouldn’t have minded being expelled. It was his parents who made him stay here after GCSEs, Victor wanted to go to college. He felt he was being infantilized, his words. He didn’t want to be here. Hold on …’
Neil Forbright must be holding the receiver a little way from his ear again, because she can just make out the footsteps.
‘Mr Forbright …?’
‘I’d forgotten. Earlier, I heard footsteps going down the corridor, not just our stretch, but further, all the way to the front door. The only time they’ve gone that far. But I don’t think they were the same as these, I think they were lighter. I heard the front door. It’s heavy, makes a clang. Then footsteps came back and I think they were heavier.’
‘They swapped over?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘When was this?’
‘Just after Matthew was shot.’
‘Thank you, Mr Forbright, you’ve been very helpful. Let me know if there’s anything else you think of.’
She ends the call.
‘The BBC warning was from a burner phone,’ DS Thandie Simmonds says. ‘Not traceable. The tech guys say he must have removed the battery. They’re trying to find the last position it was used.’
‘Anything on the voice?’ Rose asks.
‘He used a voice-changer app. They’ve got some background sounds that they’re working on.’
‘Thanks, Thandie.’ She turns to DS Ayari. ‘Amaal, can you look into the significance of today’s date?’
She’s using their first names to create intimacy because in this high-pressure situation they need to feel a personal relationship with one another to function best as a team.
‘Look out for anything a terrorist would ring in his diary,’ she continues to Amaal. ‘Anniversaries, religious holidays, birth dates of martyrs and leaders, and the number – day, month and year, both ways, American and English.’
The cowardly inadequate bastards do so love their special dates.
* * *
The wind makes the bolt on the shed door do shivery rattling and the dark creak. The eight-year-old boy is shuddering with cold, his knees knocking into his chin as he huddles; his fingers are numb. There’s a keyhole in the shed door with no key and a little bit of light like a magic wand comes through it.
The smell of the shed presses against his face, the rotting smell, but he can smell poo too, so an animal’s in here. He loves all animals, even the ones most people don’t, like rats. Maybe there’s a rat in the shed and they will become friends and he’ll take him with him in his pocket, like in the Indian in the Cupboard book, and no one will even know he’s there and he’ll feed him bits of cheese at lunchtime.
He thinks he hears a scrabble in the darkness. ‘Ratty?’ he says quietly, in case the man is listening outside. ‘The man can’t hurt us. I’ve bolted the door.’
He turns on his phone and shines his screen around the shed but he can’t see a rat; he’s probably shy and hiding. He has 7% charge. His phone animals haven’t been fed for ages and they’ll be really hungry so he’ll just quickly feed them, it’ll only take a tiny bit of charge. And then he must turn off his phone and be brave as a Barbary lion, as a Bengal tiger, as Sir Lancelot and the little mouse in The Gruffalo.
* * *
In the leisure centre cafeteria, Beth Alton has texted Zac five times but he hasn’t heard from Jamie. Her phone keeps ringing and each time she jolts with hope but it’s Mike or Theo or her parents, and she quickly answers because leaving it ringing means it’s engaged for Jamie; she speaks for just a few seconds then hangs up. She holds her phone tightly, as if it is Jamie’s hand.
The smell of old coffee and burgers is getting stronger as the room heats up. She wishes there was a window. She doesn’t even know if it’s still snowing; totally separated from Jamie.
More parents of the trapped children have joined them, but the noise level remains almost mute. Two journalists tried to blend in with arriving parents but were spotted immediately by the police officers; although the right age, the journalists’ bodies were too relaxed, their walk too easy, their faces too healthy. They were hustled out and since then a police officer has stood guard by the doors.
At the tables, the parents are isolated units; a brief exchange of information or sympathy, that’s all; even couples, pressed against one another, seem locked into this separateness.
The stillness in the large room, the terrible inertia, is broken by the young man – Steve, Beth has discovered, the fiancé of a junior school teacher, Chloe Price – who’s pacing fast up and down between the tables. She thinks of Jamie hiding on his own, and wishes there was someone who loved him and he could think of her and feel less alone, less afraid. And it can’t be her; she’s not enough, just his mum. He needs magical teenage romantic love and he had that once, but lost it, and that will make this even harder for him. And she shouldn’t even know about it; she has no right to know about it.
There’s something I have to tell you, Jamie.
Sounds ominous …
I found your diary.
You must have looked pretty hard.
I was changing your bedclothes.
Under the mattress?
I lift the mattress up so that the bottom sheet is good and tight, more comfy.
For God’s sake, Mum. I told you to leave my room alone, that I can change my own bedding. Did you read it?
I’m sorry.
You had no right.
I know.
Fucking hell, Mum.