Steve, the young man, holding his mobile, raises his voice: ‘My fiancée is on one of the boats with the children, they’ve got away.’
The room quietens instantly, as if for a moment it’s all their children who are safely on boats. And then questions erupt from junior school parents whose children are on the boats, and the parents whose children are still in danger feel the contrast.
‘Milly’s terrified of the sea,’ a young mother says, crying.
‘They’re being very well looked after,’ the woman police officer says. ‘The boats are very stable and they’re all wearing life jackets. The lifeboat men will take good care—’
‘We never go on seaside holidays,’ the mother says. ‘We go to the Dordogne. There’s a river and Milly likes rivers and she’s been canoeing with the school on an inlet, but the sea really frightens her.’
Beth doesn’t want to listen; doesn’t want to feel blazing outrage that this woman can be talking about her Dordogne holiday and canoeing when Jamie is hiding and in danger.
You worry too much about me, Mum, you really do.
I know. You’re right. But now I am really worried and it makes all those other times seem so stupid.
Worrying that his ex-girlfriend, this Antonella, had broken his heart, and him being lonely and too shy and not confident, and none of those things matter to her, not one bit. And never will again.
11.
10.10 a.m.
The police still do not know if the gunmen intend to make demands and negotiate or if they are waiting for a yet larger audience, perhaps for more countries around the world to wake up and follow the siege (siege the word being used by the media).
Four drones, all operated by off-site amateurs hoping to cash in by selling photos, malfunctioned because of the snow and crashed to the ground; but there may be more above the school. A severe weather warning has been issued; the storm is closing in with blizzarding snow and strong winds which will hamper the search. It will also make flying helicopters virtually impossible and impact their hunt for a possible third gunman.
Hopefully, there’s no third attacker to be found and Rafi is safe. But Rose will keep her word and give him a bollocking when this is over for not being evacuated with junior school, for adding to the stress of their job, for being so bloody inconsiderate. Do you have to be sixteen to be so idiotically, wonderfully courageous like that? She wonders if she or Jonny would leave safety and return to face a gunman on just the supposition that the other might be in danger. She thinks that they would, but it’s hardly likely to ever be put to the test. Jesus, Rose, focus.
Stuart Dingwall, senior officer in counterterrorism intelligence, comes on the line.
‘Rose? Stuart. One of our surveillance UAVs found the remains of the bomb and sent us footage. It’s pretty much covered in snow but there’s enough to confirm our guess that it was a pressure-cooker bomb; but not powerful. Two teachers heard it and thought it was firecrackers. A girl on TV said she thought it was a bonfire and a pigeon scarer. What I don’t understand is why set it off in the first place? Do you have any idea? Because logically I can’t think of a reason.’
Rose has wondered that too, because apart from Rafi, it didn’t frighten anyone, if that’s what it was meant to do; all it did was alert the school and the police. But she now believes the woods were significant.
‘I think the school was meant to go into lockdown,’ she tells Stuart. ‘The bomb made the woods appear dangerous so that the decision was made not to evacuate children and staff through the woods but to stay inside school buildings. One gunman was already hiding in Old School. I think that the other gunman, who shot at PC Beard from the woods and then followed Mr Marr through the woods, wanted to reinforce the idea that the woods were too dangerous for the children and staff to go into. Again, he was keeping everyone inside buildings; corralling them inside.’
‘And junior school would have been a soft target if they’d stayed inside their building.’
‘Exactly. Pure bad luck for the bombers that it was Rafi Bukhari who saw the small explosion and knew what it was and got junior school evacuated; probably the only person in the school who’d do that. But I don’t think our bomber necessarily banked on it being seen by anyone – it’s a large woodland, and classes were about to start so most people would’ve been inside.’
‘But if nobody saw the explosion, shooting at PC Beard from the woods would make the point that the woods were dangerous.’
‘Yes. I think the explosion may be part of some kind of game we don’t yet understand, that links to the rifles as a misdirect. I think it tells us something about the mindset of one of the gunmen.’
‘And you’re working on the mindset?’
‘Yes.’
She ends the conversation.
‘Victor Deakin hasn’t turned up to college,’ George tells her. ‘And there’s no sign of Malin Cohen either. Teams are en route to all suspects’ houses.’
‘I’ve got an evacuated teacher on the line,’ Amaal says. ‘Gina Patterson wants to talk about Victor Deakin, one of the boys who was expelled.’
Rose puts the phone on speaker.
‘Gina, my name’s Detective Inspector Rose Polstein. What can you tell me?’
‘We all just thought it was for his EPQ, what Victor wrote, but maybe it wasn’t. Maybe that’s why Matthew expelled him, maybe it’s Victor doing this. I mean I don’t think it is, I can’t believe that, but he only joined us in Year Eleven and most of our kids have been at the school for years, since Reception, so we know them really well and they absorb the school ethos, but Victor—’
‘What did Victor Deakin write?’
‘It was a rape fantasy. He said it was for his EPQ, extended project qualification, which was on sex offenders. He told the teacher who found it that he was just getting into the mindset of a sex offender. His tutor confirmed he was doing an EPQ on that. He said he just chose the name Sarah because it was a common name. But there’s a girl called Sarah in the year below.’
‘Her surname?’
‘Jensten.’
‘Did Sarah and her parents want him gone?’
‘No, they believed him. He wrote to them, to Sarah and her parents, to apologize for any upset he might have caused. I saw the letters. He was genuinely sorry.’
‘But he was still expelled?’
‘No. Matthew let him stay on condition that Olav Christoffersen, head of IT, had daily access to his laptop and his tutor could conduct random searches of his study area. Victor said he understood. Most of us thought Matthew was being too harsh, all teenagers have things on their laptops they’d rather keep hidden, but Matthew said he was being careful.’
‘And then?’
‘I don’t know. Matthew didn’t talk to us about the expulsion. It was the summer term so we were frantically busy, focusing on our GCSE and A-level students, too busy to pursue Matthew about it. But what if Olav found something on Victor’s laptop? What if that’s why he was expelled?’
‘Did Olav Christoffersen say anything?’
‘No, but he wouldn’t. Olav’s very circumspect, never gossips. And like I said, we were all really busy so we just accepted the decision and got on with our jobs.’