‘We’ll do everything we can, I promise.’
She ends the call with Zac.
An update comes through from a police officer at Victor Deakin’s house. This briefing is going to all personnel. In the background, they can hear drawers and cupboards being opened; the room’s being ransacked.
‘We’ve found ammo for a semi-automatic and ingredients for a pressure-cooker bomb,’ the officer says.
‘What about a laptop?’ Rose asks; because she’s pretty sure that whatever Olav Christoffersen, the IT teacher, found on Victor’s laptop got him expelled.
‘Just a desktop in his bedroom.’
‘Have we got hold of Olav Christoffersen yet?’ she asks George.
‘He was evacuated and is driving home. He’s not answering his mobile.’
‘Do you know what car he drives?’
‘A Renault Clio.’
‘So he’ll be going slowly in this. We need to send an SUV after him and get him on the phone.’
* * *
The air in the library has changed; it is staler, like you’re breathing in other people’s fear. A shutter that isn’t properly secured bangs against a window as the wind gusts outside and Hannah startles. They are all jumpy with fear. The sound of his footsteps and his phone ringing, but he doesn’t answer it. Then the phone stops and it’s just his footsteps.
The last of Frank’s mobile charge was used up on letting Tobias call his mum; they cannot talk to anyone outside the library now.
Mr Marr has lost consciousness again, as if he’s slipping in and out of two worlds, Hannah thinks, but he was always so fully present in this one, the captain of the ship, and she knows he’s trying to stay with them, knows how much effort it probably is for him just to keep breathing.
The ambulance people keep telling them what to do by email, and they’re making sure Mr Marr is warm, that his airway is clear, that he’s still in the recovery position, and it feels comforting that they’re doing everything right, even though they can’t really help him at all, and she thinks the ambulance people understand that and are telling them all this to help them as much as Mr Marr.
He’s big, that’s what Hannah thought when she heard it was Victor Deakin. Six foot and heavy; so, what will happen if he shoves the door?
FICTION A–C and FICTION D–G are the latest door fortifications; Mrs Ramsay joined by Jo March, Elizabeth Bennet, Jane Eyre, Maggie Tulliver and Dorothea Brooke; all those women with their many sisters and friends and enemies and poor-choice husbands barricading the door. But how substantial will they be against Victor Deakin if he tries to get in?
Frank’s twin, Luisa, emailed him a little while ago from the theatre, all happy, saying, ‘It’s good news because you’re not the target, he’s done what he came for.’ Like shooting Mr Marr was the end of it, so they could all relax and soon it would be over. But he hasn’t got what he came for because he’s still in the corridor. And what does it mean, getting what he came for – shooting Mr Marr? Because that means he’s a cold-blooded would-be murderer, or hot-blooded, temperature of his blood not really the issue, what matters is that he’s willing to kill and if he’s tried to do it once, then she thinks he’ll do it again, she thinks that’s what he’s building up to as he walks up and down, imagining it, like Christmas Eve and putting out your stocking, getting all excited.
No one’s said it yet but they feel the huge distance between the people who are safe in the theatre and everyone in Old School with the footsteps, especially all of them in the library with Mr Marr’s poor white face, his injured head and foot, and blood soaking into the floorboards and the rug. Nobody who isn’t here will ever understand, just Rafi, when before none of them could really understand him.
‘Mr Forbright’s emailed,’ Frank says. Brave Frank with his laptop is still near to her and Mr Marr, still near to the door. ‘He says the police want any information we have on Victor Deakin.’
There’s silence as people wonder what information they have that can help. Hannah didn’t know Victor Deakin, just saw him around. He wasn’t a loner though, wasn’t creepy – well, clearly he’s completely fucking creepy, but not the kind of creepy that gives you warning he is going to shoot someone.
Dad would call him a nefarious fiend, a degenerate devil; Great-Grandpa’s words would be called into use. Dad thinks words are like watches, you hand them down to the next generation and use them on special occasions – Stupendous! Balderdash! – and words for monster men too – unholy scoundrel, diabolical. Great-Grandpa was in the war, when they had to coin words with bigger meanings.
Esme at the back of the library says, ‘He went on the school surf trip but went too far out, wouldn’t come back, so wasn’t allowed again.’
Hannah thinks of salty air and waves and escape.
Other people are pitching in with sports he does, as if putting together his personal statement or sports BTEC, because what does it matter that he abseils and goes free running and rock climbing? Why couldn’t he have free run between two really tall buildings and missed or fallen off a cliff face or surfed into the open ocean and never come back? But he’s here. Just outside the library.
And how did he even get a gun? It’s not like Somerset is Alabama, not like you can just pop into a supermarket and stick a gun in your trolley with some ammo. How’s he done that? How did he know how to do that? Her thoughts are sounding highpitched in her head, getting panicky; she’s got to keep calm, she must be brave and undaunted like Maggie Tulliver and Jo March and Elizabeth Bennet, but she’s just plain terrified Hannah Jacobs looking at a pile of books against a gunman.
She thinks of Rafi – the flashing joy that he’d come for her, loves her – and for a little while, despite everything, she feels euphorically happy, weightless, floating above the library and the nefarious fiend in the corridor. But Mr Marr is bleeding and the footsteps are outside and she feels weighted down all over again by fear and shock and just the horror of it, really, the terrible awfulness, like the footsteps flatten her.
Rafi must be okay, must be, because he’s out in the woods, not here in the library with the diabolical man, and yes, there were shots heard in the woods earlier, but they were near the gatehouse, and the woods are huge, and Rafi can hide and be safe.
* * *
It’s snowing harder; the wind’s making the trees bend like air has muscle. Snow has covered the path and Rafi cannot find his way back. There’s nothing familiar, everything blanketed white.
He turns and runs in the opposite direction. Surely he’ll find a landmark he recognizes and then the path. The wind blows snow at his face, making his eyes smart, and he feels tears and he thinks of Mama, as if the tears came first, before he thought of her, but that’s not true because she’s always there, and he thinks love lives inside his face, behind his eyes.
Not enough money for her, just him and Basi; ten thousand euros each to go via Italy, the safest route, the people smugglers said. And oh for fuck’s sake, people are bored of this story, all that tugging misery, and you get fed up with desperate people and he gets that, he really gets that, because he’d rather binge-watch a series on Netflix or listen to Spotify or play Xbox or hang out with his friends too, who wouldn’t?