Time Is Running Out

by Michael Wood

  He opened the back of the van and began removing his clothes. It was now fully dark, and the temperature was starting to fall. He could feel the fine rain on his bare skin as he took off his combat trousers and replaced them with black cotton ones. The white shirt was cold against his chest, but the jacket was heavier than he anticipated. That should warm him up. He looked at his reflection in a cracked mirror he’d found and neatened down his hair. He gave himself a smile, which relaxed his features. He squeezed his feet into highly polished black leather shoes. They pinched at his heels slightly, but the adrenaline coursing through his veins would make him forget the pain.

  ‘Right then,’ he said to his victim trussed up in the back of the van. ‘I won’t be long. Then one more stop and you can go home.’ He picked up the bag containing his arsenal of weapons from beneath the seat in the front of the van and slammed the door closed. He was ready.

  He looked at the phone he’d been using to contact his brother in prison. There were no texts, no voicemails, no missed calls. He turned it off and dropped it down the drain. It landed with a splash.

  The school day at Stannington Secondary School didn’t finish until four o’clock. He’d heard it had been put into lockdown and wondered what the procedure was for sending kids home in a situation like this. Would parents have to collect them, even the ones in the final year, aged fifteen and sixteen? He looked around. There were no anxious parents by the gates or sitting in parked cars. In fact, all was quiet. There was a deathly silence in the air. Jake couldn’t help but smile.

  Schools had certainly changed since the days of Jake’s education. There were no open gates to simply walk through; even the perimeter of the school field had an eight-foot fence to keep people out. There were intercoms, cameras and notices telling visitors where to report. Over the years, schools had become more mistrustful and paranoid, or had people become more evil and schools were adapting to a disturbed society of kidnappers and paedophiles? The twenty-first century was not a happy place to live.

  He pushed the buzzer on the intercom by the gate.

  ‘Hello,’ came the crackled reply.

  ‘Good afternoon. My name is PC Steve Harrison. I’m with South Yorkshire Police. I’ve been sent to make sure you’re all right and answer any questions you may have.’

  ‘There’s a red dot just above the speakers and a camera to the right of it. Could you show your identification to the lens, please?’ The woman asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  Jake removed his brother’s old ID from his inside pocket and aimed it at the camera. He didn’t look much like his brother. They didn’t have the same winning smile and twinkling eyes, but he could pass for him through a poor-resolution camera, which he hoped this was. The wait to be allowed onto the premises seemed to take a long time. He wondered what the woman was doing. Eventually, the lock on the gates clicked. He’d been allowed in.

  Jake swung his bag onto his shoulder and made his way down the drive with his head held high, his shoulders back and a spring in his step. He tried to hide the smile that was creeping onto his thin lips. He didn’t want to give the game away until he was inside the school.

  He looked up at the building as he approached. A relatively new build on two storeys with a gym, drama studio and football pitch at the back. He’d done his research and knew all the staff who worked here. He knew the Ofsted report and the average grades of the students. This was a good school. Any parent would love to send their child here.

  Maybe not after today, though.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  ‘It was empty?’ Sian asked.

  ‘Not quite. It was a plastic tub filled with wires. Nothing else,’ Christian said, warming his hands up around a mug of coffee in the HMET suite.

  ‘I don’t get it. Why would someone do that?’

  ‘To delay the investigation. Everything he’s done has been to delay us, like finding that burner phone switched on in the evidence bag. Now, according to Janet Crowther, she was due to go around there this morning, but she received a text from her sister asking her to go around later in the day instead. However, initial reports suggest that Malcolm and Vivian had been dead long before that text was sent.’

  ‘So the gunman sent the text to delay the bodies being found,’ Sian said.

  ‘Exactly. If she’d gone at, say, ten or eleven o’clock as planned, then we’d have found Malcolm and Vivian sooner and worked out who he was a lot quicker.’

  ‘Why would he want to delay us?’ Finn asked from where he was making hot drinks for everyone.

  ‘Because he’s planning something else,’ Christian said. Everyone stopped dead in their tracks at that and turned their attention towards him.

  ‘You think so?’ Sian asked.

  ‘I do. The shooting at the Parkway was at eleven o’clock this morning. It’s now three o’clock. What’s he been doing for the past four hours? If all he intended was to shoot his parents and blow off steam over the Parkway, we’d have found him dead by now. Shooters like him always either kill themselves or go out in a blaze of glory – as they like to see it. We haven’t found him dead, which means…’ He trailed off, allowing the team to finish the sentence for themselves.

  Aaron entered the suite. ‘Sian, your homeless friend is downstairs.’

  ‘He has a name, Aaron,’ Sian chastised, picking up a file and leaving the room.

  ‘I’ve shown Janet and Ronald the CCTV photos, and they say the figure looks like Jake. They’re not one hundred per cent certain, but they’re in the high nineties.’

  ‘Thanks, Aaron.’

  ‘I’ve also run his name through the PNC. He’s not known to us, but there have been some complaints made against him by his wife.’

  ‘Oh?’ Christian said, handing his empty cup to Finn and asking for a refill.

  Aaron selected the file on his iPad. ‘She called 999 on the twenty-fourth of August last year, saying he was outside her flat and wouldn’t leave. When they turned up, he wasn’t there. Two weeks later, she called again, saying she saw him hanging around outside her flat. She had a brick thrown through her window and wanted him arrested.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Police went around to his parents’ house, but he wasn’t in. They caught up with him the next day at work and gave him an official warning. Nothing seems to have happened after that.’

  ‘So, that was late August last year,’ Christian said, thinking aloud. ‘Get contact details for the wife, find out where she lives, we’ll pay her a visit.’

  Sian re-entered the suite with a grin on her face. ‘McNally is downstairs giving a formal statement, but he says the photo of Jake Harrison that Janet Crowther gave us is definitely the same man who paid him to set off our fire alarm this morning.’

  ‘Yes!’ Christian hissed. ‘We’ve got him. All we need to do now is find where the bloody hell he is and what his motive is.’

  ‘You make is sound so simple,’ Sian said with a smile.

  ‘If only it was.’

  Adele entered the relatives’ room, closed the door behind her and rested against it. Tears fell from her eyes.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Penny said, crumbling in her seat. Frank rushed to comfort her.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Daniel asked, jumping up from his seat. He handed her a box of tissues from the chipboard table. She snatched one and wiped her eyes.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said through the emotion. ‘I don’t know why I’m crying.’

  ‘Has something happened?’ Daniel asked again.

  Adele took a deep breath to steady herself. ‘Ok. I’ve spoken to one of the consultants who was in the theatre with Matilda. It was touch and go, and they almost lost her…’

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ Penny said. She had her arms wrapped firmly around herself, and her face contorted with tears as she began rocking back and forth in her seat. Frank was perched on the arm of the chair, holding his wife for comfort, but his face was pale. He looked like he was about to be sick.

/>   ‘However, they managed to remove all the bone and bullet fragments from her brain and the swelling is slowly going down. They have to leave the skull open until the swelling has reduced, then they can replace the skull fragments with a metal plate.’

  ‘Is she going to be all right?’ Daniel asked, his eyes wide.

  ‘They don’t know. They’ve done all they can for her physically. She’ll need further surgery to repair the skull and remove the bullet from her shoulder, but they don’t expect any complications with that. It’s a waiting game to see if there is any brain damage when she wakes up.’

  ‘Oh my God, Frank,’ Penny cried.

  ‘She will definitely wake up though?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘They think so.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Didn’t they say?’

  ‘Daniel, there isn’t a switch you flick on and off for someone to wake up. The body needs time to repair itself. She’ll wake up when she’s ready,’ Adele said, getting testy. She went over to the chair where Penny was and sat next to her, rubbing her hand.

  ‘I’m sorry, I just… Can we see her?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘Not right now. She’s in Recovery, then they’ll move her to ITU. Frank and Penny will be able to see her then.’

  ‘Not me?’

  Adele stood up. She grabbed Daniel by the elbow, opened the door and pushed him out into the corridor.

  ‘Daniel, I’m sorry, but only the immediate family will be able to see her. Even I won’t be allowed in and I’ve known her for more than twenty years.’

  Daniel leaned back against the wall, tears streaming down his rugged face. ‘I love her, Adele.’

  She stepped forward. ‘I know you do, Daniel.’

  ‘I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose her.’

  ‘You won’t. Look, wait until tomorrow. Once Frank and Penny have been in with her, they’re bound to let you pop in for a few minutes. I’ll ask them for you. Just take a step back.’

  He nodded and gave a weak smile. ‘I will. Thanks, Adele. I think I’m going to get a coffee from downstairs.’

  ‘Will you get us all one?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Adele watched him head for the lifts before she went back into the family room. Penny was stood by the window, looking out over the grey city.

  ‘You try your best with your family,’ she said solemnly. ‘You put them through school, college and university. You hope they’ll get good grades and a good career, maybe settle down and have kids, but it doesn’t matter how old they get, you never stop worrying. Look at Matilda, forty-four years old, and I’m still fretting about her. When does it stop?’

  ‘I don’t think it ever does,’ Adele said. ‘I still see my Chris as a child, and he’s settled into a job he enjoys and he’s in a relationship.’

  ‘They grow up so fast,’ Frank said.

  Penny turned from the window to face them both. Her eyes were full of tears. ‘I’ve never regretted having kids. I love Matilda and Harriet to bits. But when you look at the state of the world, it makes you worry all the more. I don’t want Matilda to be a detective. I don’t want her doing this job anymore,’ she said, as the tears started to fall again.

  ‘Penny,’ Frank said, moving over to her. ‘It’s her choice. We have to support her and, when something like this happens, we make sure we’re there for her and help to pick up the pieces.’

  ‘I can’t,’ she choked. ‘I can’t do this. What if she’s brain-damaged? What if she can’t walk or talk or feed herself? She wouldn’t want me bathing her. She wouldn’t want me putting her to bed and dressing her. And, I know I shouldn’t say this as her mother, and God forgive me, but I couldn’t do that for her either.’

  Adele closed her eyes and put her head down. She understood where Penny was coming from, but if she was in that position and Chris needed round-the-clock care, she’d be there for him. She wouldn’t give it a second thought. She dug her mobile out of her pocket and sent a text to her son:

  Matilda out of surgery. Still not out of the woods yet. Hope you’re ok. Love you. XXX

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Once the ‘bomb’ inside the plastic tub was seen to be a hoax, a clean sweep of the rest of the Harrisons’ house in Mowson Lane was given before bomb-disposal experts handed it over to police for their investigation to begin.

  Simon Browes and Lucy Dauman were called out to make an initial assessment of the bodies of Vivian and Malcolm Harrison. The kitchen was sealed off and police searched the rest of the house.

  On the first floor, Jake had slept in the second bedroom next to his parents’ room. It was a large room with fitted wardrobes, a double bed pressed against the back wall and an oak desk in the corner where a laptop was plugged in and an iPad charging. These were both bagged and taken by forensic officers to be analysed, but there was plenty for DCs Rory Fleming and Scott Andrews to be going on with in the room.

  Scott had been keeping a close eye on his best friend all day. Under normal circumstances, following the death of a loved one, Rory would have been sent home, but today was anything but normal and Scott knew Rory would refuse to walk away from the investigation, even if ordered to do so. Rory was usually a bright and bubbly personality, always quick with a joke or a sarcastic remark, but he’d hardly said two words since the shooting at the station this morning. Not surprising. Every time Scott looked to him and took in the expressionless face of his former flatmate, he wondered what was going on inside his head. What was he thinking about? He wished he’d talk, say something, anything that would alert Scott to what he was going through. He supposed, in his own time, Rory would open up. Until then, Scott just had to let him know that he’d always be there for him, whenever he needed him. Maybe he should move back into the apartment with him for a while. He was sure Chris wouldn’t mind.

  Rory was standing in front of the large wall opposite the wardrobes, which was covered in posters and maps of the city. The pictures depicted various types of guns and Post-it Notes were stuck to them where Jake had made notes in his illegible scrawl. News articles printed from the internet about gun crime and shooting massacres had been stuck up; the headlines highlighted, key information underlined in red.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Rory said as he stood in front of the grim collage. ‘He’s certainly done his homework.’

  ‘He’s definitely our gunman then,’ Scott said from behind him.

  ‘It would seem so.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I have no idea. A psychologist would probably have a field day in here.’

  ‘I should ring the DI,’ Scott said, fishing his phone out of his pocket.

  ‘Is this linked to Steve? Did Steve put him up to this?’

  Scott turned to his colleague whose face was etched with pain and horror as his eyes danced over the amount of material on the wall.

  ‘I don’t know, Rory.’

  Suddenly, Rory darted forward, as if something had snapped in his mind. He pulled open drawers in the bed side cabinet and chest of drawers, scrambling among the clothes and underwear.

  ‘Rory, what are you doing?’ Scott asked, phone still in hand.

  ‘We need to find out where Jake is. We need to figure out what he’s planning. Look at the wall, Scott – if he was just going to shoot us at the station and then over the Parkway, he wouldn’t have done this much research. Look here,’ he said as he pushed back the door to the fitted wardrobe and scrambled among a plastic box at the bottom. ‘He’s got books on terrorism, the Unabomber, Dunblane, Columbine, 9/11, the London attacks. And they’re well read, look,’ he said, holding them up. ‘He’s plotting something bigger than we’ve already witnessed today.’

  ‘Scott, Scott, what’s going on?’

  Scott heard DI Brady’s voice coming from his phone. ‘Shit, sorry, I forgot I dialled. We’re in Jake Harrison’s bedroom. I think you’re going to need to send someone out here.’

  ‘I don’t have anyone
to send out, Scott. What do you need?’ Christian sounded harassed.

  ‘Jake has got books on terrorism and weapons, and he’s got a wall full of press clippings about gun crime.’

  ‘Look at this.’ Rory began laying out small crumpled pieces of paper out on the bed. They were notes written in tiny handwriting, some almost impossible to read. ‘Jesus, look at this one.’ He handed it to Scott.

  ‘“You can’t take your eyes off the main target. That’s Matilda. Once she’s down you can have fun,”’ Scott read out into the phone. ‘Sir, there’s about ten of these letters, maybe more.’

  ‘Bring them all in,’ Christian said.

  ‘Listen to this one, “I’ve rewritten it in order of who you need to kill first. Memorise it then destroy it”,’ Rory said, holding up another piece of paper. ‘I’m going to see if there’s any more.’

  ‘He’s got a hit list,’ Scott said. ‘He’s not finished, is he?’

  ‘It doesn’t look like it,’ Christian said.

  ‘Oh my God,’ Rory said.

  ‘What is it?’

  Rory held up a black book for Scott to see.

  ‘Shit. Sir, we’ve found a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Christian said. ‘Bag up everything you can quickly and bring it back here. We need to go through his stuff.’

  The line went dead.

  Scott’s face was ashen. He couldn’t take his eyes off the book. A person could face criminal charges for just being in possession of that book.

  ‘He’s going to blow something up, isn’t he?’ Scott asked.

  Rory flicked through the pages. A folded-up letter Jake had been using as a bookmark fell out. Rory’s eyes quickly scanned from left to right as he read it.