All the Hidden Truths

by Claire Askew

  ‘Ishbel.’ It was Dave. His voice was very close to her ear. ‘I think you’re having a bit of a fainting fit, sweets. I want you to just lean forward and put your head down by your knees, okay?’

  Her eyes were still closed, but Ishbel nodded. She allowed herself to go limp, and be folded in half by Dave’s guiding hand.

  ‘That’s a girl,’ he said. Then, louder, to someone else, ‘She’s just gone a bit green around the gills. She’ll be fine in a tick.’

  Ishbel felt the poly mix of her skirt rub against her forehead. She felt the hair around her hairline making static electricity. You’ll look a sight now, she thought. She very much wanted to go to sleep. The buzz in her head was almost soothing, and the twisting clouds of rainbowed grey had begun to fade to black.

  But Dave was yanking her upright again.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Sit up for me for a second. Alison’s brought you some hot, sweet tea and I want you to drink it.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘That means you have to open your eyes, Ishbel.’

  Somehow, she complied. The world was brightly lit and out of focus. She allowed Alison to press a mug into her hands, and then she lifted it and took a sip. It singed her tongue.

  Dave was leaning past her and typing on her keyboard with one hand; the other hand was on her back, steadying her as she sat with the mug close to her face, breathing in the steam. The BBC News website appeared on the screen; even through her own private blur, Ishbel recognised the header.

  ‘Reputable source, that’s what we need,’ Dave was saying. ‘None of this Twitter malarkey.’

  Ishbel screwed up her eyes, then stretched them wide open, raising her eyebrows as high as she could. Why am I faint? she almost asked. Anxiety sat heavy in her ribcage – they’d been talking about something important a minute ago. What was it?

  ‘Oh, holy shit,’ Dave said.

  Ishbel tensed. Abigail, she thought. Something about Abigail.

  ‘Breaking news,’ Dave read. ‘The BBC has received reports that gunshots have been fired at the Tweed Campus of the Three Rivers Further Education College in Edinburgh. Emergency services have been notified, and reports indicate that the unidentified gunman is still at large. As yet, no casualties or injuries have been confirmed. We will be posting live updates on this story as they come in, but in the meantime . . .’ Dave trailed off.

  Ishbel tilted wildly towards the screen, trying to make the print come into focus. The hot tea leapt out of its mug, and she was vaguely aware of a wet stinging sensation on her right thigh.

  ‘In the meantime what?’

  Dave didn’t look away from the screen. He was trying to scroll down, though there was no more page to scroll to.

  ‘Is that it?’ he said, and then, ‘Sorry. In the meantime, they’ve set up a helpline number. But that’s it. That’s all the information they have. So it can’t be bad, right? Right, Alison? It can’t be that bad, or they’d say more than that. They’d say, like . . . I don’t know . . . the area’s being evacuated, or something. Right?’

  Alison must have come round to their side of the bank of desks, because her voice now came from somewhere behind Ishbel.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she was saying. ‘I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.’

  Ishbel was still peering at the screen. The words helpline only, families, and no press flared in and out of focus.

  ‘Dave,’ she said. ‘Will you dial the number for me? The helpline number? I can’t seem to see straight.’

  Without speaking, Dave leaned over the desk again. Though she didn’t move her eyes from the screen, she could hear him dialling. He seemed to be doing it very slowly, and she wanted to snap something at him. She was vaguely aware of Alison bending down to sponge up the slopped tea.

  ‘You want me to talk to them?’ Dave asked. ‘To whoever answers?’

  ‘No.’ Ishbel reached out her hand for the receiver, and brought it, shuddering, to her face.

  ‘We are receiving a high volume of calls at this time.’ The voice was female, but clearly robotic. ‘Please try again later.’

  Ishbel stared dumbly, not moving.

  ‘Please try again later,’ the robot woman said again, after a short silence. Then she said it again – and again.

  ‘Goddammit!’ Ishbel banged the receiver down. Blood pounded in her head. Everything came rushing back: her colleagues’ voices, unbearably loud; the overhead strip-lights; the too-bright flare of the PC screen. Dave’s cheap aftershave so strong she could taste it. Every single face had flicked round to look at her.

  ‘Redial, please,’ she said. She put the receiver to her cheek again, and Dave hit the button.

  ‘We are receiving a high volume of calls—’ But Ishbel had already slammed down the phone.

  She looked up into Dave’s face. He’d gone very white.

  ‘Fuck,’ was all he said, but in that word was everything Ishbel needed to hear: I think it’s really true. It looks pretty serious. Loudest of all: You should go.

  Ishbel bent double again – this time beyond the hem of her polyester skirt. She scooped her handbag out from the footwell of her desk and clawed around inside it till she found her car keys. When she stood up, she could see that most of her colleagues were on their feet, too – huddling in threes and fours around computers, glancing over in her direction but then quickly looking away. She turned to Dave.

  ‘Go,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. ‘Just go. I’ll sort things out here.’

  It was enough. Ishbel pushed back the office chair, and ran.

  14 May, 9.25 a.m.

  Moira’s hands were filthy. The shed floor hadn’t been swept in years: she was crawling through decades of soot and soil, human dust, parched stalks and dried leaves, the carcasses of spiders. The words they have to be here somewhere ran through her head over and over, a kind of demented chant. Beyond the open door, she could see the garden, green and streaked like the inside of a bottle in the still-early light. As she swung her head back and forth – they have to be here – the doorway left a bright, pale green smudge on her retina.

  A figure stepped into that doorway, and the shed grew darker around her. Before she could look up, she heard a mechanical click: close to her face, familiar and weird.

  ‘Stay still, please.’ A man’s voice. ‘Armed police.’

  Moira froze. In her head, that chant: they have to be here, they have to be . . .

  ‘I’m going to give you a command now,’ the man said. ‘But I want you to listen to it all the way through before you move, okay?’ He sounded young. Somewhere in his vowels, Moira could hear a slight tremor: fear.

  ‘I want you to stand up for me, very slowly,’ he was saying. ‘But I need you to keep your hands where I can see them the whole time. Can you do that for me?’

  Moira looked at her hands, which were palm down, bracing her weight against the shed floor. It occurred to her that this was the pose she’d made as a young woman – a woman whose tiny son was singing a horse ride, a horse ride! for the fortieth time that day. She’d crawled all over that garden, wrecking her back, being Ryan’s horse. Now, her hands were getting wrinkled: the dirt from the floor exacerbated their elderliness. Each nail was a skinny black moon.

  When she raised her face, she saw the source of the click she’d heard. About twelve inches from her right eye, the long, elegant throat of a rifle hovered. Her heart snapped like elastic.

  ‘I need you to do that for me now, please,’ the young man said.

  Moira squinted past the gun barrel. He was dressed all in black and heavily padded: his chest boxed in Kevlar.

  ‘Okay,’ she managed to say. She went through the motions he’d asked for, clicking her limbs into position like a wind-up toy. As she rose to match his height almost exactly, he let the gun hover, so now it pointed at the centre of her chest. She imagined the bullet splintering her breastbone – her torso breaking open like some lush, pink fruit. The thought brought a moment
of unexpected calm.

  ‘Good,’ the young man said. ‘The next thing I’d like you to do is raise your hands so I can see them very clearly, and then turn round in a full circle till you come back to face me.’

  Moira flipped her palms up towards him. He’d be able to see every line, picked out in dirt. She turned in a neat circle, picking up her feet like a dressage horse.

  ‘All right.’ He sighed the word out, and there was relief in it. ‘Now I’d like you to tell me your name, please, madam.’

  The madam seemed so out of place that Moira actually smiled.

  ‘Moira Summers,’ she said.

  He lowered the gun barrel, and slung the weight of the big machine onto one arm. The other he raised, and made a sort of beckoning motion.

  ‘Guv!’ He barked the words across the garden, sending up a clatter of jackdaws from the nearest, biggest tree. ‘We’ve got the mother!’

  Moira allowed herself to be led along the side of the house, and round to the front. The patch of street beyond the boundary wall was full of vehicles: most of them black, and unmarked. There were also people, some helmeted and flak-jacketed: a few on the front lawn, a few in the street with their vans. But the majority of their number, Moira sensed, were now inside her house. She thought of their deep-tread boots on her carpets. She tried to remember how tidy the kitchen was. She’d been in it, last night, for a long time – but she’d been distracted, talking to Ryan. A shiver went through her. She wanted very badly to go back into the shed, and continue her search.

  The man who’d been identified as Guv by the young, gun-pointing soldier-policeman was now holding on to Moira’s elbow. He’d taken off his glove and his fingers were gentle on the sleeve of her cardigan, but there was purpose in the gesture, too. It said make no sudden moves. Stay calm. It was a grip that, Moira knew, could tighten much faster than she could ever make to run.

  ‘Mrs Summers,’ the man said. ‘We have a team of officers searching your house. I need you to tell me if you know of any threat to their safety anywhere inside that house.’

  Why? she wanted to ask. Why are they searching my house? But instead she began to think about his question: about the loose flap of stair carpet six stairs up; Jackie’s vintage cut-throat razor in its old suede pouch in the bathroom cabinet. The breadknife with the blade that sometimes came free of its handle. She knew that was not what he was asking.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll be specific. Do you know of any bombs, or any explosive booby traps, inside this house?’

  He pointed backwards at the pebbledash, the bay windows, the woody old hydrangea beside the door.

  ‘No,’ Moira said.

  ‘Do you know of any guns or other firearms inside this house?’

  Moira shuddered. She remembered Ryan’s face, hanging in the air across the kitchen table – had that really been just last night, that conversation? She felt like a child caught in the midst of telling a lie.

  ‘Not in the house,’ she said, after a pause.

  The man tightened his fingers around her arm, just slightly.

  ‘Not in the house,’ he echoed. ‘But somewhere on this property?’

  She squeezed her eyes closed.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In the shed. That’s what I was looking for. I know what—’

  ‘Can you describe the firearms for me, please?’

  Moira kept her eyes closed.

  ‘They’re not guns. Not exactly.’ Yes, just like a child telling a lie: caught, but keeping the fiction going all the same. ‘They’re starting guns. My husband is – sorry, was – an athletics coach. But they look like guns, a bit. Or they do to me.’

  She opened her eyes.

  ‘Okay,’ the man said. He was speaking more slowly now, as one might speak to someone whose English wasn’t that good. ‘What kind of guns do they look like? He pointed to the young policeman with the rifle. ‘Like this, like a rifle? Or like a handgun?’

  Moira nodded, though it wasn’t a yes-no question.

  ‘Like a handgun,’ she said. ‘They’re very small. There are three of them. Two of them are orange, and I think parts of them are made of plastic. Or they look like plastic. One is mostly black – that one looks most like a gun, I suppose. Like a gun from off the TV. They all have wooden-type handles.’

  The man’s hand was still there, holding her in one spot. She began to feel glad of it.

  ‘And the last place you saw these firearms was the garden shed, you say?’

  She nodded.

  ‘The outbuilding you’ve just been escorted from?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you say that you were in the shed because you were looking for these items?’

  ‘I was.’

  He nodded.

  ‘But you didn’t find them?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Had you been searching for them long, before we got here?’

  Moira’s eye was caught by a movement across the street: her elderly neighbour, Frank, opening his front door and stepping out onto the welcome mat in his slippers. She forced herself to focus. How long was I looking?

  ‘I don’t really know,’ she said.

  She endeavoured to keep looking at this flak-vested man. On the edge of her vision, Frank was teetering on his front step, watching the comings and goings.

  ‘You’re doing well, Moira,’ the man said. His tone had softened just a little, and when she blinked, she realised her eyes were wet, her face was wet. Would these men wonder why she was crying? Did they think she looked guilty?

  ‘I just have two more questions for now,’ the man was saying. ‘The first one is, do you think it’s possible that these three firearms have been recently moved out of the shed and taken somewhere else?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Moira said. But she did. She did know what he meant. He knew it, too.

  ‘I’m asking if they could be in the house, for example,’ he said. ‘Could someone have brought them inside, since you last saw them? Your husband, maybe?’

  ‘My husband is dead. He died two years ago.’

  The man blinked, then nodded.

  ‘Okay. Final question for now.’ He kept saying that: for now. Moira closed her eyes again. What is this the start of? she wanted to ask. Nausea had begun to swirl inside her. ‘Do you have any reason to think that these guns might now be in the possession of your son, Ryan?’

  There it was. Under her feet, the lawn seemed to lurch. In the few seconds of quiet in the wake of his question, Moira weighed up a few options in her head. No, Ryan wouldn’t. No, they belonged to Jackie. Okay, Ryan was interested in them but he’d never. I’m sure they’re in that shed. If you look, you’ll find them. Let me go back. I’ll find them. They must be there somewhere. They must be.

  ‘I suppose so,’ was what she actually said. But then she added, ‘Ryan was interested in them, sure. He wanted to know how they worked. But they’re starting pistols. I said that, didn’t I? They’re not guns. They’re not dangerous.’

  They’re not dangerous. The words seemed to come out too loud, to echo off the sides of the vans, off the walls of the houses – she imagined the whole conversation reaching Frank, forty yards away. It wasn’t even what she wanted to say. She wanted to say, Why are you bringing Ryan into this? Why does it matter if he has some old starting pistol in his room, or even in his bag? But she didn’t say it, because she knew why. It was the reason she’d been awake half the night after talking with her son. It was the reason she’d gone out to the shed in the first place.

  The man had dipped his head towards his chest, and brought his hand up to the radio mounted there.

  ‘Okay, folks.’ The voice he used to speak into the radio was quite different to the one he’d just been using for Moira. ‘We’re looking for three snub-nosed revolver-style pieces, I’m told they’re starter guns. Two have orange frames, one black, all three have wooden or wood-effect grips. The last known place they were stored is the outbuilding in t
he garden. They could now be somewhere inside the house. They could also have left the property. But if they’re here anywhere, then let’s find them please, and I mean pronto. Let’s get that particular question answered, okay?’ There was a pause. His hand was still on her arm. When no answer came, the man added, ‘Out,’ and brought his head back up to make eye contact with Moira.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ he asked. ‘Anything else my team need to know about in this house?’

  Moira allowed herself to look around again at Frank. He was now at the end of his garden path, chatting over the wall to a white-haired woman. The woman was wearing a raincoat, holding a dog on a red lead. Moira had seen her around – guessed she must live a street or two over.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Nothing else I can think of.’

  ‘Okay.’ The man opened his fingers and let go of her arm. ‘I need to be elsewhere now,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid we can’t let you back into the house while the search is ongoing, but we do need you to stay nearby. Can I ask you to stay here in the garden for now? Gibbie here will keep you company.’

  He nodded in the direction of the young policeman, who was still hefting his terrible rifle on one arm.

  ‘Can I ask . . .’ The words came out and Moira wished she could pull them back in again. She both did and did not want to know. But now he was looking at her, waiting.

  ‘Can I ask what you’re looking for?’ she said. ‘Can I ask, is my son – is Ryan okay?’

  The two men exchanged looks.

  ‘You’ve heard that there has been a shooting at Three Rivers College.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘Yes,’ Moira said. ‘On the radio. Is Ryan . . .?’

  The man drew himself up a little.

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t have information on casualties at this moment,’ he said. ‘I can’t tell you any specifics about any of the students at the scene. I also can’t tell you what we’re looking for, because at this point we don’t really know ourselves. But I can tell you that we’re here because we’re working to stop what’s happening at the college, and to stop anyone else from being harmed. That’s why we need your help.’