by Mick Herron
‘Bitch,’ Judy said, quite clearly.
‘Stand away.’ The gunman again. ‘Stand away from her.’
Louise did as she was told. Judy was no more hurt than a sudden tumble causes.
‘Get up now.’
Judy looked at him murderously, but with more fear than contempt in the mix. ‘What’s going on?’
‘You will get up.’
She did. There was a crazy, graceless stagger in her movements, and her attention was now focused on Louise. ‘What’s going on?’ she said again. ‘This is you, isn’t it?’
Oh, for God’s sake . . .
Louise faced the gunman. ‘What do you want?’ she said.
‘Your phones,’ he said. ‘Your mobile telephones.’
This wasn’t the answer she’d been expecting.
‘Now! On the floor. Put your mobile phones on the floor.’
‘I don’t have one,’ she told him.
‘Yes! Put it on the floor!’
‘I mean, I’ve got one, but not with me. It’s in the other office.’
Do you want me to go and fetch it? A giggle threatened to erupt.
‘You others. Your phones.’
Eliot said, ‘Mine’s . . . it’s in my car. I don’t have it with me.’
‘You?’
This was to Judy. She was shaking her head too.
‘The boys?’
‘Well, of course not, they’re children.’
‘Children have such things.’
‘They’re three,’ Eliot said.
Three adults, two children, and not a mobile between them. Hold the press. Louise wondered why he’d wanted them, and the unwanted answer popped up immediately: he didn’t want them; he wanted them not to have them. So they couldn’t use them. Couldn’t call for help.
Why was he here? What did he want?
‘Against the wall. All of you go there.’
‘Why?’
‘Just go. All of you. Where I can see you.’
Gordy started to cry: a heartbreaking, end-of-his-tether sob.
His father scooped him up one-armed; gathered Timmy closer with the other. ‘Come on. It’s okay. It’s going to be all right.’
Why tell them that? How can you know? Louise remembered the weeks following the suicide bombings in London, and the countless accounts of the near-misses everyone had suffered: the tube just missed; the change in routine; the five minutes that had made all the difference. And underneath that, the untouchable certainty that terrorism happened to other people . . . But here it was, a happening fact: real, live, now. And she did not know that it was going to turn out all right. It was possible that it wouldn’t.
Judy said, ‘You brought him here, didn’t you?’
‘Judy –’
‘And he’s going to kill us all!’
‘Shut up!’ It made it worse that she’d just had such thoughts herself. She dropped her voice. ‘Think about the boys –’ Eliot said, ‘Both of you be quiet.’ He spoke to the gun-man. ‘What do you want? Do you seriously think any good can come of this?’
‘Against the wall. Please.’
The windowless wall, he meant. Louise reached it with-out consciously covering any ground – were those the last steps she’d ever take? He couldn’t just shoot them, could he? But that was what terrorists did: they perpetrated pointless acts of violence, whose victims were never more than counters on a board game. It was only afterwards that they’d be listed in newspapers, alongside inappropriate smiling photographs. While it was happening, they were less than human; their only purpose, to prove someone else’s point.
Become a person . . .
She said, ‘You haven’t told us your name yet.’
Judy stared at her as if she were insane. If Louise could have killed Judy with a look, she’d have done so; though admittedly, that might have been self-defeating. She risked a glance at her watch, and it told her time had passed; that it was 8.40; that any moment she’d hear the nursery gates opening as Dave arrived, followed by parents and hordes of tinies . . . She’d been wondering how things could get worse, and there was her answer. There could be more children – more unwitting counters – and this gunman could panic, and start picking them off.
He said, ‘It is not important.’
‘It is to me. I’ve told you my name, I’ve told you all our names. Oh, except Judy’s. This is Judy Ainsworth. She’s our cleaner.’
‘You fucking cow . . .’
He said, ‘Please. Against the wall.’
‘You’re not going to shoot us, are you?’
‘I hope not to shoot anyone.’
He hoped . . .
‘I just want order.’
And now Timmy began to cry.
‘Make the boy stop.’
Eliot flashed him a parent’s look as he crouched so Timmy could lean into him. With Gordon already wrapped round him, he was starting to look like a game of hide-and-seek. ‘I’ll try. But he’s only small, and he’s not used to having guns pointed –’
‘Eliot,’ Louise said. There’d been a creeping inflection in his voice: climbing towards hysteria. A tone children’s ears were quick to pick up, the way dogs heard the higher registers. ‘Let me take him.’
Timmy didn’t want to go – when the familiar world was collapsing into threat and loud noises, his father’s arms were the safest place to be. But his father only had two arms, and Gordon wasn’t surrendering either.
‘Timmy? It’s okay, Timmy. Come with me for now. Nothing’s going to happen. We’ll just sit quietly, and everything’ll be sorted out in no time.’
Amazing what you could say when you needed to. There was always a lie handy when the alternative was unthinkable.
Timmy, slowly, tearfully, crossed a yard of floor and fell into her, sobbing.
Hoisting him into her arms, Louise heard the first of the morning’s cars arriving.
A small but not insignificant gaggle was waiting when Dave Osborne arrived: three mothers, seven children – part of the local boxing and coxing: mums transporting kids plus chums in exchange for an about-turn next week. All on foot so far, though there was a car pulling up, and a small bike heading down the road in a slow, wobbly way with a not-much-less-wobbly big bike behind it, cycling slowly being a skill that eluded many adults. His own machine, a gleaming 25-speed top-whack Road Buster, would probably move backwards if he wanted it to, but right now he was allowing it to glide gracefully to a halt even as he lifted his right leg over its frame to touch earth; feeling like a world-class show jumper, though he’d never sat a horse in his life. Didn’t matter. Three or four of those watching thought him capable of riding anything he wanted. One or two probably wished it was them.
He was good with names: Bryony, Carrie, Jane, Mishka.
He could do the children too, no sweat.
‘Morning, ladies. Morning, kids.’
‘What time you call this?’
‘You know how long we’ve been here?’
This friendly chorus of complaint was his daily welcome.
‘Twenty-four seconds, max. I missed the lights at Donington Bridge by a gnat’s whisker.’
Bryony and Jane were blonde, or passing; Carrie and Mishka dark. Average age: call it thirty-four. Did it matter what he planned to do with these statistics? He didn’t plan to do anything – he just loved being among the women, that was all; there was a secret knowledge in their easy friendship, a secret he shared with every one of them: that each, solely and alone, was the woman he thought about when the others were absent. Not true of every last mother in the nursery, of course – this kind of fun got dangerous when the the desperate or cynical joined in – but the point was, he loved his job. Some mornings, it was like a front-row ticket to Desperate Housewives.
It helped he liked children, too.
It was the kids he turned to as he hoisted his feather-weight bike on to one shoulder and made for the gate. ‘Now, which of you can remember the number?’
Ali, Amy, Cas
par, Julius, Lawrence and Piers produced a communal giggle; Wanda a ‘We don’t knooooooowww, silly.’
‘Don’t call David silly,’ Bryony warned.
‘But he is silly, we don’t know the number.’
‘Nobody knows the number,’ Caspar said.
‘Looks like we’re stuck then,’ Dave said cheerfully. ‘Unless I can . . . Let me see.’
Bike still balanced on one shoulder, he took a support-ing hand away – favourite trick for the little ones, this – and pinched the bridge of his nose while squeezing his eyes shut. Deep thought. More giggles from the tinies and indulgent smiles from the yummies. ‘Who’s got a favourite number?’
‘Ninety-nine.’
‘A million.’
‘A hundred and eleventy.’
‘Four,’ said Amy shyly. ‘That’s my next birthday.’
‘Well, let’s try four, shall we?’
Opening his eyes, Dave resisted the temptation to wink at any of the mothers – even Carrie – covered the keypad with one hand, and tapped in the code with the other. ‘Four,’ he said. ‘What do you know?’ The green light flashed, and he pushed the gate open.
‘That wasn’t four!’
‘It added up to four,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ Amy whispered.
He let them trot in, and left the gate open: it was 8.45. Louise would be here, along with Broody Judy; the latter in the annexe by now, and Lou – he had to remember never to call her that – probably in the office. U-locking his bike to the railings, he stood looking down the road another moment. Those cyclists were almost here now, and a nearby car was being unloaded. The school run mostly meant the combustion engine. Dave tried not to be a pain about this, but had his opinions. Come to think of it, he recognized that car up the way – the red one with a slop-ing bonnet: Christine. Mother of twin boys. She must have arrived early. The boys – Timmy and Gordon – were generally keen on staking their claim to the day. They must be kicking a ball on the rec ground, and lost track of time. They’d be here soon.
His bike firmly attached to the railing, he followed the mothers and children inside.
There was a mural on one of the walls in the main build-ing, painted by the children; it showed all the known planets in the solar system, but what Louise most liked it for was a comment by Amy, a shy little girl. ‘Everything’s in the right place,’ she’d confided, and it was clear from her smile that this satisfied a major demand of her own universe.
Not much was in its right place now. There was a man with a gun where he shouldn’t be, and there were people in the nursery grounds – she could hear the hum of incom-ing life. The gate leading to the annexe was open; the keys lying on the grass where she’d flung them. Someone would be coming this way soon: Dave, a parent, children. A situation teetering on the edge of violent calamity was about to get worse. She didn’t know what could be done about this.
Her back to the windowless wall, Louise could see the door through which the children would come; could already picture the carnage as the gunman opened fire. It would not last long – he appeared to have only the one weapon. Louise knew nothing about guns, beyond the brutal fact of their existence, but understood that, technically, the damage he could do was limited to the number of bullets it held. That merely accounted for physical dam-age, of course. The wider hurt would spread outwards; it would scar those who hadn’t yet heard of South Oxford Nursery School, and become one of those dates etched on the public consciousness, like 9/11 or 7/7. In a strange way, freedom came with this knowledge. The time was past for worrying about the complications of her life. Where she was now put her beyond the trivial; or rather, redefined as trivial what she’d previously considered problems.
‘Now what?’ she heard herself say. Her voice was strained and peculiar, as if it were a recording. ‘We’re where you wanted us. Now what?’
He didn’t look like he knew now what – looked as if he were the one under duress. ‘Where is everybody else?’ he said at last.
‘People are coming. I can hear them.’
‘They will come in here?’
‘Only when the security guard lets them,’ Louise said. ‘We have a security guard. Didn’t you see the signs?’
(A generic warning placard: Guards with dogs patrol this site.)
He said, ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘When he finds the outer gate open – the one we came through? The gate in the railings? When he finds it hang-ing open, he’ll call the police. That’s standard procedure.’ ‘That is not how things work here.’
‘The police respond very quickly. The station’s just a quarter of a mile away.’
In this, at least, she was not lying.
‘The police will come, I know this. But they will not enter here, in case I shoot you.’
Timmy stiffened at shoot; she felt his panic-tremor in her bones. But she had to keep her own voice steady; had to fight the contagion, before it overwhelmed them all. ‘And what then? What is it you want?’
He said something – a name? Whistler? – and the door behind him opened.
Carrie Mannion had charge of three that morning; her own pair – Caspar and Piers – and little Amy, her friend Fi’s daughter. They alternated weeks shuffling the pack into school, and as far as Carrie was concerned, she got the best of the deal, because Caspar and Piers, being boys, outnumbered Amy six to one. Amy was perhaps the sweetest child Carrie knew, in a not especially crowded field. Boys were mostly who she contended with. Her own were magnificent, obviously, but their friends – if evidence didn’t exist that the occasional boy grew up into Dave Osborne, there’d be little call for them.
There was a level on which she pretended to believe that; another on which she knew it for a joke; and a third on which – well, Dave was one of those men put on earth to worry husbands. Pretending not to notice him was ignoring a rule of nature.
Caspar had trotted into the main building; Piers, her youngest, had scampered off; was rooting around in the grass. He’d probably found a worms’ nest. ‘Don’t get dirty, darling. We’re hardly here yet.’
Amy was holding her hand – little girls: the sweet things they did that made adults happy. And would cause them no end of worry and grief, a decade down the line.
‘Where’s Miss Kennedy?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know, Amy.’
‘She’s usually by the big doors. She usually says hello.’
The big doors were those into the main building – this was how smaller universes were arranged. You started at home, and next came the Palace; after that, you were through the Big Doors. One by one, the mysteries of grow-ing up revealed themselves in their two-dimensional glory. Until you were left half wishing you could start again; half relieved the process was over.
‘Piers?’
‘I’m coming, mummy!’
As if it were a completely unreasonable request, to expect him to get up off his knees on the damp grass.
‘I expect she’s in the annexe already,’ Carrie continued.
‘The palace,’ Amy said shyly, as if revealing an import-ant secret.
‘The palace.’
Which was a deeply uninspiring building, in fact – looked exactly what it was: a temporary erection which, for reasons of economy, had endured. A recent coat of paint – eggshell white; green borders – lifted it out of the eyesore bracket, but a palace? You had to be a child.
The door was shut but not, she assumed, locked – Louise Kennedy must be inside; she’d evidently arrived, as the main nursery was open, and she wasn’t anywhere else in evidence. As Carrie reached for the door handle, Piers barrelled up: ‘Mummy, look!’
‘Where did you get those, darling?’
‘They were over there. On the grass.’
‘They’re keys,’ Amy explained.
‘They look like nursery keys,’ Carrie said. She held out a hand, and Piers dropped them importantly into it. A bunch of five: one quite large – probably for the gate. The keyring
was a friendly black and white cow. ‘I expect they’re Ms Kennedy’s.’
‘I found them,’ Piers reminded her.
‘Then you’d better give them to her.’ She returned them to her son, and reached for the door handle again. Turned it, and stepped into a nightmare.
He said something – a name? Whistler? – and the door behind him opened, and he turned. Louise was sure he was going to shoot.
Little Amy Slater tumbled in, the exact Amy Louise had been thinking about not two minutes ago. Everything’s in the right place, she’d said, looking at the mural of the solar system. Blonde curls, blue eyes, shy voice: it was impossible not to look at her without expecting her to lisp. And here she was, falling into the room, while the Gun turned to welcome her.
And immediately after came Carrie Mannion, whom Louise didn’t know well, but had marked down as some-one she’d like to.
The next few seconds were chaos.
Eliot’s instincts were to reach for his children – Gordy was already wrapped round him, but he stretched out a hand for Timmy and pulled him from Louise even as Louise moved forward. The thug had turned when the little girl burst through the door; had pointed the gun at her, though had raised his arm when he saw the height of the threat. But levelled his aim again when the woman fol-lowed: one of the mothers, a brunette, quite striking in a sharp-featured way – where did that thought come from, a moment like this? Timmy was in his arms now, or his free arm anyway, and Gordy had contrived to make him-self even smaller, a tightening process which involved squeezing Eliot’s thigh to the point where he’d have keeled over, any other circumstance, but managed to stay upright long enough to see Louise launch herself into the gunman’s back – and Eliot tightened too, and tried to make himself a shelter for his children, one in which, whatever happened outside it, would keep them safe from harm, safe from harm . . .
Sometimes a door is more than just a door; sometimes the distance between one side and the other is greater than expected. Narnia springs to mind. But wasn’t what Carrie encountered, stepping into the annexe on Amy’s heels; instead of an alien landscape of snow and streetlamps and Turkish delight, she found the totally familiar, utterly perverted – found the annexe, the kids’ palace, with its carefully cordoned sections and fully representative art on the walls; with its foam mats piled in one corner, and various islands of primary-coloured equipment marking out boundaries, invaded by a man so obviously not a parent . . .
