by Mick Herron
The man held a gun in his hand, and he pointed it first at Amy, then at Carrie herself.
What passed through her mind, in less time than it would take to utter, was: her children, her husband, Amy, herself. Her children were not in the room; her husband was on his way to work. As for Amy – Amy had come to a dead halt: frozen by a sight out of synch with anything she’d yet known – she was too young for entertainment in which this happened; for serious exposure to the news. Which was how it ought to be. But somewhere deep inside Carrie, the bitter knowledge clunked into place that she’d always expected something like this, that life would have a serious kick in the teeth waiting. Thoughts like a photo-graph: a frozen moment. And then all she was aware of was the gun pointing at her, and underneath that, but swiftly reaching the surface, that Piers was behind her; that soon he would be coming through that door.
And then came movement and noise, and Carrie lost track of immediate events.
What Amy thought mostly happened below comprehension, and would best be captured by a list of words, the kind Miss Kennedy sometimes asked them for – so a pic-nic, say, would be grass river blanket sandwiches swans lemonade, though there were other words she’d never say out loud, like daddy farted, because he had, at a picnic. None of the grown-ups noticed; they just carried on like it never happened. And what were the words here? She loved the annexe; the annexe was the palace; the annexe was painting soft-play stories sunlight. The annexe was Miss Kennedy. And now suddenly the annexe was man stranger pointing frightened . . . The annexe was still Miss Kennedy, but Miss Kennedy didn’t look her usual self, and why was everybody up against the wall? Amy started to scream.
As for Judy, what else would Judy think? She was think-ing Why me? Just half an hour ago, crossing the bridge, she’d stopped to cough – a serious hack; not the ordinary morning interruption. She should have called in sick. Instead, she was caught up in horror, and you couldn’t tell her this wasn’t Miss Kennedy’s fault, there’d never been guns in the nursery before . . . She’d been dragged from the office and made to stand against a wall – dragged was how she remembered it; how she’d tell it if the opportunity arose. And now things were getting worse, because the gunman had turned as a child burst in, fol-lowed by her mother, and in that same moment Louise Kennedy leaped at him, even though he held the gun – even though anything could happen, and probably would, and to stop any of it happening to her, Judy Ainsworth closed her eyes and willed herself safe at home.
In that moment –
There was a thought Louise had never voiced, because it seemed cruel. But in the wake of 9/11, she’d thought that the heroism of the passengers in the third plane – those who’d fought their captors, preventing increased carnage on the ground; let’s roll – had been, if not easy, at least simple. Their survival was not in question; they’d been doomed from the moment the terrorists had taken control. And they knew this; reports of planes hitting the towers had reached them. So their choice was straight-forward: they could suffer death meekly, or do what they could to prevent it visiting others. Any danger from the airjackers’ boxknives was temporary. Gravity already had it in for them: death in the air was just jump-ing the gun.
In that moment, if any thought was running through her head, that was it.
But it was more likely that pure instinct propelled her. As Eliot grabbed Timmy, Louise pushed herself from the wall: there was no real aim to her onslaught, just a desperate need to change the direction of events; particularly the one in which bullets flew, and Carrie Mannion dis-solved in red mist . . . Amy’s scream split the air. Louise hit the man in the small of the back and he went down, gun or not. Which didn’t go off – didn’t go flying, either; it would have been fine to see the gun go skit tling out of his reach, but he kept a firm grasp on it as he hit the floor, and he was no sooner down than he was trying to get up again. Louise, her own bones jarred by the collision, was half on top of him, half on the floor; she looked for the gun, didn’t see it, then scrambled to her feet and sprang like a jack from its box for the door.
Watching, Eliot thought numbly – What about us? With a boy clamped to each leg, he had as much chance of making a break for the door as the door did of making one for him: bitch, he thought – but only with the lower part of his brain. The rest of him clenched in hope that she’d make it out before the gunman recovered his feet; it wasn’t far, but there was no chance she could cover the distance faster than a speeding bullet . . .
And Judy thought No. And other words, as hopelessly out of order and incoherent as Amy’s: door cow run scared help wait gun . . . She’d have run herself; been out into the big safe world before anyone noticed she was gone, except – except she couldn’t move. Whatever was flowing through her veins wasn’t blood; it was thicker, sluggish, and bound her where she stood the way heavy sap keeps trees from walking. With open eyes, open mouth, she watched Louise in motion. She made no sound. No words, anyway. A faint tortured expulsion of air, maybe. And Louise kept moving.
Carrie snapped out of limbo about a second after falling into it – Amy’s scream had cut into the moment; the man with the gun was on the floor, and the teacher was on top of him, but scrambling to get up . . . What happened to the gun, she didn’t know. All she knew was Piers – he was right behind her. She turned and there he was, rooted to the spot: eyes round, shocked to the core – what was Miss Kennedy doing on top of that man? He was still holding those keys . . . And then Carrie was moving, a barely willed sequence of actions which involved grabbing her son, dragging him through the door, and hoisting him into her arms as she ran for the gate, the chink of the keyring on the path as Piers dropped it chiming exactly with the name Amy in her mind – Amy was in there. She’d left her friend’s daughter in that room, where a man with a gun had been waiting.
Everything probably sped up or slowed down, Louise thought afterwards. That was what happened in crisis: time threw conniptions, and everything fitted a different framework, so what seemed to last minutes had been over in seconds, or possibly vice versa. Did that happen here? She didn’t know. She was on her feet without thinking; looked for the weapon but he’d fallen on top of it, and no way was she getting involved in a hand-to-hand tussle for a gun . . . She sprang like a jack from its box just as Carrie Mannion grabbed her son and carted him backwards through the open door like a frightened sack of shopping. Louise thrust from her mind what lay behind her and seized Amy mid-scream – sound shut off as if a switch had been thrown. Everything had its place, and this wasn’t Amy’s; the child was light as a bag of feathers in her arms
. . . Louise was expecting punctuation: the sudden slam of whatever a bullet would feel like, but it didn’t come – she was out of the annexe a moment later; Carrie ahead of her, Piers in her arms, and the keys to the gate falling from Piers’ hand and hitting the path at Louise’s feet.
She scooped them up as smoothly as if she’d practised for this: a parent/child obstacle event for Open Day.
They reached the gate. Louise became conscious of others standing near the main nursery entrance, staring – she became conscious of noise again, but this wasn’t Amy screaming, it was herself. Run! Get out! Or maybe Gun! Fuck! But more probably something beyond words’ reach; the altogether more scary noises any beast makes when a bigger beast attacks. The keyring was clutched so tight, she could have had copies cut from the imprint on her palm.
And then realized they weren’t alone this side of the railing; that a few of the bigger children were playing on the grass.
Carrie was through the gate now; running for the car park and the bigger world beyond. At her approach, panic rippled through those gathered there like wind through a field of corn. With no understanding of events, they found room for dire possibility: anything can happen these days. Everyone knows that. So they gathered those most precious to them, and ran for their cars and bicycles. Louise, past the gate, thrust Amy at the first adult she encountered who wasn’t making for the hills. Go. Call the police. Maybe sh
e imagined saying that. Then she turned, and ran back the way she’d come, to shoo the children playing on the annexe side of the railings into the outside world. Most fled like lambs at the wolf’s approach. Some she had to bare her teeth at – a pair sat on the grass, playing some-thing complicated involving plastic figures – Leave them! They wanted to collect their toys – Fucking leave them! Didn’t matter about the language, so long as they fucking scattered . . . Louise was flapping like a demented scare-crow, but it was doing the trick. All she’d learned about giving children confidence, about assuring them she was a calm stable source of authority – all of it blown away in a mad rush of limbs and angry language, and every second her eyes were fixed on the door of the annexe, expect-ing the Gun to blast through it, and turn the remnants of the morning into an abattoir.
And then they were gone. It was as if she were the danger. They were gone through the gate, in search of their parents, and though that was the result she’d wanted, something faltered inside her, recognizing that however the day turned out, what they’d always remember was, she’d scared them . . . Doesn’t matter. They’d live. She was alone now, with no sense of how much time had passed, and the keys were biting into her palm, but at least the children were gone, and some kind of alarm raised, even if it resembled panic. She walked towards the gate. In the car park, yards away, people she’d known for months transformed before her eyes into creatures from a mob; it was like one of those late-night movies, in which suburban normality decomposes to a zombie carnival – she was looking at people, but seeing teeth, wide eyes and fear. Parents were survival-animals, focused only on moving their cubs out of danger. The details could be determined later. In days like these, you did not wait for the small print. You left the scene, and asked questions afterwards.
High overhead an aeroplane passed; its nervous passengers miles out of reach.
In Louise’s hand, the keys still bit. She reached the gate, and checked behind her again – no children there. Apart from the two in the annexe.
Amy bobbed in and out of sight, her blonde head tucked into an adult shoulder hurrying off the premises. Carrie, too, was out on the street; Piers still under one arm. He was too big to be carried: his mother had no doubt told him that more than once. No doubt, too, Carrie would have hoisted a car if one had been resting on his body. With no time for anything, Louise found time to marvel at the strength women had when the world bared its teeth at their young.
There was noise, but nothing transcribable. Just the sound that drums beneath enormous events: a ground-swell of human confusion and panic, half a beat out of synch with everything else.
And then came a face she recognized; the only one head-ing her way.
Dave Osborne reached the gate just as she slammed it shut. He stood in front of her – the iron railings between them – his young face twisted and clenched by unknown fears. But he’d come towards her anyway.
She slipped the key into the lock before he could speak; turned it, then threw the keys high over his side, towards the car park, where the rattle of their landing was lost as the last of the nurserygoers departed.
‘He has a gun. Call the police,’ she told him, very clearly. And then she walked back into the annexe.
He’d watched once, on a Leicester Square screen, an action movie whose few interior scenes were set in a building that supposedly housed the kind of activities this one actually did: the set designer had gone for clean white corners and soundproofed glass walls, behind which boilersuited extras test fired handguns, while pinstriped English roses delivered cutglass commands to voice-activated computers. So he always suffered a twinge of disappointment arriving at work, where the walls were grimy, and the computers deaf. Keying his security number into the touchpad by the door, Ben Whistler, as ever, wondered if his entrance/exit clear-ance was just a way of keeping track of his working hours – he was ten minutes late. This was not unusual . . . The roses in pinstripe he encountered were mostly on the Central Line. Office space was at a premium, and work-stations were cubicled, the way they were in call centres.
As the door closed, he caught a glimpse of the bookshop across the way. Ground floor: remaindered travel books, failed novels, and poncy art books. Downstairs: floor-to-ceiling porn, with specialist items in cupboards, for those who knew to ask. The difference between the two operations was that the bookshop window spelt it out in neon-tubed lettering: Private Bookshop Below. Ben’s building didn’t have Secret Service Above plastered anywhere, but then that, in a nutshell, spelt the gap between ‘private’ and ‘secret’.
The stairs were steep but the lift was temperamental, and the last time it had packed up the engineers had needed three hours to release its captives; significantly longer than it took Bruce Willis to clear a skyscraper of terrorists. So the stairs it was, but that was okay – city life didn’t allow for much exercise, unless you counted trudging. He took them two at a time to the first landing, one by one thereafter, and met nobody until he’d reached the fourth floor, where another security keypad waited – the 8, he could never help noticing, more worn than the others, the way e tends to be on a keyboard. What would a codebreaker make of that? Probably think it a clue.
Coming out as he went in was Reggie someone-or-other. One of these years, Ben was going to have to make an effort with the Reggies of this world.
‘There’s a flap,’ Reggie said.
But if this effort involved adopting WWII slang, it was never going to happen.
‘What kind of . . . flap?’
‘The flappy kind, basically. How many kinds are there? Nott wants you.’
‘Me?’
Again? . . .
‘You’re still Ben Whistler?’
‘Was when I got up.’
‘Then you, yes. But cheer up. Basically, they do quite a decent redundancy package.’ Reggie grinned; always a mistake when one side of your mouth doesn’t work. ‘Do let a chap past.’
Probably every English organization had a Reggie, Ben supposed – well, probably not garage forecourts etc, but every branch of the Civil Service – but that somehow didn’t mitigate his presence. Every encounter with the type, however brief, felt like a timeslip into films the Beeb used to show on Sunday afternoons: it didn’t matter what the movie was, it was always raining outside, and rationing had just been repealed. Before Reggie disappeared down the stairs, Ben called, ‘Where?’
‘His offi—’
‘This flap. Where is it?’
‘Oxford.’
Oxford. Ben had never been to Oxford. He was a Loughborough man.
What the hell did Nott want?
So Ben Whistler, anyway: Ben Whistler looked like what you got when you thought about a rugby player, then fixed his teeth. Six-two and broad in the shoulders with pale grey eyes and straw-coloured hair; a slightly crooked nose, which he’d never had the decency to break. ‘That’s just its normal shape’ was a phrase he was called on to use more than most men. And he carried everywhere this air of untidiness, despite the suit, despite the tie; always looked – as one of the distinctly unroselike queens of the database once put it – like he’d just been dragged through a blonde backwards. A comment which had caused a momentary lull in conversation, as her fellow worker-queens filed the image for private perusal later.
He was thirty-four, and if not quite an underachiever, hadn’t set the world alight. The targets he’d had ten years ago remained just that: undiminished concentric circles that might as well have been nailed to a distant tree. It was handy he’d set different targets since.
As for Jonathan Nott, he wasn’t head of department; he was head of the whole damn building. Which wasn’t Vauxhall Cross, but still . . . Ben was fourth floor. Operations Director didn’t visit the fourth floor much – the basic idea behind departments like Ben’s being, they should run in such a way that Operations Director forgot they existed. The lift should skip the fourth floor alto-gether. Ben had rarely met Jonathan Nott, still less been wanted by him.
The fourth floor. He was here now, so went to his cubicle – exactly the way he’d left it; a benign mess, delivering the impression that work was happening, but wasn’t getting on top of him. He took his mobile from his pocket, and dared to turn it on at last, already inwardly flinching from the anticipated fall-out from last night’s misbehaviour – he’d got talking to a girl in a bar; talked to her so long, he’d stood his date up . . . And yep, here came the voice-mail alerts. At the same moment, Ben saw the new post-it attached to his monitor: JN wants you – now (or sooner). He was a bit late for now. ‘Sooner’ would have demanded prior notice. Switching his mobile off, putting it down, he headed back to the stairwell; his heart pumping so much, he didn’t really need more exercise.
Last time he’d had this summons – two weeks previously – he’d been more or less expecting it, and Nott’s first words were, ‘Any idea where Weiss is?’
Three seconds into the room, this was. No Whistler, sit down, cup of coffee? Then Nott had glanced at his watch. He was mostly bald, and what hair still fringed his ears and the back of his head was shaved to stubble. Broad shoulders and eyes like pebbles, though not so friendly. Probably sixty, but Ben guessed he’d been that for a while, and would remain so for ditto. Some people had an ideal age and stuck to it. Ben was hoping his own was thirty-four . . . Miro Weiss. Ben had known this would be about Weiss – there was no other reason for Nott wanting to see him.
‘None at all, sir.’
Firmly voiced; unfaltering gaze.
