Stephen Leather: Nightshade: The Fourth Jack Nightingale Supernatural Thriller

The man didn’t look at her. He continued to scan the room, the twin barrels of his shotgun matching his gaze.

‘You have to go,’ said Phillippa, more forcibly this time, but still the man paid her no attention.

Jacob fell through the open window and yelped as he hit the ground outside. Phillippa took a quick look over her shoulder. Two girls were on the table and a third stood on the chair, looking anxiously at the man with the gun. Phillippa made a shooing motion with her hand then turned to look at the gunman.

He had raised his shotgun to his shoulder and Phillippa gasped as she saw his finger tighten on the trigger. He was aiming it at Paul Tomkinson, one of her favourite pupils, always eager to please and one of the first to put up his hand, no matter what the question being asked. She opened her mouth to scream but before the sound could leave her lips there was a deafening bang and the shotgun kicked in his hand. The children screamed and scattered like sheep to the back of the classroom. Phillippa realised that there was a child lying on the ground, what was left of his head touching the wall. Blood and gobs of brain were dripping down the wall.

Phillippa covered her mouth with trembling hands. The two girls on the table threw themselves through the window, screaming.

The man swung the shotgun in Phillippa’s direction and her stomach turned liquid. She felt her bladder open and a warm wetness spread around her groin but she was barely aware of it. Her legs began to shake uncontrollably and she mentally began to run through the Lord’s Prayer, Our Father, who art in Heaven, and then the shotgun swung away from her and roared again. A girl fell, her chest and face a bloody mess. Phillippa realised it was Brianna Foster, one of the quietest girls in the class, so passive that Phillippa had to constantly keep an eye on her to make sure that she wasn’t being bullied.

Brianna lay on the floor like a broken doll as blood pooled around her. The gunman turned back to look at Phillippa and for the first time they had eye contact. He broke the shotgun and ejected the two cartridges. They flew through the air and clattered onto the floor.

The man groped in his haversack with his right hand, slotted in two fresh cartridges and snapped the weapon closed, all the time keeping his eyes fixed on Phillippa. He brought the shotgun up so that it was pointing at her chest and the breath caught in her throat. She was sure that she was going to die there in the classroom, in front of her pupils. Time seemed to freeze and all she could think of was that she would never see her husband again. Her dear darling Clive. She’d kissed him on the cheek when he’d left the house that morning and she’d said that she loved him and it gave her a small feeling of satisfaction that if they were her last words to him then at least he would know that he was loved. For the first time she saw something approaching emotion in his eyes. Not anger, not hatred, not contempt, but something approaching regret. She saw him swallow and then he turned around and walked out of the classroom.

3

The first Armed Response Vehicle pulled up in front of the school with a squeal of brakes. A Firearms Officer piled out of the BMW while the driver unlocked the gun cabinet and pulled out two G36 carbines. Both men were wearing black uniforms and bulletproof vests and had Glock pistols holstered on their hips.

There were more than a hundred pupils gathered in front of the railings. ‘What the bloody hell are they gawping at?’ asked Sergeant Mickey Rawlings, though the question was rhetorical. There were a dozen adults among the crowd, presumably the teachers. Rawlings walked over and raised his hand. ‘Who’s in charge?’ he shouted.

A middle-aged man in a tweed jacket with black leather patches on the elbows walked over. ‘The head is off today and her deputy is …’ He grimaced and pointed to a body in the playground, about fifty feet away.

‘What happened here?’ asked Rawlings.

‘There’s a man in the school with a shotgun. He shot Mr Etchells and he’s walking through the school shooting children.’

‘Wait here,’ said the sergeant, then he raised both hands above his head. ‘Would you all please move down the road!’ he shouted. ‘I need you to all move well away from the school, now!’ No one moved and the sergeant wished that he could what they did in the movies and fire his gun into the air, but he knew that would be the quickest way off the force. He took a deep breath and shouted at the top of his voice. ‘Everybody move down the road now!’ he yelled. ‘There’s a man in there with a gun and you’re all at risk.’

A second ARV arrived and squealed to a halt. The teachers started herding the children down the road. The sergeant turned to the teacher next to him. ‘You’re sure it was a shotgun?’

The teacher nodded. An armed policeman ran over from the newly arrived ARV. He was Ricky Gray, a relative newcomer to the unit but an excellent shot and unflappable under pressure. He nodded at Rawlings.

‘Any idea how many shots have been fired?’ Rawlings asked the teacher.

‘Five. Six maybe.’

‘Was it a double-barrelled shotgun or a pump action?’ asked Rawlings.

The teacher frowned. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘Did it have two barrels? Or did it just have one?’

The teacher nodded. ‘Two.’

The two ARV drivers hurried over to Rawlings. The driver of Rawlings’ car was holding two carbines and he handed one to Rawlings. His name was Vic Rhodes and he’d worked with Rawlings for more than five years.

Four was the minimum for an emergency entry but Rawlings would have been happier with six. As if a fairy godmother was granting him wishes, a third ARV came roaring down the road.

‘And what does he look like?’ Rawlings asked the teacher.

‘Like a farmer. Waterproof coat and green Wellington boots.’

‘How old?’

‘Forty. Fifty maybe. I didn’t hang around to get a good look.’

Rawlings patted Rhodes on the shoulder. ‘Call in a sit-rep, Vic,’ he said, then jogged over to the car. Sergeant Tom Chisholm climbed out of the front passenger seat and nodded at Rawlings. Though he was the same rank as Rawlings he had more experience and he naturally assumed the role of Op Com – operational commander.

‘There’s another car on the way,’ said Chisholm. He nodded at the school building. ‘Heard anything?’

‘Five shots. Maybe six. There’s one casualty in the playground.’ Rawlings pointed at the body of the deputy headmaster.

A shot rang out from the school and the policemen flinched. ‘Make that seven,’ said the officer who was accompanying Chisholm, twenty-two-year-old Neil Sampson.

‘Okay, we’re going straight in,’ said Chisholm. ‘There are kids at risk, I’m not waiting for a senior officer.’

A police van was heading towards them. Sampson handed Chisholm his G36. ‘Let’s get in there,’ said Chisholm. ‘If there’s a bloody inspector on that bus we’ll be out here all day.’

The six men ran towards the school entrance, cradling their carbines.

4

As the armed policemen raced across the playground to the main school building, McBride was walking down the corridor towards the school’s gymnasium. In the classroom behind him was another dead girl, shot at point blank range while the rest of the pupils screamed in terror. The double doors leading to the gym were panelled with glass and McBride could see a balding teacher in a dark blue tracksuit peering at him, his hands shading his eyes.

McBride raised his shotgun and the teacher turned and ran away from the doors. McBride stopped, took a long, deep breath, exhaled slowly, and pushed the doors open. Several of the children screamed but most of them just stared at him open-mouthed. The teacher pushed his way through the children to a fire exit. He pushed the metal bar that opened the door and shouted for the pupils to get out.