Like an idiot, her first reaction was to reach for the gun.
Luckily, there was nobody to notice. From inside the church came a communal mutter of ritualised response, and then a shuffling that could have been anything, but was, in fact, a large congregation reaching for its hymn books. Shirley got to her phone on the third ring. ‘Yeah. What?’
‘Where are you?’ Louisa asked.
‘Why, where are you?’
‘I’m at the Abbey, Shirl. With River. Are you not here too? We haven’t seen you.’
‘Well, yeah, that’s because I’m not there,’ she said. ‘Simples.’
Louisa stifled an exasperated sigh. ‘So where are you, then?’
‘I’m at Abbotsfield.’
‘You’re what?’
‘Me and Coe.’
‘What the hell are you doing there?’
Same as what Louisa and River were doing at the Abbey, Shirley thought. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Singing began. Something sacred, obviously, and freighted with sorrow. Shirley recognised the tune, but couldn’t think what it was.
‘Nothing much,’ she said. ‘What’s happening there?’
She waited, but Louisa didn’t reply. She’d lost the signal, she realised. Hick place like this, the wonder was her phone had rung in the first place.
Putting it away, she opened the door and slipped inside. The church was full, and everyone was standing, singing; the air was thick and warm; the light patterned with colour. A few people turned when she entered, but not many, and she closed the door behind her softly as she could. There were spaces on the back pews, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to stay, now she was here, though didn’t want to bow out immediately. It would be disrespectful. So she stood at the door and cast her eyes around. How long since she’d stepped inside a church? And did she have anything to say to God right now? She supposed she wanted to ask Him what made it all right to let those murderers intrude on this quiet place. But He’d been overseeing village massacres since time immemorial. Either He’d have a foolproof answer by now, or He didn’t give a damn either way.
The hymn swelled to a chorus, and the church filled with sound.
It was a good few minutes before anyone noticed the shooting.
When Chris saw the sign reading ABBOTSFIELD, which also suggested that visitors drive carefully, he increased speed to thirty, thirty-five.
‘Drive normally!’ Shin hissed behind him.
But An said, ‘No. This is good.’
There was blood on Shin’s shirt, not his own. It had sprayed from Danny when he died. There were other bits too, that looked like scrambled egg, and when he stepped into sunlight, he would look a fright.
But he would look a fright anyway, on Abbotsfield’s streets again.
‘There will be cameras,’ An said. ‘Our victory will be seen around the world.’
And then what? Shin had wondered. The Supreme Leader himself would see their victory, it was true. But then what?
‘We take the church,’ An said, as if answering Shin’s question. ‘That is where they are gathered now. They will be praying, but they will not get what they pray for.’
Thirty-five, forty.
‘We will seize their attention for all time.’
The van bumped and swayed on the imperfect road.
Up ahead, a police officer stepped out, and waved for them to stop.
When J. K. Coe saw the van approaching, he thought: this is not good.
Vehicles were weapons now. Everything was a weapon.
He had reached the far end of the village, the scene of the attack, before turning back towards the church. Outside the sole shop, on a forecourt boasting a row of newspapers in a plastic display unit, a pair of journalists had approached, one wielding a microphone, but he fended them off with an open palm. A little further on a police officer had stopped him and he’d shown ID once more, but offered no explanation for his presence. I’m here because if I go home, I’ll just be waiting for a knock on the door. The officer had examined his card as if it were the first time she’d seen one, which it probably was, then continued her slow patrol down the road. Half a minute later, having skirted the two TV crews, something made Coe look back. A van was approaching, moving fast.
This is not good.
The police officer stepped into the road to flag it down.
She was not armed. It would have made little difference if she had been: when the van clipped her she was thrown against the wall of the nearest cottage, where she hung for a fraction of a second before dropping to the ground. The van swerved in the aftermath of impact, sideswiped a parked car with a tortured screech, then righted itself and continued up the road towards Coe.
Who also dropped, taking shelter behind a car.
There was shouting and sounds of running; someone yelling into a clipped-on radio. The journalists were running too, towards the fallen officer, but as the van passed them its back door swung open and Coe heard the pop-pop-pop of automatic gunfire. One of the journalists was hurled sideways and bounced off the bonnet of a car.
Somebody screamed.
As the van hurtled past, a police officer appeared from a side street, took aim and fired three times, each shot hitting the rear door, which had bounced on its hinges and swung shut again. And then reopened as the van kangaroo-hopped: from where he crouched, Coe caught a brief glimpse of a khaki-clad figure, upright, armed. He smelled fear and metal and joy, and saw the policeman attempt a pirouette, and give up halfway through. His rifle hit the ground a second after his body. Up ahead, the van skewed to a halt.
Behind him somebody shouted, ‘Are you getting this?’
The driver clambered from the van, raised a gun and died as two armed officers opened fire simultaneously.
Amid movement and confusion, Coe got to his feet. His body appeared to be making its own decisions, he was interested to learn. Was operating slowly, but efficiently. At least two figures had jumped from the back of the van, and one of the police officers had run through the lychgate into the church grounds and was firing from the shelter of the wall. The other had taken cover behind the abandoned van, and had dropped into firing stance, but wasn’t shooting; was shouting instructions at someone. Himself?
Coe crossed the road and bent by the fallen policeman. Would have checked for a pulse, but there seemed little point, as the officer’s throat was mostly missing. Coe wondered how he felt about this, and decided he didn’t feel anything yet. Except, perhaps, that he would rather not be here. All the same, he discovered he was picking up the fallen rifle.
‘Put that down! Put that weapon down!’
This time the instruction was pretty clearly aimed at himself so he did just that, put the rifle down, when more gunfire cut the instruction in half, Put that wea—
It was no longer clear to him where the gunmen were. He couldn’t see either, always supposing there were two, were only two. He could, though, see the police officer who’d been shouting at him a moment earlier: he was a heap on the road. So the gunmen were out of Coe’s field of vision; must be along the side of the church, on the road that looped round it, where Dander had parked. Their driver was still by the van, which was similarly riddled with bullets. Bonnie and Clyde, thought Coe.
And a news crew was out in the open, filming proceedings.