The parents' laughter and talk withered. He walked forward, half a dozen paces. He saw the rolling, abandoned football and the young, old, numbed faces. He picked up the gun, and the screaming started. He saw the parents grabbing kids, going down on to the asphalt and sheltering them with their bodies, hugging them, guarding them. He held the gun in his hand, the tool of his job, and did not know what he should say. Perry stared at him, blank and uncomprehending. A great space was widening around him. Through a glass window, he saw the grey, lined face of the head4eacher as she lifted the telephone. He put the gun into his waist holster.
The first cars were already charging away from the school gate. He took a deep breath, then strode towards the school building and the sign for the head-teacher's room.
It took fifteen minutes to sort it. He showed his warrant card, made a telephone call to turn back armed-response vehicles and another to verify his identity for the head-teacher. His explanation to her of his principal's need for police protection was economical and bland.
He walked back across the empty playground.
They were all gone, his principal's friends and their children.
He slipped down into the front passenger seat.
Davies said stiffly, "I owe you an apology, Mr. Perry. That was unforgivable, unprofessional. You are perfectly entitled to ring my guvnor to request a personnel change."
"But I'm a beggar, Bill, so I can't be a chooser. What I'd get might be worse than you." The principal laughed, with a hollowed echo.
"Thank you. If you don't mind, it's Mr. Davies… I don't know what the consequences will be."
"None.." forgotten… just a little dose of excitement. I have to tell you, I saw the gun. The gun was real, but it's the only part of anything that seems believable."
"It's all real, Mr. Perry, and you shouldn't forget that."
The mobile telephone went in his inside pocket. Could Bill Davies talk? No. When could he talk? In fifteen minutes. Would he call back soonest, when he could talk? In the guttering light they drove back to the village.
It was the second time he had asked the distance to the village she said it was six and a half kilometres by road. He told her to stop, then told her when he would see her again at this precise place. He took her map, large-scale at four centimetres to a kilo metre and the sausage bag. There were trees close to the road and he went for them. He did not look back and he did not wave. Farida Yasmin Jones wondered what she would have to do to earn his trust and watched him until the trees hid him.
Chapter Seven.
"Well, are you…?"
"God, it's not that simple."
"It's black and white… Are you going?"
"I'm trying to be sensible."
"Are you staying?"
"I said I wasn't going, I said I was staying."
"What, then, is the problem?"
The boy was upstairs. Davies had gone and Blake was in the car outside. They had come home. Perry had told Meryl that the policeman had dropped his gun in the playground. They had been responsible for a moment of blue panic. That was one problem. Davies had come to the front door fifteen minutes later with another problem.
"I want to stay."
"So stay."
"I don't want to go."
"So don't go."
"But I'm not told anything."
"Neither am I."
Davies had stood on the step. She would have seen the technique he used. He stood on the step, his body blocking the open doorway and he had motioned Perry to stand back in the hallway. He had reached forward to the switch and turned off the hall light. Perry had been in the shadow, she behind him, their bodies protected by the policeman's. Davies had told them, calm and businesslike, that again he was offering his apologies for what had happened in the playground and repeated that Mr. Perry was perfectly entitled to request a change in personnel, and Perry had shaken his head.
Then the second problem was explained. Like a doctor at a bedside with a bad diagnosis to deliver, clearly and concisely, Davies had said that there was an upgrade in the threat-assessment level. The property was to be protected by armed uniformed officers, that premises for them would be delivered in the morning, that there would be additional personnel, mobile, assigned to the village. Davies hadn't said it, it was in his face, but they were going up the tough road; the easy road was to pack the suitcases. They had paced around the kitchen and worried at the problem. They had broken off the talk to eat with the boy before sending him upstairs, and starting at it again.
"What do they know?"
"They haven't told me."
"Why haven't they told you?"
"They don't explain. They never explain."
"What does it mean?"
His voice rose.
"If you want to go, go."
"I don't want to go.
"Can we, then, leave it?"
"I'm just frightened. I'm frightened because we can't even talk about it. Is this our best effort at conversation?"
"Everything I know I've told you. Let's drop it."
"What sort of life " "Better than running out of suitcases. It's home. It's our place. It's among our friends. So leave it or go."
He turned on the television. It was a quiz game and the audience bayed encouragement at the contestants going after giveaway money.
Bitterly, Perry wondered how many of them could have answered real questions. Where was Iran? What was the government of Iran? What was WMD? What was the requirement of mixing machines in the programme for the development of chemical-agent warheads, and the requirement in the programme for the development of ballistic missiles? What did they do with a fucking spy in Iran?
The telephone rang. The sound was suppressed by the shrieking of the studio audience. She heard it and jolted, but he didn't stir from his chair. He watched the ecstatic faces of the audience. The telephone rang a long time before she weakened and went to answer it.
She went into the kitchen, and it was silent.
He could not hear her voice.
He hated the game show, the moronic questions, the cacophony of applause.
The curtains were drawn, as the policeman had said they should be. He'd come into the darkened room and groped in the blackness towards the window and drawn the curtains, then groped back towards the standard lamp and switched it on. Before, they would not have drawn the curtains. Only their home tonight would have the curtains drawn. The drawn curtains separated them from the village, their neighbours and friends. Meryl had said that in the morning she would buy the lengths of net from which to make more curtains, and the boy had been told he was not to stand behind windows when the curtains weren't drawn, where he could be seen.
She came back into the room. She was biting her lower lip. She was pale.
She shouted, "Can't you turn that puerile bloody noise off?" He hit the mute button on the remote.
"Who was it?"
"One of your friends."
"Who?"
"Emma Carstairs."
"What did she want?"
She spoke deliberately, but without emotion and without feeling.
"Emma has dropped out of the school-run with us. We won't be taking Sam, she won't be taking Stephen. Emma won't be coming to our house again, and Sam won't. It's dangerous to come to our house, your friend said, and she's not prepared to put Sam at risk."
"That's ridiculous." He pushed himself up from the chair.
"It's what she said."
He blustered, "I'll speak to her, and Barry."
She blocked his way.
"She said she wouldn't speak to you. She said her decision was final. She said that if you rang her back she would put the phone down on you.