Then she heard the operator’s voice. She blurted out, ‘Police.’ Then, moments later, she heard herself shouting into the phone, ‘MAN! GUN! OH GOD, PLEASE COME QUICKLY!’
She calmed enough to give their address carefully, then ran down the stairs, passed John who was in the hallway peering out of a window, and into the living room, calling, ‘LUKE! PHOEBE!’
No sign of them.
Back in the hall, Naomi stood behind John and stared fearfully out of the window at the motionless, rain-sodden figure in his anorak, bobble hat and wellingtons. His face was turned away from them so they could not make out his features. And she wondered, just for a fleeting instant, whether she had been overreacting. A tramp? He looked like a tramp?
A tramp with a handgun?
‘I can’t find Luke and Phoebe,’ she said.
John was opening the front door.
‘Oh God, please be careful. Wait. The police will be here-’
‘Hallo!’ John called to the man. ‘Hallo! Excuse me! Hallo!’
‘Wait, John.’
But John was already stepping outside, holding the shotgun out in front of him, finger on the trigger, staring at the brightly lit drive and lawn, and the pre-dawn darkness beyond, swinging the gun from left to right, bringing it back onto the man each time. He took a few more steps, the wind lifting the bottom of his dressing gown like a skirt. Naomi followed.
They were standing right over the figure, right over the man in his black cap and black anorak and black trousers and black boots. He was young, no more than thirty, she guessed. John crouched, snatched up the handgun and gave it to Naomi to hold.
It was heavy and wet and cold and made her shudder. She stared out warily into the darkness beyond the lights, then back at the man.
‘Hallo?’ John said.
Naomi knelt, and it was then that she saw the hole in his forehead above his right eye, the torn flesh, the bruising around it, and the plug of congealed blood inside that the rain hadn’t managed to wash away.
She whimpered. Scrambled on all fours round the other side of his head. Saw the patch of singed hairs at the base of the skull, the torn flesh, more congealed blood here.
‘Shot,’ she said. ‘Shot.’ Trying frantically to remember a First Aid course she did when she was in her teens at school, she grabbed his hand, pushing back the cuff of the leather glove, and pressed her finger against his wrist. Despite being soaking wet, the flesh was warm.
She tried for some moments, but couldn’t tell whether it was a pulse or just her own nerves pulsing. Then his eyes opened.
Her heart almost tore free of her chest in shock.
His eyes rolled, not appearing to register anything.
‘Where are my children?’ Naomi said. ‘Can you hear me? Where are my children? For God’s sake, where are my children?’
His eyes continued to roll.
‘Where are my children?’ she screamed, barely able to believe he could still be alive with these holes in his head.
Then his mouth opened. Closed. Opened, then closed again, like a beached, dying fish.
‘My children! Where are MY CHILDREN?’
In a voice quieter than the wind, he whispered, ‘Lara.’
‘Who are you?’ John said. ‘Who are you, please?’
‘Lara,’ he said again and again faintly, but just loud enough for them to hear that he had an American accent.
‘Where are my children?’ Naomi said, yet again, her voice wracked with desperation.
‘Call an ambulance,’ John said. ‘Need an ambulance-’
His voice was cut short by the distant whoop of a siren.
‘Lara,’ the man whispered again. His eyes locked and widened, for a brief moment, as if he was now seeing her, then they roamed again, lost.
98
A disembodied blue light strobed in the darkness, in the distance, not seeming to get any closer. A siren wailed but didn’t seem to be getting any louder. Maybe it was going somewhere else, not coming to them at all, Naomi wondered, stumbling across the lawn, calling out with increasing desperation every few moments, ‘LUKE! PHOEBE!’, staring into the bushes, the shadows, looking back at John who was still kneeling by the man, then at the blue strobing light again, then at the dark, empty fields.
At the void that had swallowed up her children.
Now the siren was getting louder, and suddenly she was fearful that the children were in the drive, and the police in their haste, in this darkness, might not see them. Balancing her way across the bars of the cattle grid with difficulty in her sodden slippers, pointing her flashlight into the darkness, oblivious to the cold and the pelting rain, she stumbled along the metalled surface of the drive, calling out again, ‘LUKE! PHOEBE! LUKE! PHOEBE!’
Headlights pricking the darkness ahead of her now. Twin blue lights streaking along above the hedgerow at the bottom of the drive. Electrifyingly fast. She stepped onto the verge, felt her dressing gown snag on a bramble, but ignored it, frantically waving her torch.
As the car came round the bend, she stood frozen like a rabbit in the dazzling glare. The car stopped right beside her, slivers of blue light skidding off the paintwork, skidding off the face of the uniformed policewoman in the passenger seat, who was lowering her window and peering out at her. A voice crackled on the radio inside the car and the male driver said something Naomi didn’t catch. Heat and damp, rubbery smells poured out of the window.
Pointing frantically towards the house, Naomi said, near breathless, ‘Man – there – need ambulance – you didn’t see any children – down the drive – two children?’
Looking at her with a concerned expression, the policewoman said, ‘Is someone armed? Is there someone with a gun?’
‘Shot,’ Naomi said. ‘There’s a man shot – there – he’s up there – and my children, I can’t find my children.’
‘Are you all right? Do you want to get in?’ the woman police officer asked.
‘I’m looking for my children,’ she said.
‘I’ll come back down to you in a few minutes.’
The car pulled away barely before she had finished speaking, accelerating harshly, clattering over the cattle grid. She watched the brake lights as it halted on the gravel, saw both driver and passenger doors open and the two officers stepping out purposefully.
Naomi turned away, carried on running down the drive, following the torch beam, her slippers slapping on the hard tarmac, her feet coming out of them every few steps. She went ankle-
deep through a puddle, lost both her slippers, retrieved them and hooked them on her feet again, calling out, her throat rasping, ‘PHOEBE? LUKE? LUKE? PHOEBE?’
Halfway down the drive there was an open gate leading into a field of stubble, where she sometimes took Luke and Phoebe for a walk. Several pheasants, bred on a shoot at nearby Caibourne Place, had made a refuge here. Luke and Phoebe took a delight in startling the pheasants out of their covers, giggling at the strange, clanky sounds of their beating wings and their metallic croaks. She went in there now, shining the beam of the torch around, calling out to them.
Silence. Just the wind and a creaking hinge. And another siren.
Moments later a second police patrol car ripped past her and up the drive. Then, seconds later, as if it were being dragged in its slipstream, a third car with four people inside, this one unmarked and no siren, just the urgent roar of its engine and the swish of its tyres.
She stumbled on, calling out their name every few moments, crying in shock and despair and exhaustion. ‘Luke! Phoebe! Darlings! Where are you? Answer me! Where are you?’
Dawn was breaking now. Watery grey and yellow tints streaked the darkness. Like celluloid developing, the darkness turned into increasingly clear, shadowy shapes, and these in turn were lightening into the familiar sights of the buildings, trees, houses that were their surrounding landscape. A new day was breaking. Her children were gone and a new day was breaking. Her children were gone and a man was dying outside their front door.