‘MUM!‘Candy yelled.
Casey stopped suddenly, lungs heaving. Oh, Christ, she’d misunderstood! He wasn’t hurrying them up, he was trying to tell them to go back.
She hesitated as he came racing towards them, the ridiculous bell-shaped helmet clasped in one hand, his short black hair plastered flat against his scalp by the rain.
He looked so young, his face pinched and anxious. ‘Better not come down here, miss. There’s a suspect package in that car. We’ll get the Expos to have a look.’
Casey didn’t understand. ‘Expos?’
‘Sorry, Explosives Officers. Now if you just walk quickly back up to Seven Dials and take another route.’
‘What about you?’
He grinned an uneasy boyish grin. ‘A policeman’s lot, as they say.’
She returned the smile. ‘Take care.’
They turned, leaving the young constable to his unenviable task, and began walking briskly back the way they had come. Candy seemed to be taking it in her stride and Casey felt increasing relief as they put more distance between themselves and the suspect car. At least now they knew where it was, knew they would be safe The scorching white core of the blast seared into their retinas. Up ahead the scene at Seven Dials pulsed in a flux of blinding light. The dark outlines of police cars and fire engines were lifted off the ground, bodies hurtling like limp dolls against the background of flame. The images were drilled into the backs of their eyes as the fireball erupted. But the split fraction of a second in which it happened appeared to run in slow motion, their confused brains absorbing every microsecond of detail in a single instant. Feeling the cobbles quake and tremble beneath their feet, even registering the advance of the invisible shockwave as it came towards them like a mighty juggernaut, tossing parked cars into collapsing shop fronts, contemptuously wrenching lampposts from the pavement…
And then it hit. With the power of an Atlantic breaker and an awesome explosion of sound that pierced the eardrums and stunned the senses. Casey was swept helplessly backwards by the tumultuous hurricane of displaced air. Felt herself flying through the red mists of space, her hand ripped from her daughter’s grip. Spinning through space, endless, blind and deaf.
Then she landed, her body thrown against one of the decorative metal stanchions that lined the pavement. Pain! Her ribs throbbed where they had been struck, the agony of it seeming to consume her whole body. But she knew she must be alive. Alive!
Candy?
She tried to open her eyes before realising that they were already open. The blinding flash of the explosion was still etched in her vision, the moment of horror frozen for all time. The vehicles lifting under the force of the blast, the flying bodies, the great tongues of flame. That nightmare would be in front of her eyes for ever. She shook her head, trying to erase the image, but it wouldn’t go. To be blind in total darkness would be a blessing, it occurred to her, compared with spending the rest of her life before this picture of hell.
Slowly, very slowly the brightness began to subside, the details of the carnage began to lose their definition and the brilliance of the explosion began melting away. At last she could focus on the debris-strewn cobbles on which she lay.
Silence. Absolute silence. There was not a single noise. Nothing. Just an awesome, eerie silence. And flowers. Blue flowers scattered amongst the shards of glass that glistened like jewels on the cobbles. And in the air. The air was filled with petals; it was raining petals, floating down like feathers.
Then she realised. The flowers had been tossed skyward from the window boxes and hanging baskets at the pub. And the street wasn’t silent; she was deaf, her eardrums shattered by the explosion.
Gradually reorientating, she pulled herself into a sitting position and drew up her legs. Her tights were in ladders, covered in tiny starbursts of blood from flying glass fragments.
She looked around for Candy, but the first sight to catch her eye was the young constable farther down the street. He was picking himself off the pavement, nursing his arm where his tunic was torn. Even from that distance, she could see the blood dripping through his fingers, mingling with the rain.
‘M-mum?’ The sound was muted, distorted.
Her daughter was standing, trembling, clutching her arms around herself. She was paralysed with fear, the raincoat she had been wearing over her shoulders now metres down the street. A pathetic and incongruous sight in her brightly coloured leotard. Her eyes were wide, questioning, but she was unable to move. Again she tried to speak but this time no sound escaped. Then Casey noticed the urine stain dribbling down the inside of her daughter’s leggings.
‘Darling, darlingf Casey could scarcely distinguish her own muffled words as she found her balance, hobbled across the pavement and drew Candy into her arms. The girl collapsed against her, the slender body heaving as she began to sob. Tenderly Casey ran one hand over the tightly banded hair in slow and reassuring strokes. The last time she had needed to do this had been on the eve of her marriage to Randall Thurlow.
For the first time she allowed her eyes to return to the grim aftermath of the explosion at Seven Dials. How long ago had it happened? One minute, two at the most. Now it was a scene of total devastation. The sleek white patrol cars and sturdy red fire brigade tenders were just raging pyres, the trees now leafless and broken, black skeletal fingers reaching to the sky in supplication against a background of leaping flame. Every now and again there was a sudden eruption as a fuel tank ignited or upholstery caught fire. Some of the surrounding buildings in the circus were alight and great stalactites of broken glass dropped free as of their own volition to smash down on the street below.
‘Oh, my God,’ she thought aloud. ‘Eddie and Hal.’ Both were certain to have been there, somewhere, probably talking to the police. She had to go, but couldn’t. Couldn’t leave Candy in such distress. Moisture began welling in her eyes.
‘Fucking bastards!’ She turned. It was the young constable, his own cheeks wet with tears. ‘My mates are up there. I don’t believe this is happening.’ He looked like a child himself, barely more than a teenager.
She touched his shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry. Are you all right?’ He nodded. ‘And you? The girl?’
‘My daughter.’ Neither seemed to know what to say. Words were so inadequate. ‘Perhaps I can lend a hand?’
He shook his head and took a deep breath to steel himself. ‘No, it’s too dangerous. Petrol tanks are going off and there could be another device…’
‘But we can’t go the other way,’ she protested, ‘You said that car…’
‘I know, I know. You’d best stay here till I sort something out.’ He tried to raise someone on his radio but only the hiss and crackle of static came from the set on his lapel. Nothing. He pointed to the shallow arched doorway that surrounded an emergency exit from the Thomas Neal shopping complex. ‘Shelter in there until someone gets back to you — just in case.’ She nodded numbly; there was no other choice. They huddled together against the locked door, Candy still crying on her mother’s shoulder while Casey peered around the edge of the brickwork, watching the policeman make his way nervously back towards the scene of the disaster.
Shortly afterwards the fires began to subside. Casey could see the outline shapes of people moving about in the sizzling wreckage and hear the distorted sound of ambulances reverberating in her ears. The rain had eased to a drizzle, but it did nothing to dampen the acrid smell of burning. Ashes floated in the air like the macabre confetti of death.
Then she saw the two white Range-Rovers arrive; they parked nose to nose in V-formation, pointing towards her and so cutting off her view of the carnage.