roots of history and the branches of society.
Behind these large pictures were the first-floor storerooms for the shops below them, as well as half-hidden offices for local firms and the cooperative that managed the centre. From past visits to the interior, Grey remembered the open centre of the building on the upper floors and how it brought in more light than you’d imagine, the varying uses that the different spaces above the shops were put to, and the stairs and corridors which linked these spaces; and which if you knew your way, could bring you out onto the roof above the artwork the equivalent of three floors up.
Inspector Glass was already there of course, approaching Grey as he stepped out of the car,
‘You know, when they painted that picture of the faces they missed a lot of people out.’
‘Who do you mean?’ said Grey, scanning the huge mural afresh for something he had missed. He checked the beaming visages, ‘Every nationality imaginable is represented.’
‘But look, every one of them is smiling — what about all the bloody miserable people who have to shop here?’
Grey imagined this was intended as a joke, and so meant Glass was trying to build bridges. Maybe not, but either way Grey was allowed to stay at a scene that, as a purely public-safety episode, was uniform’s domain.
Facing the building’s front was an area of paving, benches and knee-high concrete bowls containing seasonally-replenished flowerbeds. In the ten minutes or so since the alert was raised, within this space had formed a crowd. From his position by the hastily parked squad cars lined behind this open space, Grey scanned the people. He imagine most of them were those already nearby shopping, socialising, drinking coffee or doing whatever among the cluster of shops; or else on their way to or back from the various public amenities nearby: Citizen’s Advice Bureau, Connexions youth unemployment service, the Safe amp; Sound elderly housing maintenance office, SureStart’s nursery service for working mothers, or the town’s two-storey JobCentre Plus next door. These numbers were quickly swelled as word got to those living nearby — for houses and flats directly overlooked the precinct.
Even as the officers stood there more people arrived, and soon there were upwards of two-hundred in that unevenly paved area with the wafting trees either side. To half-hearted efforts at calling the crowd back there was little attention given, the people eager to see what was happening. There was a general sense of no one actually knowing what was going on, only an excitement that something might be occurring, as those who had seen what had actually happened were lost in the crowd. This expectation and uncertainty were shared by the officers, who sometimes paused from issuing orders to look up at the large building themselves.
Grey shared this sense of being witness to something. The day was sunny and this lent the area’s brickwork a joyous redness, the slabs a dusty, careworn feel. This, along with the animation of the people’s faces brought Grey some residual cheer even as he contemplated the nightmare now unfolding on the roof; for it was up there, to the roofline above the murals, that people’s eyes were now training on, though none quite sure what they were seeing… and then they saw it clear.
Accompanied by gasps from the crowd, like a public concert where the signer had just fallen from the stage, above the area of wall bearing the Community Tree mural appeared the bobbing heads of a man Grey saw to be Mars and of a shopkeeper many of the crowd would have known. Suddenly the heads were gone again, behind what was evidently a chest-high rim of brick running around the edge of the roof.
Just as suddenly the men appeared again, the shopkeeper appearing to lunge at Mars, and then run along the edge of the roof behind the wall, before disappearing into the doorway just visible from the ground. He did this to whoops and cheers; which turned to shrieks and moans as there was suddenly a loud bang, the glass door shattering as he closed behind the fleeing man. Mars, like the hunter in his beloved painting, then turned his gaze and the barrel of what suddenly revealed itself as a shotgun at what he saw as his enemy. However, where the painted gunman had been aiming his gun upwards into the body of the bear about to shred him with his foreclaws, here Mars ranged it downward over the parapet formed by the wall.
The fact of having a gun pointed at them did the job of a hundred officer’s calls to move back, as all at once the gathered throng turned to flee from the building like charged filings from a upturned magnet. What they found though was street furniture and police cars in their way, as they fell over these, scrambled past them and into spaces that weren’t there. Others to the sides of the crowd had clearer escape routes, or found cover around corners.
The uniformed division had been arriving by the minute, some of them on shift forty-eight hours of the last seventy-two guarding murder scenes, searching for Ludmila Mars, watching Mansard Lane and then this morning employed on the scene at the Mars house. Now they quickly gathered the crowd, easing panic and moving them to what all hoped was a safe distance back.
‘Where’d he get that?’ asked one of them of Mars’ gun; which like the man holding it had now thankfully (though worryingly) disappeared from view.
‘Probably something his security “boys” keep back for an emergency,’ said Glass, striding through the carnage like a military General.
But a Town Host, one of the staff who kept things civil in the vicinity though without the authority of an actual police officer, gave the lie to that; running over to the cordon from the shops that had already begun to board their windows and shut up. (The gunman being on their own roof left the shopkeepers with a dilemma, some running out to be with the crowd, other locking themselves into their own spaces, despite him being within the greater building.)
The Town Host had her purple-jacketed arm around the shoulders of a crying woman.
‘This is the man on the roof’s wife,’ the Town Host said when reaching the line of squad cars.
‘The man came into our shop,’ said the wife shakily. ‘He said hello and asked for cigarettes, and then when my husband turned his back he reached under the counter and took the gun.’
‘It’s your gun?’ asked Glass.
‘We need it, for protection. I heard the shot. Is he..?’
‘I’m sure he’s fine. We’ll have people up there in a flash to get him down.’
Though not sure he had any authority here Grey spoke the woman,
‘Hello, I’m a Detective Inspector,’ he began conscious of his plain clothes among uniforms. ‘It sounds as if Patrick Mars knew the gun was there?’
‘Yes, he’d seen it before.’
The Town Host took over, ‘Mars Protection ran a pilot scheme here two years ago, taking over security of the precinct.’
‘How did it go?’
‘It was abandoned,’ remembered Glass, ‘after a lad got badly beaten up.’
‘But he knows the building?’
‘Inside out. They used one of the upstairs offices.’
At that point a glass door snug between shopfronts opened and a group of office workers ran out, running wildly for the nearest cover.
‘Hey, hey! Over here!’ called Glass, they casting their eyes warily roofward as they changed direction.
‘You were working upstairs?’ he asked them once crouched behind parked cars.
They nodded.
‘Did you see the man shot?’
Again they could only nod.
‘Well?’ asked Glass.
They were in shock, Grey observed watching the conversation. They weren’t built to see this kind of thing at work.
One spoke, as unsteadily as the shopkeeper’s wife currently being comforted further back from the line, he saying,
‘The one with the gun led the other one up there, right past our office.’
‘You saw him shot?’
‘He’s up there bleeding, he’s all right though, he’s pulled himself through a doorframe into one of the rooms. We couldn’t get close enough to get him down.’
‘And did you see Mars’ face? How does he look?’
‘He’s the security guy, isn’t he?’ asked the office worker.
