‘Yes he worked here a while back. Could you see him?’
‘Yes, along the corridor and through the smashed door. He was lying flat out on the roof. He’d thrown the gun to his side, which was why we risked clearing out.’
‘Was he injured?’
‘Maybe, but not badly. It looked like he was just lying in the sun up there.’
‘He’s mad,’ said Glass as he turned to Grey; before throwing him with his next question, ‘So what would you do if you were me?’
Grey took it at face value,
‘Call in Armed Response…’
‘Except we’re thirty minutes’ drive from the nearest unit.’
‘…or decide the public need is too urgent, and go in now.’
‘Then on my head be it. Right then,’ said Glass turning back to the just-arrived office workers. ‘Which of you is brave enough to don a bulletproof vest and take us back up there?’
Grey was given a vest too, it going over his shirt and tie to replace his suit jacket and leaving him looking, he thought, like one of those urban teachers or social workers he had seen in a terrifying televised documentary about US crime. The reason for his being included in the party was obvious and unspoken: that he had been the last of them to speak to Mars.
Quickly, the six of them moved across the now-empty courtyard to the door to the upstairs offices. They did this to cheers from the nervous audience, Grey hoping this wouldn’t rouse Mars; who he was hoping from the description of him lying on his back in the sun was either injured from the Waldron attack at his home earlier, or in some kind of post-violence fugue state.
Guided by the terrified worker, who would fall back as soon as possible, there was Grey, Glass and three of the latter’s best people, all five of the officers with pistols issued from the station armoury. Grey had had the firearms training too, but accepted the offer of a gun for himself only grudgingly. To not have done so would’ve been cowardice, for were the need to arise he would want Mars shot as much as the next man, and wouldn’t want this duty to have to be borne by one the others up there.
Through clean though ageing passageways and doors they were soon on the first floor, and surrounded by open space, light and lots of glass in white wooden frames. By now every one of the little offices had been emptied of life, the doors flapping in the breeze from the windows opened on such a bright day. In one room a coffee mug still sat on a table beside posters for public events, in another monitor screens buzzed or had switched onto screensavers. Another staircase led them to the top floor, the office worker holding them back at the top,
‘You turn here and you’re in the corridor.’
‘Mars will see us from there?’ whispered Glass.
He nodded.
‘Where’s the injured man?’
‘Two… no, three doors along on your left.’
Glass gestured for one of his staff, the Sergeant who Grey had been in the car with and who had driven he and Ludmila to the Cedars the night before, to poke his nose around the corner,
‘I can see Mars, sir,’ he reported, ‘through the smashed door at the end.’
‘What’s he doing?’ asked Glass.
‘Flat out on his back. He’s about twenty yards away, direct line of sight.’
‘Where’s his gun?’
‘Can’t see.’
‘Can you see the injured man?’
‘No, but I can see the blood on the doorframe nearest the end.’
‘Damn, if only been able to drag himself closer…’
‘How many doors?’ he asked the Sergeant now safely returned.
‘Three on the left, one on the right.’
‘Are all the doors along here unlocked?’ Glass asked the lone civilian.
‘Yes, this corridor’s all ours, none of them would be locked.’
‘Good, then you get downstairs now, keep yourself hidden; but don’t go outside as you’ll be back in his line of fire.’
‘Plus, the crowd will get agitated if they see movement,’ added Grey.
To pats on the back, the man was free to scuttle down the corridor to find a hidden corner of a first-floor room. The remaining five were all within a few feet of each other, crouched at the top of the stairs and talking in whispers thus far; but after Glass gave them simple instructions of which room to each head for, he whispered finally into his radio, ‘Moving into position to engage,’ before putting his finger to his mouth and gesturing them to rise.
As one they bolted around the corner, there was only momentary confusion as Glass and one other ran to the only door on the right-hand side, Grey and the other two to the second door along the left. Having gotten this far unseen, the Sergeant — a first aider and keen to find the wounded shopkeeper — risked running to the furthest door on the left, the one with the bloodstains, broken glass from the smashed end-door kicking up underfoot as he darted in and lodged himself inside the doorframe.
Seeing him do this, Natasha, who Grey had spent an hour in the unmarked car at the end of Mansard Lane with the night before, and who was another charged with a first aid kit, risked the same; yet from his vantage point peeking around his doorframe Grey saw in gruesome slow motion as Mars, alerted to their presence by the sound of glass beneath the Sergeant’s boots, in one movement pulled himself half-up from his somnambulant state and swung the shotgun that had been resting hidden along his right side up and over himself to fire a second round through the already shattered end-door. Distracted by his movement, Natasha slipped on the blood and glass on the floor and fell into the room catching the doorframe in her midriff, leaving her legs hopelessly exposed in the corridor.
Unable to shoot with her blocking the corridor ahead of him, from across the corridor Grey had seen the pain in Glass’ expression as he first yelled at her impotently to get down; then to everyone to get back as a roar of shotgun pellets ripped the walls of the narrow passageway and splintered the doorframes they were each hiding inches behind.
Again Grey heard the wails from the crowd some distance away, even as the glass from the door and inner- windows above him continued to fall and smash all over and around. Moving carefully between shards and razor- sharp fallen metal blinds, Grey got himself back in position to see the damage done to the corridor.
The youngest of the group had already burst back out into the corridor and fired off three wild rounds in Mars’ direction.
‘Hold your fire, hold your fire,’ called Glass. ‘You want to kill us all?’
‘Permission to go out there and finish him, sir,’ asked the lad aquiver with anger and adrenalin.
‘Not if he’s down, son.’
And he was, the energy of rousing himself for that impossibly effective second blast seeming to leave Mars knocked out even colder.
The Sergeant in the room at the corridor’s far end had pulled Natasha in with him,
‘Shotgun wounds to the legs, sir. Flesh wounds.’
‘The shopkeeper?’
‘Looks like glass in his back and legs, sir. Both need ambulances.’
‘This has gone on long enough,’ said Glass, as Grey saw him stand up and march right out past the damage and through the smashed end-door to approach Mars, pistol in hand and pointed at the prone man’s face,
‘One move from you and you’re dead. Now throw the shotgun away.’
But there was nothing more to come, Grey already standing openly in the corridor with the agitated young Constable,
‘You’re hit, sir.’
‘What?’ Grey felt his collar was wet, and drawing his hand back saw it thick with blood. But there was no pain, at least not yet,
‘Must be a cut from the glass. Don’t worry.’
‘All clear, call the ambulances.’ Shouted Glass coming back inside. ‘And get a third, he’s bad out there. You,
