switch she could see the room was empty. The box room was empty, too.
John came out onto the landing in his dressing gown, holding his shotgun. ‘Where? Where outside?’
Staring at him in wild, bug-eyed panic, she blurted, ‘F-f-f-front – f-f-front door. I don’t know where Luke and Phoebe are.’
‘Call the police – no – hit panic button, quicker – by the bed, press the panic button. They’ll come right away.’
‘Be careful, John.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Front door.’ Trembling. ‘I don’t know where Luke and Phoebe are. I don’t know where they are, they may be outside.’
‘Panic button,’ he said. Then he switched the safety catch off, and headed cautiously downstairs.
Naomi ran to the side of the bed, pressed the red panic button and immediately the alarm began sounding inside and outside the house. Then she grabbed the phone and listened for a second. There was a dial tone. Thank God. She tried to stab out 999, but her fingers were shaking so badly that the first time, she misdialled. She dialled again and this time it rang. And rang.
‘Oh Jesus, come on, answer, please, please!’
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.
