‘Ruth,’ he snapped, turning to his PA. ‘Get on SIMS now and see if Donna had time to do her register.’
‘Two absent,’ Ruth informed him after a couple of keystrokes on her keyboard. ‘Billy Thoms and Elizabeth Wright are marked as absent. The rest of the class are there. Apart from Keely, who raised the alarm.’
‘I’m going to need a printout of that class list,’ Pearson said. Cam opened his mouth to protest but the DI cut him off. ‘Please don’t give me any crap about safeguarding and data protection – we need to know who’s in the building, it might help us to work out who the target might be.’
‘Target?’ Ruth asked.
‘It’s possible that one of the students may be the focus of this situation. Possibly somebody with wealthy or influential parents. If not, then it may be that the school or any of the staff may have been the catalyst. It’s too early to speculate but that list of names might give us a place to start until we hear from the men holding them hostage.’ Pearson turned back to Cam. ‘How many staff and students do you have here? And can we use the register to get an accurate figure?’
Cam nodded and pointed to the monitor on the reception desk. ‘Staff log in here. If they go off site for any reason, they must log out so we can easily find out which staff are present. SIMS will tell us which students are in school today. I’m sure we can get a total.’ He looked at Ruth hopefully and she started tapping on her keyboard.
‘Six staff out,’ she said. ‘And 807 students present – total absences thirty-four. Four of the staff are on a trip with a group of twelve SEND students. They’ve gone bowling.’
‘SEND?’
‘Special educational needs and disability,’ Ruth explained. ‘We have a specialist unit in school.’
‘So how many staff does that leave on site?’ Pearson asked.
‘Including support staff, sixty-two,’ Ruth said.
‘We need to get them all off site. Staff and students.’
‘How the hell are we supposed to do that?’ Cam asked. ‘Over half of them are bussed in from outlying villages and the west coast. Where will we put them?’
‘The theatre,’ Ruth said. ‘It seats over a thousand people. We could get a message to all staff that they’re to walk their classes down there and wait for instructions.’
Cam shook his head. ‘That won’t work. We don’t have the right teacher to student ratio to take the whole lot off site. What if there were an accident?’
‘There’s been an accident?’ Penny Bainbridge asked stepping out of Cam’s office.
Cam glared at her. He’d explicitly asked her to wait in reception and liaise with the police. What the hell had she been doing shut up in his office?
‘No,’ he snapped. ‘We need to get the students off site and Ruth’s suggested walking them down to the theatre where we can keep them all together. We don’t have enough staff to ensure the safety of the students. You know what the ratios are.’
Penny sighed and gave him a look that suggested she thought he was a bit dim. ‘I’m sure our parents will overlook protocol if it means ensuring that their children are out of the way of a group of gunmen, don’t you?’ She smiled at him, but her eyes were steel. Cam knew she was right, but he was reluctant to make the decision and take the blame; what if somebody got hit by a car? Or broke an ankle on a kerb?
‘Cam. Get it together.’ Penny snapped her fingers in front of his face. ‘We need to get the kids out. We can use the year twelves to escort each class, along with their teacher. They should all still be in the common room for their Christmas assembly – Jack offered to take it and you know how he goes on. Ruth, ring down to the sixth-form office and get one of the study supervisors to keep them all in the common room. Cam, I know it’s not regulation but, frankly, who gives a shit as long as we get them out? Then we can focus on the ones that are left in the humanities block.’
‘Okay, okay,’ Cam said, trying to gather his thoughts as images of Tom, terrified and lost, threatened to overwhelm him. ‘We need to get a message to each member of staff. I’ll speak to year twelve myself. If we can pair them up and send them to each department, they can tell the staff what’s going on and help escort the students to the theatre.’
‘Tell them what’s going on? Is that wise?’ Pearson asked. ‘Wouldn’t it be better to tell them that there’s a chemical spill or a fire or something?’
Cam shook his head. ‘If there was a chemical spill or a fire the students and staff have been drilled to assemble on the top playground – right outside the humanities block. We have to get them off site. It’s a hell of a responsibility for the older students but I can’t see another way. I don’t have enough free staff to visit every room.’
He noticed, irritated, that Ruth was typing something rather than listening to his plan. Cam was just about to reprimand her when the printer behind her kicked into life and started to spit out sheets of A4.
‘What the hell…?’ Cam began.
‘It’s a message to the staff,’ Ruth explained. ‘I don’t think it’s fair for the students to have to tell them what to do so I’ve printed out a message for them to deliver.’
She grabbed a sheet off the pile and passed it to Cam.
Emergency evacuation. Please escort your students to the theatre in town as a matter of urgency. It is vital that students are not unduly alarmed so ensure that the evacuation proceeds in an orderly manner. A member
