As he moved, he fired once, twice, three times towards the police.
Then turned himself and his gun to the two children as he ran to save them.
The first shot fired by the police hit him in the chest. The second went into his heart. The third shot missed, although, by then, it did not really matter either way. The slow brother was already dead on his feet and sprawling to the ground.
* * *
Carrie heard the gunshots, the split-second silence, the screams of the two children. Guessed what had happened. Brother shot. Children saved.
The anguished, animal cry of The Scribbler as he moved to the window to see his dead brother fall confirmed it. He started firing randomly at the police. Downwards. To kill.
She moved suddenly, one, two, three steps towards him, raised her hand to slash at his gun hand with the shard of glass.
He saw her. Out of the corner of his eye. Just in time.
Turned and hit her across her face with the back of his gun hand.
Sending her sprawling. The shard of glass flung far from her hand, out of sight. Over there somewhere, deep in the straw. Too far away to reach. No time to scramble towards it.
The Scribbler felt quickly in his pocket, reaching for ammunition. Reloading the gun. She thought he would shoot her. But he went back to the window. Firing again now in raging heartbreak. Three, four times.
Stepped back. In the nick of time.
As the police returned fire.
Flashbangs and smoke.
Carrie could not tell, as she scrabbled desperately to find the piece of glass, whether they were shooting to kill him.
Or whether they were simply returning fire to keep him busy, distracted, while other police officers stormed the barn.
Guessed they’d move the children first and then, under cover of more fire to the front and the back, they’d head to the building.
She found the shard of glass and turned to face The Scribbler one last time. She was ready to attack as he turned to shoot her in his wild rage.
But he was crouching now, his head down. Ignoring her. He looked up slowly as she moved towards him.
“My brother,” he said, sobbing angrily, “they shot him as he went to save the little children.”
She stopped and looked back at him, hesitating for a moment. Knowing she had to get him to drop the gun so she could arrest him. Bring him out alive to face justice for all he had done.
“I know,” she answered simply. Not sure what else to say in that instant.
They gazed at each other then. For a second or two. In silence. It was a moment of balance, even surrender, she thought. This is it. No more deaths. The end of all the carnage.
She was about to ask him to hand her the gun, give himself up, was just phrasing the words, the sentences, in her mind before she spoke. One final time. To make the arrest.
Heard, at the same moment, the two of them, police officers rushing through the barn door and, before either of them could say or do anything, heading up the staircase.
The Scribbler reacted fastest, sitting up, full of tears and fury, and firing his final two shots.
As the police reached the top of the stairs.
Carrie was hit first once, then twice, by The Scribbler’s shots and fell to the ground.
And then the police returned fire. Five, six times. And shot The Scribbler dead.
EPILOGUE
MONDAY 10 DECEMBER, 11.25AM
Sharon Carrie stood in the garden of the crematorium at Nacton, a mile or two outside of Ipswich. She held the hand of her restless grandson, Noah, jigging from foot to foot, as they looked across the garden to the huge, swaying trees that surrounded the site.
She could still hear the roaring traffic from the road, the A14, and its endless procession of lorries to and from the docks in Felixstowe.
She turned back to look at the crematorium. An odd, wooden building behind a nondescript car park. This could be anything, she thought, a supermarket, a truck stop, some sort of country warehouse that sold remaindered books, outsized clothes and cheap garden furniture.
What a place to say goodbye to a loved one.
Miserable and soul-destroying.
Like being cremated in the shower and toilet block of a campsite.
She put her arm around her grandson’s shoulders and looked down at him. He stopped moving about and smiled up at her. She smiled back, pleased that he was settling.
They then both turned towards the crematorium as they heard organ music playing to mark the end of the funeral service and, within a minute, the doors had been opened.
They put on a good do, she thought, when one of their own dies. Is killed. Murdered. Police officers lining either side of the road up to the crematorium. A guard of honour. The Constabulary drape over the coffin. Bearers. The attendance of the good and the great, including the Chief Constable herself.
The full works. For all the world to see.
More for themselves, she thought, than for Roger Gayther or his loved ones.
To show how kind and caring they all were.
She watched as the mourners came out of the crematorium. The family and personal friends first, no more than half a dozen by the look of things. The police officers inside, who would have filled most of the building, holding back.
A vicar to one side of the doors, commiserating, shaking hands, saying a few words. Opposite him, a tall, fair-haired man in a charcoal grey suit echoing the vicar’s words and actions. He looked familiar.
She suddenly saw Georgia pushing herself out in a wheelchair – her “rocket chair”, as she called it. The latest model, for sure.
The vicar bending, saying a few words, shaking Georgia’s outstretched hand.
Then an unexpected embrace from the sandy-haired man, a long conversation, so it seemed, as the police officers inside the crematorium lined up waiting to file out. And then Georgia was through and away.
“Mama!” the little boy
