David Trevellyan 03 -More Harm Than Good (40 page)

       
It was the fire alarm.

       
“To the kindergarten,”
she said, a look of half surprise, half shock, on her face. “Quickly.”

       
I didn’t need to be told
twice. The staff room door flew open as we rushed past, but we ignored the
angry shouts telling us to change direction and carried on along the corridor
towards the classrooms. The two electrical workers were on
their
feet, standing squarely in front of the kindergarten door, and as we approached
my nose picked up the first hint of smoke. It was leaking out below the door
they were guarding.

       
“Stop,” the guy on the
right side, reaching into his overall and drawing a pistol. “Armed police. Stay
where you are or I will fire.”

       
We stopped.

       
“Hold it,” Melissa said.
“Blue on blue. I’m going to reach into my pocket and take out my ID. Is that
OK?”

       
“Go ahead,” the guy
said, as his partner also drew his weapon. “But do it slowly.”

       
“What are you doing out
here?” Melissa said, when they were satisfied with her credentials. “Where’s
Toby Smith?”

       
“He’s fine,” the first
guy said. “The others are taking him out to the assembly point. It’s outside,
on the playground. All the classes have an allocated spot to wait in. As soon
as we get word they’re set, we’ll go around the other way and meet them. We
can’t get there through the classroom, like they did. It’s too full of smoke.”

       
“We need to go now,”
Melissa said. “We have to move the kid. He’s not safe there. The fire’s a ruse
to get him out in the open.”

       
“What do you mean?” the
guy said. “What do you know that we…”

       
Melissa’s phone rang and
she held up her hand, cutting the guy off and indicating she needed to take the
call.

       
“OK,” she said, hanging
up a minute later. “They stopped both engines from leaving Medway Street fire
station. Both crews, and everyone inside the building, are under wraps. Two
other engines are en route from Victoria, in their place. ETA is four minutes.
Let’s make sure we have our hands on the kid before they get here.”

       
“Are you going to tell
us what’s going on?” the first guy said.

       
“I will,” Melissa said.
“Off the record, anyway. But only once the kid is safe. So come on. Lead the
way.”

Organising
large groups of
kids was always my idea of hell, but the teachers at St Ambrose had it down to
a fine art. We emerged from the glass corridor on to the playground and instead
of the chaos I had
envisaged,
we found four neat
double lines of children. The classes were arranged in age order: kindergarten to
the left, Year One in front of us, Year Two to the right. And if the relative
size of the children
wasn’t
enough of a clue, the
teaching assistants standing on either side of the diplomat’s kid would
certainly have been a reliable guide.

       
“There he is,” Melissa
said. “Let’s get him away from the crowd, just in case.”

       
We’d just started moving
towards the youngest children when the alarm bells inside the school were
switched off. Without them, we could suddenly hear the excited murmuring of the
kids. The background hum of city traffic returned. And we became aware of
another sound. Sirens.
Several of them.
At least four.
And they were heading in our direction.

       
One of the teachers
called for silence,
then
ordered the children to
remain absolutely still. The last words had barely left his lips when the first
of the emergency vehicles arrived. It was a police car, closely followed by a
pair of fire engines and two ambulances. The car pulled over to the side, near
the last of the Year Two children, and the fire engines swooped past it, not
stopping till they were as close to the classroom building as possible. Their
doors were thrown open and five firemen jumped down from each one, already
suited up in their protective clothing. Like clockwork they started towards
their prearranged positions, but before a single hose could be connected all
ten of the men suddenly froze. They raised their hands, and I followed their
gaze to two men I hadn’t seen before. They’d emerged from a black BMW that had
made its way up the drive under cover of the second ambulance. They were both
wearing suits. They were tall, each well over six
foot
.
And they were both holding guns.

       
“Nobody move,” the first
newcomer said. “Police. Now, listen carefully.”

       
“They’re not police,”
Melissa whispered to me. “They’re Box. I
recognise
them.”

       
“I’m speaking to the
fire crew only, now,” the newcomer said. “I need to know which one of you is in
charge?”

       
The man who’d been first
out of the leading fire engine raised his right hand even higher than it
already was.

       
“Good,” the newcomer
said. “I need your help. Because before a single drop of water gets sprayed
anywhere, we need to test it. And that won’t take long, if you show me how to
open the tanks.”

       
The fireman made his way
to the back of his engine and started to climb the ladder which was built in to
the vehicle’s bodywork.

       
“The hatch’s up here,”
he said. “But you better haul your
arse
. We’ve got a
fire to fight, here.”

       
The newcomer followed
him up, pulled something about the size of an iPhone out of his jacket pocket,
and held it to the mouth of the tank.

       
“Good,” he said, without
looking at it, and I
realised
it must be a Geiger
counter. “This one’s clear. Let’s check the other one.”

       
They repeated the procedure,
and again the agent looked satisfied.

       
“Clear again,” he said.
“Thank you. Now, please, carry on.”

       
The chief fireman waved
his hand and the others sprang back into a blur of choreographed action. I
guess they were eager to make up for lost time, but I wasn’t too worried about
the fate of the school. I was pretty certain that whatever kind of device had
caused the
fire,
it was designed to produce more smoke
than flames. The idea was to provoke an evacuation, and that part of the plan
at least had been successful. The diplomat’s son had been moved exactly where
someone wanted him, and even though he was flanked by four armed guards, if the
caesium
hadn’t been intercepted, he’d have been as
vulnerable as if he was standing naked and all alone.

       
Melissa badged the new
agents, spoke to them for a moment,
then
started
moving towards the line of kindergarten kids. I don’t know if it was down to
the length of time they’d been standing there, the excitement of seeing the
fire engines arrive, or the drama of the armed agents appearing, but the volume
of noise they were making was increasing and their lines were becoming more
ragged. And the degree of fidgeting had grown much greater, too. I started to
follow Melissa and as I moved, I caught sight of something flying through the
air. It was looping over my head. Something oval and black, like a large egg.
The line of children instinctively broke as the object plummeted towards them,
and it landed in the exact spot where a tall boy with glasses had been standing.
I’d expected it to bounce, but instead it cracked open and the pieces stayed
where they’d fallen. It didn’t make much noise, particularly in contrast with
the shrieks that were coming from the nearest kids, but red smoke immediately
started to spew from its cracked shell. The screaming grew louder and spread
throughout the different groups of children, and the last vestige of discipline
dissolved in the next split second. The smoke spread, whipped up by the rising
wind, and amid the hysterical howling it became impossible to distinguish one
set of panicking children from another. I could only hope that despite the
chaos, the diplomat’s kid was still in safe hands.

       
“Gun,” one of the new
agents shouted. “Get down.”

       
I spun round and saw
spits of flame flickering from the muzzle of his 9mm.
A man,
twenty feet away from me, staggered back, clutching his chest.
Kids were
rampaging everywhere. I spotted a second man, twenty feet away in the other
direction. He had another gun. He fired two shots, and the agent went down.
Then he fired two more shots, over the heads of the children. The screaming
became even louder, and under cover of the frenzied movement, the man turned
and started to run.

       
“Stop,” Melissa shouted.

       
The man turned and fired
at her. She slipped, but was straight back on her feet. She took two strides,
then dropped down into a kneeling position, her weapon raised. Two more shots
rang out, and this time the guy went down. He didn’t stay down long either, but
wasn’t as controlled as Melissa. His gun arm was flailing, jerking so wildly it
would have been impossible for him to hit anything he was aiming at. But it was
guaranteed he was going to hit something, if he pulled the trigger again. And
given the numbers, his most likely victim would be one of the children.

       
Melissa started moving
towards him, stooping down to reduce the target she presented. The guy’s gun
twitched in her direction, then snapped back to his left. The other new agent
was moving, too. Melissa took advantage of the distraction he’d created and
charged forward, straight at the guy. He saw her coming, but it was too late to
bring his weapon to bear. Melissa launched herself at his chest, sending him
reeling, and the agent and I reached them just as he hit the floor.

       
“You take him,” Melissa
said to her colleague, as she regained her feet. “Make sure nothing happens. We
need him able to talk.”

       
It took a moment to spot
anyone we
recognised
from the Kindergarten, but
eventually Melissa caught sight of the boy who’d almost been hit by the smoke
grenade. We started towards him, watching as he was bumped and buffeted by
bigger children who were in a greater state of panic. Then Melissa suddenly
changed direction. She’d spotted the two electricians. There were at the far
side of the playground, standing near the boundary wall. They appeared relaxed.
Detached from the madness around them. And with no sign of Toby Smith.

       
“Where’s the kid,”
Melissa said when we reached them, slightly out of breath from pushing through
the crowd. “Aren’t you supposed to be with him?”

       
“We were,” the guy who’d
spoken outside the classroom said. “But he had to go to hospital.”

       
“What?” Melissa said.
“Why?”

       
“Because of that weird
red smoke,” he said. “Didn’t you smell it? The kid took a right lungful, and
came over
all queasy
. So the other officers put him in
one the ambulances, and off they went.”

       
Melissa shot me a
worried glance.

       
“Which hospital are they
heading for?” she said. “Did they tell you?”

       
“Of course,” the guy
said. “St Joseph’s.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

I’d thought Melissa’s driving was aggressive on the way to Woolwich,
two days ago. But that was before I saw how she cut through the traffic that
afternoon between the school and the hospital. And she wasn’t just driving. She
was using her phone, too.

       
She called
Chaston
, to find out if anything was happening at the
Houses of Parliament.

       
It wasn’t.

       
She called Thames House,
to ask them to intercept the kid’s ambulance.

       
They couldn’t.

       
She called St Joseph’s,
to see if it had arrived yet.

       
It hadn’t.

With each new frustration her right foot grew heavier until I was
tempted to pick up the phone myself and pre-emptively call an ambulance for the
two of us. It was starting to seem inevitable we’d need one. The chances she
was taking were becoming untenably crazy. And then, after a particularly near
miss with a black cab, Melissa suddenly eased off the accelerator and revealed
what was really bothering her.

       
“Did you hear what those
other agents told me?” she said. “The ones who arrived with the fire engines?”