Page 2

Two

Sunday 7.30pm

It was bad. There were no more screams, just crying. People clung to each other, huddled amongst the shattered furniture. Shards of glass glittered in the light where the dust had been disturbed. Charlie looked upward. The ceiling was peppered with bullet holes. Plaster dust turned the floor into a pinkish slurry of blood and spilled drinks coating every surface — including the survivors. Among the debris, two figures lay still. He didn’t want to look at them, the people he hadn’t been able to save. All the lights had been turned on, but the spotlight still illuminated the stage, microphone stand lying drunkenly on the floor. Charlie saw that one of the too-still figures wore the clothes of the MC and the breath caught in his throat.

Someone grabbed his arm. He turned and saw the woman Orianna had introduced earlier as: Dana, my fixer.

“You’re Orianna’s friend? Is she okay?”

“She’s not injured, but she’s not okay,” he said. None of them were okay. None of them were going to be okay for a long time, if ever.

“What happened? How did Dusty get killed? I heard a shot, and I hid…” There was a sob in Dana’s voice.

Charlie assumed Dusty was the name of the too-still figure. He thought she had been the owner of the bookshop. Her introduction had been full of excitement at introducing Orianna. He shook his head. He couldn’t answer the questions.

“Orianna is sitting up at the front,” he said.

“I want to stay with Dusty. I can’t believe this.” Dana put her face in her hands and sobbed.

Guilt vied with sorrow in Charlie’s stomach, rolling around, exaggerating the stink of plaster dust, alcohol and blood. He swallowed hard. Orianna’s bag was where she had stowed it out of sight. Under their table, now upturned and spattered with blood. Tom’s blood. Charlie picked up the bag, and saw Tom’s old leather jacket and his messenger bag on the floor. He sank to his knees, regardless of blood and dust, and buried his face in the jacket.

Tom.

The word was a scream in his head.

Pleasepleasepleaseplease.

Charlie retraced his steps through the debris toward where Orianna was waiting.

A group of women in rainbow T-shirts were huddled around a figure being tended by a paramedic. The injured woman was sitting up as the paramedic applied a bandage to her face and neck. Blood dripped from her chin, but she seemed to be forcing a smile. Charlie heard her say she was fine and that she hadn’t been shot. The paramedic spoke quietly, reassuringly.

A middle-aged couple had their arms round each other, the woman saying: He’ll be alright. I know he will.

Other people were crying quietly, and others sat silently, eyes unfocused. A uniformed police officer gave one young woman a blanket and spoke to her softly. Another officer had a tablet and seemed to be taking names and addresses. The man he was talking to shouted, “ You have no right to keep me here. No right.”

His companions were talking on their phones. One of them looked up and saw Charlie. His face registered horror and Charlie realised he was shirtless and covered in Tom’s blood.

Two young men, college students perhaps, called to him.

“Hey, friend, thank you.”

“Yes, thank you.”

Charlie looked at them, not sure they were talking to him. They caught his eye and beckoned. The two were sitting huddled together next to the wall toward the front of the shop. One of the too-still figures lay in front of them, blood pooled on the floor around him. Not close enough to touch, but to move to anywhere else in the room they would have to step over the body, so Charlie understood why they stayed where they were.

“You chased that guy. Fuck, I was so scared,” one of them said.

“He shot this guy, and I was sure we were next, but you chased him. You saved our lives. Jesus.”

Charlie looked down at the dead man on the floor.

It was Kaylan Sully.

Kaylan Sully whom Charlie had last seen in Liverpool Prison waiting to be released into the custody of the FBI, to use his computer hacking skills for the good of his country as payback for his crimes in Llanfair. What the hell was Kaylan doing at Orianna’s poetry reading? Did he know Orianna from his Llanfair days? Nothing Charlie knew about Kaylan suggested any interest in poetry. He thought back to the moments of the shooting and his certainty that the gunman was looking for targets. Had Kaylan been a target? He had been shot at close range in the chest. Had the gunman looked at Charlie after killing Kaylan and then shot up the ceiling and run? He replayed the sequence of events in his mind’s eye, scanning the room for clues. This was close to where Charlie had been when the gunman caught his eye. He hadn’t seen the two college students. He hadn’t seen any individuals except the shooter. Everyone had been invisible as Charlie had run toward a man with a gun, trying to distract him by throwing glasses and books and even, he remembered, a chair. Because that’s what had to be done.

Kaylan could have been the last person killed. Did it mean anything? He didn’t know, but he thought the police should be told, because if nothing else, the shooter had murdered someone working for law enforcement.

Someone Charlie knew had been shot.

Someone else Charlie knew.

This is not about you , he told himself. Except at this moment, it felt like it was.