dozens of figures in the hall, sitting on the floor, lying down or huddled up receiving medical attention or answering the questions of the six or so police officers who had responded to the emergency call.
Lamar made for the large wooden staircase opposite the entrance.
The landing on the way up to the first floor was used for displaying student notices. A crimson sun about three feet in diameter had exploded over the area. Its core consisted of little particles of molten brain that now stuck to the board, and its rays were made of blood, glistening in the harsh light. The linoleum was also streaked with swirls of blood that stretched towards the stairs where pools stagnated, dripping softly.
A beige blanket covered a body. A hand was sticking out.
A hand with short stubby fingers and several rings. And varnished nails.
Lamar stepped over the body, his Walther P99 at the ready, the two police officers at his heels. They climbed the remaining stairs and found themselves in a long corridor with classrooms leading off it.
There was a lot of blood all over the floor, and panicked teenagers and teachers had skated in it, spreading macabre flower patterns as far as the stairs.
Lamar immediately noticed the three bodies. Two boys and an adult.
Most of their body fluids pooled around them, still warm.
The black man looked at them compassionately without for a moment being distracted from his main objective.
One of the officers crept cautiously towards an unmarked wooden door. He pointed his gun at the lock.
‘The janitor assured us that there’s no way out,’ he murmured. ‘There’s no door handle on the other side; it’s just a closet.’
The two officers took up position on either side of the door.
There was a sweetish odour, a mixture of iron and the smell you get in a butcher’s shop – the smell of blood – combined with the sharp whiff of gunshot. How many cartridges must have been fired to make the corridor smell like that? wondered Lamar.
The detective hesitated. He could still call out a SWAT team for backup. He didn’t have to go in there all on his own.
Too late.
According to witnesses, the gunman had gone into the cupboard, which had no other exit, and then a shot had rung out. Lamar knew that in these sorts of massacres, the perpetrators almost always turned their guns on themselves. So it all fitted. On the face of it there should be nothing in there but a corpse.
Lamar put one hand on the gold doorknob, training his semi-automatic on the opening. His palm was sweaty. He gripped the weapon so tightly his knuckles showed white.
He tugged the door open, moving aside quickly to avoid presenting too easy a target.
The closet was unlit, but the light from the corridor illuminated it completely.
The smell was nauseating.
Someone in military fatigues and a hooded sweatshirt had collapsed amongst the buckets and pails and cleaning products. A bag full of ammunition lay at his feet, with an Uzi abandoned nearby.
Lamar stepped inside.
The man’s head was tipped backwards. Lamar had to go in further to see his face.
He saw a pointed chin, thin lips and the fluffy beginnings of a moustache beneath a large nose.
Then there was a confused mess of meat and splinters of bone amid gaping holes.
He had committed suicide – no doubt about it.
The nauseating odour was even more noticeable now. Lamar instinctively began to look at where he had stepped.
It was shit. It smelt of shit.
He searched the tiny space around him.
A cleaning cart was parked to his left, by a rail of overalls and aprons.
A shoe had been tidied underneath.
Lamar started.
It was a sneaker.
He slowly raised his weapon in front of him.
Then moved forward slowly.
The sneaker jolted.
Lamar spread his weight evenly between both legs, ready to react to anything.
‘Come out of there slowly,’ he said. ‘There’s no point in hiding.’
When still nothing happened, Lamar took another step forward. One of the police officers came in as well, casting a shadow over the closet. Lamar couldn’t see very much any more. With one hand he reached towards the overalls and aprons and pushed them briskly aside to reveal the back wall of the closet. His outstretched right arm held his pistol, ready to spray hell out of its metallic mouth.
A teenager jumped, looking up at him in terror.
He was folded in on himself, trying to take up as little space as possible against the wall. His teeth were chattering.
A huge stain spread across the front of his jeans.
He was trembling.
Lamar realised that the smell of excrement was coming from the boy. Lamar had set up his base in the janitor’s office; the large window looking out onto the hall allowed him to keep an eye on all the comings and goings. The telephone rang incessantly.
So far they had counted fourteen dead and several wounded.
The school principal, Allistair McLogan, a man in his fifties with white hair and a grey moustache, had collapsed into an armchair in the corner of the room. He was rubbing his face and shaking his head.
The gunman had been identified fairly rapidly. First of all by some witnesses who had thought they recognised him, in spite of his hood, as one of the school’s students, and then from the corpse, which, despite the absence of the top part of its face, had been compared to the student’s photo in the administrative files. There was no doubt who it was.
His name was Russell Rod and he was seventeen.
In less than ten minutes, he had emptied half a dozen Uzi cartridges, about two hundred bullets.
Lamar had gathered together all available depositions and had just finished reading them. Several officers were still in the process of taking statements, but already the essential facts were clear.
Russell Rod must have arrived early. So far no one remembered seeing him before the tragedy, but there was still an enormous number of teenagers to interview. He had gone down to the basement, near the locker rooms, to get ready. That was where he’d started his mad spree.
He’d shot a boy in the corridor,
