ONE STEP CLOSER
"I mean it," the gunman shrieked, and he pointed the revolver at Ward, the end of the barrel moving in tiny circles with the shaking of his hands. "I mean it. One step closer..."
Ward stopped where he was. Other than the man with the gun, no-one else was standing. The sun was shining bright through the frosted windows, and somewhere in the bank a lazy dying fly buzzed and battered against the glass. The bank smelt of floor polish. Ward could taste the pickle from the sandwich he had eaten an hour earlier. Everything was very real, as sharp and defined as the stars on a cold and cloudless November night.
I've not been a bad man, Ward thought, although I could have been a better one. But I've not been a bad man. There's always that. He thought about how blue and perfect the sky had been that morning. He thought of Sarah, of how they were before it had all gone wrong, and he wondered what she was doing now. He hoped that she was happy. I don't think I have ever felt more alive, he thought. And now I know I've wasted so many things. So much time.
~
He'd almost not bothered with the bank at all—had ducked his head through the door, seen the lunchtime queue, and thought briefly about going to get the other things he needed first. Some shop-brand beans and some potatoes, a cheap shirt for work and maybe a book from the library. But he thought no, you're here now and it's not like you've got anything else to do with your day, so you might as well join the queue.
Which turned out to be bad timing, but then that was life, Ward thought. A bad call here, some bad luck there, and everything turns around. One year you're married, and the next you're not. One year you have a career, a house in the London suburbs, and then you're just stumbling from one dead-end job, one rented room, to another. One day you go to the bank and you roll your eyes at the slowness of the staff, and the next moment a man in a stained combat jacket and a baseball cap pushes in front of you and holds an old-looking revolver pressed into the cheek of a woman in a print dress and shouts "Money, in bags now, or I'll do her" and the whole world goes into slow motion and everybody stands very still and there isn't a sound other than the drip, drip, drip on the floor where the woman wets herself.
Everyone stood very still.
The puddle of urine rolled lazy tendrils across the floor and around Ward's shoes.
The gunman noticed everyone else for the first time, and shouted, "The rest of you, down on the floor now, and no-one fucking move."
It's a film, Ward thought. This isn't real life, this is a film. Even the words sound like they're from the script of some straight-to-video clunker. But he sat on the floor, all the same.
"Get a fucking move on." The gunman took the revolver away from the woman with the print dress and pointed it through the glass at a bank clerk who opened and closed her mouth with no sound, like a fish. "Piss me about and I'll do you n'all."
He's not a pro, Ward thought. Too nervous. Too slow. Too dangerous.
The combat jacket was torn on one side, and greasy. The gunman had heron legs in tight black jeans, and a sports bag slung over one shoulder. As he stood there he rocked from foot to foot, eyes darting to the left, to the right, always in motion. Junkie, Ward thought. God knows where he's got the gun from. Robbed from his granddad's attic, from the look of it. Probably blow his hand off if he tried firing it.
The cashier behind the window was filling faded fabric cash bags with money from the drawer under her desk, stuffing them through the tray in the counter. One got stuck, and she sobbed with frustration, pushing it hard and making it stick even more. The gunman grabbed the bag, pulled, nearly went over backwards.
That was the time, Ward thought, for the hero bit. The gun was pointing up at the ceiling, the man was off balance, but like everything else, you only thought about it when it was too late, and the opportunity was gone, the words had already been said, the deed had already been done, life had moved on and left you behind floundering in its wake, trying to stay above water. Ward knew this well.
Then the door to the bank opened, and a man in uniform walked in and the gunman shouted something that didn't sound like anything and there was a loud crack and all the people sitting on the floor flinched and some of them screamed and the man in uniform went backwards and would have fallen right out of the door but he hit the edge of it and just slid down it and ended up on the floor, half in, half out, all tangled arms and legs.
"Who called them? Who fucking called them?" the gunman shouted, and he swung the gun back towards the counter. "You press an alarm? Did you? Did you?"
"He's a traffic warden," The elderly man with a blue blazer and a red face was sitting on the opposite side of the bank to Ward. He glared up at the gunman.
"What?"
"You shot a traffic warden. He's a damn traffic warden. Look at him man, can't you tell the bloody difference?"
"Shut the fuck up."
"Animal," the old man said, and the gunman pointed his gun and Ward shut his eyes just before the bang and when he opened them again the old man was sitting rigid and silent with fear and the wall next to him was splintered and chipped.
"Next time I don't miss," the gunman said, and Ward did not know why but he was as sure as he had ever been of anything that the gunman had not meant to miss the first time.
"One more bag. Go on, move it," the gunman said, and again the gun was back against the woman in the print dress, who shivered throughout her whole body, like long grass in a squall. The cashier filled another bag, and again it got stuck in the tray when she tried to push it through, but she pushed it again hard, and it came through. The gunman stuffed it with the others in his sports bag, and began to move towards the door. Ward sat very still, thinking, it's not over until it's over. The gunman stepped over the body without looking down, got half way out of the door. Then it seemed to Ward as if several things happened very quickly, so quickly that perhaps it was all at once, or maybe in a different order than it seemed. There was a screech of tyres outside, some shouts, two cracks in quick succession, a distant sound of broken glass falling to tarmac, the slam of the bank door. Then the gunman was back inside with them, panting as if he had just run a race, ragged sobs, wild eyes. He waved the revolver around in the vague direction of the people sitting on the floor, then he turned, shoved the body out of the door with one kick, slammed the door and slid the top bolt shut.
The woman in the print dress let out a shudder of breath which spoke for what the sound of the bolt closing had meant for all of them. This is going to be a long haul, Ward thought. If the gunman hadn't waited for that last bag he would have been outside when the police arrived, and whatever would have happened would have played out on the street. Now they were here, locked together, the nine or ten people and the man with the gun.
It always hinges on the little things, Ward thought. Like everything else. The devil is in the little things. One step that on its own seemed like nothing. A bag that sticks. The hotel receipt you meant to throw out, should never even have taken in the first place, but which you left in your pocket. The first time you think, I know, the best way to get through this is to have a drink. The boss who runs out of staples, and looks in your drawer and sees the bottle. Always the little things. A tattered piece of paper. An empty box of staples. And life jumps the rails, runs away from you and there's no catching it up. Not ever.
"Sit down."
The woman in the print dress collapsed on the floor next to Ward. He wanted to put his arm round her, to comfort her, but he also did not want to move, not even to breathe. The gunman paced up and down, never stopping moving, talking to himself. Ward caught the woman's eye and smiled. It'll be all right. It'll be over. You can go home, collapse in the arms of the man who gave you that ring on your finger and cry and cry until you're all cried out, and then you can have the longest bath you've ever had and drink wine until the day is drowned by it. She stared blankly back at him, and he smiled at her again. Hang on in there. She mouthed something at him, her eyes wet with tears, and he did not catch it. He furrowed his brow—what?—and she mouthed it again. My kids, she said. My kids. And then she kept on saying it, over and over, not making any sound at all, and Ward waited until the gunman was looking somewhere else and then he reached out slowly and placed his hand over and around the woman's hand, squeezing gently. You'll see them again, he tried to say with his touch. You'll see them again.
"Might as well give yourself up." The elderly man had recovered his composure enough to speak up again. You're brave, Ward thought. Bet you're an old soldier, judging by your tone of voice, ramrod back, shiny shoes. So you should know when it's the time to be brave, and when it's the time to just hide in the foxhole and ride out the shelling. "They'll not let you out of here, you know. You've had it now."
"Shut up," the gunman said, but quietly, as if he was saying it to himself.
"They'll have snipers out there now," the old man said. "Marksmen. Shoot you down like a dog if you walk in front of the right window. Serve you right, too."
"Shut up."
"Like a dog. You won't stand a chance. Just give yourself up."
The gunman lifted the revolver and fired. Don't look, Ward said to himself, don't look, but he had to and then he looked away, the world spinning and he knew he would never forget what he had seen. The air in the bank stank of the gun, and now more besides, and the ringing in Ward's ears did not stop.
"Told him to shut up," the gunman said, "I told him," and again it sounded as if he was talking to himself. We don't even exist for him, Ward thought. We aren't even people. There is nothing in his world but himself.
A phone rang, behind the counter, and then a voice outside, distorted from the amplification, said that they wanted to talk, please answer the phone.
"Get it," the gunman said. "Tell them I want them to back off, want a car, now, fast one, or I'm going to shoot someone in here. Tell them if they try anything, I'll kill her." He pointed the gun towards the woman next to Ward, and she shook in her skin.
"They say they want to talk to you," the cashier said.
"Fuck do they want to talk to me for? It's a trick. They fuck with your head. Tell them I won't. Tell them a car, and them gone, right out my way, or she's fucking dead." Ward squeezed the woman's hand tighter and thought how many shots did the gunman fire when he was at the door? One or two? How many does he have left? He fired one when he shot the old man. One more when he shot the wall. And one for the traffic warden. That made four. Five if he shot twice out of the door. Ward thought that he had, but ever since the gunman had walked into the bank time had slipped and stuttered and all the events since seemed to merge into one, so he could not be sure.
A long time ago, in a different life, Ward had a lot of things he did not have now. One of those things was a brother-in-law. He took Ward out once, blasting away at pheasants with a shotgun in between hammering the contents of a hip flask. Was that really me, Ward thought. Was that really me standing there bored and with a whisky headache, listening to him talking guns all day? It felt as if it was someone else, a different Ward who just happened to look the same, talk the same, but whose life was different in every way. But still, the other Ward's conversation was there, in his memory now. So what is the difference between a revolver and an automatic then, Ward had asked, vaguely aware that revolvers were what they had in cowboy films but not much more. He didn't care, but felt that as he was drinking the other man's whisky he at least ought to show interest in his pet subject. He'd only half listened to the answer, but when he'd heard one part he thought of course, six-shooters, how could I not remember that, and then his brother-in-law had moved on to talking about his car again and Ward had switched off and begun watching orange stain the sky as the sun sunk behind the stands of trees and crows flew in lazy, noisy circles.
The phone rang again.
The gunman twitched and so the gun twitched and so everyone sitting on the floor of the bank twitched. The woman next to Ward, the woman in the print dress, started to say something to herself, over and over again as if she were saying the rosary. Her eyes were wild and she looked everywhere around the bank, first here, first there, as if her salvation was going to spring from behind a fire extinguisher, or out of a set of leaflets about mortgages and savings accounts.
"You, answer the phone." The gunman gestured to the cashier. "Tell 'em I don't want to talk no more, they do what I say or I start fucking shooting people. Tell 'em."
The woman next to Ward said "No, no no no, oh no."
"Starting with you, you stupid bitch," the gunman said, "and if you don't shut up now, I won't even wait. Understand? Fucking shut up."
He's going to do it again, Ward thought. They're taking too long outside, they don't know what's going on in here, they're making sure they're getting it right, but it's going to be too long, too late, and he's too brittle. The woman in the print dress shivered and moaned like a baby with a fever. "My children," she said. "Please."
"Shut up," the gunman shouted, and spit flew from his mouth and danced in the sun as it drifted to the floor. "Fucking shut up. I can't think with you whining, it's doing my fucking head in, just shut up, shut up, shut up."
The woman made a frightened noise at the back of her throat, and her heel clattered against the ground as her leg shook. He's going to do it, Ward thought. One last shot.
Ward smiled at the woman, and stroked her shoulder, gently, as if he were shushing her off to sleep. Then he stood up.
"Fuck you doing?" the gunman said.
Ward stepped towards him.
"You mad? I'll fucking do you, so help me God. Sit down now! Now! Now!"
Ward took another step. He wondered whether the police outside had counted the shots like he had. He wondered whether he had counted right. He wondered whether his brother-in-law had said that all revolvers had six shots, or only some. He wondered whether the man had any more ammunition in his pockets.
"I mean it," the gunman shrieked, and he pointed the revolver at Ward, the end of the barrel moving in tiny circles with the shaking of his hands. "I mean it. One step closer..."
Ward stopped where he was. Other than the man with the gun, no-one else was standing. The sun was shining bright through the frosted windows, and somewhere in the bank a lazy dying fly buzzed and battered against the glass. The bank smelt of floor polish. Ward could taste the pickle from the sandwich he had eaten an hour earlier. Everything was very real, as sharp and defined as the stars on a cold and cloudless November night.
I've not been a bad man, Ward thought, although I could have been a better one. But I've not been a bad man. There's always that. He thought about how blue and perfect the sky had been that morning. He thought of Sarah, of how they were before it had all gone wrong, and he wondered what she was doing now. He hoped that she was happy. I don't think I have ever felt more alive, he thought. And now I know I've wasted so many things. So much time.
And then he took one step closer.