Carnage. Maxime Chattam

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.

       2

      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, before going upstairs and opening fire in the hall at everyone who moved. Then he’d continued up to the first floor, going into several classrooms where students were taking cover. He’d hunted them down as they sheltered behind the tables and shot them like rabbits, some of them at point-blank range, the barrel almost touching them.

      As his weapon was blasting out molten lead, some students had attempted to run away down the corridor. Russell Rod had tried to get as many of them as possible. Not without a certain sadism, according to a maths teacher who had seen it all. He said Russell had aimed for the legs of the fleeing students and then gone and shot them point-blank, if possible in the face.

      A massacre.

      Russell had done everything to ensure that there would be as few witnesses as possible.

      Then he had gone into the janitor’s closet. There was a gunshot, then silence. Several seconds had gone by before crying, groans and shouts of pain started up.

      Lamar pushed the pile of reports to the side of the desk, putting a rubber stamp-holder on top of them so that they wouldn’t be displaced by a draught, and went next door to the nurse’s office.

      The youth who had been found in the cupboard, one Chris DeRoy, lay on one of the four beds, wrapped in a silver survival blanket. He was brown-haired and brown-eyed, with freckles and a few spots. He was lying in his own filth, waiting for his parents to come with clean clothes. He was slowly recovering from his terrifying experience.

      He had spoken to Lamar, in a very quiet voice. He’d seen Russell come up the stairs holding his submachine gun. He’d also had a clear view of a girl’s head exploding. So he’d thrown himself into the walk-in closet and tried to hide in a corner. He’d heard the unrelenting gunshots. Everyone was running around. At first he could hear yelling, but then everyone who wasn’t dead and hadn’t already fled outside understood that if they wanted to survive they would have to shut up in order not to attract the attention of the madman.

      Minutes passed and then the door opened and Russell walked in.

      He had recognised him. He was wearing what he always wore: combat trousers and a hooded sweatshirt with the name of a heavy-metal band on it.

      Chris had seen him come in. He thought he’d heard him mutter something, but he hadn’t been able to make out what. Then Russell had taken his Uzi in one hand and pointed it at his head and fired. Half his head had been blown off and splattered over the opposite wall.

      At that moment, the door, which closed automatically, had slammed shut and Chris had waited in the dark until the police arrived.

      Lamar came over to his bedside.‘Your parents will be here in a minute. Are … are you sure you don’t want to go to the bathroom and clean yourself up?’ He hoped the youth would prefer to be undressed but clean under his survival blanket.

      Chris shook his head.

      ‘All right then …’

      Lamar was about to offer him a hot drink when the door opened to reveal a well-coiffed brown-haired middle-aged man, closely shaven and dressed in a three-piece suit. Newton Capparel.

      ‘Lamar!’ he exclaimed. ‘Give me the low-down; we only have a few minutes before the press conference. They’re getting impatient out there.’

      Lamar folded his