This seemed like a good place to stop

Wednesday 17th – Saturday 27th April 2002

The Students

I was there, I saw everything. I sat in my van, on this unusually sunny day. I watched as Sara and Jack sat in their lounge, the trees outside dancing in the slight springtime eddy. Jack had a guitar slung across his lap, idly strumming the same chord over and over again, like a zombie. Sara sat opposite, her slight frame leaning against the sofa, humming an improvised tune over the clang of each strum of the strings. It was Saturday, a day of rest. They were waiting for Jib – Sara’s brother visiting from Australia – to arrive back with armfuls of chocolate croissants. It was a particular favourite in the household, a weekend ritual. It was a two-minute trip to the supermarket, at the most.

The sudden sound of a wooden door splitting against its hinges broke the tranquillity. Jib was back, sans croissants. He did, however, have a slight bruising on his right cheek; it looked like a shadow passing over his face, refusing to move on. Standing in silence in the hall, it was the utterance ‘fuck’ from Sara that punched through. It was then that Jack noticed the blood.

Of course, at this point, I didn’t know their names; I simply noted two males and one female. Cowden Street, SW12.

From my vantage point I could see past the broken door. I watched as Jib limped over to the foot of the stairs and gave a quick overview of the events that had led to his breaking down the door, how he’d taken the shortcut across the common, as normal. The sky was clear, even though the weatherman had said rain was forecast. After all, spring equals rain in the UK. Jib was probably counting himself lucky. As a visitor from the southern hemisphere he’d no doubt been conned into believing that it always rained in England, yet there hadn’t been a drop for eight weeks now, none since the moment he’d stepped from the plane.

He may not have noticed anything out of the ordinary as he approached the shops, watching a dog running ahead chasing an unknown and unseen prey. There had been an old man sitting on the bench at the back of the chemist on Cowden Street, reading a newspaper; generally people were out and about, enjoying the sunshine. At the end of the row of local – and mostly boarded up shops – he’d seen my van, the same one that had been parked in the road for some time, but aside from looking as he crossed the road, nothing had struck him as “out of place”.

I pointed the hi-tech microphone in the direction of the house. I heard as Jib held his breath for a second, struggling to control the flow of words from his mouth. He told Sara and Jack how he had seen a crowd of people outside the supermarket, frozen like mannequins in a shop window. At this point he couldn’t see what it was they were all staring at. Then, as he rounded the side of the shop a sharp crack split the air and echoed around the adjacent car park. Both Jack and Sara sucked in their breath: it could only have been a gunshot. I’d climbed from the van at this point, running towards the shot.

Somehow, Jib had stayed calm, despite the circumstances and the other shoppers running away and diving for cover. A group of men with balaclavas pulled down low over their faces were struggling with a case. They all had weapons. The men were running, headlong towards Jib and he hadn’t had time to avoid the one carrying the case. Just as the man was about to crash straight into Jib, a further loud crack almost deafened me and I dived for cover.

Sara was looking straight at Jib, trying to see where he was hurt. Jib waved her away with his hand and carried on with the story.

“I felt this unbelievable pressure against my head, I was sure I’d been shot,” he told them. “I went down like the proverbial sack of shit, breaking the fall with my fat arse.” He laughed then. “Probably won’t be able to sit down when the bruise comes up.”

“C’mon, what happened next,” Sara interjected, wanting to hear what she would later refer to as “the juicy details”.

“Well,” Jib continued, “The world went dark for a second and as I came to I noticed a body next to me. One of the robbers had been shot – by whom I hadn’t a fucking clue! Anyways, I checked that I was in one piece. I think I was grazed by a bullet; that’s where the blood is coming from,” he said, pointing towards a cut under his left eye, the swelling already beginning to turn an array of purples and yellows, like a sunset reflected on his face.

“And?” This time is was Jack trying to hurry Jib along.

With a glint in his good eye, Jib smiled at his sister and her boyfriend. “Then, I saw my opportunity.”

In his hand, Jib was holding up a small suitcase. Sara and Jack stared at it, not sure of what it contained.

“Did you get the croissants?” she asked.

Jack was the first to start giggling – he couldn’t stop. There was Jib, covered in blood and grinning like a village idiot that’s just been kissed by the prettiest girl in school. Jack’s giggling subsided into a snort and then he went quiet.

“Damn, I knew I’d forgotten something,” he said by way of reply. The giggling immediately began again, this time in earnest.

I left it at that, I didn’t think they had anything to add and I needed to get back to my real quarry just a few doors down. I left the microphone recording the student babble in the background, finding it strangely calming. I caught snippets of what was said, but I wasn’t about to step off-case.

Suddenly, Jack was on his feet. “Let’s get this fucking door back on its hinges before someone notices,” he implored. In seconds they were all laughing again, dancing around in circles, jumping up and down. The door had to wait another five minutes before it was repaired.

I tried to concentrate on the job in hand. I made a note in my pad to check on the students over the coming days and left it at that.