cord was the explosive; and it seemed to be winding up and down through the walls of the stairwell for at least one floor above me and another below.
I yelled ‘Toby’ with full lungs and whatever power I could muster. I yelled ‘Toby’ up the staircase and 1 yelled ‘Toby’ down the staircase, and got no response at all.
‘Toby, if you’re here, this place is full of explosive.’ I yelled it up the stairs, and down.
Nothing.
He had to be somewhere else, I thought. But where? Where? There could be det cord festooned throughout the length of all the buildings; throughout the Club, through the Tattersalls enclosure where on race days the bookies had their pitches, through the cheapest of three enclosures where there were almost more bars than viewing steps.
‘Toby,’ I yelled: and got silence.
There was no possibility that I could miraculously dismantle what looked like a thoroughly planned attack. I didn’t know enough, nor where to start. My first priority, anyway, was the safety of my son, so with silence continuing, I turned to go back out into the open air, to run further down the sprawling complex and try again.
I’d already pivoted to run when I heard the tiniest noise, and it seemed to me it came from above, from somewhere up the stairs, over my head.
I sprinted up two levels, to the landing outside the Stewards’ vantage point and yelled again. I tried the Stewards’ room door, but like so much else, it was locked. He couldn’t be in there, but I yelled anyway.
‘Toby, if you’re here, please come out. This place can blow up at any moment. Please, Toby. Please.’
Nothing. False alarm. I turned to go down again, to start searching somewhere else.
A wavery little voice said, ‘Dad?’
I whirled. He was climbing with difficulty out of his perfect tiny hiding place, a small sideboard with spindly legs beside an empty row of pegs meant for the Stewards’ hats and coats.
‘Thank God,’ I said briefly. ‘Now come on.’
‘I was the escaped prisoner,’ he said, slithering out and standing up. ‘If they’d found me they would have put me back in the Bastille.’
I hardly listened. I felt only urgency along with relief.
‘Will it really blow up, Dad?’
‘Let’s just get out of here.’
I reached for his hand and tugged him with me towards the stairs, and there was a sort of crrrump from below us, and then a brilliant flash of light and a horrendous bang and a swaying all about us, and it was like what I imagine it must be like to be caught in an earthquake.
CHAPTER 6
In the fraction of time when thought was possible, both knowledge and instinct screamed that the stairs themselves, wreathed and tied with explosive like a parcel, were the embrace of death.
Enclosing Toby in my arms I spun on the heaving floor and hurled us with slipping feet and every labour-trained muscle back towards Toby’s hiding-place cupboard beside the Stewards’ box door.
The core of Stratton Park racecourse imploded, folding inwards. The staircase ripped and cracked and crashed as its walls collapsed into the well, splitting open into jagged caverns all the rooms alongside.
The Stewards’ door blew open, its glass viewing walls splintering and flying in slicing spears. The terrifying noise deafened. The stands shrieked as they tore apart, wood against wood against brick against concrete against stone against steel.
With Toby beneath me, I fell forwards, scrabbling and seeking for footing so as not to slide back towards the gutted stairs; and the high precarious tower atop all else, the Press and television vantage point, came smashing down through the ceiling beams and plaster above us, plunging in sharpedged pieces at crazy angles across my back and legs. I seemed to stop breathing. Sharp stabs of passing agony stapled me to the floor. Movement became impossible.
Billowing black smoke poured up from the stairs, lung-filling, choking, setting off convulsive coughing when there was no room to cough.
The thunderous noise gradually stopped. Far below, small creaks and intermittent crashes. Everywhere black smoke, grey dust. In me, pain.
‘Dad,’ Toby’s voice said, ‘you’re squashing me.’ He was coughing also. ‘I can’t breathe, Dad.’
I glanced vaguely down. The top of his head, brown-haired, came up as far as my chin. Inappropriately, but how can one help the things one thinks, I thought of his mother’s once frequent complaint – ‘Lee, you’re squashing me’ – and I would raise my weight off her by leaning on my elbows and I’d look into her gleaming laughing eyes and kiss