Author's Notes: I wrote this as one, longish story. I've tried to break it into parts for ease of reading, but I'm afraid it may be rather awkwardly done. The basic springboard for this story came from the wonderful scene referenced from the Inspector Morse episode The Twilight of the Gods.
Warning: This is a much more violent story than any I have ever written before or ever thought I would. There is a lot of death, and though I didn't try to get graphic, as a writer I did try to make the horror and sadness of it to come through clearly.
Disclaimer: This is purely for fan purposes. No copyright infringement intended.
Shooting on the Green
When the first shot was fired, most of the people on the green weren't quite sure what they had heard. Even the first victim didn't know what had slammed into him and sent him reeling to the soft grass.
Sergeant James Hathaway who had been interviewing a possible witness glanced up in the sudden quiet following the loud, incongruous report. He knew what he thought he had heard, but he couldn't believe he was right. Not in the quiet of a bright summer day on a small green in a sleepy village near the edge Oxford.
It fell then to Inspector Robbie Lewis, who had also been interviewing a possible witness to a crime that no longer seemed at all significant, to recognize exactly what had happened and sound the alarm. He knew instantly what he had heard. He'd heard it before, the day Gwladys Probert had been shot in the open area outside the Sheldonian Theatre.
He had stood beside Chief Inspector Morse in the midst of all the other spectators there watching the procession, and when the sound of the shot had crashed through the air, he'd watched the Welch Canary-Bird slump to the ground. He'd turned in shock and disbelief to Morse for direction and instruction and found that the man was too stunned by the unfolding events to give him either. It was the sergeant who had led the way to the downed woman, and the chief inspector who had numbly followed.
And all the time it had taken him to reach her, Lewis had been assuring himself he was mistaken…this was Oxford, not London or Belfast or New York City. Gunmen did not open fire in the University…it just wasn't done. It was only when the horrified medical man raised his white face to his own and Lewis had seen for himself the bleeding bullet hole that he had finally accepted the truth his instincts had been telling him all along.
He'd put his training to use then. "Everyone, get away! Clear the area! Get back! Get back! Everybody under cover!" The crowd had scrambled in awakened alarm at his cry, and it had taken only a few moments to get everyone safely indoors. There'd been a commendation placed in his file over his fast acting. Some of the academics gathered there that day had filed complaints against him for what they saw as a panicked overreaction…after all there was no mad gunman in the Bodleian that day, only a man bent on vengeance for forty-year-old atrocities; people could have been hurt unnecessarily rushing to safety. But even the Chief Constable had stuck by his man on the scene. There'd been a statement in the local papers praising the sergeant's quick thinking, and Chris Hoyle from the Oxford Mail had thrown his two cents in on Lewis' behalf.
But Lewis had been all too aware he hadn't acted quickly enough. All that wasted time between hearing the shot and accepting that was what he had heard…if there had been a madman at the theatre that day—how many would have died because he was too busy telling himself it couldn't happen, not in Oxford?
Chief Superintendent Strange had listened to his self-recriminations and authoritatively stated, "You mustn't feel that way, Sergeant. No one raised the call any sooner; almost certainly there were men in that crowd who had served in Her Majesty's Armed Forces and should have known what they'd heard. But, you, just an everyday English copper? Not even a huntsman, are you? No, Lewis. You acted correctly. And if it's any consolation, if, God forbid, you're ever in such a situation again…you'll know."
Strange's words had been all too prophetic, for that day on the green Inspector Lewis did indeed know it was a gunshot that had just intruded on an ordinary summer day in the small green at the edge of Oxford.
"Everybody get down! Clear the area! Get under cover!" he was shouting even before the echoing reverberations had completely faded away. Thirty to forty people had been taking advantage of the beautiful day and were scattered over the open expanse of the green. "This way!" he called to those closest to him. "Get behind the wall, here! This way!" He himself ran in the opposite direction, farther into the open. He grabbed people as he ran, pushing them back behind him toward the low stonewall facing the small brook still contently bubbling along on its merry way through the center of the green. "Get to the wall!" he ordered them and kept running.
He had been a natural runner in school, and he'd never failed to bring home a ribbon for the kids when he managed to attend their parent days. Even now, at his age, he could still outrun the young Hathaway when the situation called for it. And today…that first bullet had taken down a lad, just a child, eight—maybe nine, no older. Lewis ran for all he was worth, slowing only to push others towards the relative safety of the wall.
He went down on his knees beside the child and panted out a soft, "Hush, hush now" to the boy as he pushed his hand desperately against the bleeding wound in the child's side. Years of pathologists' reports told him things could have been much worse. Just a little higher and the bullet would have hit the liver; as it were there was blood, a lot of blood, but…even from such a small body, it was less than that would have amounted to he assured himself. "Hush," he said again to the child whose cries had only grown shriller with his arrival. "I'm going to get you—" he started to say as he began to gather the lad up in his arms, but he didn't finish because at that moment an entire barrage of bullets rained down on those still in the open.
Lewis threw himself over the lad while trying to keep the pressure on the boy's wound. He hunched over him and waited to die. He'd faced a bullet before on another beautiful summer's day. He'd survived that one only because Chief Inspector Morse had arrived to save the day. This one…surely by now someone would have called for help, but the nearest unit wouldn't be close enough to stop the bullets flying all around the green right now. A woman only a few paces from them suddenly gave a muffled cry and was thrown to the ground almost on top of them.
The boy under Lewis screamed, " We're going to die!" Lewis thought it was only too probable.