‘Get back,’ the father shouted over the train. The attendant looked up and stopped, his hands by his side, his blade still gripped tightly. For a second, no one moved. Then he dropped the blade, which landed with a metallic clatter, and sprinted along the platform and through the exit gate that led to the rest of the park.

#

Fletcher felt only a crushing urge to run. He wasn’t supposed to run, that hadn’t been the plan. He was supposed to have stayed at the ride, singling out the Muslims first, but also targeting other Asians and blacks if he could, taking them out one by one until he was stopped by the police or the army or some have-a-go-hero, until he could fulfil his destiny as a martyr. For weeks he had thought of nothing apart from the moment when his suffering would finally be over, not in an empty gesture, but a statement so bold it would trigger an earthquake around the world. But surrounded by the gore and the blood, all those carefully drawn-out plans had evaporated. It was not that he wanted to live, he simply did not want to die, not there, not then.

No one was following as he sprinted, head down, through the rain. He pulled the sweatshirt over his head, noticing as he did that his hands were smeared crimson. He wiped them on the material before throwing it into a hedge. Free from his uniform, wearing a long-sleeved grey T-shirt, he pushed through the crowd, who were unaware of the raw, desperate scenes two hundred metres away, and made his way to the staff entrance.

The winter sun had finally emerged from the curtains of cloud and was casting honeyed beams of light on the theme park and the distant North Downs. It was beautiful. It was England at its most glorious and it was worth fighting for. Fletcher pulled out his key ring, fumbled with the padlock and then yanked his bike free from the rack. Raising a hand to the security guard as he passed, he cycled on, propelled by adrenaline and wild giddiness, around the barrier and out of the park.

DAY 1

Wednesday Afternoon

Chilton Park, Kent

Detective Superintendent Sophie Gabriel spotted the staff entrance to Chilton Park a fraction of a second after her driver passed it.

‘Bugger, it’s there – back there,’ she said. Her driver, Detective Sergeant Jorell Campbell, braked hard and swerved into a lay-by, using it to do an imprudent U-turn across four lanes before heading back up the road. Ten seconds later, he threw the Volvo around the corner into the narrow track, sending a water bottle tumbling across the back seat.

Campbell opened his window and waved his ID card at the rat-faced security man on the barrier and was ushered through, past two cars and a TV news van parked on the verge. Two journalists clutching notepads shouted out as they drove under the lifted barrier, but Gabriel didn’t catch the questions.