bang bang bang bang

It was hot today, mid-afternoon. We were working, photoshopping an image. We heard bangs. And then one of the dogs started barking. “What’s she barking at? Is there some trouble?” my colleague asked.

As I stared at the image we were working on, half-listening to her, three men ran past our office, down into the gardens behind our building. “They’ve got guns” someone shouted. But now they were hidden by bush; we couldn’t see them, but they could see us. They were still there; the dog kept barking at a certain point. There was a moment of clear and present danger.

Someone called the front office to get help; someone else called her home, 50m away, and told her kids to lock the door. A police car roared up and two officers – who did not appear to be armed – leapt out and ran into the garden.

When it’s real, you realise how out of your depth you are. I’d never been in a situation like this before. They have guns and they could shoot us. I write it and it sounds simple. But there was that moment when I realised it, and I felt frightened and outraged at the same time. How pointless it would be if I were shot, if I died here, in this office.

On the one hand, it’s cops and robbers and bang bang bang bang! It is exciting. But on the other it’s an awful kind of quiet. They have guns and they could shoot us. Out of the blue like this, one of us could be shot and die. What if it’s me, what if it’s her. On a sunny afternoon at work. For absolutely nothing.

**

They’d held up a car nearby and stolen two cash boxes (so prearranged: they knew who to watch for – when – where to wait – where to run). They’d fired four shots at people as they ran off; one box was hidden/dropped in their getaway, but they held on to the second. One man’s shoe fell off in our yard. No one stopped to get it. The police ran and chased them through our gardens, but they vanished over a fence.