In a grove of trees headed by an ancient standing stone, near the cricket pitch used by the school in Hungerford where gunman Michael Ryan holed up, a body last night lay covered by a blanket and guarded by a single policeman in the gathering dusk.
Nearby, on the corner of Priory Avenue and Hillside Road on the 1930s residential estate where mayhem had broken loose, a red Datsun, its lights still on and its windscreen smashed, stood parked. Inside was another body, its stained shroud failing to conceal the human form within. That victim, according to one of the local residents standing in bewildered groups along the street, was the father of the estate╒s beat policeman. He had come to visit his son.
Further back along Priory Avenue, the neat privet hedge by Alan Lepetit╒s coal yard presented a gaping, earthy gash where a Ford Transit van had ploughed into it after its driver had been shot through the neck.
Next door, Mr Roy Fox stood by his mini-market, where Mr Lepetit had run across the road, bleeding copiously from a shoulder wound, after seeing the gunman casually approach his children waving his weapons as if they were toys. The doorway of the shop was still spattered with blood, and inside Mr Fox showed the dark stain where his friend had lain in a pool of blood for half an hour until an ambulance arrived. ╥I thought he was going to go, he╒s lost so much blood,╙ Mr Fox said.
Earlier, at about 4pm, Chief Inspector Laurie Fray told reporters: ╥Every time officers from the police or the ambulance have approached the area where the incidents have taken place they╒ve been shot at. There are people lying there and we just can╒t get to them.╙
It was not until 7pm that fire engines were at last able to move into Southview. By that time Ryan╒s house and three adjoining dwellings were gutted. All afternoon, smoke from the blaze had hung over the estate ╤ eerily silent, with the only traffic armoured police vehicles ╤ in a thick pall. Late in the day, the panic of lunch-time still sometimes broke through. ╥I╒ve been at work since 6am and I╒m bloody well not going to let you stop me getting home,╙ a teenage girl shouted at a policeman who blocked her way.
Elsewhere on the estate there was a stunned calm. Residents leaned anxiously from their windows, asking whether it was safe to go out now. Others worried about elderly neighbours left alone. Telephone lines had been cut off by police, but the news about the dead and wounded spread across the estate. People compared notes across hedges and garden gates, conferring in shocked tones about those from their community ╤ the taxi driver they had all known, and Mr Khan, the elderly Pakistani whom everyone knew ╤ who had died in the shootings. Many residents had been unable to get back home from work, and there were relieved and tearful scenes as the cordon relaxed a little after 7pm and those who were simply delayed returned to their families.
