In the old days, it would have taken quite an effort to bring the best in the business in London together with the best in the business in Sydney, but with Skype they could do it in real time.
It is a surreal feeling to hear somebody like Wolf say, ‘Get me Scotland Yard.’
It’s a line that I’d never heard before, other than on TV, but within minutes, Scotland Yard was on the line – not the phone line, but on Skype, saying, ‘How can we help?’
The technology made it easy. Wolf had his people send images from the CCTV – live footage and still shots of Ali Khan and the device he appeared to be wearing – over the internet to London so Scotland Yard’s experts could examine it. He sent the same images to a contact at the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and to the military college in Canberra, where explosives experts who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan could look at them.
He told them all, ‘We have a young man slumped against the glass door, blocking the exit. We’ve got the door locked. We’ve tried to reach him by phone and by loudspeaker. He’s not picking up. We rang the phone for so long the shop girl went to pick it up!’
One of the Scotland Yard guys said, ‘Did you let her?’
Wolf said, ‘No. It’s not . . . I mean, I thought I should keep trying him.’
The Scotland Yard guy said, ‘He’s not moving? He didn’t go to stop her?’
Wolf said, ‘No.’
‘And you’re sure you haven’t missed anything? Nobody called the shopping centre this morning to say there’s a bomb, and why it’s there? You haven’t missed the call?’
Wolf said, ‘I don’t think so. We’ve got people going back through the records. As far as we know, no one’s called to say it’s a bomb threat, or what it’s all about. We’re lifting fingerprints as fast as we can, trying to find out who this guy is, but at the moment, we’ve got no idea, and he’s not saying anything.’
‘Well, then, why don’t you let her pick up?’
‘Her?’
‘The hostage. The one who went to answer the first time. He didn’t go for her, did he?’
Wolf mulled it over, but what choice did he have? Mouse was, by this stage, waving her hands high above her head, like a netballer does when they’re standing undefended in some unnoticed corner of the court trying to get somebody to throw them the ball.
I could see what Wolf was doing. He was weighing the risk. He was thinking, ‘If I get her to pick up the phone and Ali Khan jumps up, what then? On the other hand, what choice have I got?’ So they went through the loudspeaker again, saying, ‘We’re going to call the phone on the counter,’ and this time, Mouse picked up.
‘Hello,’ she said, ‘Is this the police?’
She was looking through the glass storefront, trying to make out where we were, across the atrium. Wolf stood up from behind his makeshift desk. He held his end of the phone high above his head in one hand, and his police badge high above his head in the other hand.
‘This is the police. I’m Wolf Boehm. Who is this?’ he said.
Mouse said, ‘It’s Mouse . . . my name’s Nichole Harding. I work here . . . why have you locked us in here? Can you open the door?’
Wolf paused, then said, ‘Nichole, we’re not actually sure what the situation is that we’re dealing with here.’
Mouse said, ‘There’s a guy in here with what looks like a bomb. Somebody’s locked us in here. We can’t get out. We’re stuck. Can you open the door? We want to get out.’
Wolf said, ‘I locked the door, Nichole. Look, that young man by the door there, do you know him?’
Mouse looked over at Ali Khan. He hadn’t moved so much as an inch. Mouse said, ‘Never saw him before in my life.’
Wolf said, ‘You said he looks like he’s got a bomb?’
Mouse said, ‘It looks like a bomb to me.’
Wolf said, ‘What makes you think it’s a bomb?’
Mouse said, ‘It smells like petrol.’
Wolf said, ‘Okay.’
Mouse was getting exasperated. She said, ‘Can’t you see it? On the camera? He was showing it to the camera before. Are you going to open the door?’
Wolf said, ‘The thing is, Nichole, we’re trying to make contact with the young man but, as you noticed, he wouldn’t answer the phone. Have you asked the young man what he wants?’
Mouse was incredulous. She said, ‘What do you mean, have I asked him? Why would I ask him? Why don’t you ask him?’
Wolf said, ‘We were hoping he’d take the call but he didn’t. You took the call. It’s brave of you. I’m grateful. But we have no idea what this young man wants.’
Mouse said, ‘Jesus Christ, why don’t you just ask him?’ and with that, she pulled the phone away from her ear and held it out toward Ali Khan, as if she was offering to pass the call over to him. She said, ‘Do you want to talk to the police?’
Ali Khan didn’t respond. Mouse said, ‘Hey! You! Can you hear me? Can you understand me? Do you want to talk to the police?’
I looked over at Wolf. I knew him well enough to know that his heart would have been beating like a bird under a blanket, and that he’d be desperately worried that Mouse, who just doesn’t know the meaning of the term ‘kid gloves’, was going to get herself hurt, and he was right about that. Mouse looked cheesed off. She waited for a few seconds to see if Ali Khan was going to answer and, when he didn’t, she gave a great big sigh and said, ‘I don’t think he wants to talk to you. Can’t you just open the door? We want to get out. Not just me, these guys,’ she added, waving the phone at Kimmi K and Mitchell, both of whom were sitting, tight as balls, on the floor. Kimmi’s arms were wrapped around her upright knees. Mitchell’s arm, though, was around Kimmi’s shoulder.
Wolf said, ‘What’s worrying me is I don’t know what that device is that the young man is wearing . . . what will happen if we try to move him, what’s behind it, how it works . . . do you think you can you describe it for me?’
Mouse said, ‘It’s an old box, like a tin box. But look, you have to open the door.’
Wolf pressed on, ‘Is the box resting on him or how’s it attached to him, Nichole?’
‘There’s a thick chain on it. It’s attached to his neck. It’s locked on with one of those U-shaped bicycle lock things.’
Wolf said, ‘Can you see any type of timer on it? Has it got wires that you can see?’
Mouse said, ‘I haven’t looked at it that closely and I’m not going to.’
Wolf said, ‘I understand.’
Mouse said, ‘Are you going to open the door or not?’
Wolf said, ‘The thing is, Nichole, we don’t know what his intentions are.’
By this stage, Mouse was getting serious points from me for her sassiness. She said, ‘He wants to blow us up, probably. That’s why you should open the door. There’s other people in here. It’s not just me.’
Wolf said, ‘I understand, Nichole. Listen, given that he won’t talk to me, do you feel like you can pass on a message to him?’
Mouse said, ‘Whatever.’
Wolf said, ‘Okay, Nichole, can you ask the young lad to move away from the door? Explain to him, if he’s got a problem, we can solve that problem, whatever it might be. But he needs to let you and the other people in the store leave.’
Mouse said, ‘Sure. I can tell him that.’
She put the receiver against her bosom, looked at Ali Khan and said, ‘The cops said, whatever you want, they can sort it out. But you have to tell them what you want.’
Ali Khan hadn’t, until that point, been looking at Mouse. His head had been hanging down, over the tin box on his chest and, for a while at least, he’d actually had his hands over his ears, like a toddler does when he wants the noise to stop, but Mouse wasn’t having any of that. She started to shout, ‘Can you hear me? Why won’t you answer? WHAT DO YOU WANT?’
Ali Khan jerked his head up, looked directly at Mouse and scrambled to his feet. Mouse jumped back. Ali Khan took a step toward her. Mouse held her ground.
We all held our breath. Was he going to take the phone or what? He was moving pretty slowly, much more slowly than when he’d first walked into Surf City. Mouse held the receiver out to him, urging him – with her expression and the nodding of her head – to take it.
And take it Ali Khan did.
He took the receiver from Mouse and, without taking his eyes from her, put it gently back into its cradle.
From where I was standing, I couldn’t hear the line go dead but Wolf obviously could. He swore. He said, ‘Jesus Christ.’ The team around him looked at each other, as if to say, ‘What now?’
For his part, Ali Khan turned away from Mouse. He shuffled back toward the door, where he resumed his position, with his back curved against the glass and his feet out in front of him, the only difference being that he was now leaking drops of petrol all over the floor.
‘I want to get a better look at this guy,’ Wolf said. ‘Give me that control.’
He moved the keyboard that controlled the cameras closer to his own hands.
‘Which are the keys?’
Foto showed Wolf how to zoom in, using the downward arrows. As he did so, the camera angle shifted slightly from Ali Khan’s face toward the back of the shop – and that’s when we all saw him: right against the back wall, almost hidden behind what Mouse called the ‘pricey stuff’, there stood another man.
Chapter Eleven
‘I had completely forgotten that guy was there!’ Mouse told me, in one of those conversations we’ve had.
‘He’d been my first customer – not even my first customer because I hadn’t even had a chance to serve him. He’d been waiting at the door when I’d come to open the shop, saying what a hurry he was in and he needed to get something quickly.
‘I’d sent him to the back of the shop and, I don’t know, I can’t explain it, I just wasn’t thinking about him when the phone rang.
‘I was really worried about the little girl, Kimmi. She wasn’t crying but she looked like she might start. She was wrapped up so tight on the floor and she was trembling like jelly. Mitchell was okay. He was sitting next to Kimmi. He had his arm around her shoulders, like he trying to comfort her. I just hadn’t given this other guy any thought. He’d gone down the back, and when things went all pear-shaped, he must have thrown himself against the back wall, hidden in the old lady nighties or something. But then, after the first phone call I had with the police, they spotted him. They came over the intercom saying, “You, in the back! Put your hands up!” and I got the shock of my life.’
Roger Callaghan didn’t hesitate. When the camera found him standing at the back of the shop, and police called out to him, he immediately stuck both his hands in the air.
I leaned forward, trying to get a glimpse of the laptop screen over Wolf’s shoulder. Roger was holding something.
‘What’s he got?’ someone said.
‘Is that a gun?’
It wasn’t a gun. Roger was holding a plastic hanger with a bra swinging from it. Not exactly terrifying. Wolf pressed the button for the intercom and spoke directly to the room. He said, ‘You stay there. You don’t move.’ As requests go, it was probably superfluous. Roger looked to me like he was, excuse my French, shitting himself.
I mentioned earlier that police had located four SIM cards in Cups and Saucy. That made sense: they’d matched one SIM card to Mouse, one to Kimmi K, one to Mitchell – and they’d been working on the assumption that the fourth SIM card was in a phone in Ali Khan’s pocket, but that wasn’t right.
Ali Khan had no phone on him.
Police had run data from the fourth SIM card through their technology system. It had come up as registered to a Melbourne real estate agent by the name of Roger Callaghan, principal of Roger Callaghan Real Estate.
They’d called the office and spoken to Roger’s PA or EA, or whatever the poor girls who have to cover for their bosses are called these days. She’d told them that Roger wasn’t yet in the office but that wasn’t unusual. He sometimes didn’t come in until after lunch. She couldn’t think of a reason why Roger would be in Sydney – so police were thinking, was it possible that Roger’s phone had been stolen and was being used by somebody in the siege in Sydney?
That’s about where the investigation was at when Roger Callaghan himself turned up inside Cups and Saucy, holding a bra.
He called out, ‘Can you hear me?’
By this point, Wolf had the whole shop wired for sound. The loudspeaker system also operates in reverse, as most intercoms do. We could hear the people in Cups and Saucy breathing. Wolf said, ‘We can hear you. Who are you?’
Roger said, ‘I’m nobody!’ How right he was.
Wolf said, ‘Do you know that man by the door?’
Roger said, ‘No way! Get us out of here.’
He still had his hands in the air, and he was still holding the bra. Wolf said, ‘Can you identify yourself?’ and the man said, ‘I’m Roger Callaghan. I’m from Melbourne. I flew into Sydney this morning. Open the door!’
So, that checked out. He didn’t live in Sydney. He was from Melbourne. In days to come, we’d discover that he’d been seeing a girl who lived in Sydney and it was just bad luck that he’d flown up that particular morning to visit her. Yes, he was supposed to be at work but he was besotted. Whatever people might think, I do understand the concept of lust. Roger had gone to Cups and Saucy to buy this girl something he could present to her as she opened the door for him, hopefully with her arms already open. Like most blokes, he had in mind something sexy, which means the present wasn’t really for her, it was for him, but hey, I’m told that’s what some men are like.
I had no way of knowing this then, but Roger was also one of those people – well, put it this way: there are some people who, when you strip away the ego and the ambition, you’ve got nothing left.
Roger Callaghan was like that. Take away his ego, you’d have no Roger. He’d read every self-help book on earth, particularly those designed to get him ahead of his fellow man. He’d read all of Anthony Robbins and Dale Carnegie and Who Moved My Cheese?’ and What Colour Is Your Parachute? and The Art of War. His appetite for books about people who had made it bigger than him was insatiable: he carried a copy of Paul Barry’s The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer and the follow-up, Who Wants to Be a Billionaire? around in his car and I have absolutely no doubt that had he personally been asked that question, before those events at Surf City, Roger Callaghan would have said, ‘Me!’
He was hugely ambitious. As far as I can tell, it had been the way pretty much since he was born.
Roger came bouncing into the world in May 1968. To give you an idea of what his sense of humour was like, I heard that he used to go around telling people he was born ‘nine months after Father’s Day, so I guess we know what my dad got for a present that year!’
He already had an older brother, and before long he had a younger brother, too. That made Roger the middle child. I have some theories about middle children. Firstborn children are special: they were the first and, at least for a while, they were the only; the last born is special because they’re the baby.
Middle children get squeezed. They’re neither the first nor the last. It can do some of them the world of good: they have to make a bit of noise to get any attention, and that can turn them into high achievers. Roger was a classic in that respect. His parents were nice people. His dad, Michael Callaghan, is a doctor at St Vincent’s in Melbourne. He’s now aged seventy-eight and is still seeing the odd, favourite patient. Roger’s mum, Cheryl Callaghan, was a teacher before she retired to raise her three boys.
Roger’s parents sent him – sent all three of their boys – to one of the local private schools, St Kevin’s. Roger was the only one they didn’t have to pay for: he got an academic scholarship, and one for sport, too, which his parents handed back so some other child might benefit. He played cricket in summer and AFL in winter – like all the Callaghan boys, he barracked for Melbourne – and he rowed, and he could ski.
The family was absolutely middle class, and maybe even wealthy, but Roger’s father was old-fashioned. He didn’t believe in giving his sons everything. He wanted all the boys to get part-time jobs, pretty much from age fifteen, so they’d know the value of a dollar earned. He liked to quote Bob Dylan, saying, ‘There’s nothing so helpless as a rich man’s child.’
Roger’s older brother, Michael, had a paper round; the younger brother, Kevin, worked part-time at the local golf course, collecting stray balls and helping out in the pro-shop; but when the time came for Roger to choose a part-time job, he decided to go into real estate. The dad of one of his friends from school was principal of a local agency; he had a flash car and flash suits, and Roger was the type to be impressed by all that.
From the age of sixteen, Roger was a regular at weekend auctions, standing near his friend’s dad with a clipboard in hand, pointing his pen at the buyers, and scribbling the numbers down on a piece of paper, keeping an eye on the bids. This was the 1980s, and there wasn’t much of a boom underway, not compared to the boom that was coming, but Roger was a natural-born salesman. He loved to land a deal. He couldn’t get enough of the scene: the vendors huddled inside the house that was going under the hammer, chewing their fingernails and trying not to look desperate; the buyers rugged up in the cold outside, blokes trying to feign a bit of confidence, bidding with rolled-up newspapers, their wives hanging on to their elbows, urging caution.
Two months into his HSC, Roger dropped out of St Kevin’s in favour of a real estate career. His parents were horrified. He’d been getting straight As. He was on track for what his father called ‘one of the professions’ – medicine, law – but Roger couldn’t give up the adrenalin of the auctions, the massive rush he got when a sale went through. There’s no question that his father tried to get him to reconsider, but Roger was quickly cashed up, and then cocky, and his father saw the battle was lost. His son was addicted to fat commissions and fast cars; to salary packaging and tax dodging; to Saturday nights at strip clubs, with a dozen naked women.
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