by Alex Palmer
‘Why do you want me to do that, Lucy?’ Grace said, sitting down.
Harrigan sat opposite, watching her as they all listened.
‘I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you with everyone listening!’
Grace glanced at Harrigan who nodded.
‘I can come down there and I can talk to you. That’s no problem.
If we come now, I can talk to you as soon as we get there.’
‘No, let me tell you what I want, Grace. I want to see what you look like. I want to know who you are. I have to look at you, I have to talk to you face to face. So I want you in here looking at me. Looking at me and fixed up for sound.’
Harrigan was shaking his head.
‘Okay, Lucy, we’re coming down. You wait for us there.’
‘No, Grace, you’re not listening to me. I am sick of people fucking lying to me,’ Lucy screamed across the office. ‘When you come here, you’re coming inside to see me and you are going to talk to me. I am telling you something. I have a gun with fifteen bullets in it. Now that’s one for everybody here, one for me, and six left over. Now you are coming in here. Because I have put everything on the line to talk to you.
You are coming in. And you’re going to tell me that you are in ten seconds from now or I am going to start shooting people. You listen to me. I am counting as of now. One. Two. Three. Four. Five … ’
Harrigan gave Grace the faintest of nods.
‘I’ll be there, Lucy. I’ll come in and I’ll talk to you.’
‘You will?’
‘Yes, I will.’ Harrigan leaned his chin on his hands.
‘But you have to promise me you won’t shoot anyone. Will you do that?’
‘As long as they don’t move, or try and do anything silly, they’ll be fine,’ Lucy said. ‘And is that a promise from you that you’ll be here?’
‘Yes, it’s a promise from me,’ Grace replied. ‘So who is there with you, Lucy?’
‘There’s Bronwyn. And Graeme. He’s really pleased to be here, I can see it in his face. There’s this woman and her kid. Lucky kid.
There’s an old lady who doesn’t know what day it is and her husband who looks after her and his sister who looks after him. And there’s this other white-faced guy who’s always here. That’s all.’
‘And you’re not going to hurt them.’
‘Not if they just sit there. But I’m waiting for you, Grace, so you’d better come.’
‘Give me your number, Lucy, so I can call you and tell you where we are and what we’re doing. So you don’t think we’re not coming.’
Lucy read out the number which Harrigan wrote down.
‘Before we go, Lucy, how did you get my number here?’
‘Graeme gave it to me. He knows all about you, Grace. He showed me your picture. I just want to see if that really is you. I’ll see you soon.’
Grace hung up. The room stayed silent as people glanced at each other and waited for Harrigan to speak.
‘We need a negotiator to talk to her. As well as you, don’t we, Grace? The best we’ve got.’ He looked her in the eye, the memory of earlier conversations between them in both their minds at that moment. ‘We’ve got to try and talk you out of this if we can. We’d better hope we can. You’d better get ready to talk to her. Ian and Trev, in my office now. The rest of you, get yourselves ready to go.’
The crowd broke up.
‘Where are you going, Gracie?’ Ian asked, as Grace headed quickly for the exit.
‘I’m going to wash my face and change my blouse,’ she replied grimly. ‘If I’m going to get shot, I want to be wearing clean clothes.’
Harrigan was suddenly in front of her. People stopped to stare.
‘You do not say that, not for any reason, not even as a joke. Do you hear me? None of you are getting shot and that includes you. You take that back.’
‘It wasn’t a joke, Paul. But I didn’t say it anyway,’ she replied, shaken that he should be so angry about something which, for her, was just a way of coping with events way past the limit.
‘Good.’
He walked away, thinking he was glad that she had listened to him for once; others simply noted that she had called the boss by his first name.
In his office, he asked Ian and Trevor to wait while he made his first phone call. He was putting the essentials in place before he did anything else. Negotiators were all very well but sometimes there was no substitute for a reliable marksman or two.
He also had another job to do before he left along with everyone else. He went to Louise, who he had instructed to stay behind, and asked her to email his son.
‘Just tell him what’s going on,’ he said.
He didn’t want Toby to find out by accident through an Internet browser that the girl he thought he loved had been shot dead by police on a rainy morning in Camperdown.
36
Lucy listened as the sirens began to grow louder outside. She smiled and aimed her gun more directly at the preacher.
‘Listen to that, Graeme. And it’s all because I’ve got this. Nothing else would make anyone waste their time on me like that.’
He tried to shift forward to speak to her.
‘Don’t move!’ she snapped and he stopped where he was.
‘Lucy, listen to me. There’s nothing you can take out of this. If you put yourself in my hands, perhaps I can bargain for you. We can try and talk this through somehow.’
She smiled at him in reply.
‘No, Graeme. No way. You just sit there. The only thing I want you to do is keep your mouth shut. It’ll be nice not to hear you talk for a change.’
Briefly, the anger in the preacher’s face was greater than his fear.
Suddenly afraid herself, Lucy tightened her hand around her gun.
‘That’s who you are, isn’t it, Graeme,’ she said, ‘playing all those little games. No, not little games, all those big games. You want to know why I’m here? Because I’m going to deal with this in my own way from now on. I’m not hiding my face this time. You set this up.
This time, you can just sit there and be part of it.’
‘Do you want me to go to gaol with you, Lucy? Is that it?’ he said, taking just enough courage to speak.
She laughed. ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen yet. I really don’t. It depends on all sorts of things. I’m not expecting that I’m going to walk out of here alive and I don’t care if I don’t. But you just sit there. Don’t talk, don’t say a word. Don’t even think anything. That goes for the rest of you as well.’
The others remained huddled against the wall, too frightened to think of moving. Bronwyn cried silently. The child began to cry softly as well, leaning against his mother, his voice echoing beneath the now quieter sound of the rain on the tin roof. Briefly, Lucy closed her eyes.
‘Keep him quiet,’ she said dangerously, her voice shaking and her hands squeezing on the gun.
The child was hushed. Lucy met Graeme’s eyes and thought, you don’t really give a shit for anyone, do you? No one. You don’t care about me.
I don’t know what you do care about, but it’s no one here. She did not say it. She put her free hand on her phone and waited for the call.
There was no such silence in the street outside, it was filled with activity. In the midst of the multitude of requirements this operation had
— including once again keeping the media at bay — Harrigan was fixed on two simpler items. The first was the line of leadlight windows in the upper storey of the hall that looked out along the laneway. The second was a small group of armed men wearing bulletproof vests over nondescript blue overalls who had finally arrived at the scene. When they drew up in their van, Harrigan resisted the urge to say, thanks for taking your time about it. They seemed to him to move with deliberate slowness.
They carried their high-powered rifles with the ease of practice.
‘Where do you want us? And what do you want us to do?’ the chief overall-wearer asked.
‘There’s two places I need you,’ Harrigan said. ‘We have to negotiate one of them first. But I’ve already started on the other. Just around here.’
He led the man down the narrow laneway where he had two officers on temporary scaffolding, checking the dark blue windows near the back of the building.
‘If we can get that window out without being noticed — which is a pretty big ask, I admit, but I’m going to see what we can do — I want one of you up there and ready to fire. The other place I want you is opposite the front door — in case I can get it open. You can deploy everyone else around the building. I want you to make sure the target does not use her gun. I want her neutralised. The last person who gets hurt is my officer. Is that clear enough?’
‘We can do that,’ came the slow reply. ‘Nice to have a challenge.
We’ll get set up.’
You do that, Harrigan thought as he walked away, don’t rush it too much now.
In the centre of a smaller crowd, Grace was having a sound device adjusted. She stood with the negotiator, a big woman with a little-girl blonde haircut and dressed in brightly coloured clothing too tight for her large frame. Grace spoke to Harrigan as soon as he appeared.
‘I should call her. She’ll be getting very edgy.’
He did not reply. He looked at his watch and then the negotiator.
‘I think we are pushing it,’ she said.
‘You’ve briefed my officer?’
‘I have.’
‘Okay, Grace, you can call her,’ Harrigan said.
Lucy answered the phone at once.
‘You took your fucking time, Grace,’ she said, angrily.
‘I’m here now, Lucy, I’m outside. So what do you want to do now?’
‘I want you to come inside.’
‘How are we going to do that?’
‘I open the door and you walk in.’
‘You open the door?’
‘Maybe not me. I’ll get someone else to do it. I’ve got just the person,’ Lucy said, looking at the child.
‘Lucy, before we do anything, I need to talk to you. Just to sort a few things out.’
‘There’s nothing to sort out.’
‘There is something, Lucy.’
‘What?’
‘Will you leave the doors open for me? Those wooden doors that open onto the foyer. Just so people out here can see me through those glass doors at the front and know what’s going on.’
‘Is that all? Is that so they can get a clear shot at me?’
‘It’s so the people out here can see what’s happening.’
‘Yeah, I don’t care about that. I’ll do something else as well. Once you’re in here, I’ll let everyone else but you and Graeme out. How’s that?’
‘That’s a good thing to do. Will we organise that?’
‘Yeah, let’s do that. So — are you coming in now?’
‘Lucy, will you let me ask you something first? Why do you want to see me? What are you going to do? I would like to know that.’
The negotiator was nodding her head.
‘I told you. I want to look at you. I want to see what you really look like. I want to talk to you. I told you all that. There are seven people in here, Grace. Now I can just shoot three of them if I have to. And then maybe you’ll come in.’
‘Are you going to shoot me? Is that what you want to do?’
‘That depends on you.’
‘How does it depend on me?’
‘You’d better come in and find out, hadn’t you,’ Lucy snapped. ‘I am sick of talking to people. I’ve told you what I want. No more talking like this. Finish!’
Outside on the street, the negotiator shook her head.
‘Okay, Lucy. I’ll be in there very soon. We’re just getting the sound right for you. I’ll call you back as soon as I can. Just give me a little more time.’
‘Don’t you keep me waiting too long.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Okay,’ the negotiator said once the conversation had ended, ‘when she says, don’t keep her waiting, she means it. You have to keep her logic focused on not using that gun. She needs to be given a reason for not using it. You have to play a waiting game in there. Keep her talking. She does want to talk. Don’t lie to her whatever you do. If she thinks you’re lying to her, you’re probably gone.’
The negotiator spoke in a voice at odds with both her appearance and her words, one that offered the listener a sense of immediate reassurance. Grace drank this reassurance down as a temporary relief for the impossible.
‘That isn’t enough,’ Harrigan said. ‘Keep her talking? What else can you tell me?’
‘We have no leverage,’ the negotiator replied. ‘It’s a matter of the choice you make. She’s decided she’s got nothing to lose. She’s made her choice. She will kill people, I am sure.’
A sound technician from the nearby van appeared amongst them without any noticeable concern for what he might be interrupting.
‘I need a sound check,’ he said to Grace. ‘Can you say something once I’m back in my van?’
Grace, who had lit a cigarette, smiled. On a signal from the man, she sang, Hey, yeah, you with the sad face/Come up to my place andlive it up/Hey, yeah, you beside the dance floor/Whattya cry for let’slive it up.
The technician laughed as he leaned out of the van door. ‘Clear as a bell,’ he called.
Harrigan found himself scratching his chin.
‘Thanks,’ he said to the negotiator, ‘I need to talk to my officer now.
I’ll call you when we need you next.’
The woman disappeared into the crowd.
‘It’s just a song I like, Paul. My first boyfriend used to sing it to me,’
Grace said with a smile before he could speak.
‘You can’t go in there if you can’t see this through. You want to walk away? Now’s your chance.’
‘I know that,’ she said, dropping ash on the wet road, ‘I can do it.’
‘You haven’t put any make-up on,’ he said.
Grace almost said that no, she hadn’t had the energy for some reason but she had changed her knickers, that was something. She pushed down the desire to laugh out loud.
‘No, and just when I need the protection too,’ she said, looking away.
‘Look at me,’ he said, and she did. ‘Just keep it calm. Do what the negotiator says — play for time. Call her now and talk some more.
You don’t go in there until I say you do.’
Again, Lucy answered the phone at once.
‘Hi, Lucy. We’re still out here. It won’t be long now.’
‘And you’re still taking your fucking time, Grace. What are you up to?’
‘We’re about there with the sound, Lucy, and I’m having a cigarette before I come in. I need one.’
‘You smoke? Why don’t you bring them in with you?’
‘Sure. We can both have one.’
Last cigarettes, Grace thought.
Lucy laughed in the gap of silence, she might have heard this thought on the airwaves.
‘I’m telling you, Grace, don’t think about it. I don’t know what’s going to happen. Everything could be just fine.’
‘That’s nice. I haven’t always managed to have everything just fine in my life.’
‘No, me neither. I’d like to stop fucking around. I’m sending someone to open the door in five minutes. You’d better be there. Or you’re going to hear shooting. And then there’s only going to be one person who’ll walk away from this, and that’ll be the person who opened the door.’
Grace hung up and dropped a second packet of cigarettes in her pocket. Harrigan contacted his ring-in carpenters.
‘How are you going on that window?’ he asked.
‘The seal’s very brittle so it’s looking more hopeful than it did.
We’re doing our best. But it’s going to take time.’
‘Just do it,’ Harrigan said.
‘Wait he
re,’ he told Grace and walked across to the house opposite to speak to the marksman. He was set up in a room where the heavy green lounge suite, the radio, carpet, even the ducks on the wall were loving recreations from the fifties and sixties. His rifle was trained through the open window, past an effigy of Elvis, onto the front doors of the Temple.
‘We’ve got the door open. Remember, I want her neutralised.’
‘No worries,’ the man replied.
‘I’ll be outside the van. Make sure you communicate with me whenever you have to.’
He went back outside to speak to Grace, who was dropping yet another cigarette butt on the bitumen.
‘You’ll be fine,’ he said to her. ‘I’ll buy you a lime and soda at the Maryborough when this is over with.’
‘We can do better than that, Paul,’ she said with a grin. ‘We’ll go upmarket, where they sell fresh lime. That’d be better.’
‘Anything you want,’ he replied.
He gave people their last-minute instructions, they took up their positions. Harrigan squatted down near the sound van where he could see inside the hall. If he discounted being almost shot dead in an inner city alleyway ten years ago, watching Grace walk across the open space towards the door of the Temple rated as the worst moment of his working life.
A dowdy-looking woman had opened the wooden doors between the foyer and the hall and stood waiting by the glass doors, but instead of running out as soon as Grace went inside, as he had expected, she turned and followed her back in. Very shortly afterwards a small group of people appeared in the tiny foyer and came running down the steps into the street, where they were met and spirited away by his waiting officers. There was no woman and child. Harrigan trained binoculars into the hall and saw Lucy sitting on the floor holding the child in her arms. The marksman contacted him at that moment.
‘I can’t get a clear aim at her. She’s using the child as a shield,’ he said.
‘Yeah, I can see,’ Harrigan replied. ‘Just keep waiting.’
Inside the Temple, Grace watched the small group of lost souls disappear out of the building into the grey weather. Her footsteps were too loud on the bare floorboards, the air around her was icy cold; the atmosphere gave the extraordinary sense of the auditorium as a place without exits. Only the preacher, lying face down on the floor, and the woman who had guided her in remained. The woman was standing near the wall, her arms hanging loosely, an expression of appalling fear on her face. Lucy sat towards the back of the hall, holding the weeping child in her lap.