Grace had thought about this. She’d had a similar encounter with the manager on Friday, when she’d stowed the Klee in her safe-deposit box. Today it was her intention to clean out the box, never to return. She’d be missed eventually; Ely and his staff would scratch their heads over her-but that would be later, maybe weeks later, when it didn’t matter. Arousing their curiosity today was quite different. So she said she wondered if they could sit in his office and discuss some of the VineTrust’s business banking opportunities.
‘Certainly. Follow me.’
Grace followed. Behind her the housepainter was saying, ‘…open a business account for, you know, me painting business.’
The words faded to nothing as Ely shut his door. Grace sat erect on the chair facing Ely’s desk. She was never coquettish. She never flirted or signalled, consciously or unconsciously, but men always responded to her as if she did these things. Rowan Ely beamed at her as if his assistance to this beautiful woman had been special, and especially noted by her. It gave him a peculiar glow.
They talked for a while. He showed her brochures, swung his computer monitor around to show graphs full of brightly coloured lines. They settled on one of his ‘products’ and then he was escorting her out to the foyer, chatting away, saying she should come earlier next time, they were about to close, and if she came earlier they could have a cup of tea and a chat, even a proper drink, his eyes on her chest the whole time.
That’s why she noticed the shotgun before he did.
She shifted her gaze to the man holding it, and recalled that the housepainter had been wearing dark glasses, a black beanie and a bristly moustache earlier, when she’d entered the bank. The beanie was over his face now, but the point was, she’d stuffed up. After all, she was the hiding-in-plain-sight expert, and should have been able to tell when someone else was doing it. Instead, like an idiot, she’d been concerned for the bank’s carpet, hoping the guy didn’t have paint on the bottoms of his boots. And now he was waving some kind of sawn-off shotgun in her face.
47
It was Joy, the senior teller, who’d activated the silent alarm. The gunman had ordered her to step back from her window, but then he was distracted by the sudden emergence of Mr Ely and Mrs Grace from the manager’s office, so she’d darted forward, pressed the red button, darted back again.
But Challis didn’t learn this until many hours later. Right now all he knew was an alarm had sounded at the police station, a handful of Waterloo uniforms under Jeff Greener had responded, and he and Murphy had a siege on their hands.
The first thing he did was try the bank’s back door. Locked. He went around to the High Street entrance. Also locked. Then someone on the inside opened the venetian blind briefly. He saw a huddle of people in the middle of the main room, controlled by a man wearing a balaclava and pointing a shotgun. The blind was closed again.
So he phoned the bank. Rowan Ely answered, sounding frightened, and Challis said, ‘Rowan, I need to talk to him.’
He heard muffled sounds, as though Ely was holding the phone to his chest, then the manager was back, his voice crackling in Challis’s ear: ‘He says you don’t call him, he calls you,’ and the connection was cut.
This was the heart-in-the-mouth stage, adrenaline fuelled, a sense of sand running out, and Challis’s chest tightened. He turned to Pam Murphy and ordered the closure of High Street and its side streets and alleyways for two hundred metres in each direction. ‘Nobody allowed in, and shopkeepers and shoppers to be screened before being allowed out.’
‘Boss.’
Then he made a number of phone calls. First, the Force Response Unit; second, a hostage negotiator; third, reinforcements from other Peninsula stations; fourth, the superintendent.
‘Just in case you feel tempted to complain to the press about resources, Inspector,’ said McQuarrie, ‘how about I put a bomb under Force Response and the negotiators?’
‘I’ve already contacted them, sir,’ said Challis.
Wondering if he’d redeem himself today, he pocketed his phone and walked into the middle of High Street with a megaphone. There was movement in the bank’s front window again, a hooked finger twitching the blind slats. Then the gap disappeared, the blind trembling briefly behind the glass.
He raised the megaphone to his mouth.
A small window, set high in the wall above the ATM, blew out.
Glass and shotgun pellets flew over his head. He jolted in fear and retreated to the police line.
‘Boss?’ Pam said, grabbing at his arm. ‘You all right?’
‘Back to the drawing board,’ Challis said shakily. He glanced around, his gaze alighting on Cafe Laconic. ‘Command post,’ he said, and strode across to negotiate with the owner.
Then nothing. Late afternoon edged into evening. The Force Response Unit arrived, a dozen men and one officer, armed with assault rifles and dressed like extras in an American cop film. And acting like it, too: they were rarely called upon to do anything but take part in training exercises, and now here was the real thing. Their eyes gleamed and their forefingers twitched.
The commander was a man named Loeb, sculpted out of blonde hardwood. ‘We can use that busted window,’ he said. ‘Toss in a teargas canister, stun grenade, the guy’s disorientated, my guys rush in and take him down.’
‘He has a shotgun, determination and an itchy trigger finger,’ Challis said. ‘We wait for the hostage negotiator.’
‘I say we consider-’
Challis shook his head. ‘We give the hostage negotiator a chance, you know the drill.’
‘It’s getting dark.’
‘I can see that.’
‘Could take hours for the negotiator to get here.’
‘Could do,’ agreed Challis.
He was saved by the Cafe Laconic staff, who brought out trays of coffee and sandwiches. Challis gulped his latte. Strong, as he liked it.
His mobile phone rang. He answered, listened, pocketed the phone again. ‘The negotiator’s about ninety minutes away.’
‘Jesus.’
Challis shrugged. He was in charge and, as far as he could see, that meant saying ‘no’ to everything. He didn’t tell the FRU officer that the hostage negotiator had only just touched down at Melbourne airport. Her name was York and she’d been attending at a hostage situation in Shepparton. A fruit grower, burdened by debts and claiming that a Mafia standover man was bleeding him dry, had shot the family dog and threatened to shoot his family.
In the end, he’d shot himself.
I can’t see that happening here, Challis thought. Meanwhile it was his job to tell the gunman that a hostage negotiator was on the way. He swallowed a few times and walked out into the intersection again. ‘I need to speak to you,’ he called, hunching to present a smaller target.
Nothing.
Challis turned around on the spot, a quick reconnaissance of the intersection and nearby streets. The town seemed to be filling rapidly, an avid crowd of locals and strangers forming behind the barriers, possibly drawn to Waterloo by the TV images. Plenty of media, Challis noted: reporters, cameramen, the Channel 7 helicopter, four or five women holding microphones to their flawless mouths. They were all hungry and, like the crowd-and indeed the police-would be swapping guesses, black humour and misinformation.
He wasn’t fired upon. He walked back to the command post.
Then Jack Porteous was blocking his way into Cafe Laconic. ‘Quick update, Inspector?’
‘How did you get though the cordon?’
‘Is it true you were fired on from inside the bank? Are the police properly resourced for a siege situation?’
Challis nodded to Greener, who came forward from the shadows. ‘Senior Constable Greener will escort you back behind the line.’
Then more stasis.
Movement, when it came, was quick and clean. The main door of the bank opened and three figures appeared. Challis recognised the senior teller, just as she lurched forward as if shoved in the back, stumbled, fell to her hands and knees in the street. Now he could see that another woman was behind her. Young, dark-haired, attractive, scared. Scared because a powerful forearm was choking her windpipe and a shotgun was tucked into the hinge of her jaw. Of the gunman, all Challis could see was the forearm and a black woollen head.