Challis shrugged. ‘Well, this guy hasn’t said a word.’
‘Okay, let’s get squared away,’ York said.
She’d arrived with a special van fitted with digital recorders, phones, camera monitors, a TV set, scrap paper, pens and a whiteboard and markers. There was also a small, soundproofed inner compartment fitted with a chair, a monitor and a telephone. ‘The throne room,’ she grinned, ‘so I can talk to him without distraction.’ She gestured at the white board. ‘And this is for intel.’
Challis grunted. There was no intel, only supposition. ‘For what it’s worth, I think we’re dealing with a hold-up man who’s been robbing banks along the coast south of Sydney and more recently in Gippsland. Those robberies were quick and smooth, in and out, no hostage situations.’
‘And he’s said nothing,’ said York flatly, bending to a keyboard and watching one of the monitors.
‘Not directly. In directly he’s asked for blankets and clothesline.’
York shook her head. ‘Don’t like the sound of that. What if he’s planning a murder-suicide and doesn’t want to see the faces of his victims when he shoots them?’
‘Could be some kind of shield.’
‘Either way, I’ve got to get him talking,’ York said.
Challis gave her phone numbers for Ely and the bank and she shut herself inside the small compartment. After a while, she came out again, shaking her head. ‘When they talk, I’m on firm ground.’
Challis nodded. He couldn’t help her.
‘Normally,’ she said, ‘I walk into a situation that’s volatile, not calm, and it’s my job to talk the hostage-taker down, even if it takes hours. And it’s surprising what you can learn in that time. You know, personal information-he’s upset or depressed because he’s been sacked from his job or his wife’s got a lover or he’s stopped taking his pills-and environmental.’
‘Environmental?’
‘Like he’s got a gun, or the room’s too hot, or one of the hostages is pregnant, stuff like that.’ York shook her head. ‘But this guy…’
Challis began to tune her out. York was thinking about the hostage-taker in an immediate sense, he was thinking about the man’s long-term intentions. He wasn’t dealing with a nutter but a planner. The man had found himself trapped, but knew to wait for the cloak of darkness. And he’d asked for blankets and twine because he was a planner, not some volatile schizophrenic or speed freak.
Challis reached forward and turned on the van’s TV set, channel surfing for a while. The siege was receiving extensive air time, viewer interest teased by constant replays of the gunman on the steps of the bank, shielded by the woman known as Mrs Grace. It had everything: a gun, a masked man, a beautiful victim, a heavily-armed cordon of police.
He muted the sound track and stared at the empty car park between the rear of the bank and the Safeway supermarket. Almost all of the cars were gone now, part of the evacuation plan, but some drivers had still to be located. Meanwhile, according to a number-plate check, only two of the cars were not locaclass="underline" a white Nissan, which had been reported stolen in Gippsland four days ago, and a burgundy Commodore, rented in Rosebud earlier that day. He’d wanted to play it safe and place a tracking device on both cars, but owing to budget cuts, only one tracker was available, so he’d selected the stolen Nissan, figuring it was the gunman’s.
The darkness deepened, the underside of the evening sky lit queerly by the street and parking lot lights. York sat back in her swivel chair and frowned at her monitors and said, ‘I mean, ideally you guide the dialogue until the guy talks his own way out, and along the way you get him to release some or all of the hostages…This guy, zilch.’ She reached for one of her phones. ‘I’ll try again.’
Challis stepped out of her booth, sealing her in, and watched her make the call, knowing the gunman wouldn’t answer. Presently she came out again, gesturing in frustration. ‘I don’t like it,’ she said. ‘What have we got here? Suicide by cop, except he’s going to shoot his hostages first?’
Challis shook his head. ‘This guy’s given no indication he’s suicidal. He’s too collected. He’s got a plan.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe,’ York said. She chewed on her bottom lip. She didn’t want a breakout, she wanted to be able to say she’d sweet-talked a nutcase into giving himself up.
In silence they watched the bank. 10 p.m. and the onlookers were beginning to drift away. The force response officer ambled over from Cafe Laconic and his clutch of body-armoured and visored men and said, ‘What gives? My boys are getting antsy.’
‘Antsy?’ said York. ‘You mean they’re not well trained?’
Challis laughed. The FR man’s face tightened. ‘They put a media hound like you in charge?’ he scowled, sauntering back to his team.
‘It’s important to let them flex their egos,’ York said.
‘Guys like Loeb?’
York shook her head. ‘Sorry, I mean your average hostage-taker. You let them think they have the upper hand, when ultimately it’s the negotiator who holds all the cards, the negotiator who denies and delays gratification.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘A personal relationship, that’s the first step.’
Blankets, Challis was thinking. Cord to bind them together into one big invisibility cloak.
The image took hold in his head, as York continued to explain the intricacies of her job. ‘In the end, you learn to recognise the signs, what we call a surrender ritual, a handing over to the nego-’
‘They’re coming out,’ Challis said.
An apparition emerged from the bank. It resembled a lumpy tent or a knobbly creature with a rounded back and many legs. The range made it difficult to see clearly but he was betting the holdup man was under there, together with the bank staff and Mrs Grace. The creature moved on mincing, shuffling legs across the car park. No way can we take a shot, he thought, glancing at the armed response team, shaking his head at them.
They all watched as the huddled figures passed the Nissan and paused at the burgundy Commodore. Damn, thought Challis. Wrong car. Then the cloak shifted shape as if it were a sack full of kittens and, one by one, the gunman and the hostages slipped into the front and rear of the car. He couldn’t tell who had got behind the wheel; the cloak still covered them.
Then a passenger door opened as the car began to creep away. A young woman tumbled out, falling to her knees. The car stopped again, fifty metres away.
Challis waited a moment, expecting a trap, then ran, trailed by Pam Murphy. With one eye on the Commodore, he helped the woman to her feet. ‘You’re Maddie?’
She gulped and hiccoughed. ‘Yes.’
‘It’s okay, you’re safe now.’
She shook her head violently. ‘He told me to give you a message. He’ll release the others as soon as he feels safe. But if he sees anyone follow him, he’ll shoot to kill. No cars, no helicopters, that’s what he said.’
The Commodore crept a short distance, stopped again. Challis’s mind raced with counter plans. He held up a hand, took out his phone, waved it at the car. He got his answer: the car accelerated towards the dark edge of the night.
Ian Galt was in a city motel, at the end of a fruitless day, propped against the headboard of a lumpy bed, unwinding before the TV set bolted to the wall. Days of wearing out good shoe leather, he thought, and what happens? I find her on the evening news. In a place where I can’t get at her.
The best he could hope for now was the man with the shotgun would blow her pretty little head off.
And he thought: What was she doing in that bank?
50
‘I guess I wasn’t making much sense last night,’ said Rowan Ely in the Waterloo police station the next morning.