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,
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
