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 here,’ 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.
‘You can sit down, Grace. Why don’t you sit just there? Next to Graeme, where I can see you. You can sit up now, Graeme.’
The preacher rolled over with agility. He looked at Grace with revulsion but this did not touch her. They were almost side by side, a V shape with Lucy at the apex. Once they were in position, Lucy pushed the child towards his mother, who scooped him up and ran for the door. She was gone in an instant, the glass door clicking shut on its automatic lock behind her.
‘It’s just us now. Isn’t that nice?’ Lucy said. ‘You’re Grace?’
‘Yes,’ Grace said, looking at a small girl with a square and pretty, almost innocent, face and clear eyes. Her pale skin was delicate next to her reddish hair. She held her gun unselfconsciously, apparently unafraid of what it could do.
‘Are you wired for sound?’ she asked.
‘Yes, I am. Everyone can hear.’
‘Yeah, I want people to hear. I want them to know what I’m going to say. You know what I want you to do first? I want you to sit on your hands.’
‘Why, Lucy?’
‘I just do. I want to touch your face. Now you be careful. You just have to look at this gun and it goes off. Remember that, Graeme. Because if you move, it’s Grace first and then you. And I’m faster than you.’
Grace leaned forward, hard on her hands, and felt the gun barrel pressed in her stomach as Lucy stroked first one cheek and then the other. Her touch was cold and smooth. They were eyeball to eyeball.
Grace, chilled to the base of her spine, controlled panic by staring into the rage mirrored in Lucy’s eyes. She told herself, meet it full on. That’s the only way you can know what there is to fear.
Outside, the marksman contacted Harrigan.
‘She’s got them in a position where I have to shoot one of them to get to her. And if I did do that, I couldn’t get her before she got your officer.’
‘Wait your chance,’ Harrigan replied.
‘That is you, isn’t it? That face, it’s you,’ Lucy was saying, her voice thin and metallic over the communication device.
She drew back, the gun ready to fire at a breath. Grace reconnected to the possibility of staying alive a little longer.
‘Yes, this is me. Is it okay if I get off my hands now?’
‘Yeah, you can do that. You’ve got a nice face.’
‘Why is that important, Lucy?’
‘Because it’s who you are. I need to see who you are,’ Lucy said. ‘You see, when I shot that woman and that man, I got blood all across my forehead. Some of it got up into my hair. I don’t even know whose it was.
It just hit me. I can feel it all over me again now. And that man, he didn’t have a face left. He wasn’t anything any more. Nothing. I never should have shot him. But you know one of the things that really bothers me?’
‘No, Lucy,’ Grace replied. ‘You tell me.’
‘I didn’t let that doctor see all
‘You want me to be looking at you when you do whatever you’re going to do?’
Oh Christ, Harrigan thought.
‘I don’t want to hide from you the way I did from her,’ Lucy said.
As Lucy spoke, Grace felt a movement beside her. She glanced at the preacher. He had leaned forward and
