Cry of the Needle

by Radford, Roger

  Hopkin nodded, then, ‘I mean it’s not hard to see Professor Tring being sympathetic towards his captors.’

  ‘He’s not going to arse-lick a bunch of criminals if that’s what you mean,’ Fiona replied, surprised at her own indelicate use of language.

  ‘Anyway, if there’s one person who deserves his freedom it’s Jonathan.’

  ‘So you don’t care about the other two?’ the Welshman said cynically.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Cut to the chase, Miss Harrington,’ Simmons said irritably. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I want to make a direct television appeal to the hostage takers.’

  ‘And say what?’ asked Hopkin with a hint of exasperation. Women always thought they could manipulate any situation involving men.

  ‘I want to tell them that if they release all the hostages, Professor Tring and I will do everything in our power to see that their demands for justice are met.’

  Hopkin smiled wryly. ‘Missy, you’re very earnest and you’re very pretty, but I don’t believe our balaclava-man will be persuaded by any argument you might put to him.’

  ‘I can try.’

  ‘Not without my permission you can’t.’

  ‘You can’t muzzle the media.’

  Hopkin was determined to remain calm. She was a feisty young lady and he could understand her concern for her boyfriend, but there was no way he would allow her to interfere in his game plan. ‘You won’t find anyone to run your appeal. The Government has issued strict orders.’

  Fiona could sense that her request was falling on deaf ears, yet there appeared to be so little progress being made. ‘May I ask you a question, Mr Hopkin?’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Have you yourself even spoken to the hostage takers yet?’

  ‘Not yet,’ replied the Welshman coolly.

  ‘Isn’t it about time?’

  ‘Listen, Missy, I can only speak to someone if he decides to speak to me, and, believe me, sooner or later he will.’

  Fiona looked at the fat man and raised her eyebrows. ‘Let’s hope it’s sooner, Inspector,’ she said turning away, ‘just don’t screw up.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Harrington,’ Hopkin called out, ‘we didn’t have this conversation, right?’

  ‘I understand,’ she said without looking back, and continued walking towards the throng of newsmen standing fifty yards away. She might not be permitted to appeal to the hostage takers through the electronic media, but that would not prevent her from making her appeal in print. The TV and radio stations might not quote her in full, but at least the men holding Jonathan would get the gist of her message.

  Hopkin watched Fiona Harrington with a mixture of admiration and consternation. She was right. Unless he could make some contact with Kelly, this was becoming a one-way street. That might be all right in the early days, but the longer the siege went on without him being able to exercise his skills, the greater the pressure would become for force to be used. The Government wasn’t helping either. There had been a lot of waffle from the PM, but nothing that could be construed as a sweetener to the hostage takers. Predictably, the drug companies had spouted the formula that no one should surrender to terrorist demands. The thin edge of the wedge and all that. They were the ones who were being asked to give up some of their profits and they didn’t like it. The Welshman realised, however, that in the final analysis it was the Government that would decide how this thing would be played out. It would impose a windfall tax on the pharmaceutical giants and leave them bleating all the way to the bank. The question was whether there would be the political will to do so. In the meantime, everyone was silent except Kelly, and silence was never golden for a negotiator.

  Kieran Kelly had spent most of the day preparing his evening address, formulating its content and rehearsing its delivery. He’d given scarcely a thought to the menagerie outside, leaving Sean to look after the shop while he prepared the updates for his website, which had now become more popular than CNN, the BBC and the whole media caboodle. He used the software to install biographies about himself, sans his unofficial work, and Teresa. She would have pride of place: a photo gallery of her and the kids. He thought of the kids, and how they would be proud of Da’; how they would understand that the success of his cause was for their future; how they would see that their mammy had not suffered in vain. The madness of sticking needles into people’s spines had to be stopped.

  Once again he positioned himself in front of the web cam.

  ‘Good evening, world,’ he began as per usual, ‘most of you must be wondering who I am and what I look like. You are about to find out.’ With this, the Irishman removed his balaclava, straightened his hair and fixed his piercing blue eyes on the web cam. He placed the voice distorter on the table in front of him. Everything he was about to say would not only come from the heart, but would be uttered with the inflection and power of the one thing that could move men and mountains: the human voice.

  ‘My name is Kieran Kelly,’ he said, ‘and I am from Belfast. However, in the great scheme of things, who I am and where I am from are of no consequence. The action my comrades and I have taken is not only about the deeds of the three men we are holding here, it is about this woman.’

  With this, Kelly held up a framed photograph of Teresa. It was his favourite of her, taken in the full bloom of early motherhood, just six months after the birth of their first child. Teresa’s smile was as carefree and as pure as her bairn’s. The camera angle had caught the innate kindness that radiated from within, the fullness of the flowing red hair, the petite nose that turned up ever so slightly, and the emerald green eyes that could captivate the hardest of men.

  ‘This was my wife,’ he said, speaking from behind the photograph. ‘Her name was Teresa and she was only twenty-five years old when she died. She was the mother of four children who miss her terribly. She was the wife of a man who misses her more and more as each day passes.’ He paused because of the lump that was forming in his throat. It was the truth, dammit.

  ‘Teresa and I met at a dance,’ he continued after regaining his composure. ‘She was only seventeen, but I knew almost immediately that this girl would become my wife, that she would bear me the most beautiful children in the whole world. We came over two years ago. We were just an ordinary family living an ordinary life in east London. That was before late last year when Teresa decided to have an epidural for the birth of our fourth child. I didn’t want her to have it, but she wanted to experience childbirth without pain. They told us Dr Martin Townsend was good, but they didn’t tell us he was a drunk. They also didn’t tell us what would happen if he injected the anaesthetic in the wrong place. They didn’t tell us that there were thousands of women affected by these injections that no one ever got to find out about. These women were told it was all in their heads. They were told they should stop their bleating and go away. That’s what happened to my Teresa. No one believed her agony. She couldn’t stand, she couldn’t sit, and her waterworks wouldn’t function properly. The burning pain in her legs tortured her remorselessly, and if you ask me about the pain in her feet, I’d ask you whether you mean the kind where if you could bend easily enough you would gnaw them off, or the kind that makes you look to see if you’re bleeding because it feels like they’re being sliced with razor blades, or maybe the kind where it feels like your toenails are being pulled out or wooden slivers are being shoved under them; or the kind that makes you think the balls of your feet are so swollen that your toes don’t reach the floor, but then you look and they’re digging into the hardwood; or do you mean the kind of pain that feels numb until you bang your foot into something and break a toe because you can’t feel where it is? Teresa begged me to get a chainsaw and cut off her feet. She begged me to sever her spinal cord, thinking that would put an end to her agony. I had to tell her that if I did that, her pains would continue. They’d simply call them by another name: phantom limb pains. She said she didn’t mind; that at least people wo
uld take her agony more seriously if she didn’t have any legs. I did what I could, but it wasn’t enough. She took an overdose. I shouldn’t feel guilty, but I do. I feel as guilty as hell.’

  The Irishman’s voice had dropped almost to a whisper and a single tear worked its way down his cheek from his left eye and into the corner of his mouth. ‘I pray to God that my Teresa will not have died in vain,’ he rasped. He stood the framed photograph of his wife directly in front of the web cam. It would be all that people would see for the duration of the siege.

  ‘He’s playing us like a fiddle, Dai,’ Simmons growled with barely disguised frustration. ‘With that performance he’ll have the whole bloody nation baying for the PM to accede to his demands.’

  Hopkin nodded. ‘Amen to that. Nothing would please me more than if my efforts were redundant, boyo.’

  The commander was just about to make a comment when his telephone rang. ‘Simmons,’ he said gruffly, then quickly covered the mouthpiece. ‘It’s him, Dai, and he wants to speak to you.’

  ‘Well, that’s a first,’ said the Welshman, his heart pounding as he picked up the link and motioned to his staff to begin recording. ‘Dai Hopkin here.’

  ‘The negotiator?’ came the now familiar voice.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Listen, Hopkin, I’ve seen the movie.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ said the Welshman.

  ‘The Negotiator, with Samuel L. Jackson. Great film.’

  ‘Yes it was, but it was a movie and this is for real.’

  ‘Sammy was a pussy,’ Kelly went on, ‘he just pretended he was prepared to kill. I’m not pretending, Hopkin.’

  ‘I believe you.’

  ‘Of course you believe me. Never say no to a hostage taker, never use don’t, won’t or can’t.’

  ‘I see you’ve read the script.’

  ‘You might as well throw away the manual when it comes to me, Hopkin. Unless my aims are met, I’m prepared to die and to take as many of you as I can with me.’

  ‘That’s not for public consumption, I guess,’ the Welshman replied, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.

  ‘You’re right, Taffy. Bad PR.’

  Hopkin felt a flicker of relief that Kelly had agreed with him early on. It was paramount that he did everything to win the man’s trust. ‘I think you’ve presented a convincing case.’

  ‘What you think doesn’t mean jack shit. It’s what that bastard Scotsman does that matters.’

  Hopkin glanced up at Simmons with a look that spoke volumes. As far as they knew at that moment, the Prime Minister was not for turning. He was a po-faced politician who thought compromise was a dirty word. Meanwhile, Kelly and his cohorts were like animals backed into a corner, fangs bared, seeing no way out. It was going to be an uphill task.

  ‘All my demands must be met,’ the Irishman said firmly. ‘Make sure he understands that, Taff.’

  ‘I understand how you feel, Mr Kelly. It’s not easy to see a loved one suffer. I felt terrible watching my old man die of cancer.’

  ‘God killed your father, Mr Hopkin. Man killed my wife.’

  ‘Yes, medical malpractice is a tough call. Dr Townsend should never be allowed to practise medicine again.’ Hopkin knew that he had to focus on the man’s feelings. He had to demonstrate understanding of the Irishman’s fear, anxiety and anger. He had to empathise without being judgmental or condescending. Just by having someone listen might reduce the man’s stress.

  ‘I wish I could believe that were true, Taffy,’ said Kelly with a sigh. ‘If I let him go, the GMC will give him a slap on the wrists, and the drunken bastard will be out there again ruining more people’s lives.’

  ‘Unfortunately, you’re probably right,’ Hopkin agreed. So far so good, he thought. He could feel that he was building what might be the beginnings of a rapport. It was all a case of active listening, the ability to see a circumstance from another’s perspective, and to let the other person know that the negotiator understood that perspective. Empathy, not sympathy, was the keyword. Sympathy implied pity and over-involvement. If the negotiator got too involved and showed pity, then the hostage taker might feel justified in how he was feeling about the actions he was taking. One thing was certain: the man was highly intelligent. Unfortunately, that could turn out to be more of a bane than a boon.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Kelly, ‘how would any of you bastards know how it feels to lose someone you love so fucking unnecessarily.

  Kelly’s sudden vehemence did not fluster the Welshman. The ‘how do you know how I feel?’ response was common in people who were in crisis. It was possible to understand another’s feelings without going through the same experience because, while experiences were not universal, feelings were. Degrees of feelings were also common. There wasn’t a man alive who hadn’t experienced shades of anger, sadness or depression.

  ‘It’s a good thing I can rely on my friends,’ Kelly went on.

  ‘Friends?’ Hopkin repeated. The technique was called mirroring. By repeating the last word and adding a question mark, he was using the subject’s own word to provide an exact response. ‘Yeah, the – ’ Kelly halted dead in his tracks. He had just been about to say ‘the two of us.’

  There was a pregnant silence before, ‘Cute, Taffy. You almost had me there.’

  ‘But not quite.’

  Kelly laughed. He found himself admiring the man’s honesty. This was going to be an intellectual challenge. ‘That’s enough for one day, Hopkin. I’ll answer my phone again tomorrow at noon. By that time I hope the authorities have gained some wisdom.’

  ‘Are you telling me that if they get wise, then there might be some room for compromise?’

  ‘What I’m saying is that the prick you call the Prime Minister has to stop his waffling and come up with something concrete.’

  It was a glimmer of hope, thought the Welshman, relieved that the rapport appeared to be still alive. ‘Is there anything you need in the meantime, like food for instance?’ he asked with genuine concern.

  ‘Fully stocked for the duration and enough to feed Africa’s starving for a year. And there’s just one more thing. If you find out where my kids are, don’t involve them or I’ll shoot at least one of the hostages. Make sure they’re not hassled by the media. Is that crystal clear?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. And there’s one other thing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ve just put an article on my website. It’s from a book by some Yank doctor called Marsden Wagner. I want it published in full by every goddamn national newspaper. Tomorrow, get it tomorrow, not the day after. Then I want your apology for a prime minister to agree to an inquiry.’ With this, Kieran Kelly switched off his mobile.

  Hopkin frowned and turned to his staff in the control van. ‘Okay, boyos, listen up. What do you think we’ve learned from this initial contact?’

  ‘He might be prepared to lower his demands if the politicians make some concessions,’ piped a chubby-faced copper manning the tape recorders.

  ‘Which is a tad better than his earlier statement that all his demands must be met,’ Hopkin agreed. ‘But never forget, boyos, this guy is not only desperate, he’s clever. He’s got a manipulative personality. He’s used to getting his own way.’

  ‘How many men do you think are in there, boss?’ asked a beak-nosed constable standing by the awning.

  ‘Play back the tape, Jim,’ Hopkin ordered.

  They all listened intently when it reached the place where the Welshman almost caught his man out.

  ‘Play it again,’ Hopkin said, ‘and watch the oscilloscope. There it is, look you.’

  The Welshman was slightly amused by the sea of blank faces before him. ‘I think our voice analyst will say that Kelly was just about to say “two”. It’s that nasal snort just before he cut himself short. You wouldn’t get that with any other number. My guess is that there are no more than two hostage takers in that cottage. Kelly and A.N.Other. Confirms mor
e or less what the radar is telling us.’

  ‘That’ll make SO17 even itchier to take him out,’ Simmons grunted.

  ‘Over my dead body,’ retorted Hopkin. If the anti-terrorist unit went into action, it could only mean that he’d failed.

  ‘I’m already getting flak from that quarter,’ said the commander. ‘How long can I stall them?’

  ‘It’s too early.’

  ‘Unless he starts shooting,’ Simmons warned. ‘We know he must have a bloody arsenal in there.’

  Hopkin looked at his boss anxiously. The Welshman’s job was to stall as long as practicable, but there was a downside to the passage of time. A major problem would be exhaustion on the part of everyone involved, from the subject through to the negotiators, tactical personnel and commanders. He himself was already feeling the effects of sleep deprivation. Although twelve hours was probably too long to be actively negotiating, most teams established twelve-hour shifts, and his was no exception. Exhaustion could lead to fuzzy thinking at best and irrational thinking at worst. What sounded like a good idea at three in the morning, after eighteen hours of high stress, might not sound so good when it came to the day in court. Typically, however, the first few shifts in sieges were extraordinarily long. Most of his best men liked to believe that the standoff would end soon, and itched to be on the scene when that happened. They just didn’t want to miss out on any of the action. From past experience, he knew how difficult it was to get personnel to leave for rest or even to run errands. No one wanted to go home and have his son ask, ‘Hey, Dad, when that bad man was shot today, what did you do?’ and have to answer, ‘Well son, I was down at McDonald’s buying burgers for the team and missed the whole shebang.’

  Lost in his own dark thoughts, Dai Hopkin had to be prodded back to awareness by one of his staff.

  ‘Excuse me, sir, I’ve got his website article on screen.’

  Hopkin and Simmons spent the next few minutes sitting in front of the screen engrossed in the article.

  ‘Pretty impressive stuff,’ said the Welshman. ‘Do you think you can get the press to cooperate, Bob?