Chapter 10

Mike watched closely as John walked tentatively toward the severed finger. Whilst he strongly disagreed with his colleagues’ action in taking himself outside the relative safety of the shields, he knew why he had acted in the way that he had. John was a friend and an excellent negotiator and had brought dozens of situations to a peaceful and successful conclusion over the years; from talking down potential suicides, to actually taking the place of a hostage on one occasion. He had very accurately gauged the reactions of a man who had taken his son hostage and threatened to kill him after a particularly violent argument with the boy’s mother. She had sustained serious head injuries as a result of a severe battering over a period of about ten hours but had managed to escape to safety by crashing through the first floor bedroom window and sliding down the porch roof to the garden below.

As is so often the case, the boy was the unfortunate meat in the sandwich of an extremely volatile relationship which was doomed to disaster almost from the first weeks of the marriage. He had always been a sickly child and prone to all manner of illness and john had managed to persuade his father that,

‘James needs to be seen by the Doctor. After all Tom, this business is between you and your missus. Let your son go, I’ll come in and we can try and sort it all out without any more injury to anybody. I know you love him dearly and you don’t want him to suffer. I also know that you feel trapped in there and he is your only hope. He knows that you are hurting as well Tom. Let him go and you and me will get through this together.’

After the release of the boy, John had spent thirty hours as a replacement hostage before he was able to talk his captor out of killing both of them. The handgun that the man had cocked and held to johns head on several occasions was later found to be a genuine, but de-activated, nine millimetre automatic but there was no way of any one knowing that fact until the gun was examined after the event.

Mike Hogan knew this was a very different siege incident. John had ‘lost’ several situations over the years when he had been unable to prevent people from taking their own lives. He always knew that there would be some incidents that he could never resolve. There would always be a few where death was the inevitable outcome; some where the hostage taker actively sought out his own death. Known as suicide by cop, the individual would come out; all guns blazing, only for him to be shot by the police marksmen: but, the one job that he felt particularly responsible for; the one he found most difficult to come to terms with, was when a young female police officer was taken hostage during a bank robbery several years ago.

It wasn’t Johns fault and, deep down, John himself knew it wasn’t his fault, but that didn’t stop him from feeling that weight of responsibility.

The young officer had been on foot patrol in the area of the bank. Maybe an older, more experienced officer would have called for assistance first or made a slower, more calculated and informed decision, but no one could criticise her bravery as she instantly ran into the bank when she heard the alarm sound and, along with a cashier and the manager, was held captive for twelve hours.

John, as the lead negotiator, had managed to persuade the hostage taker into allowing him into the bank to talk. The would be robber was not much older than the rookie officer, 20 or 21 years of age maybe and, it would later transpire, had no history of armed robbery. A few minor offences of street mugging and joy riding in stolen cars, but nothing of this seriousness.

He was using all his experience in taking his time, keeping the young gunman calm. Making sure that John himself was not seen as a threat to him and slowly but surely building up trust and a dialogue when the young officer, sat several feet away, saw her captor lower his firearm. Unlike the firearm he was facing today which, had two barrels and only held two shells before it had to be reloaded, the bank robber had a single barrelled sawn off pump action shotgun which held at least seven or eight 12 bore cartridges.

Although many witnesses recall instances seemingly happening in slow motion, it happened so quickly and unexpectedly that John had not been able to shout at the officer. He couldn’t stop her as she made a lunge for the gun. She grabbed it in a way that you might take hold of a Christmas cracker. She wrapped both hands around the barrel and pulled it towards her.

Even to this day, John was absolutely certain that it had not been the intention of the gunman to pull the trigger but, as he tried to pull the gun barrel back towards him, out of the young officers grasp, it went off fatally wounding her in the stomach.

She died instantly. Her spinal cord was cut clean through and two of her vertebrae shattered into several pieces. As she slumped to the floor with her mouth and eyes wide open, her insides emptied in a pool of blood, intestines and mucus around the gunman’s feet. He stepped back leaving a bloody footprint on the marble floor, as his own mouth opened in disbelief at the crumpled body below. John could plainly see the look of abject horror and panic on his face.

The cashier, sitting on the floor several feet away screamed and ran for the door as the gunman instinctively raised the gun in her direction. This time he did intend to fire and the back of her head exploded like a pomegranate as bits of skull and brain tissue splattered against the outside of the bullet proof glass. The beautifully ornate mahogany counter of a few minutes before now smeared with blood and bone fragments. John was falling to the floor at the same time as the manager collapsed in a heap next to the cash machine and John heard the distinctive sliding action of the weapon as one shell was ejected to be replaced by the next cartridge of death.

He knew the metal legs and flimsy upholstery of the chairs would not protect him and, as he looked up in the direction of the gunman several feet away, he saw him slump to his knees. Almost in slow motion, and certainly with a sense of shock and horror, the gunman looked at the empty shells at his feet and at each of the motionless persons in turn.

First, the policewoman at his side with a hole the size of a small football in her back where the cartridge had exited her body, then to the cashier, almost headless, several feet away. He looked at the bank manager lying on his face, his light coloured suit peppered with blood. He was in such a confused state of mind, he’d pulled the trigger two or three times; he didn’t know whether he had shot the manager or not. Finally, he looked over to where John had cowered behind the chairs. Their eyes met. The young man, still kneeling, slowly shook his head. He leaned back heavily on his heels and looked up to the domed ceiling of the bank, tears streaming down his cheeks. It seemed like a long time as they were both trying to understand how it had happened and why. It was in fact only a matter of a few seconds before he lowered his gaze from above and looked down at the floor. He had never seen so much blood.

How could a situation change so dramatically in less than 30 seconds or so. One or two minutes before, everybody had been alive. Shocked, most certainly, frightened; absolutely, but all unharmed. Now, two people had died at his hands in the most violent of circumstances as the pools of blood from the two horribly disfigured persons spread out across the floor engulfing his knees in warm sticky crimson. The once beautiful building now resembled that of a war zone.

He didn’t speak, just looked back over at John, placed the stock of the gun between his knees and leant forward slightly. The fleshy under part of his chin pressed down on the stubby barrel of the gun and, looking away from John towards the two mutilated bodies, he squeezed the trigger.