Free I Am Gold by Bill James

particular area than he did himself. Now and then, Harpur had seen him allow someone else to talk quite a bit. And he’d listen, at least for a while.
    At the charity shop siege now he would have to listen to the official negotiator as well as to Andy Rockmain, a police psychologist, who’d been brought in fast. Harpur felt glad to see him. Just before Rockmain turned up, Harpur was beginning to worry about Iles. A lot of lives could be at risk here. So far, the ACC had unquestionably followed settled methods for a hostage crisis, but Harpur feared he might not stick to them. Harpur thought he had already spotted some signs of wavering. He would expect some signs of wavering. This didn’t mean Iles might order an attack. He’d fear putting lives in peril. But he might decide to do something solo.
    God, Harpur loathed those times when Iles ditched the pattern of sane behaviour and might have to be physically neutralized by him, Harpur. That is, if Harpur could do it. Although Iles was comparatively slight, nearly a dandy, he had exceptional power in his limbs and knew headbutting. It had always seemed wrong to Harpur and a collapse of decorum that two officers of high rank should go at each other violently in public, Iles possibly wearing uniform. Bad, bad, for the outfit of an Assistant Chief to get bloodstained in that kind of internal team fracas. Of course, whatever the dispute might be about, he would always top it up with his bitter stand-by rage over the Harpur–Sarah Iles affair, so long ago now, but still raw with Iles. This perennial, wild resentment probably helped put that extra, frantic strength into his arms and legs, and gave the special intensity to all the unnecessary baying, frothing and sobbing.
    In the control caravan, towed here for the siege, Rock-main had gone through three recordings of the negotiator’s conversation with the gunman and now listened in live to the latest contact, trying to construct some sort of offender profile. Harpur and Iles were also on extensions. Harpur liked how the negotiator worked. His training would have been based on plenty of handed-down experience here and abroad, some of it successful. He was patient, polite, unmenacing, never used the term ‘hostages’, constantly sought agreement with deferential phrases like ‘isn’t it?’ and ‘wouldn’t you say?’ and often repeated the gunman’s words, so giving them an importance boost. He remained reasonable, always ready to chop his own spiel and let the gunman chatter and demand. That’s what link-ups were for: to get the suspect talking and keep him talking. Slowly, it might be possible to create a relationship, even a bond, between him and the negotiator. This would have no genuine basis or worth, of course. It was a ploy. The negotiator might be bonding with someone else at a different siege tomorrow. But it often worked.
    This slowness could be an asset. It gave the chance to pile up more information about the hostages and the building’s layout, as well as the gunman, and to bring in additional personnel and equipment for a possible swat. A mob-handed attack might become inevitable if the negotiations showed no progress signs and the danger to hostages rose. But the objective was to dodge this no-choice finale, if possible. Instead, the siege manager hoped the offender could be persuaded by a negotiator’s seeming empathy and sympathy that the most sensible next step was surrender and release of the hostages undamaged.
    Logic – the offender’s own – should lead him to this decision, not threats and badgering. He must be brought to realize that to give up was a preferable fate to what might happen to him otherwise. And this, of course, was logical, impeccably logical. If it came to tactical intervention, he would be priority stun-gunned, possibly gassed, possibly riddled like that deafening, lengthy, fusillade ending of Bonnie and Clyde ,