In any case, I groped around on the floor for the phone, hoping that whoever was calling was somebody I could ignore, but it wasn’t. The caller ID – don’t you love that invention? – showed that Superintendent Wolfgang Boehm of the Bondi Local Area Command was on the line. I figured I’d better answer.

‘Hello?’ I said.

‘Are you awake, Father?’

I was tempted to say, ‘Please, Wolf, it’s Paul,’ but I’d tried to get Wolf to call me by my first name before. It was never going to happen: Wolf has old-fashioned values. He’d have called his teachers by their surnames, and he was never going to call a priest anything other than Father.

‘I am now,’ I said, meaning of course I was awake; I was answering the phone, wasn’t I?

Wolf said, ‘Can you come to Surf City?’

I don’t mind admitting that my first thought was, ‘You have got to be kidding.’ Surf City is the name of a shopping centre near Bondi Beach but I guess I knew Wolf wouldn’t be asking me to go for a spot of breakfast at the food court or anything like that.

‘What’s going on?’ I said.

‘I can’t give you all the details now,’ he said, ‘but somebody’s taken hostages.’

I said, ‘Taken hostages? Where?’

Somewhat impatiently, Wolf said, ‘Here, at Surf City.’

Now, Surf City is no run-of-the-mill shopping centre. As befits Bondi, it’s luxurious. It went up on vacant land near the beach a few years ago. The public – by which I mean locals – tried to object, saying they didn’t want shops down behind the sand dunes. There were already enough people coming to Bondi on the weekends without attracting more. It would force out long-time residents, who were already struggling to pay the rent.

They lost the argument, and then something strange happened: Surf City went up and locals fell in love with it.

I can’t say I blame them: as shopping centres go, Surf City is pretty good. It’s cool inside in summer; it’s quiet and glamorous. It’s got four floors of what they call ‘boutique shops’ – little shops that sell pointless things – and an ‘artisan baker’, a butcher with an old-style wooden chopping block and a shop that sells only tea leaves. I’m sure you get the picture.

The idea that somebody would try to take hostages at Surf City was intriguing. Like most shopping centres, it’s got more security than an airport terminal and there’s a police station not three blocks away.

I said, ‘That doesn’t sound too smart.’

Wolf said, ‘It probably isn’t that smart. Can you come over? I don’t have a good feeling.’

Now, when a police officer tells the police chaplain that he doesn’t have a good feeling – well, that was all I needed to know.

I said, ‘Give me ten minutes,’ and Wolf said, ‘Thank you, Father.’

I moved quickly, picking my pants up off the floor and dressing in the clothes I’d worn the night before. I fished around in the bowl I kept on the kitchen bench for my wallet and keys, and made my way out the front door of my flat. I’ve owned it for years. It’s cream brick and pretty run down but in a good position on the beach. Of course I didn’t pay for it. Priests don’t earn that kind of money. It was given to me by my sister, Ruth. She died when I was twenty. I remember the conversation we had about her intention to leave it only to me, and not to any of our seven sisters.