Crisis: True stories of my life as a hostage negotiator

We had been there for over 12 hours. The man was still 30 feet up a tree, balancing on a branch directly over one of the main railway lines out of one of the busiest train stations in the country. He refused to talk to us, threatening to jump if we came too close. To him, we were the enemy. My job was to preserve his life.

Nicky Perfect knows that the most dangerous time in any negotiation is when you think you’re winning.

Often one of the first on the scene, during her two decades spent in crisis and hostage negotiation, she was deployed to defuse the most volatile and fraught situations imaginable.

From rooftop stand-offs to criminal barricades, gang kidnappings to terrorist incidents, these are the stories and cases that have shaped a career spent on high alert, where life often hangs in the balance.