Jones.
‘What are you doing in there?’ Haroun banged on the door and Dean felt that any hope of micturition was gone. He respected Jones, but he was seriously frightened of Haroun, who had the pale blue eyes and tiny black pupils of a staring seagull.
Jones saw a traffic warden pass the window. Their researches had already established that the wardens around here were sticklers, and he had a sense of impending disaster.
He ran out and round the corner. He stood still. He shut his eyes. He clenched his fists.
‘Nooo,’ he called. ‘Stop it, you!’
Already a clamp had appeared on the right-hand front wheel of the ambulance, a green clamp, moronic, infernal. He swore in Arabic.
Hmar. Jackass.
Yebnen kelp. Son of a bitch.
Hee hee hee, chortled Eric Onyeama.
Jones ran back into the Tivoli and rounded up his men. By now only Haroun had failed to make use of the facilities.
‘Come,’ said Jones.
‘I must just go …’ said Haroun, but such was the power of Jones, and so contemptuous was the expression in his eyes that Haroun followed him like a lamb and Jones ran back into the sunlight.
And now he couldn’t believe it … He couldn’t flipping well believe it. Surely he had been gone only seconds, and now the clamp had gone but the ambulance was being hoisted up into a kind of hammock by a hydraulic lift, and the parkie was standing there, still scribing zealously away into his Huskie computer.
‘I am sorry, sir,’ recited Eric, ‘but once all four wheels are off the ground, you have lost control of the vehicle. It is now the responsibility of Westminster City Council.’
Jones waved the keys. ‘But it is ours. Put it down.’
‘All the craps are on,’ said Eric.
‘The craps?’
‘Yessir, these are the craps. The metal craps.’
‘You mean the crabs.’
‘That is right, sir, they are the craps.’
Jones gave up. ‘Did you say all four wheels?’
‘Yes, that is correct, sir. Now that all four wheels are off the ground, it is the law that you no longer have any control over this vehicle.’
This was a big ambulance. Fully laden it weighed not far short of three and a half tonnes, with a 3.5 litre Rover V8 engine and bulky aluminium chassis, so that it was already astonishing that the tow-truck had been able to hoist it.
At that moment Jones had an inspiration. It was technically true that the wheels were off the ground. But the front pair were only a few inches up.
‘What about now?’ asked Jones. He and Haroun jumped on the bonnet of the Leyland Daf vehicle, painted with a blue star and caduceus, and it sunk its nose until the front offside wheel brushed the ground.
‘See!’ shouted Jones. ‘Now it is ours again!’
‘Whose ambulance did you say it was?’ asked Deputy Assistant Commissioner Purnell, who was, today, in charge of anti-terrorist and security operations throughout the Metropolis.
Grover entered the room with an air of satisfaction. ‘What did I tell you? We’ve got it. An ambulance from the Bilston and Willenhall NHS Trust was seen at the Travelodge in Dunstable at one a.m.’
‘Good. And it’s still there, is it?’
‘Er, no. It left.’
‘Aha.’
‘We’re on the case.’
A second later, he was back again. ‘I’ve got Bluett on the line.’
The two London policemen looked at each other. They knew – or strongly suspected – that the Americans were tuning in to their frequencies.
‘Put him through,’ said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Purnell.
He listened with half-closed eyes to the American’s demands.
‘You want a sniper on the roof of the Commons? What did you say his name was?’ On a piece of headed notepaper Purnell printed ‘PICKLE’. Then he crossed it out and wrote ‘PICKEL’.
‘I see, yes,’ he said, ‘I see, yes.’
He listened some more, and then said: ‘Well, I can understand if the First Lady is a bit anxious but … Right you are. Colonel … Okeycokey, chum. Yep. See you later, I expect … No, no, everything else is, um, fine. We have no evidence of anything, you know, untoward.’
He disconnected with a groan.
‘They want a sniper on the roof of the Commons, above New Palace Yard. I’ve said we’ll oblige. Someone answering to this name will be presenting himself in a few minutes. Whatever happens, I am not having him sitting up there alone.’
He handed over the sheet of paper. ‘And I want the choppers to start scanning Westminster for this flaming ambulance.’
High above Soho a Metropolitan Police Twin Squirrel Eurocopter AS 355N banked and turned down Shaftesbury Avenue.
It passed directly over the head of Roger Barlow, who looked up and felt vaguely resentful. Why did they hover in that threatening way over innocent streets? It was like some dreary lefty movie about Thatcher’s Britain.
Then he continued to thread his way through the cars. That’s what he loved about bicycles: the autonomy, the ability to put your wheel wherever you chose. As you looked over the handlebars you could see your front tyre as a snub-nosed cylinder, nosing at will down the open streets of London. He passed an Evening Standard hoarding, announcing full coverage of the state visit.
Uh-oh. The Standard. He had forgotten about the Standard. How would he stop his wife seeing that one?
The traffic was getting heavier. Now he understood. It was the exclusion zone. The American security people had insisted on a total ban on traffic in the area to be honoured by their presence, and the result was that a freeborn Englishman could not even move down the Queen’s highway.
‘Strewth,’ he cursed, and used a disabled ramp to mount the pavement. He knew he shouldn’t do it, but there you go. In any case, his political career might be over by tomorrow morning.
Then he was back on the road again, watching the shimmer starting to rise from the hot bonnets of the backed-up traffic, and thugga thugga whok whok the helicopter was ceasing to impinge on his consciousness.
