Uh-huh.
Tits out, very tasteful and all.
Go on.
And they had turned it to the wall. Twenty minutes later they checked out.
Wackos.
The phone went in the outer room. They both knew it was Bluett.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Purnell looked at the clock on the wall.
Theyll be on their way, wont they?
No way of stopping them now, said Grover.
No fewer than fifteen BMW 750 police motorcycles were engaged in sheepdogging the traffic out of the way of the slowly oncoming cavalcade.
Now they were approaching Junction 4 for West Drayton and Heathrow, and seeing the signs the President looked over to his right.
He tried to spot the two Boeing 747-700s, painted in the eggshell blue livery of the President of the United States; but no sign. Perhaps they had been tactfully concealed in a hangar.
After the airport the wailing host of outriders and motorbike voortrekkers took the red route that runs from Heathrow to London. They shovelled the taxis aside and cowed the cursing commuters.
One woman tried to see into the tint-windowed limos and crashed her Nissan Micra into the back of an expensive but vulnerable Alfa 164. The ensuing delay added an average of fifteen minutes to the journeys of more than 1,000 motorists.
As the traffic thickened down the Charing Cross Road, it occurred to Roger that this security business would be no joke. What if he couldnt even get into his office?
Cameron. That was the answer.
Cameron would have all the passes necessary.
He reached into his breast pocket for his mobile, since he was all in favour of using his bike as his office.
Damn. Oh yes. Hed thrown it away the other day when it rang at the wrong moment. Straight out of the car window, as it happened, on the M25, landing safely in some buddleias in the central reservation.
He negotiated the Palio of Trafalgar Square and howled round into Whitehall. And here it was.
A fence. Ribbons of aluminium fences, and policemen in fluorescent yellow, sprouting like dandelions in the grey of the stone and the tarmac, and the who k-who k-whok of a helicopter in the distance.
Im sorry, sir, youll have to dismount.
But Im a Member of Parliament.
The policeman looked at him with open disgust.
I dont care if youre the Queen of Sheba, sir.
And so it went on as Roger was shunted in a ludicrous arc westwards of the place to which his electors had sent him. Every time he attempted to penetrate the cordon of fencing he was sent off again in search of some mythical entry point.
Im sorry, sir, you cant take your bike through here.
At one point, to his shame, he snapped at the men in blue.
Whats wrong with my bike?
Its a lethal weapon, sir.
You can say that again. Its almost killed me several times.
Now dont try to be funny, sir. Ive seen these things packed with explosives. Ive seen what they can do. Look, I know its annoying, sir, said the copper, seeing his expression, but please try to bear with us. Were all doing our best, but the whole caboodle has been agreed with the Americans.
And so Roger Barlow tacked ever round and west, until he found himself in Pimlico and puffing up Tufton Street.
Where he saw Dragan Panic standing by the tiplift of his Renault 150, heaving some large white vehicle aboard.
Come on, droogie moi, come on, my friend, said Dragan to himself in Serbo-Croat.
In theory the Renault could lift 4,450 kilos, but the hydraulics were puffing a bit and the stabilizing rods were biting into the tarmac the way a heart attack victim clutches his chest.
Dragan wanted to take this bleeding ambulance, and then he wanted to scarper. Personally, he thought Eric the parkie was mad.
OK, so it was dangerously parked. But you didnt lift an ambulance. Nah, not an ambulance. Since fleeing Pristina in 1999 Dragan had slotted in nicely in the East End. His knuckles were richly scabbed and crusted with doubloons, and he dressed in trackie bums. At Christmas he sold Christmas trees on the street corner, thumping his mittened hands together. He did a bit of gamekeeping for some toffs out in Essex, place called Rayleigh, and he did like a high bird.
But lifting an ambulance well, it was like shooting a white pheasant, wasnt it? He wasnt on for that. And above all he didnt like being in the company of Muslims. That wasnt just because he was a Serb killer from Pristina, and a former member of Arkans Tigers.
It was also because he was as big a coward as ever set fire to a Muslim hayrick in the dark, and experience had taught him that you had to keep an eye on the sneaky bastards. Speaking of which
A couple of them seemed to have vanished. Now there was just the young kid and the spooky-looking fellow, and the parkie taking his time.
CHAPTER SIX
0837 HRS
Eric Onyeama was struggling with the urge not to burp.
This man was rude, and Eric had to maintain his poise and dignity. It was impossible to do this while burping.
Please Oh you bastard, said the man called Jones. Just do what I say or Ill . .
I must warn you that it is the policy of our company to take legal action against anybody who uses the verbal or physical ab
As when scuba divers find a pocket of stale air in a sunken submarine, and the bubble rises to the surface in a distended globule, so the garlic vapours were released from Erics stomach.
Abuu
They passed in a gaseous bolus through his oesophagus, and slid out invisibly through the barrier of his teeth.
Abuse, he said, and a look of mystification, and then horror passed over the face of the man called Jones. He staggered back.
Ah yes, thought Roger Barlow, a classic scene of our modern vibrant multicultural society, a group of asylum seekers in dispute with a Nigerian traffic warden.
Poor bleeders, he thought. What were they? Albanians, Kosovars, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Martians? Now their day was wrecked. They would have to find the thick end of £200 just to spring their motor. How many windscreens would they have to wash to earn that back?
He composed a sorrowful speech in his head, to the effect that the law was cruel, but that its essence was impartiality. Hang about, he said to himself as he drew nearer. Thats bonkers. They cant take an ambulance.
Barlow rescues ambulance, he said to himself reflexively. Have-a-go hero MP in mercy dash. I couldnt believe my eyes, said Mr Barlow last night. The Mail asks: Has the world gone mad? He was thinking Newsroom Southeast, he was thinking Littlejohn. He was thinking Big Stuff. Well, this was a story, all right. That should get that awful Debbie woman off his back.
He saw the traffic warden say something to the olive-skinned man, and the olive-skinned man reeled; and no wonder he reeled, poor dutiful fellow. He could imagine that they were already late for a mission.
Across London, the mere act of getting up was taking a terrible toll. People were braining themselves in the shower, slicing their nostrils with Bic razors, brushing their teeth with their childrens poisonous Quinoderm acne cream, sustaining cardiac infarcts at finding themselves misreported in the paper and where was the ambulance?
It was outrageous! Roger braked and spoke in the mellow bedside tones of the MPs surgery.
CHAPTER SEVEN
0839 HRS
Excuse me. I wonder if I can help.
The traffic warden smiled bashfully. Its OK, sir, we do not need any help here. De law is de law.
I know its none of my business, but are you seriously going to remove that ambulance?
Please, sir, do not get involved. I cannot make de rules. I can only enfoooo oo excuse me, I can only enforce them.
Barlow blinked as he was engulfed. But this is absurd, he said, turning to the victims. I know this shouldnt make any difference, he said superbly, but I am an MP.
For the first time the olive-skinned man faced the MP. His passport said his name was Jones, and that he had been born in Mold, Clwyd. Though it was true that he was currently a student at an institution implausibly called Llangollen University, these biographical details seemed unlikely.
Roger Barlow noticed something about his eyes. They had a kind of wobble. It was as though he was watching a very close-up game of ping-pong.
Piss off, he said. Piss off and die.
Eh? Barlow gasped.
Not necessarily in that order, said Jones.
Barlow looked for guidance to the warden. There was something badly out of whack here. When all was said and done, were they not, he and the warden, part of the same team?
He made the law, the warden enforced it. They were like two china dogs, bracketing the sacred texts of statute.
Im sorry ? he said, pathetically.
Tee hee hee, sniggered Eric Onyeama, and shook his head at the busybody. He felt sure he had seen dis man before, maybe in church, or at a meeting of parents and teachers. But if Roger was looking for an ally now, he was out of luck.
De man is right, he said. You must go away. And Roger did. For once he felt he could have made a difference. He could have improved things here. He cycled on. Was it getting hotter, or was that the sweat of embarrassment?
That man told me to piss off, he told himself. And die, too. He wondered whether anyone had seen his humiliation.
Had Barlow not been so mortified, he might have seen Haroun issue from the side of the van and pass something to Jones. The leader of the gang of four now looked at his watch and decided it was time to bring matters to a close.
Please be so kind as to put the ambulance down now, and stop this damnfoolery.
Hey dere, said Eric to himself. The Huskie was chirruping back to him.
I knew it, he thought. The ambulance had been reported stolen last night, from Dymock Street, Wolverhampton.
Did you hear what I said? Joness voice had an evil snit to it.
Im sorry, said Eric, thinking fast, but you must come with me to the pound.
Im going to ask you one last time: give us back our vehicle.
You have broken de law.
No, sneered Jones: you broke de fucking law. You lifted the thing off the ground while we were here.
I am sorry, but that is wrong.
You IDIOT! Tell him to put the ambulance down. Tell him to do it now.
In defence of its parking attendants, men and women who must put up with some of the worst abuse known to this coarsened, selfish and irresponsible age, Westminster Council gives them cameras.