These are used not just to record the offence, but also to deter the protesting traffic offender just as he is about to bust a blood vessel or commit a common assault. Now Eric took out his Sony DSU-30 digital camera, and left the Huskie hanging by his neck. As he was doing this Haroun was creeping unseen up the side of the tow-truck.
In his hand he held a nasty-looking piece of medical equipment which was, did he but know it, a thorax draining kit. The man called Jones began to swear never a good sign for those who had dealings with this horrid person.
Omak zanya fee erd. Your mother committed adultery with a donkey.
I am sorry? beamed Eric, who had decided to call the police.
Yen aal deen ommak! barked Jones. Damn your mothers rooster a deadlier insult than you might think, if only to an Arab.
What for do you need an ambulance anyway? asked Eric, and he took a couple of quick shots of Jones: billhook nose, grubby neck, short grey-flecked hair and peculiar eyes.
It is for the disabled, said Jones.
It is for the disabled, said Jones.
Who are the disabled?
Haroun tiptoed round the front of the Renault and prepared to lunge at Dragan Panic.
I dont see a disabled person anywhere, repeated Eric. Show me the disabled person.
Here is the disabled person, said Jones.
Where?
Here.
The last noise Eric heard before he fainted with shock was the ripping of his own pericardium as it was punctured by the pericardial puncture unit. Then there was a scraping noise as the spike hit something hard that might have been bone.
Help me, shouted Jones to Dean, the nineteen-year-old, as he caught the falling warden.
Dean watched, mouth agape, as his boss buckled under the weight; and then leapt forward to help him arrange the traffic warden in the gutter.
CHAPTER EIGHT
0841 HRS
Dragan the Serb had been weaned on tales of heroic assassination and glorious betrayal. From the Battle of Kosovo Pole onwards, Serbs have learned to glory in a sense of victimhood. But today he decided to give the national myth a miss.
He pushed away Haroun and his spike, and thudded off, weaving and shoulders hunched, as though with every yard he expected a bullet in his back from the Kosovo Liberation Army.
He sprinted from the Muslim extremists, down Tufton Street, past the (former) Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, founded in 1701, and turned on to Great Peter Street. He weaved one way, he ducked the other. Haroun watched him go.
Leave him, called Jones. We have no time.
Dean already felt he had good reason to be admiring of Jones, but he was amazed at the self-possession with which his boss now began to unload the ambulance from the tow-truck.
Whoa, he called, as the telescopic arm of the crane jerked into life, and the vehicle was thrust out into the street.
The arm was powered by three separate hydraulic lifts, the first capable of carrying 2,500 kilos, the second 1,700 kilos and the third 1,300 kilos; and in theory they were well capable of lifting a three-and-a-half-tonne ambulance.
But Jones was in such a hurry that he neglected the basic laws of physics.
Hey! said Dean, as the white machine was swung out over the street, like some mad mediaeval siege engine.
Haroun gave a curse something nasty about a dog, Dean guessed and even Habib broke off from flossing with his juniper twig.
Yow need to come back a bit, shouted Dean over the roar of the Renault engine.
The front wheels of the tow-truck were now on the verge of leaving the ground; black smoke was coming from the exhaust; the whole thing was about to keel over, and Dean instinctively ran to drag the body of Eric the warden out of the way.
It is fine, it is fine, shouted Jones, and flipped the next toggle, so that their stolen machine crashed back towards them and bust a taillight on the bed of the tow-truck.
Do it like this, called Habib quietly in Arabic. Habib was also called Freddie, and came from a good Lebanese family.
He was a Takfiri, a man who masked the ferocity of his faith with a sympathetic worldliness; and he had spent enough time in gambling houses to understand the principles of the grabby machines you use to pick up a watch or a fluffy toy.
Together, and with what Dean thought was remarkable coolness, he and Jones worked out how to ease in the last extender arm and, in hydraulic pants, the van was lowered to the ground.
With the speed of Formula One pitstopmen they now undid the metal crabs and hessian straps, bunged them on the back of the tow-truck, and loaded poor Eric in the back of the ambulance.
Haroun paused only to read the sign on the side of the Renault.
How ees my driving? he said, and laughed, a horrible carking yelp.
It says something for the tranquillity that has descended on the Church of England that no one else observed these events outside Church House.
No one took any notice of them as they drove in full conformity with the laws of the road apart from the taillight in the direction of the Palace of Westminster.
They began thereby to catch up with Roger Barlow, who was waiting with his bike at a red traffic light, as all good lawmakers must.
CHAPTER NINE
0843 HRS
Barlows thoughts of political extinction had taken a philosophical turn. Did it matter? Of course not. The fate of the human race was hardly affected. The sun would still, at the appointed date four billion years hence, expand to the girth of a red giant and devour the planet. In the great scheme of things his extermination was about as important as the accidental squashing of a snail. The trouble was that until that happy day when he was reincarnated as a louse or a baked bean, he didnt know how he was going to explain the idiotic behaviour of his brief human avatar.
It wasnt the sex comedy side of things. It wasnt the waste of money, the cash that should have gone into Weetabix and plastic guns for shooting him in bed.
It was the gullibility that was what worried him.
Should he wait for the papers to present this appalling Hieronymus Bosch version of his life? Or should he try to give his account first, and thereby win points for frankness?
Hang on a tick: there was a colleague. Swishing down the pavement, hair cut by Trumpers, suit cut by Savile Row it was Adrian (Ziggy) Roberts. Bright. Forceful. Decisive. Very far from completely unbearable; in fact, by any standards really rather nice.
Roger conceived a desire to talk to him, not least because he could see under his arm the early edition of the Evening Standard.
Ziggy, old man, called Roger Barlow, kerb-crawling on his bike.
Hombre! replied Ziggy.
You going to this Westminster Hall business?
God no, said Ziggy, who had benefited from the most expensive education England can provide. Cant be arsed.
Roger felt welling up in himself the urge to confide in a friend. A problem shared, he whispered to himself, is a problem halved.
Can I ask you something, Zigs?
Of course.
Roger looked at his colleague, his high, clear forehead, his myriad certainties. On second thoughts, no.
Ziggy counted as a friend, but it was, in the end, your friends who did you in. And quite right, too. That was what friends were for.
That posh suit, said Barlow. Just tell me roughly how much. But Ziggys answer was lost in the noise of the Twin Squirrel Eurocopter. Blimey, thought Barlow: this was worse than the helicopter paranoia scene in Goodfellas.
Wait a sec, said the co-pilot of the chopper, as they bullocked over towards the Embankment. He craned backwards the way they had come, and the City of Westminster touching in its majesty was reflected in the black visor of his helmet.
I just realized . .
Say again? yodelled the pilot into the mike on his chin.
I think we just flew over it. It was on a tow-truck. I didnt really take it in
On a tow-truck?
Yeah, you know, a council truck.
Bollocks, said the pilot. No one lifts an ambulance.
Go on, itll take thirty seconds. Just back there in that little street near Marsham Street.
Go on, itll take thirty seconds. Just back there in that little street near Marsham Street.
The pilot sighed and turned the joystick. Well, he said a little later. Theres your tow-truck, but I dont see any ambulance.
The co-pilot stared. It may have been unusual for an ambulance to be hoisted, but it was positively unheard of for a vehicle of any kind to escape the clutches of a tow-truck operator.
Wheres the driver, anyway? he asked himself.
Here, thought Dragan Panic. Down here! Look this way!
For a couple of seconds he jumped up and down, waving and staring at the police helicopter until his eyeballs began to ache from the glare.
No use. They couldnt see him.
Dragan had a pretty good idea what he had witnessed: the shambolic beginning of something that might end with eternal loss and heartache for thousands of families. He had read about the idiotic punch-up outside Bostons Logan Airport on the morning of 9111 itself, when the Islamic headcases left their maps and their Koran and their flight manuals in the stolen hire car. But mere incompetence was no guarantee of failure, as he knew from his own soldiering.
Dragan looked down towards Marsham Street. He saw a building site; he saw men in yellow hats and muddy boots. Tough men, who could help.
He was older and fatter than he had been as a purple pyjamaed Serb MUP man, and he was soaked with sweat; and though he had absolutely no reason to love the United States, not after what they had done to Serbia, he stamped and grunted as fast as his Reeboks would carry him.
Hey! he shouted. Help, please!
Dark faces looked up.
Dragan put his hands on his knees in exhaustion, and began to explain to the immigrant builders that there was a plot against America.
CHAPTER TEN
0844 HRS
Im starting to think we should warn the Yanks, said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Purnell.
You mean about the ambulance? said Grover. What makes you think they dont know already?
But when Purnell came to dial Bluett he once again found himself changing his mind. Why raise the temperature?
He cleared his throat when Bluett picked up, and was on the point of improvising some excuse when the American cut in.
Mr Deputy Commissioner, we have a problem.