LITMIR.BIZ

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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

      Barlow’s 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 didn’t know how he was going to explain the idiotic behaviour of his brief human avatar.

      It wasn’t the sex comedy side of things. It wasn’t 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. ‘Can’t 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 Ziggy’s 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 didn’t 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, it’ll 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. ‘There’s your tow-truck, but I don’t 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.

      ‘Where’s 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 couldn’t 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 Boston’s Logan Airport on the morning of 9/11 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

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