As I said, after that things got confusing.
Suddenly the airbag was as big as an elephant but I’m swinging sideways against my seatbelt as the car flips over. I hear Carey swearing and I’m thinking that thank God the pub was made out of piece-of-shit cement sections and not bricks. I’m also thinking that if he’s smart Martin Chorley’s not going to wait for the car to stop moving before hitting us with his follow-up.
I had thought we were going to roll over, but the roof slammed into the good solid Victorian brick of the railway arch and my head whiplashed in the other direction as the car bounced back onto its wheels. Despite the ringing in my ears, I had my belt off and the door open before the suspension had settled, and I rolled out. I staggered to my feet with a screamer in my left hand and my right extended and my shield up.
Ahead of me the Goat was missing its front façade and the interior was blown to matchwood. Bizarrely, only the solid antique bar remained standing – but it was on fire. I couldn’t see any hostile movement and, more importantly, no casualties. Careful to keep my shield up and angled towards the pub, I threw the screamer down the street and turned and ducked down to see if Carey was all right. The passenger door was open and the seat was empty.
‘David?’ I called.
‘Get under cover, you pillock,’ he shouted back from behind the car.
It seemed a sensible idea, so I dashed around the back and into the gap between it and the archway. Carey was tucked in there with his back against the car, his face grey and his feet against the wall.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked as I joined him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m fucking not.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m fed up.’
I grinned with relief.
‘It’s not fucking funny,’ he said.
I said I’d go and assess the situation if he checked for casualties in the pub.
Carey gave a pained grunt and then said, ‘After you.’
I checked my Airwave and found, amazingly, that it was still working. I told Stephanopoulos, who was currently running the op from Belgravia, about my plan. She told me to be careful and that Nightingale was less than five minutes out. I seriously considered just staying where I was but then I heard a van start up. I shuffled to the end of the car and had a look around the back, just in time to see a genuine antique Mark 1 Transit van resprayed in Prussian blue pull out from behind the ruins of the Goat and Crocodile and make a ponderous turn to the east on New Inn Yard.
I knew from my last visit that fifty metres further east New Inn Yard hit Anning Street. The south turn was a cul-de-sac and beyond the crossing New Inn Yard became bicycle only and was blocked off by a trio of cast-iron bollards. The only way the transit van could go was north up Anning Sreet, and Stephanopoulos had just told me the Incident Response Vehicle had blocked that route off.
Leaving Carey to check the pub, I took off up the street after the van, which was gunning its short-arse two-litre V4. An old-fashioned engine in a carefully chosen old-fashioned van with no chip-controlled fuel injection that a slightly desperate young Detective Constable could disable with magic. Chorley, the bastard, had probably chosen it for just that reason.
I was wondering if I could fireball the rear tyres, but tyres are difficult – small, hard to hit, and if you do burst them you’ve turned the vehicle into a couple of tons of random destruction.
I gained ground as the van slowed and I expected it to go left and be blocked by the approaching IRV, but instead it ploughed forward onto the cycle track. Something black and solid and about a metre long flew up and over the van – tumbling lazily to crash into the road behind it. I recognised it as the sort of solid metal bollard councils use to block traffic from cycle lanes and pedestrianised streets. The van practically stopped while Chorley dealt with the two remaining bollards. As the second thudded into the tarmac I got close enough to fling a handful of fireballs at the left rear tyre – all of which bloody missed. Although I think I got someone’s attention, because the third bollard came scything right at me at head height. I dropped and heard it bounce on the roadway behind me with a strange hollow boing sound.
The van lurched forward even as I was getting to my feet and I thought it was going to get away when it suddenly ground to a halt again. Later we determined that the back axle had caught on a spur of concrete created when one of the bollards was ripped up.
The van’s left rear door opened and I caught sight of Martin Chorley crouched in the back, and behind him a young woman slumped against the van wall, arms extended forward as if chained at the wrist, a look of agony on her face. It was Walbrook.
Chorley leant to out to see what his van was caught on. I was tempted to throw everything I had at him while he wasn’t looking, but I couldn’t risk it with a hostage just behind him.
Still, I was gaining enough to be wondering what the hell I was going to do when I got there. I’m getting better at magic, but Chorley was in the Nightingale-weight class. And although he’d promised Lesley he wouldn’t kill me, there were many unpleasant things he might do short of that.
Setting my clothes on fire for a starter.
Chorley gave me a disgusted look and waved his hand. I flinched but I wasn’t the target. Instead, the back of the van lifted half a metre off the ground and the whole thing lurched forward half a length before the rear dropped back onto its wheels.
Chorley gave a mocking salute, the rear doors closed and the van accelerated away. There was supposed to be another bollard where the cycle path met Shoreditch High Street but it seemed to have vanished in the excitement. Bizarrely, the van driver signalled before turning left. As it disappeared I saw half a dozen pedestrians hugging the wall, including a cycle courier.
The courier, a young black guy in blue and red lycra, stared at me in incomprehension as I bore down on him frantically waving my warrant card and yelling, ‘Police, police, I need your bike!’
He shifted his grip on the handlebars and for a moment I thought he was going to fight me for it, but then he stepped back to hold it at arm’s length and give me unimpeded access.
Thank God the bike was a hybrid, not a racer, and didn’t have toecaps, because I didn’t have time for adjustments as I grabbed it and launched myself after the van. I think I might have said thank you but I can’t remember.
Ahead, the van had done a classic dash and stop, getting a hundred metres up the road before being blocked by a 149 bus going north and a lorry coming south. I saw it give an uncertain wiggle as the driver looked for a way around. I could hear India 99 overhead, which meant that Seawoll, Stephanopoulos and probably half the Met were watching the van in real time.
I wondered what they thought of yours truly, pedalling madly up behind it.
And where did Chorley think he was going? He must have known that once we had air support and assets with eyeballs on him there wasn’t any getting away. I started to worry about India 99. Chorley had form trying to shoot down helicopters, and I know for a fact that Nightingale downed a couple of planes during World War Two.
I leant forward and stepped hard on the pedals, hoping to catch up when the van hit the inevitable traffic jam further up the road. As I did so, there was a ripping sound and I felt both shoulders of my jacket go loose and start to slip down my arms – I’d managed to tear the back of my jacket. As I struggled to flap the sleeve off my left arm, an IRV screamed past me with sirens and lights on. I learnt later that they were responding to a different shout and that CCC hadn’t alerted them in time to reroute. Chorley obviously didn’t know that, because I glanced up just in time to see the IRV’s bonnet go fluttering into the air and a dirty yellow ball of fire erupt from its engine.