Taking a step back, I karate-kick the midsection of the French windows. The lock breaks and the doors fly open. I run through, clambering onto the balcony's wooden balustrade. Below me, I can see two plainclothes cops with police-issue caps and MP5 carbines strapped to their shoulders climbing over the boundary wall. At least two cop cars are parked out on the adjoining road, and I can hear the sound of sirens converging from several different points in the distance. The balustrade makes a worrying cracking noise as I scramble down the other side of it and hang from the bottom rail by one arm before jumping the final dozen or so feet to the patio below. I hit the ground with knees bent to absorb the impact, and roll to one side - a typical parachutist's landing. A bolt of pain shoots like a bullet from my ankles to my calves, and my shoulder bumps hard against the stone. But I'm uninjured and back on my feet in a second, running for the fence that separates the garden from the rear of the neighbour's property.
'Stop or I'll fire!' yells one of the armed cops behind me.
Harsh words, definitely, but I'm calculating that he won't shoot me in the back. The British police have some of the toughest regulations in the world governing the use of firearms and can only pull the trigger if there is an immediate threat to life. And there isn't. At least not yet. Although maybe I'm being a little over-confident, given that these are days of paranoia, with men being held down and pumped full of head shots on the Underground. Everyone's a little bit more trigger-happy these days. But I was a soldier a long time and I'm used to taking risks. And today of all days, I'm not stopping for anyone.
I vault the fence, crash through the trellis running along the top, and land in a grubby backyard full of kids' toys. I run straight across it, vault the next fence, land in the flowerbed of a better-kept garden, then do a rapid left turn and charge through an unlocked gate at the end, which leads into the alleyway providing rear access to the properties. I sprint along it for about twenty yards, try a couple of locked gates, finally find one that isn't, and disappear
through that. At no time do I look back or listen out for the pursuing cops, preferring to focus every ounce of my energy on putting as much distance as possible between me and the apartment where four men have just died, two of them by my own hand.
I run down a garden path towards a particularly attractive young woman who's sunbathing on a lounger, stark naked and glistening with tanning oil. She shoots up in her seat, putting one arm across her ample chest and the other down below, and stares at me from behind oversized sunglasses, like I'm the one with no clothes on, not her. The back door to her house is open, so I run past her and through the gap, emerging into a kitchen with a ton of washing to do in the sink. I jump over a binbag full of rubbish and continue into the hallway.
A muscular black guy in a string vest pokes his head out of one of the doors. 'Oy, you! Come here!' he barks angrily. He steps into the hallway to confront me, which is the moment when I tug the Glock free from the back of my jeans and aim it straight at him, all without slowing down.
'Out the way!'
He doesn't need asking twice, diving back inside the door and out of my line of fire with an impressive athleticism.
Replacing the gun, I pull open the front door and run down the steps. The sirens are almost on top of me now, seemingly coming from all directions. I can see the flashing lights of one cop car roaring down the street towards me and I know I have seconds rather than minutes to get out of here. I charge into the road and straight into the path of the cop car.
There's an angry screech of tyres as the driver brakes violently in a desperate effort to avoid me. He almost loses control, but somehow manages to stop about six feet in front of me without hitting any of the parked cars.
He's the only occupant of the car, and I'm guessing he hasn't been given much of a description of the suspect he's meant to be apprehending, because he looks more angry than anything else.
'What the hell do you think you're doing?' he yells, sticking his head out of the window.
'Stealing your car,' I tell him, producing the Glock once again, running up to the driver's side door and pulling it open. I shove the barrel
against his temple, grab him by the shirt and haul him out of the car.
'You can't do this,' he splutters, but like most regular British cops he's unarmed, so it's perfectly obvious to both of us that I can.
I knee him in the groin to relieve him of any excess enthusiasm he may have, and shove him onto the pavement.
Another cop car has just turned into the street behind this one and is bearing down on us fast, so I don't hang around. Jumping into the driver's seat and flinging the Glock and the briefcase onto the passenger seat, I shove it into first and I'm off again. Unfortunately, I'm also going back in roughly the direction I've come, towards the murder scene; but it's a narrow road, and with the second cop car behind me, I don't have a lot of choice. Speed is my weapon here. Not much more than a minute has passed since they kicked in the door, so I'm thinking that the bulk of the arriving cops will still be concentrating on the house, not me. I change up into second gear, then third, accelerating towards the junction.
Meanwhile, the cop I've just evicted from his vehicle is signalling to his colleagues and they
come to a halt, realize what's happened, and speed up again, sirens blaring. By this time I'm at the junction and I don't slow down. Instead, I put my foot flat on the floor and go straight across, glimpsing as I do a couple of armed officers on foot taking aim at the car's tyres.
I'm through and out of sight before a shot's fired, but time's not on my side. There are three police helicopters on permanent standby for the London area. They're based at Lippitt's Hill Air Base, not much more than three minutes' flying time from where I am now, and as soon as one of them joins the pursuit, I'm effectively finished. There's no escape from the flying eye and, unfortunately, the cop car behind me is catching up fast. He comes up right behind me until he's so close I can see the hairs up the driver's nose, and I can't help thinking that it's just my luck to have Stirling Moss on my tail. By the number of occupants, I'm guessing it's an ARV - an armed response vehicle - and that I'm going to have to get rid of these guys pronto if I don't want to end up in the cells, or the morgue. So as I come to another junction I change down to second and take a hard left that sees me almost wipe out a parked car on the corner. I
swerve like a drunk at closing time, straighten up like a Methodist on Sunday, and my foot hits the floor again.
But the ARV's still with me, and it's time for more radical action. We're still in a residential area, but the road's a little wider now and as I come round a bend, a car appears ahead of me, travelling in the same direction and crawling along so slowly he'd be better off walking. There's another car coming towards me, and it's slowing down as it sees me approach with my lights flashing and sirens wailing. The gap between them is narrow to say the least, and narrowing all the time, but beggars can't be choosers, so I change down to third gear, slam my foot to the floor and pull out onto the wrong side of the road, heading straight at the oncoming car and sucking up the distance like it's a thread of spaghetti.
Thirty yards, twenty yards, ten . . . I pull in just before I hit it head-on, still flooring the accelerator and almost losing control of the car as I fight to straighten it up. Almost, but not quite, and I've bought myself precious seconds as the ARV gets held up further back.
There's a T-junction with traffic lights, which
leads back to the main road. The lights are on red and there are four cars lined up in a queue, so I veer once again onto the wrong side of the road, passing them like they're not there. I'm braking a little by this time, and it's a good thing, because a minibus is turning into my path. Thankfully the driver sees my lights and slams on his brakes, giving me enough of a gap to drive straight through.
I am still doing forty when I shoot out onto the main road, causing cars to skid and horns to blare, but somehow I don't hit anyone and my momentum keeps me going onto the other side of the road where I do a hard right and join the traffic, weaving in and out of the cars. It's an exhilarating feeling, I have to admit, being king of the road. You have a real sense of power, and the more dangerous your manoeuvres, the more confident you become. If I wasn't so desperate, I'd be really enjoying this.
I snatch a glance in the rear-view mirror. The ARV is twenty yards back but has taken advantage of the fact that all the traffic stopped to accelerate out onto the main road, and is already making up the distance between us. It's police procedure to terminate high-speed pursuits
when they become too dangerous, but it looks like the rule book's been thrown out of the window today. But then I suppose I am leaving the scene of four violent deaths in a hurry, so I can see why they're keen to keep me in their sights.
I come to another set of lights, and once again they're on red. This time, however, there's no obvious way through. I slow a little, pull on the seatbelt, and as the ARV races up behind me, I do an emergency stop. The ARV hits me right up the arse, shunting me forward several feet, but I was expecting the impact and they weren't, so they now have a couple of seconds of shock in which their reactions are slowed to almost nothing. My head hits the windscreen, but as I bounce back into my seat I shove the car into first, pull into the nearside lane and, like the worst kind of joyriding delinquent from one of the 'Eye in the Sky' police pursuit programmes every channel seems to love, I mount the pavement and drive along it, blasting away on my horn and scattering confused and occasionally angry pedestrians in all directions. I drive off again on the other side, having passed the junction now, then turn the wheel hard left, merging with the passing traffic and aggressively forcing
it out of my way as I at last put some space between myself and my pursuers.
After about twenty seconds and a quarter of a mile, I see a Sainsbury's superstore looming up like an architectural monstrosity on my right-hand side. Behind me, the ARV is nowhere to be seen. Neither is any other sign of pursuit, so I veer across the central reservation, drive down the wrong side of the road for twenty yards, once again making everything in my path come to a screeching halt, then park up half on and half off the pavement. I've lost the cap I was wearing when I arrived at the apartment, so I keep my head down as I shove the Glock back in my jeans and pick up the briefcase.
Ignoring the looks I'm getting from other drivers, I walk rapidly into the superstore car park. I move along the lines of cars, going slower now so that I don't attract attention, and keeping as far away from the main entrance as possible. I'm looking for a suitably old car that won't have a sophisticated alarm system, and since this isn't the poshest end of town, it doesn't take long to locate a couple of likely candidates. There are plenty of people around, mainly in the process of loading up their
shopping, and I use them as cover as I hear the first telltale whirr of rotor blades. It seems the airborne cavalry have arrived.
But the problem with all these real-life cop shows is that you learn how the cavalry operates and can therefore always second-guess them. For instance, they're already circling the area, so it's obvious they're talking to the guys on the ground, which means they haven't picked me up on their infra-red cameras yet. And the yodel-like shriek of emergency service sirens is such a part of London life that no-one takes a blind bit of notice as I stroll along, trying the doors on the cars I've singled out as potential theft material.
The first two are locked, but in my experience there are always people around who are careless about security, and the door on the third opens when I try the handle. I don't bother to check whether an eagle-eyed member of the public has spotted me. If you act casually enough and cut out the furtive looks over the shoulder, most people will assume you're bona fide. I clamber inside and shut the door, putting the case down on the passenger seat.
Now that I'm out of view I can move a bit
faster. Bending down low, I put the gearstick into neutral and remove the steering column's plastic sheath, exposing the maze of wires beneath. I locate the two I need, touch the ends together, and the engine kicks into life. Just like that. Working in the used car trade has its compensations, I think, as I put the shitheap I've picked into reverse and back out.
There's a second entrance to the car park on the other side of the superstore, and as I follow the road round and join the line of traffic slowly filtering out of it, I can hear the sirens continuing to approach from all sides. My heart's beating like a hammer drill and beads of sweat are running down my face, but I wait my turn patiently, and within a few seconds it comes and I'm out on the road heading east with no sign of any flashing lights showing in my rear-view mirror.
It seems I've made it.
It's another ten minutes before I feel I can breathe again. I'm still driving east, not a hundred per cent sure what I should be doing other than putting as much distance as possible between myself and the police. I turn the phone my blackmailer supplied me with back on, but there are no messages.
I'm hungry and exhausted. I take some deep breaths as the traffic ahead slows at lights, knowing that my situation's now taken a serious turn for the worse, while my memory of yesterday remains a steady, stubborn blank. Before I continue my search for Leah's killer, I need to stop somewhere and take stock of what's happening. And I need food. I desperately need food.