She gushed her thanks and was gone. And it was therefore with a faint sense of a hunter-gatherer who has missed one easy kill that he turned into Tufton Street, for the second time that morning.
He could hardly believe his eyes. It was still there.
It was the big one, el gordo. This was the white whale, and he was Ahab.
It had been there, to his certain knowledge, for half an hour, and probably far longer. The ambulance was on a single yellow. That was a Code 01 offence, and it was on the footway – that was Code 62. But what made it a légitimate target, in Eric’s view, was that it was blocking the thoroughfare, in the sense that two cars could certainly not pass abreast.
It was not true – as the tabloids hinted – that he received a bounty for every car he successfully caused to be plucked from the streets. But it certainly was true that he received bonuses for ‘productivity’, and productivity was measured – well, how else could it be measured?
Eric and Naaotwa Onyeama were ambitious for their children, and on the televised urgings of Carol Vorderman they were currently investing in a series of expensive ‘Kumon’ maths text books. Since Eric Onyeama only made £340 per week, working from 8.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m., this was not an opportunity he could responsibly pass up.
He reached for his Motorola and summoned the clampers. Then, since there could be no question of the vehicle staying where it was, he rang the tow-truck company.
Hee hee hee, chortled Eric, and he laughed at the multiple pleasures of the morning.
He knew all the tow-truck men, and Dragan Panic, the Serb, was the hungriest of the lot. Unless the mysterious crew of this ambulance returned within five minutes, the vehicle was a goner.
In the Tivoli café on the corner of Great Peter Street and Marsham Street three men and a kid of about nineteen were coming to the end of breakfast. The restaurant was non-posh to the point of affectation. Up the nostrils of its diners rose the tang of vinegar, mothering in its bottle, mingling with the ammoniacal vapours that hummed from the cloth that was used to wipe the Formica.
But the four dark customers had done well. They had eaten a meal of Henrician proportions: eggs, beans, chips, chops, schnitzels, steaks. The proprietor was amazed, especially considering it was not yet nine in the morning.
They had swallowed draughts of milkless tea, turned into a kind of sugary quicksand, and then they had eaten the Danish pastry and the doughnuts, ancient thickly iced things that had been in the display so long he had feared he would have to reduce the price.
They had eaten, in fact, as if there were no tomorrow; but today their mortal frames required relief. Owing to their eccentric bivouac they had been unable to pass water all night.
‘Quickly,’ said the one called Jones, coming back from the toilets. ‘The traffic wardens will be here.’ There was certainly something lilting and eastern about his accent; but if you shut your eyes and ignored his brown skin, there were tonic effects – birdlike variations in pitch – that were positively Welsh.
‘I must go too,’ said one of his colleagues, who had a moustache.
‘Well, hurry, God help us.’
Haroun scowled. It was obviously inequitable for their leader so to privilege his own requirements, but no doubt he was under pressure.
‘Sir, please can I go?’
It was the kid. ‘Quickly, Dean,’ said the man called Jones.
There was only one toilet, identified by a pictogram on the door, of a Regency buck and a crinolined dame, to show it was for the use of both sexes, and by an unspoken agreement Dean went in first.
Full though his bladder was after a night of appalling discomfort on a stretcher in that airless vehicle, he found he was trembling too much.
‘What is going on?’ hissed the man called Jones.
‘What are you doing in there?’ Haroun banged on the door and Dean felt that any hope of micturition was gone. He respected Jones, but he was seriously frightened of Haroun, who had the pale blue eyes and tiny black pupils of a staring seagull.
Jones saw a traffic warden pass the window. Their researches had already established that the wardens around here were sticklers, and he had a sense of impending disaster.
He ran out and round the corner. He stood still. He shut his eyes. He clenched his fists.
‘Nooo,’ he called. ‘Stop it, you!’
Already a clamp had appeared on the right-hand front wheel of the ambulance, a green clamp, moronic, infernal. He swore in Arabic.
Hmar. Jackass.
Yebnen kelp. Son of a bitch.
Hee hee hee, chortled Eric Onyeama.
Jones ran back into the Tivoli and rounded up his men. By now only Haroun had failed to make use of the facilities.
‘Come,’ said Jones.
‘I must just go …’ said Haroun, but such was the power of Jones, and so contemptuous was the expression in his eyes that Haroun followed him like a lamb and Jones ran back into the sunlight.
And now he couldn’t believe it … He couldn’t flipping well believe it. Surely he had been gone only seconds, and now the clamp had gone but the ambulance was being hoisted up into a kind of hammock by a hydraulic lift, and the parkie was standing there, still scribing zealously away into his Huskie computer.
‘I am sorry, sir,’ recited Eric, ‘but once all four wheels are off the ground, you have lost control of the vehicle. It is now the responsibility of Westminster City Council.’
Jones waved the keys. ‘But it is ours. Put it down.’
‘All the craps are on,’ said Eric.
‘The craps?’
‘Yessir, these are the craps. The metal craps.’
‘You mean the crabs.’
‘That is right, sir, they are the craps.’
Jones gave up. ‘Did you say all four wheels?’
‘Yes, that is correct, sir. Now that all four wheels are off the ground, it is the law that you no longer have any control over this vehicle.’
This was a big ambulance. Fully laden it weighed not far short of three and a half tonnes, with a 3.5 litre Rover V8 engine and bulky aluminium chassis, so that it was already astonishing that the tow-truck had been able to hoist it.
At that moment Jones had an inspiration. It was technically true that the wheels were off the ground. But the front pair were only a few inches up.
‘What about now?’ asked Jones. He and Haroun jumped on the bonnet of the Leyland Daf vehicle, painted with a blue star and caduceus, and it sunk its nose until the front offside wheel brushed the ground.
‘See!’ shouted Jones. ‘Now it is ours again!’
‘Whose ambulance did you say it was?’ asked Deputy Assistant Commissioner Purnell, who was, today, in charge of anti-terrorist and security operations throughout the Metropolis.
Grover entered the room with an air of satisfaction. ‘What did I tell you? We’ve got it. An ambulance from the Bilston and Willenhall NHS Trust was seen at the Travelodge in Dunstable at one a.m.’
‘Good. And it’s still there, is it?’
‘Er, no. It left.’
‘Aha.’
‘We’re