They descended at a recklessly fast pace, taking the stairs three at a time, clinging to the bannister and blindly throwing themselves into each turn. Luckily, no one was coming the other way because a collision at that speed would have been ugly.
As he reached the ground floor, Grier spotted a bored hospital security guard leaning against a wall up ahead, and he shouted to the man to help him stop the fleeing suspect. The guard was short and middle-aged, with the figure of a man who had eaten too many doughnuts.
With a look of trepidation plastered across his face, the security guard moved away from the wall he’d been holding up, spread his arms wide and started shuffling from side to side like a Sunday league goalkeeper getting ready to try and save a penalty kick from David Beckham. His chubby face was scrunched up in fierce concentration as he clumsily attempted to wrap his arms around the suspect’s waist, only to be shouldered effortlessly aside.
The bewildered guard was sent tumbling to the floor, where he rolled a couple of times before coming to an abrupt stop in a rather messy heap. For a moment, he lay there as unmoving as a bouncy castle that had just been deflated.
As Grier raced past a second later, he was relieved to see that the guard’s only obvious injury was a dented pride.
Up ahead, the suspect barged through a glass plated exit door leading out into an area at the side of the hospital where the ambulances all parked up between calls. Once outside, he paused for a moment, head frantically turning left and then right as though trying to decide which way to run. A second later, the suspect disappeared off to the left, heading towards Raven Row and the back of the hospital.
Grier dodged past a nurse who had stopped to stare at him quizzically, zigzagged around an elderly couple, one of whom was using a Zimmer frame, and cannoned through the exit door after him.
The IRV that he and Bartholomew had arrived in was parked off to the right, blue lights still flashing, which probably explained why the fleeing man had opted to go left. Following suit, Grier immediately collided with a petite paramedic coming the other way. Manhandling her to the side as gently as he could, at the same time apologising profusely for his clumsiness, he set off towards Raven Row desperate to regain sight of the bald suspect.
By the time he reached the road, his quarry was nowhere to be seen. Cursing profusely, Grier ran into Milward Street, which was set almost directly opposite the rear of the hospital car park. He paused by another parking area that led through to Cavell Street, eyes scanning left and right. Surely, the bald man couldn’t possibly have come any further than this?
Grier took a moment to reattach the loose cable into his radio and then strode purposefully into the middle of the car park. Being careful to avoid all the dirty puddles that had formed after the earlier deluge, he dropped flat on the floor as though he were about to do start doing press-ups.
His eyes traversed the cold, wet concrete floor from one side of the car park to the other, and his diligence was rewarded by a blur of movement beneath one of the SUVs parked nearest to the Cavell Street exit.
Springing back to his feet in triumph, he saw that the suspect was already up and running. The man’s surgical mask had come off, and as he glanced back Grier was afforded a decent look at his face. Doing his best to commit it to memory, he set off in pursuit.
Now that he had the man clearly in his sights, he pressed the orange emergency button on his radio, which cleared the airwaves and gave him a few seconds of priority transmission. “Hotel Tango from 167, active message… chasing suspect concerned in a murder at the Royal London Hospital… Cavell Street towards Stepney Way... suspect is a bald-headed IC3 male… dressed as a hospital porter and wearing rubber gloves…”
◆◆◆
Dillon and Bartholomew had retreated a safe distance from the CS contaminated area and, although his eyes were still streaming, Dillon was at least now able to open them without too much pain. From afar, he followed the slow progress of the needle in silent fury. It had now almost reached the top floor.
There were procedures in place to deal with a CS discharge inside premises, and he was waiting impatiently for a local supervisor to turn up and implement them so that he could get back to the business at hand.
“Where the hell is this skipper coming from?” he demanded of Bartholomew, “Greater Manchester?”
Bartholomew stopped rubbing his head long enough to shoot Dillon a sideways glance. “I’ll get back on the radio, boss, but Mr Speed said he was sending someone straight up.”
Ray Speed was the local duty officer, the Inspector in charge of Bartholomew’s team, and he had now arrived to take charge of the incident.
So far, the lift had stopped twice on its way up, and Winston’s party could have got out on either occasion, or they could still be inside, heading for the top floor. Regardless of where they alighted, Dillon knew they would eventually have to make their way back down via one of the other lifts scattered around the building. From what he’d seen of Winston, the man was in no condition to take on the stairs, which was good news because it bought him a little time to get
