Errol jammed on the anchors, jinked left, then right, and as the startled policeman drew level with him, he palmed the man off, sending him toppling straight over the bonnet of a parked car to land face down on the tarmac. He didn’t have the energy to celebrate, so he just gritted his teeth and set off again.
Up ahead, a black London Taxi had just stopped to drop a fare off at the junction with Sidney Street. As he reached the cab, the driver looked out of his window dispassionately and said, “Sorry, mate, I’m about to finish for the day so I’m not taking any more fares.”
Pulling the gun from his waistband, Errol yanked the driver’s door open and rammed the revolver into the cabbie’s frightened face. “OUT!” he screamed, looking back over his shoulder to make sure there was no sign of the cop who had taken a tumble.
The cab driver was aghast. “You can’t do that,” he spluttered indignantly. “This cab’s my livelihood.”
Errol grabbed hold of his shoulder and unceremoniously dragged him out.
The cabby tried to resist, but he was half Errol’s size and about thirty-years older. “Gerroff,” he shouted defiantly as he struggled to disentangle himself from the bigger man’s grip.
Ignoring his protests, Errol gave him a firm shove that propelled him away from the cab and left him lying in a crumpled heap on the wet pavement.
Errol slid behind the wheel and slammed the door shut. The seat was too close to the steering wheel for comfort but he didn’t have time to adjust it. Slamming the selector into drive, he jammed his foot to the floor and the cab lurched off towards Commercial Road.
“Wanker!” the cabby yelled after him, running into the road and shaking his fist at the man who had just deprived him of his wheels.
Despite the bitter coldness outside, Errol left the driver’s window down to let in some much-needed fresh air. Maybe, if I’m really lucky, he thought as he adjusted the rear-view mirror, I might actually pull this off.
◆◆◆
Officers were now turning up in their droves. As each new cluster arrived, Ray Speed gave them a thirty second briefing and quickly deployed them in a loose perimeter to secure all the exits. Their orders were simple: visual containment. No one who even vaguely fitted the description of the three suspects was to be approached without SO19 support.
There were already four Trojan units on scene, and now their duty officer, call-sign Trojan One, had arrived. His name was Inspector Pat Connors, and Dillon knew him from way back.
Dillon quickly assembled all the AFOs and briefed them fully, noting how grim they became when they were told how their fellow officer met his death. He felt it said much for their training and professionalism that none of the twelve firearms officers present made a single comment.
Connors started by making tactical deployments of his four three-man teams. Their mission was fundamentally one of containment and support while they awaited the arrival of more ARVs and a level-one-response team from their training facility at Lippits Hill in Loughton.
Connors agreed with Dillon that, in the short-term, the only thing Winston and his gang would be thinking about was getting away from the hospital as quickly and quietly as they could, and they would apply all their energy to making sure that happened without further incident.
From a policing perspective, the problems would start when they realised that they were trapped inside. At that point, they would start to panic – and that was when things would get interesting.
Connors knew from bitter experience that one of two things would happen once the gang worked out that they had no way out. They would either accept defeat and lay down their weapons, or they would adopt a siege mentality and start taking hostages.
With Claude Winston running the show, Dillon knew that the former scenario wasn’t a realistic option, and with a heavy heart, he confided his fears to Connors.
“I really hope you’re wrong,” Connors said, looking grim, “because when that happens, more often than not, people tend to start dying.”
Chapter 9
Susie gunned the sluggish Astra along Stepney Way, wishing that the clunking diesel engine had a little more oomph in it. She suddenly became aware of a siren and, glancing in her rear view, she saw that an Immediate Response Vehicle had just turned into the road. While still a little way behind, it was coming up on her at a great rate of knots, roof bar strobing a dazzling blue, headlights flashing alternately, first left and then right. The yelping of the two-tones steadily grew in volume until the noise became deafening.
Susie was desperate to find a space big enough to pull into in order to let the gung-ho response driver by, but there were no gaps anywhere. The driver, who obviously didn’t realise they were police officers responding to the same shout as him, was furiously pointing towards the nearside, trying to make her understand that he wanted her to give way.
“I bloody well know,” she shouted at the mirror, “but there’s nowhere for me to pull into, you tosser.”
“Temper, temper,” Murray chided, earning himself a fierce look of rebuke.
He squirmed in his seat, withering under the intensity of her glare. “Alright,” he said defensively, “there’s no need to go all premenstrual on me.”
“Oh, shut up you cretin,” Susie snapped. If she hadn’t been driving at speed, and therefore felt the need to keep both hands firmly on the wheel, she would have slapped him around the head for making a comment like that. Not that it had surprised her in the slightest; Murray was a racist, sexist, homophobic misogynist, and he had a gift for insulting just about anyone he came into contact with. The staggering thing was that he genuinely seemed to have no idea how unpleasantly inappropriate he was virtually every time he opened his mouth.
Susie finally spotted a large enough gap up ahead, and