The big V8 howled as Getaway Woman threw it into reverse. “Justified and ancient!” she sang through the open window, as she backed up the alley under Wendy’s despairing gaze. “Let them eat ice cream!”
What. The. Fuck?
Wendy shook herself as the big black Cayenne reversed rapidly into the street. She took a hesitant step forward. The weight of the world’s woes gradually slid from her shoulders; her feet buoyed, and she ran after the car just as the fire door cracked open again and a gun banged.
They’re getting away, she realized angrily. Nothing else mattered, not the sick sense of fury at her suspects slipping through her fingers, not even the bullets cracking past her head. Gotta get my wheels on! Wendy drew a deep breath as she stepped up on one foot, then up again on the other, wobbling slightly as she swapped her shoes for speed skates.
She kicked herself up to speed and jump-turned sharply onto the right-hand pavement at the end of the alleyway, narrowly avoiding an elderly shopper towing a wheelie-bag. The getaway Porsche screeched into a right turn outside a Waitrose, then braked sharply to avoid the back of a crawling Number 9 bus. Wendy grimaced and bared her teeth, panting as she jinked and wove her way between pedestrians, trying to catch up with the SUV on the other side of the road. It was a ridiculously one-sided race: the Porsche was theoretically capable of hitting two hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, but London traffic today travelled at the same crawl as it had in the 1880s. Meanwhile Wendy with her skates on could use pavement and road with equal aplomb, as long as she didn’t mind the risk of being squished by a left-turning truck or caught in a bus’s blind spot. She was gaining ground within a minute, even though the traffic was moving. But as she tried to second-guess Getaway Woman’s likely route in order to cut her off, the phone rang.
What the fuck—Wendy hit the “accept call” button. “Kind of busy,” she panted.
“Were you there?” demanded Gibson.
“Yes, I’m in hot pursuit—”
“Break it off!” Gibson sounded alarmed.
“They’re unarmed—”
“The hell they are! I can’t afford for you to get shot, our cleanup metrics will go to hell—”
“This bunch are unarmed!” she shouted. Getaway Woman had spotted a gap in the oncoming traffic and gunned the big Porsche, screeching out to nip smartly around the bus and accelerate down the wrong side of the street, pulling ahead again. “There were two gangs! Repeat, two gangs! I’m after our original targets—they’re getting away—”
She glimpsed the edge of Holland Park between the buildings on the right, then had to take emergency evasive action to avoid a feral cycle courier hurtling out of Earls Court Road without looking. Live action Frogger, fuck my life, she thought. “Suspects are on Kensington High Street driving a black mark two Porsche Cayenne Turbo, plates Papa Hotel Ten Foxtrot Yankee India, going right right right onto Abbotsbury Road northbound—”
“Break off!” Gibson told her. “I’ll run the plates, but for the love of god back off now!”
“Fuck.” Wendy went into a drift along the pavement, slowing as the Porsche pulled away from her. It drove past the park before screeching into an unsignalled right turn and disappearing from view. “Why?”
“Need you back at the bank,” Gibson said heavily. “The Met first responders are declaring a major incident and they have questions for you. It’s a murder scene now. I thought our suspects were nonviolent, we’re dropping the case if they’re—”
“I can confirm the gang we’re after are unarmed. I was in the process of arresting two of them when the shooting started outside. Their getaway team showed up and they were unarmed, too, I nearly had them, what the fuck happened?” They have transhuman mind control voodoo, that’s what happened, she thought, but she wasn’t about to say that to her boss until she could account for exactly how they’d used it to blindside her. That rankled.
“I don’t know and I don’t like it,” said Gibson. “But you’d better return to Pennine Bank right away. I’ll meet you there with our duty solicitor, and after we’ve got you out of the frame and scheduled the police interviews we can discuss what to do next.”
The Bond paused at the end of the alleyway to adjust his suit jacket and straighten his tie before he stepped out onto the main road and walked away.
Next time, he promised himself grimly.
Behind him, the abandoned assault shotgun cooled slowly in one of the recycling bins just inside the end of the alley.
BIDDING WAR
It took hours for Wendy to disentangle herself from the investigation, even with a Home Office thief-taker ID card and the HiveCo lawyer’s assistance. One of the bank employees and four civilians had been wounded, two of them seriously enough they might not survive. Two of the AK-toting thugs had died at the scene, shredded by the shotgun-wielding maniac. The police were collectively furious and confused, and Wendy had contributed to the fracas in a small way, peppering the inner door and walls of the bank with arrow holes. Luckily everything had been caught on camera and the duty solicitor’s pointed comments about self-defense and the relative lethality of fully automatic weapons versus an imaginary bow and arrow finally got through to the Inspector in charge. Wendy was released under caution after four hours of questioning, with a stern admonition not to leave the country and to present herself at the local nick within forty-eight hours for a full deposition.
(That she had until two years earlier been one of the Met’s own was not a point Wendy brought up: it might have led to uncomfortable questions about why she was no longer on the force, not to mention what the blithering hell was she doing engaging in a firefight
