by Matt Johnson
‘Keep the window closed in case they have a Taser,’ I yelled.
Quickly, we donned our flame-resistant hoods. It would stop us from being recognised. I just hoped that one of the SO19 boys wasn’t a trigger-happy idiot who would take a chance. I had come across one or two Rambo types amongst them. Today would be a good day not to meet one again.
Kevin eased the taxi past the transfixed policemen at a little over ten miles an hour. I kept the doors locked. Two of the policemen leapt in front of us and roared a challenge to stop.
‘Go round them, slowly.’ I said, now trying to sound calm.
As Kevin did as I suggested, I waved to the two police officers. It was the kind of wave that you see Royalty give. They would know I was taking the mickey and they would hate it, but at the same time it distracted them. I took their minds off whether they should make the decision to shoot. By the time the moment for decision had passed, it was too late and we were away.
A few yards from where the SO19 officers stood watching, Heckler & Koch MP5s levelled at the taxi’s rear window, Kevin turned hard left. As soon as there was clear space in front of us, he hit the accelerator. The armed policemen were well trained and all knew the law. Shoot a fleeing suspect where there is no danger to life and you could expect to stand trial yourself. Pistol and carbine sights followed the taxi’s path. Nobody pulled a trigger.
I breathed a deep sigh of relief and, for a fleeting moment, closed my eyes. For a short while we were in the clear. Now all we had to do was make good our escape. I looked back. Behind our taxi, uniformed and plain-clothed figures were running in all directions. Some were leaping into the Range Rover and one of the white vans, others were running up Euston Road.
Kevin and I had devised a ‘what-if’ plan for a car chase in case we were stopped by a patrol car after snatching the Arab. What we hadn’t planned for was a scene from the Keystone Cops. We had to move quickly. In a few seconds, the radio operators at New Scotland Yard would be warning every on-duty policeman to track our progress through the London traffic. Instructions would be given not to try to stop us, but to leave that to armed response cars. I could just imagine the messages. ‘Suspects known to be armed – do not approach’, ‘Trojan units pursuing armed suspects’. What I couldn’t get my head round was that it was me they would be talking about. My mind began racing.
‘What now?’ yelled Kevin.
I was struggling to think straight. I started getting angry with myself. There was a time when I excelled in situations like this. Escape and evade capture. Use your initiative. Outsmart the enemy. All the old drills started to come back, but in a confused muddle. Now we were up the creek without a paddle and I didn’t have a plan to get us out of it. So much for me being the great ideas man.
Kevin was a highly trained driver and he swung the cab round the cars and buses with ease, but all he had to do was drive. I kept racking my brains. We needed somewhere close by where pursuit would be dangerous and which would take time to surround. Somewhere the presence of numerous people would stop the firearms cops from shooting. My first thought was to head for Oxford Street, but there was so much traffic in central London our cab would get blocked before we found a good place to run from. Regent’s Park, I wondered? Too big, too easy to surround, not enough people. Tube stations? No good, again we wouldn’t have enough escape routes. Hiding up would be no good, as dogs would soon be called in to look for us. London Zoo seemed an idea. Then I remembered the high fences and the ease with which the place could be surrounded. As I raced through the ideas I lifted the two bergens containing our equipment onto the seat of the cab. We didn’t want to leave that little lot behind.
I started to lose focus, become distracted: The Arab, his blue eyes, the taxi driver. Had there been a deliberate plan to distract us so the Arab could escape? Was the taxi driver someone from Special Branch who had to slow us down to give SO19 time to get there? It looked like they’d been tipped off something was going down but hadn’t got there in time. I kicked myself. Leave it. Let’s get out of this jam first.
And then inspiration came to me. I looked back, again. The Range Rover was in the lead. It was about a hundred yards behind us. That gave us about five seconds from stopping the cab to being face to face with our pursuers. Five seconds to get out, grab the kit and run. We would get about thirty yards if we were lucky. That meant that we needed to be out of view in thirty yards.
‘Head for Albany Street nick,’ I shouted to Kevin through the driver’s window.
‘What have you got in mind?’
‘Put the cab just outside the gate to the yard. Keep together. You leg it across the yard and use the roofs of the parked cars to get onto the rear wall. When you’re on the wall, give me cover fire. I’ll cover you by stopping them in the street with a couple of flash-bangs. Then, as we go over the wall, we chuck a couple more behind us for good measure.’
‘And after we get over the wall?’
‘Run like fuck. Just like the old days. Go through the estate at the back of the nick.’
Albany Street had been my first posting as a probationer PC. I knew the area like the back of my hand. There were alleyways through the estates backing on to the police station that you could use to make ground without being seen from the road. I’d spent a lot of time walking those estates. Old home-beat PCs with nicknames like Geordie, Budgie and Norman had shown me where you could get a hot brew at any time of the day or night. They’d taught me where to hide when the Sergeant was looking for someone to report a sudden death. Now, I was to be thankful for those lessons.
As Kevin turned hard right into Albany Street, the Range Rover was closing in. The police station was about a hundred yards further north and the diesel-powered cab was losing ground to the more powerful police car. We screeched to a stop, just as the Range Rover crew pulled up about thirty yards behind us. Our five-second head start had disappeared.
Kevin grabbed his bergen and launched himself through the open security door to the station yard. As he ran he must have seen the ‘emergency close’ button. He jabbed his fist on the red knob as he went past. The electric winch immediately jerked into life and the steel shutters started to close. I heard the door start and panicked. It looked like I might be locked outside. There was no time to think. I rolled two flash-bangs towards the Range Rover as the policemen raised their weapons. I wanted them to think they were real grenades. It would frighten them, make them take cover, but nobody would get hurt.
As I turned and ran towards the closing gate, a round whizzed past my right ear and hit the steel shutter in front of me. Behind me, policemen were diving for cover. Fleeing criminals had shot at them before, but this was the first time that they would have faced hand grenades. Without exception they lost all interest in me. At times like that, the desire to preserve your own life takes priority over any thought about being a hero. That effect was what I had gambled on.
The steel shuttered gate was an unexpected bonus.
Chapter 74
Albany Street Police Station was now a quiet sub-divisional base on the larger Kentish Town division. The station yard was used as a store for unclaimed stolen vehicles.
As we ran through the yard, I saw the young PC station officer standing on his own, checking the cars against some form of paperwork. He looked up from his clipboard as we ran in and Kevin started the security-gate closure mechanism. As he sprinted towards the opposite end of the yard, I heard Kevin say something to the lad before leaping onto the bonnet and roof of one of the cars and then scrambling onto the rear wall.
Kevin pulled his Browning from beneath his jacket and pointed it towards me at the gate. I waited for what seemed an age as the shutters closed and then threw the lock switch to prevent the mechanism being operated from outside. The delay would buy us vital seconds.
I jumped up onto the car next to Kevin and threw him my bergen. He caught it neatly, dropped it over the far side of the wall and then extended a hand to pull me up.
‘What did you say to him?’ I asked.
Kevin said nothing until we were both safely on the ground, the pursuing police now hidden and delayed. ‘I told him we were filming The Bill,’ he said.
I laughed, it was a crazy thing to do given the dire situation we were in.
As we shoved the remaining masks and Kevin’s pistol into the bergens, the sound of loud voices came over the wall from the yard. Kevin quickly pulled off his jacket and reversed it. Where it had been black, it was now green.
‘Time to be going,’ he said.
‘Keep together for now and follow me,’ I replied, as I swung my heavy bergen on to my back. ‘Right … let’s go.’
With only a few precious moments to put as much space between our pursuers and us as we could, we ran like Olympic sprinters.
To our distinct advantage, the estate behind the police station was a maze of houses, blocks of flats and recreation areas. Despite our advancing years, adrenaline gave strength to our legs. In less than a minute, we covered over four hundred yards, twisting and turning around corners as we attempted to make ourselves impossible to find. I gambled that our pursuers would be much slower. Fearing ambush, they would move cautiously. Four hundred yards was a lot of ground to cover when facing the possibility of a gunman around every corner.
The council estate streets were deserted, the pavements, dusty and strewn with litter. Loud music and television sounds poured out from many of the open windows. Nobody looked out or took any interest in two men running passed their doors.
Reaching Hampstead Road, on the opposite side of the estate, we reduced pace to a fast walk. It was now a more public area and anyone running was bound to become the focus of police eyes. I checked the sky.
‘Listen out for India nine-nine,’ said Kevin.
I nodded. Our certain undoing would be the speed with which the police helicopter crew could be mobilised. If they were already in the air and nearby we would need to keep hidden.
Lady Luck chose that very moment to deal us a kind hand. An old Routemaster bus was pulling into the stop opposite. But it was going the wrong way, back into town. Kevin pointed towards it, the quizzical expression on his face asking a question of me. I nodded again as I struggled to draw breath. It was the best I could manage, all form of speech now completely out of the question. Kevin got the message. It was time to take yet another chance. Just as we settled into seats near the open doorway, two ARVs roared past, sirens blaring, headed towards the estate.
We were both soaked with sweat.
‘I’m getting too old for all this,’ Kevin laughed.
‘We’re not out of the woods yet. You got any money to pay the bus fare?’ I asked.
‘Nope, you said don’t carry anything traceable or which we might drop.’
I did my best to think quickly. ‘I’ve got a couple of blueys in my waist band,’ I said. But then I had a better idea. ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Conductor’s upstairs. When the bus stops at the lights, that’s Drummond Street. We’re off. Short walk to Euston BR and we’re away. OK?’
‘Sounds good to me.’
We were quiet for a moment, getting our breath back. I suppressed a chuckle.
‘What’s the joke?’ asked Kevin.
‘The Bill. That was a nice touch.’
Kevin laughed too. ‘And did you see the look on his face?’
We laughed together. A moment of relief after the tension of the last few minutes.
Soon it was time to jump from the bus at Drummond Street and walk to Euston British Rail station. I changed my mind again at that point, remembering the closed circuit TV cameras that covered the concourse. Instead, we crossed Euston Road, ignored the obvious opportunity at Warren Street and headed for the quieter tube station at Goodge Street.
I glanced back as we headed south, away from the traffic of the main road. We were just in time. On the far side of Euston Road, where we had just been standing, I saw the local area car pull up outside and drop off two young policemen to keep watch on everyone entering the rail station.
Chapter 75
The Anti-Terrorist Squad were burning the midnight oil. The city outside the windows was blue-black, laced with chains of winking lights, but the office was still full, every desk covered in papers, every bin filled with discarded coffee cups.
Grahamslaw had held his temper this time and had, so far, kept from swearing. But he was not best pleased. Bad luck had, once again, been the major player in their failure to capture the two St Pancras gunmen. He had teams searching the Albany Street area but he knew the two suspects were, by now, long gone. He was also sure he knew who the men were. The decision now was whether to pick them up.
‘What do you think, Mick?’ he asked Parratt, in the privacy of his office.
Parratt was his usual, calm self. ‘Do you want to tell me how it went at the COBRA meeting first?’
‘Oh, Christ. With all that’s been going on, I forgot. Well … it didn’t go quite as I expected.’
‘So, are Finlay and Jones part of some official Secret Service operation or not?’
‘I didn’t manage to find out; unfortunately the Home Secretary intercepted me and, although he promised to look into it, I never got a straight answer.’
‘Not unusual for a politician.’
Grahamslaw smiled. ‘He had the new Home Office Minister, Michael Rashid, with him. The two of them cornered me in the police room. They didn’t want me raising things at the main meeting and, when you look at things from their point of view, I can see why. They’ve been concerned about the numbers of hangers-on who’ve been turning up for meetings to try and impress the big guns, and there’ve been some problem with leaks.’
‘Civil servants, you mean?’
‘Yes, and junior politicians. A lot of people seem to be thinking that attending COBRA meetings is good for their careers.’
‘They thought one of them might talk to the press about what’s been going on?’
‘Exactly. And with what happened at St Pancras, I think they were right to be cautious. What’s your opinion of it?’
Parratt sat up in his chair. ‘Well, it was Finlay and Jones, no doubt in my mind. We’ll have some CCTV footage to look at by tomorrow. That’ll confirm it. There is only the vaguest of descriptions from eyewitnesses. Two men, both early forties, both with short brown hair. The cabbie got the best look, but that was only at the getaway driver.’
‘He still refusing to get involved?’
‘Of course. Not surprising, really. He saw what looked like an Arab getting kidnapped and then policemen with guns everywhere. He’s convinced himself that Finlay and Jones are Mossad.’
‘Work on him, Mick. We need him to pick them out, photographs at least. That might give us enough evidence to hold them.’
‘I say nick them both now.’
‘What have we got on them?’ Grahamslaw stood, throwing his arms in the air in exasperation. ‘Surveillance pictures of them meeting an unidentified man, a report from a surveillance officer that they were looking at a picture of the Arab and another Special Branch man who says the Arab was in the St Pancras Hotel half an hour before they tried to kidnap him. Without the Arab we haven’t got a victim. No victim, no crime.’
‘No crime? How about conspiracy? Last time I read the instruction manual that was still something you could be nicked for.’
‘Ok, Mick. Point made. But what about finding the Arab?’
‘What’s his name again?’
‘Our files have him as Sultan Anwar, but, according to SB, he’s now using the name Yildrim.’
‘I’ll get those names circulated around London. He’ll turn up somewhere. And even if we can’t find him, I still say there’s enough evidence to justify arrests. Finlay was at the scene. The station officer at Albany Street says he saw one of them with a gun. The one in the back of the cab – my guess that was Finlay – he threw stun grenades at our blokes. The rest … well, we’ll have to rely on a bit of luck. We might recover some
weapons when we turn their homes over…’
‘…and we might not!’ said Grahamslaw.
‘…and we might get some forensic? We could make a conspiracy charge stick.’
Grahamslaw sat down again as his telephone started to ring. He ignored it.
‘Let’s not forget, these two are coppers like us,’ he said. ‘They know how forensic science works. They know our limits when it comes to searching. We’ve got to find proof; they’ll see that we don’t.’
‘All the more reason for moving quickly, before they get a chance to cover their tracks.’
The telephone continued to ring.
‘But if we miss the evidence they’ll go to ground and we’ll never catch up with them.’ Grahamslaw raised his hand as Parratt made to reply. He picked up the telephone receiver.
It was the police laboratory. The news wasn’t good.
‘Nothing, not a bloody thing,’ said Grahamslaw as he ended the call. ‘The cab was clean.’
‘I still say go for them. We’ve enough for search warrants. Let’s see what we can find.’
‘I think it’s already decided Mick. We’re not going fishing. We don’t have enough to charge them and that’s my final decision. Now let’s move on.’
‘OK, you’re the boss.’
‘I am, so cut me some slack. We’re still no closer to finding out who is pulling their strings. Now … let me run this past you. How many hotels are there in London?’ Grahamslaw gestured at the window to indicate the crowded streets below.
‘Thousands, maybe tens of thousands,’ said Parratt.