James Becker - Echo of the Reich

“Breathing space,” Weeks said. “And now they know I’m not firing blanks either.”

At the end of the next street, Weeks took out his remote control and pressed two buttons in sequence. Fifty yards ahead, the hazard lights flashed on his Range Rover, followed almost immediately by the welcome sound of the engine starting. The two men reached the car, pulled open the doors and jumped inside. Weeks released the handbrake, pulled the automatic transmission lever into drive, and powered the heavy car away from the parking space.

As the Range Rover accelerated down the road, the police officers appeared again, their approach clearly much more cautious. But they were still following.

“Do you think they got the number?” Weeks asked, punching buttons on the built-in satnav.

Bronson pulled on his seat belt, then turned round in his seat and looked back at the two men.

“I don’t know. But they’ll have a good description of the vehicle, and that might be enough.”

As soon as he could, Weeks turned off the road, Bronson now using the satnav to pick a route that would take them away from the area as quickly as possible.

“We’ll need to lose the car and these clothes as soon as possible,” he said.

“Not a problem. We’ll head out into Essex, find somewhere there.”

“I’ve got a better idea. Keep heading down this road. At the end, take a left turn and then follow the signs for the M25. At the junction, go west. We’ll go to Angela’s flat in Ealing and sort ourselves out there.” He paused for a moment, then chuckled. “I suppose one good thing is that Stratford will now be swarming with armed police looking out for anything suspicious, which is pretty much the result I’d hoped to achieve when I told the Met what I thought was happening.”

But when Weeks braked the Range Rover to a stop at the T-junction, both men knew that getting out of the area wasn’t going to be anything like as easy as they’d hoped.

Weeks spotted the flashing blue and red lights in his rearview mirrors. At almost the same moment Bronson saw a Volvo estate car approaching the junction from the right, traveling very fast.

“I think that’s an ARV,” he said, gesturing toward the Volvo.

“Then let’s hope they don’t spot us,” Weeks said.

Seconds later, before Weeks could pull the Range Rover out onto the main road, a siren on the Volvo began sounding, to move traffic out of the way, and then it slewed across the road, stopping right in front of Weeks’s car, blocking the way.

27 July 2012

“Hang on,” Weeks snapped.

He swung the wheel of the Range Rover hard over to the left, shifted the transmission into reverse and backed up a few feet, until the rear of the four-by-four slammed into the front bumper of the car immediately behind them. The driver sounded his horn in a loud, continuous and clearly angry blare, which Weeks completely ignored. He spun the wheel to the right, engaged drive and floored the accelerator pedal.

The two-ton car hit the left-hand rear of the Volvo just as the two front doors were opening. The impact turned the Volvo violently on its axis. The passenger door instantly slammed shut while the other gaped wide, the black-clad figure of the police driver visible in the opening, struggling to stay in his seat.

Weeks kept the power on, forcing the police car out of his way. Metal ripped and tore, tires howled as the tarmac road surface ripped rubber from them, and pedestrians on the sidewalks watched the unequal contest in open-mouthed amazement. He shunted the Volvo over to the left, keeping the wheel of the Range Rover hard over, all four tires smoking and leaving black streaks on the road, forcing the other car back against the curb. There was a sudden explosion as the right-side rear tire of the police car blew, forced off the rim by contact with the curbstone. People scattered in all directions.

“That’ll do,” Weeks said, straightened up his car and accelerated rapidly down the street.

“That’s probably buggered up your no-claims bonus,” Bronson observed. “Did you damage this car?”

Weeks shook his head. “Unlikely,” he replied shortly. “I’ve got bull bars on the front, and the chassis and suspension have both been uprated and strengthened. I like this car. In fact, I need to do something about that, right now.”

He punched buttons on the center console and a ringing tone sounded in the car’s stereo audio system. Then a disembodied voice announced: “Police.”

Weeks grinned at Bronson and immediately launched into an urgent description of having left his car outside a newsagent’s while he went inside to buy a paper, and of seeing two men jumping into the vehicle and driving off.

“Then,” he continued, “these two bastards rammed one of your jam sandwiches and then buggered off down the street. You need to stop them, mate. That bloke who nicked my motor is bloody mad.”

He finished off with the registration number of the Range Rover and his personal details, then rang off.

“You think that’ll work?” Bronson asked.

“I dunno. I thought it was worth a try. Muddies the waters a bit, anyhow.”

As soon as they got out of sight of the damaged Volvo, Bronson directed Weeks down side roads to get them away from the area as quickly as possible, and they neither saw nor heard a police car for several minutes.

“I reckon we’ve lost them, but they’ll have a chopper up any time now, so we need to lose this motor pretty soon,” Weeks said.

“Best place is a multi-story,” Bronson said. “You’re invisible as soon as you drive inside, and there’s always some car there that you can jack. I should know-I’ve investigated dozens of car thefts from places like that.”

Five minutes later, Weeks drove the Range Rover into a car park on the edge of a shopping center, and headed for the up-ramp. Bronson crouched down in the front seat so that he would be invisible to the unwinking eye of the security camera covering the entrance, and Weeks made sure he kept his left hand over his face as he took the parking ticket.

He drove the Range Rover up to the fifth floor, where there were far fewer cars, most shoppers obviously preferring to find a parking place on one of the lower levels. He stopped just as he reached the floor and then maneuvered the car until it was directly underneath the camera that covered that parking level, felt in the door pocket and pulled out a pair of insulated pliers, which he handed to Bronson.

“Snip the coax on that camera,” he said, gesturing upward.

Bronson climbed onto the hood, stood up and cut the lead in two where it entered the camera.

Weeks parked the car on one side of the level, then they both checked the other vehicles there. The obvious choice was an oldish Ford, the newer cars having far more sophisticated antitheft systems, and in under ten minutes Weeks had the door open and the engine running. They transferred all their possessions to the new vehicle, then drove off down the ramp. They stopped beside a payment machine on the second floor, and Bronson got out to pay the charge on the ticket Weeks had taken about a quarter of an hour earlier.

“That’s a deal,” he said, when he got back into the car. “The first half hour is free.”

As they exited, Bronson again ducked down out of view of the camera, and Weeks hid his face as he fed the ticket into the slot.

Weeks drove the car with care, not out of respect for the vehicle, or for the person they’d deprived of it, but simply so as not to attract any attention. The car didn’t have a satnav, and so they had to rely on the road signs to find their way. But that wasn’t difficult.

Just under an hour after Weeks had started the engine on the Ford in the car park in northeast London, he and Bronson were stepping inside Angela’s apartment, having dumped the Ford a few streets away.