Ben Aaronovitch - Moon Over Soho

The Pale Lady hit him when he was halfway through the door. I came down the stairs just in time to see him go down in a spray of what turned out to sweet-and-sour sauce.

“Call it in,” I yelled as I jumped over him and into the pouring rain.

I’d seen her veer right down Savile Row and charge down the middle of the road. A silver Mercedes SL500 swerved to avoid her and piled into the side of a parked Porsche Carrera and set off car alarms along the whole street. I stayed in the road behind and concentrated on trying to close the distance — as far as I knew, I was the only officer with a visual on the suspect. It was Saturday night in the West End, and despite the weather the crowds were out. If I lost contact she’d vanish without a trace.

I stuffed the taser into my jacket pocket and fumbled for my airwave. I tried it a few times until I remembered that I’d neglected to put the batteries back in. The Pale Lady was running out of road as Savile Row made a T-junction with Vigo Street. She went left, toward Regent Street and Soho. I lost hold of the airwave as I followed her around the corner and it went spinning under a parked car.

Vigo Street was little more than an alleyway with pretensions, a narrow road lined with coffee shops and sandwich bars that linked Savile Row with Regent Street. It was late enough for them to be closing and the Pale Lady was having to dodge around pedestrians, presumably because running over them might slow her down even more. I managed to get my phone out of my pocket. Like every police officer under the age of forty I have the bypass number for Metcall on speed dial — that’s a number that routes you directly through to a CAD operator without all that “Which service do you require?” stuff.

When you’re sprinting after a suspect through a narrow street in heavy rain it’s almost impossible to hear someone talking to you on your phone, so I waited a suitable interval and started breathlessly identifying myself and the suspect I was chasing. It’s hard to talk and stay with a fleeing suspect, especially one who runs across a major thoroughfare without waiting for the lights to change.

Regent Street was a slow-moving river of wet metal, but I thought she might even make it until White Van Man came to my rescue and she went spinning off the front of a Ford Transit. She ricocheted off the back of a Citroën with a thin scream of rage and went staggering for the entrance to Glass house Street.

Fortunately for me, the river of metal ran itself aground on the rocks of potential insurance claims and so the traffic had stopped moving by the time I followed her across. I was now less than five yards behind the Pale Lady so I pulled out the taser and tried to remember what its effective range was. I also realized where she was going — twenty yards farther on, Glasshouse Street branches left into Brewer Street. She was heading back to the club.

Then she just accelerated away. I’m a young man, I’m fit, and I used to sprint at school. But she just left me standing like a fat kid on sports day. I came to a stop on the corner of Brewer and Glasshouse, put my hands on my knees and tried to catch my breath. The die-hard smokers outside the Glassblower Pub on the corner gave me an ironic cheer.

You bastards, I thought, I’d like to see you run her down.

I heard a siren in the distance and looked up to see her running back toward me. Behind her I saw the flashing lightbars of at least two IRVs. When she saw me waiting for her, she gave me a look not of hatred or fear but a sort of weary disgust. As if I were a particularly persistent unwanted smell. I was somewhat insulted, so I shot her in the chest with my taser.

The Metropolitan Police uses an X26 model taser manufactured by the imaginatively titled Taser International Company. It uses a compressed nitrogen charge to fire two metal prongs into suspects and then zap them with fifty thousand volts. Which causes neuromuscular incapacitation, which causes them to fall over. Which was why I was a tad disappointed when the Pale Lady just grunted, blinked, and then tore the prongs out of her chest. She glared at me, I took an involuntary step backward, and she spun on her heel and shot off down Glasshouse Street, bowling over the smokers as she went.

I dropped the taser and rocked forward for a good start. Even though my shoes slipped on the wet road I like to think I trimmed a bit of time off my start. If I could get close enough to give her a heel tap I could bring her down long enough for me and half a van of TSG to land on top of her.

She tore down Glasshouse Street with what I realized were bare feet slapping on the road surface. I came after her sweating and blowing. But, weirdly, either she was slowing down or I was warming up, because I was gaining. But where was she going? At the far end of Glasshouse Street was Piccadilly Circus, lots of traffic, lots of tourists to get lost in, and a tube station. The tube. There were steps down to Piccadilly Circus station right where Glasshouse met the circus.

I was right. As she reached the ugly pink façade of the doughnut shop she started angling right for the station entrance. I dug for it, but I didn’t have enough left to get me closer than two yards. Then she suddenly veered left again and started curving around past the big Boots and heading for Shaftesbury Avenue. I couldn’t figure it out until I saw a pair of PCSOs idling in front of the steps down to the station — the Pale Lady must have thought they were after her.

She went across the traffic island, bounced off a hatchback, and ran right over the bonnet of a Ford Mondeo before sprinting past the Rainforest Café, bowling tourists aside as she went. I went around the cars to a chorus of hooting and headed after her, but I groaned out loud when she did a sharp turn into the Trocadero Centre. The only way in was a set of escalators going up a floor. Chasing someone up stairs or escalators is always a nightmare because there’s a chance they’ll be waiting in the blind spot at the top to kick you back down again. But I couldn’t risk losing the Pale Lady, so I ran up the down escalators on the assumption that if she was waiting for me it would be on the wrong side. It was a good theory, and had she been waiting for me I’d have been well pleased with myself.

The Trocadero was a five-story bastard child of a building built in the Baroque style in 1896 and sorely used over the centuries as everything from a music hall to a restaurant and a waxworks. In the mid-1980s the interior was completely gutted and replaced with the sets from Logan’s Run — or that might be just the way I remember it. It’s got a cinema and a multilevel amusement arcade that I remember well, because my mum used to clean it. And one of my uncles knew a trick to blag free turns on Street Fighter II .

I caught a flash of salmon pink as I crested the escalator and saw the Pale Lady jump the short flight of steps that led down to the mezzanine level. A bunch of plump white girls in black hoodies scattered as she landed among them. As I chased her I was praying Please God don’t go into the cinema because short of a minefield, a multiplex is the last place you want to chase a suspect. She skidded on the waxed floor and went left.

I yelled “Police!” at the plump white girls, who scattered again.

One of them yelled “Wanker” as I jumped the stairs and followed the Pale Lady along the mezzanine. She went past a café with a drift of aluminum chairs and tables half blocking the way. Some poor sod stood up at the wrong moment and got the Pale Lady’s forearm smashed into his head. He went down hard, upending a table and sending a tray spinning over the railings and down into the atrium three stories below.

“Police,” I yelled again, which just got me bewildered looks from the bystanders. I really don’t know why we don’t just save our breath. Which I needed to save at that point, I can tell you.