Boris Johnson - Seventy-Two Virgins

Cameron scowled at the man, piqued in her basic sense of loyalty. She tried accelerating her gait, in the hope that Roger would walk faster.

Much earlier that morning she and Adam, her boyfriend, had been brushing their teeth in the Amigo hotel, Brussels. She had been nuzzling him, unable to speak for foam and love, when he spat out his own mouthful of Colgate and made a peculiar request.

She had agreed without thinking; of course she had. But now that she was with Roger, and now that she could hear the square full of the sounds of hate, it seemed a more difficult and dangerous proposition.

She felt uneasy that she had handed over Roger’s car park pass; though Roger the cyclist had long since lost track of it, and probably didn’t even know she had it in her handbag. Now she was dubious about the ethics of the other request that Adam had made.

‘It’s completely outrageous,’ Adam had told her, as he outlined the callous discrimination against the journalists from Al-Khadija. ‘They just want to make a film about parliamentary democracy. Aren’t we supposed to be in favour of that kind of thing?’

She didn’t have to do anything difficult, he said: she just had to pick them up, and obviously he couldn’t do it himself because he didn’t have a researcher’s pass. And, by the way, could she get one for him, too?

So guiltily she tried to force Roger’s pace, and turned her eyes away from the crowd, and didn’t look twice at the white emergency services vehicle chuntering slowly round the corner to her left.

‘So one of our chopper boys thinks he saw an ambulance?’ said Deputy Assistant Commissioner Purnell. ‘Did he get the roof number?’

The Deputy Assistant Commissioner was thinking that there was a case for passing it on to the pilot of the Black Hawk.

‘No,’ said Grover. ‘He can’t remember it, and anyway he says it was half covered up by a tow-truck crane.’

‘A tow-truck?’

‘S’what he says.’

‘Well, where’s this tow-truck? Christ on a bike.’

Dragan Panic sighed. He was only second in the queue, but he seemed to have been here for some time.

At Horseferry Road police station Duty Officer Louise Botting was dealing with another victim of crime.

She was a woman of about fifty, with grey hair, and perfectly attired for cycling. She had a helmet with a red reflector, fluorescent yellow zig-zags on her torso, and an air of Anglo-Saxon indignation.

‘I feel a bit silly reporting it, but I feel it’s my duty. It’s just so uncivilized.’

‘I know, madam,’ said Louise Botting, and passed her a form.

‘Do you know why they do it?’

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t.’

‘Is there ever any chance of catching them, do you think?’

‘Well, there’s always a chance, I s’pose.’

Behind her in the queue, Dragan groaned.

‘What I would like to know,’ said the woman loudly as she left, ‘is what kind of person would steal my bike seat?’

No one in the room felt able to answer, least of all Dragan, who now bent towards the counter, his muscles still trembling with exertion.

‘How can I help you, sir?’ asked Louise Botting.

‘They killed the traffic warden, didn’t they,’ said Dragan.

‘Did they?’ asked Sergeant Botting, and then listened with mounting amazement. At one point she interrupted him. ‘Did you say you were removing an ambulance?’

‘I told him not to. I was going to tell him not to.’

‘And why are you covered in mud?’

Dragan thumped a weary fist on the attack-proof glass, like a drunk in a benefit office. ‘I swear I am telling the truth.’

Louise Botting summoned the station commander, and together they took a full statement.

‘Are you saying you lifted this ambulance? Right. And where is this ambulance now? They drove off, you say, and you are sure they are Muslim terrorists. I see, Mr Panic. Now, what’s your address? No. 10, Eaton Place, SW1. You’re sure about that. I see.’

Then the station commander took a call, and when he explained its contents to Louise Botting, she looked at Dragan Panic with new and wondering eyes.

She filled in an Initial Crime Report, and timed the incident for 9 a.m.

BONG Big Ben struck nine, and on the roof of the Commons, Pickel quivered again.

BONG The cavalcade effortfully turned right towards Chelsea, and the leaves of the Embankment waved beneath the passage of the Black Hawk.

BONG The Ambassador of the French Republic, M. Yves Charpentier, told his official driver to follow the Mall down to Parliament Square and make for St Stephen’s Entrance. Then he sat back on the blue velour of the Renault and buried his nose in the hot black scented crown of his mistress, Benedicte al-Walibi.

BONG In a cave in the tribal areas of Pakistan, not far from the Afghan border, the BBC’s coverage of the state visit was being closely monitored on TV.

BONG The British Prime Minister sat in his small office in Downing Street and gave heartfelt thanks, once again, to the protocol ruling which meant he did not have to attend the speech in Westminster Hall; the theory being that he had proposed the President’s health last night at Windsor, and that was enough. John Major, it had been pointed out, was not there for Nelson Mandela. Nor for Bill Clinton, if his memory served him correctly.

BONG Colonel Bluett of the US Secret Service had decided that it was time to take a more active role in the security operation, and was now being driven in a blacked-out Ford from Grosvenor Square to Scotland Yard.

BONG In the White House in Washington, the Presidential red setter had a beautiful dream, in which he sunk his teeth into the neck of the Presidential cat.

BONG Roger Barlow’s four-year-old heir was sitting cross-legged at school, and looking intently at some pictures of king-killing in old Dahomey.

BONG Jones felt the first drop of perspiration emerge from his temple and run down his cheek.

As Roger and Cameron gained the entrance to New Palace Yard, a taxi drew up. The policeman bent down to look through the window, and then let them through. After twenty-five years everyone knew Felix Thomson. Barlow knew him, too, and offered a mock-salute which was returned, though perhaps a little more mockingly than Barlow, in an ideal world, would have liked.

The policeman at the gate once more demanded production of the pink slip, though for some reason they waved Felix Thomson’s taxi on without too much fuss. The vehicle rolled on a few yards down the cobbles to another barricade, a ramp with winking lights that came up and prevented access, just by the spot where Airey Neave had been blown up by the IRA.

‘No, sorry, sir,’ said the policeman. Barlow had made to follow the taxi, because he wanted to have a word with Felix Thomson, and now he was told this was not on. He’d have to go that way, through the turnstiles. Did he have his pass with him? He had his pass.

‘Oh Cameron, by the way, I have a terrible feeling I have to make a speech in the debate this afternoon.’

‘That’s right, Roger. The whips have been on to us twice already. They are expecting it.’

‘Oh lor’, sighed the MP, stopping. ‘Can you remember what it’s all about?’

Why the hell, wondered Cameron, couldn’t he ever concentrate on what she was saying? ‘I sent you a speech. I mean I sent you a draft of the speech. It was in your mail on Friday.’

‘Oh yes, and what’s the Bill about?’

‘It’s the Water Utilities Bill (England and Wales). The whips thought you might be interested in speaking on fluoridation.’

‘Mmmm,’ said Roger, ‘and what line am I taking?’