Responding to the wailing siren closing in quickly from behind, I tucked my aging Renault as far into the side of the road as the cars already parked there would allow. The police car, the flashings of its blue emergency lights reflecting off the wet tarmacadam, hurtled past at over fifty miles an hour - far too fast for safety down an Old Kent Road that was now crowded with drunken Saturday night revellers pouring out of the late opening pubs and fast food outlets before heading into the trendy discos that lined the busy south London street. I had no idea what the cops were up to, of course, but that was the third jam sandwich that I'd had fly past me in the last few moments. Putting the incident out of my mind, I glanced in the mirror before easing my way back into the traffic flow.

The rain continued to lash down on the windscreen as, less than two minutes later, I pulled up and double parked outside The Gin Palace, one of the more popular of the pubs in the area. Spotting the name of the mini-cab company painted on the side of my car, two young girls detached themselves from the throng cowering for shelter under the building's overhanging balconies and dashed over, wenching open the rear door and almost literally throwing themselves in. They settled themselves back in the seats, put on their seat belts and giggled out an address up by the Sun & Sand roundabout. I smiled and acknowledged them, surreptitiously taking in a good glance at them in the mirror as I waited for an opening in the traffic again. Both were young - young enough to be my daughters - and both were well inebriated but there the similarity ended as one was blond and almost flat-chested while the other was dark haired with a pair of breasts that could have easily graced a Page Three girl. The blond had a short white button-down blouse on and was clearly wearing nothing beneath this for the dark outline of her nipples was clearly visible through the thin material. Her legs were encased in those ultra tight leggings, also in white, that the youths of today seem to favour; the clear lack of any form of 'panty-line' seemed to indicate that she was wearing nothing beneath those leggings either. The other girl's stomach was bare while her impressive breasts wobbled about like two great mounds of firm jelly trapped inside her black lycra boob tube; down below a little mini-skirt just about covered the firm cheeks of her delectable backside. Suddenly she spotted me eyeing her up and, gently nudging her companion in the ribs with her elbow, the cheeky little minx parted her legs and slide ever so slightly down the seat to give me a clear glimpse of white knickers that just about covered what needed to be covered though a few wild pubic hairs were managing to successfully escape the confines of the lacy briefs. Even with my advancing years, such a sight quickly had my John Thomas responding and hardening. Smiling at me, she spread her knees even further apart and tugged the hem of her dress higher with one hand as she asked, "Like what you see?" I felt myself colouring up as I turned my attention back to my driving and finally pulled away from the curb as both girls started to giggle at my obvious embarrassment.

We'd only gone a few blocks when a red light forced me to ease the car to a halt. The two lasses were now chatting gayly away in the back, mostly discussing the various inadequacies of the boys at their collage, when the front passenger door was suddenly wrenched open and a soaking wet youth with wild eyes flung himself into the car and pointed a gun at my head. "Drive, you bastard - drive!" he yelled at me.

The chatting in the back of the Renault stopped instantly and I felt my mouth opening and closing. Ahead of us, and unseen by me, the lights turned green but all I could concentrate on was that gun; we didn't move. The youth rammed the pistol painfully into my forehead as he shouted that he'd kill me if I didn't get going immediately. Looking back on it now, I have to saw that it's rather odd that in most stories like this, the narrator now tells his readers in cool, measured tones just what sort of gun it was, which country it was made in, what calibre the barrel was and other information of that ilk... yet all I can recall was it was big, black, dangerous and pressed against my forehead. Terrified, I reacted in a simple, primeval manner and lost control of myself, a stream of warm urine spurting out of me and quickly soaking through my pants before pooling in the plastic material of the seat below my now drenched backside. "Don't fuck me about, man - get moving! Hey, you haven't...?" His voice trailed away as his eyes sank down to take in my now soaking wet groin and an expression of amused revulsion flitted across his face. "That's disgusting," he laughed before going on to add, "Some hero, eh? Wonder if I can get you to shit yourself?" Then, pulling his attention back to what was going on, he again pushed the gun into my head and ordered, "But we haven't got time for that right now - get this fuckin' heap moving!" Taking the hint, I rammed the vehicle into first and pulled rapidly away... just as another cop car screeched around the junction and started after us.

There followed a nightmare drive up the Old Kent Road as I took chance after chance though the rapidly growing collection of police vehicles following us, each with their sirens and lights working flat out, seemed to magically open up an avenue in front of me. A quick glance in the mirror showed me that both girls, while clearly frightened and holding on to each other for mutual comfort, seemed basically fine though neither had said a word since the man had dived into my Renault. Suddenly the entire car and surrounding area was flooded with light. "Christ!" the youth exclaimed, "What the fuck is that?"

"Helicopter search light," I explained. "What the hell have you done?"

As if he didn't believe me, he wound down his window and poked his head out into the airflow, his curly black hair being tossed about in the wind as he peered upwards into the glare. Quickly appearing to give up the idea of actually seeing the chopper, but now knowing that my explanation was clearly correct, he pulled himself back in and wound up the window before saying, "Hey, it wasn't my fault, right?"

"Erm... right. What wasn't your fault?"

"The old fool wouldn't hand over the cash like I asked... then he tried to press some alarm or other... so I let him have it! If only he'd just done like I told him! Man, this sucks!"

"You killed him?" I asked with concern ringing hollowly in my voice for if this bloke could so callously kill one man he could easily do for me too... and the next thing I know the guy's goes loopy and the gun's back on my face.

"How the fuck do I know?" he yelled at me. "The back of his head kinda flew away... but he might still be alive for all I know..." With a struggle, I turned my attention back to the road as my heart sank. This didn't look too good, I thought to myself, for while I wasn't sure what newly designed street-drug this bloke was on, it was abundantly clear that he was hardly in control of himself.

The car sped on through Lewisham, passing the new station they'd just built for the Light Docklands Railway and up towards Blackheath. All the time I felt that the cops were doing their best to get us up there onto the Common and since the nutter with the gun hadn't actually given me any directions, I was quite happy to go whatever way the cops wanted. We screamed up the hill that lead to the heath at over eighty... and then I saw why the fuzz wanted us up there for stretched out before us was a blockade of at least a dozen emergency vehicles all lined up across the road and the wide kerbs that faded away into the almost impenetrable wet darkness. Hauling the wheel over and with tires screaming loudly, our Renault left the tarmac and started to tear across the sodden grass, rapidly slowing down as the driving wheels lost traction. "Faster, shit head! Faster!" our would-be robber shouted at me as he continued to wave the gun about.

"I can't," I yelled back. "It's like a quagmire up here... it's hardly stopped raining for three days... we're not going anywhere..." And, true enough, within a few hundred yards the car lost all forward momentum and gently settled down into the mud. For a few moments, I revved the engine hard, sending plumes of turf high into the air but achieving nothing apart from bedding us down further and convincing the loony beside me that I really was attempting to make a clean getaway. As all this was going on, the police Land Rovers closed in to within a few hundred feet of us, their four-by-four drive systems taking them easily where we'd struggled to get...