Ultimatum

by Simon Kernick

  She looked through the wardrobe’s narrow keyhole and saw him walking round with his back to her. From this angle, it was impossible to tell whether or not the screensaver on the PC had kicked in or not.

  Brozi stopped talking, and Tina’s whole body tensed. She could hear her heartbeat – a rapid-fire tattoo that she would swear was audible from outside the wardrobe. He was standing still and looking over towards the PC. Slowly, he replaced the phone in the pocket of his trousers and exited the room, his movements unhurried. A few seconds later she heard him going down the stairs.

  Tina waited, trying to work out what to do. She couldn’t stay in there for ever. At some point, Brozi was going to want to get something out of, or put something into, his wardrobe. He might go out again, of course, in which case she’d be fine. But if he didn’t, she was going to have to try to sneak out past him.

  The staircase was creaking again. He was coming back up, and his movements were slower, more purposeful, this time.

  She stared out of the keyhole, keeping as still as possible, watching the doorway.

  Brozi reappeared, and this time he was holding the gun in front of him.

  And he was looking right at her.

  Tina held her breath.

  After looking round the room again, he walked slowly towards the wardrobe.

  Tina leaned back, clenched her fists, preparing. Her mobile phone vibrated in her jeans pocket, but she didn’t have time to wonder who it was. It was irrelevant now. She was on her own, and none of her new colleagues could help her.

  He was right outside the wardrobe now. She could hear his slightly forced breathing. Any second now he’d open the door, take a step back so he was out of range of an attack, and there she’d be. Defenceless and totally vulnerable.

  She exploded out of the wardrobe’s double doors, leaping straight into him, grabbing for his gun hand.

  Caught completely by surprise, Brozi stumbled backwards as Tina yanked his arm upwards, and the gun went off with a deafening bang, the bullet striking the ceiling. They landed on the unmade double bed in a violent embrace with Tina on top. Brozi snarled, showing yellowed teeth, and, as he lifted his head, Tina butted him hard on the bridge of the nose, knocking him back.

  But he was strong, and with a grunt of exertion he rolled over, knocking her off him, the gun swinging wildly as he tried to point it at her. Tina kept her grip but allowed herself to be pushed off the bed, landing on her feet and bringing Brozi with her. He spat in her face, and tried to butt her back, but she dodged the blow, and drove her knee into his groin.

  Immediately, Brozi’s grip weakened and he yelped in pain. Tina gave him a hard shove that sent him tumbling, then turned and ran for the door, slamming it shut behind her. She took the stairs two at a time, going so fast she almost stumbled and lost her balance.

  As she hit the first floor, she heard the bedroom door open and the sound of rapid footfalls on the staircase, and then she was on the last flight of stairs down to the ground floor, the front door and freedom only feet in front of her. She reached the door, pulled both handles, saw that he’d put the chain across, slammed it back shut, pulled back the chain, went to open it again—

  ‘Hands up or I shoot!’ came the angry, heavily accented shout from the top of the stairs.

  Tina didn’t know if he was bluffing or not but she made the split-second decision not to stay and find out. Yanking the door open in one movement, she dived on to the steps, rolling down on to the pathway, trying to make herself as difficult a target as possible, before jumping to her feet and vaulting over the gate, noticing with relief that Brozi still hadn’t pulled the trigger.

  Bolt was already running across the road to meet her, holding his warrant card in one hand, the tension etched all over his face. ‘Are you all right?’ he shouted, grabbing her by the arm.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ she panted. ‘Let’s get out of here. He’s armed.’

  But at that moment Jetmir Brozi came striding down the steps, holding the Glock in both hands in front of him. ‘Who the fuck are you?’ he yelled.

  Tina and Bolt retreated, backing away from each other at the same time, hands in the air in non-confrontational poses as he bore down on them in this quiet little street that suddenly felt like the loneliest spot in the world rather than the middle of an immense and bustling city.

  But Brozi kept coming. He was heading for Tina, the gun pointed straight at her head, the end of the barrel barely ten feet away now. His eyes were wild and he looked coked up, which probably explained why he was pursuing her on to the street armed with an illegal Glock 17 in broad daylight.

  ‘What were you doing in my house?’ he demanded. ‘Tell me now or I shoot you fucking dead! Understand? And stop moving.’

  Tina was in the middle of the road now, and she did as she was told, keeping her arms firmly in the air.

  ‘Mr Brozi,’ said Bolt firmly, ‘we are police officers. If you shoot either of us, you’ll go to prison for the rest of your life.’

  Brozi stopped, and the first flicker of doubt crossed his face, although he kept the gun pointed firmly at Tina.

  ‘Put the gun down, Mr Brozi,’ Bolt continued. ‘Then we can talk about this.’ He edged forward ever so slightly as he spoke. ‘Armed officers are on the way here right now.’

  ‘Shooting us isn’t going to help you,’ said Tina, noticing Bolt’s forward movement.

  Brozi suddenly turned the gun on Bolt. ‘Stay where you are.’

  Tina had a flash of fear that he might shoot him and it would all be her fault. She thought about rushing him but it was too risky. He was too far away and she’d seen the damage that a bullet could do.

  From somewhere to the south of them came the steady wail of a siren getting closer, and Brozi seemed to realize what an exposed position he was in, standing in the middle of the street. Fifty yards away, Tina could see two teenage girls in school uniform standing outside a corner shop at the end of the road, watching. Twin beads of sweat ran down her forehead and into an eye, but she didn’t dare move her hand to rub them away.

  ‘Put the gun down, Mr Brozi,’ she said with a calmness she wasn’t feeling. ‘This is not helping anyone.’

  ‘Fuck you, pig,’ spat Brozi, retreating up the street away from them. ‘Fuck both of you.’ Still keeping the gun trained on the two of them, he climbed into his car, a big Lexus saloon, and started the engine, pulling out in front of them.

  Seeing the opportunity to get out of the line of fire, Tina and Bolt rushed over to their own car and jumped inside as Brozi roared past them.

  ‘We’re going after him, right?’ shouted Tina.

  Bolt didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at Tina. Instead he yanked the key in the ignition and tore away from the kerb.

  Tina started talking rapidly into the radio. ‘Alpha One to all units, shots have been fired inside Target One home and we are pursuing Target One now in his blue Lexus, licence plate Alpha Freddie Ten Alpha November Charlie, north on Roman Road. Target One is armed with a fully loaded Glock. I repeat, Target One is armed. Approach with extreme caution. Over.’

  Bolt was driving fast, his face etched with concentration, and he was barely twenty yards behind Brozi as the Lexus headed for the junction. But then the Lexus’s brake lights came on, and Brozi leaned out of the driver’s-side window, pointed the gun at them, and started firing.

  ‘Shit!’ yelled Bolt, slamming on the brakes and coming to a halt in a screech of tyres, and ducking his head as bullets flew past, one pinging off the car roof with a high-pitched whistle, another blowing a hole in the driver’s-side wing mirror.

  Tina ducked too, her heart pumping like a steam train, completely caught up in the thrill of the moment. When she looked back up, Brozi and the gun had disappeared back inside the car, and he was driving again.

  But before he could reach the junction, a marked squad car appeared round the corner, and turned into the street, driving up it the wrong way and blocking Brozi’s path, forcing him t
o reverse.

  ‘He’s coming back!’ shouted Tina as the Lexus shot back towards them.

  Bolt cursed, and they just had time to take up crash positions before the Lexus hit them with a loud bang, knocking their car several yards backwards, but not doing enough to shunt it out of the way completely.

  Knowing there was no way out with the car, Brozi flung open the door and took off back up the street, running along the pavement, and keeping low behind the line of parked cars, still waving the gun around.

  With the Lexus in the way, Tina couldn’t see whether or not the occupants of the squad car were an armed response unit, and she didn’t wait to find out, leaping out of their car and running along the road after Brozi. She was a lot fitter than he was, and within a few seconds she was drawing level with him.

  He saw her and waved his gun but didn’t attempt to fire, still maybe thinking he could outrun her, even though he was panting heavily and looking like he might collapse at any moment.

  Operating entirely on instinct – if she’d thought about it there was no way she would have done it – Tina abruptly changed direction and ran over the bonnet of one of the parked cars, before leaping off the other side and, as Brozi turned to meet her, diving into him and knocking him and the gun flying.

  He went down hard, badly winded, the gun well out of reach underneath another parked car. Tina wriggled into position so she was squatting on top of him, her knees holding down his arms. Brozi tried to struggle but then his eyes widened as he saw Tina’s expression.

  She punched him hard in the face, three times in rapid succession, ignoring the blood flying out of his nose, and the fact that he was no longer resisting arrest. She would have punched him a fourth time too, but she felt her arm being grabbed firmly from behind and looked back to see Bolt standing there.

  ‘Leave him, Tina, or you’ll be done for assault,’ he told her.

  Behind Bolt, she could see two unarmed male uniforms jogging, rather than running, towards her, neither of them looking like they’d have done too much faced with a gunman, and she nodded and turned back to the man who just moments earlier had tried to kill her.

  ‘Jetmir Brozi, I’m arresting you for attempted murder,’ she said, as Bolt stepped forward and the two of them hauled him to his feet.

  Twenty-six

  15.15

  FOX SAT IN his cell, watching events unfold on Sky News. The breaking news was that the Sky newsroom had just received a phone call from a spokesman for Islamic Command, the previously unknown group who’d already claimed responsibility for the bombings. The caller had reiterated his warning that a third, much bigger, attack would take place if their demands weren’t met.

  The female anchor was now discussing the ramifications of this with one of Sky’s reporters who was standing outside 10 Downing Street, while on the bottom of the screen the news ticker gave the latest on the casualty toll: seventeen dead, including four police officers and a civilian killed in the second attack, and sixty-eight injured. A separate breaking news headline stated that there would be a press conference at Downing Street at 3.30.

  Watching it reminded Fox of the chaos he and the other terrorists had inflicted on London fifteen months earlier. He’d felt like the king of the world then, an all-powerful lord of life and death, knowing that the whole world was watching him.

  And now he was caged like an animal in a shitty little prison cell with lime-green walls, and his moment of glory was little more than a faded dream from another life.

  With a sigh, he got up from the bunk and walked out of the cell. He’d petitioned the governor earlier to release him from solitary confinement and, surprisingly, permission had been given. It was recreation time in the wing now, and he was free to come and go as he pleased for the next two hours. The governor liked the prisoners to be able to mingle. He felt it made them less likely to be aggressive if they weren’t cooped up in their cells the whole time, and in this, Fox had to admit, he was right. He appreciated the small pleasure of being able to stretch his legs – to walk, and think – even if it was in a confined space. This was the first day since the attack by Eric Hughes that he’d been allowed to do it. Hughes, meanwhile, was still locked up in a separate wing as he’d been the one armed with the shank.

  A table-tennis table in the central atrium surrounded by a cluster of tables and chairs provided the focal point for the prisoners when they were given the chance to socialize. Devereaux was already sitting at one of the tables, furthest away from the two screws who stood keeping an eye on things. Muscular and intense, with big staring eyes, and a tattoo of a grinning black skull covering most of his face, Devereaux looked like something out of a horror film, and gave off the air of a man only ever one step away from exploding. With a lot of prisoners, this kind of posturing was just show, but Devereaux was different. He was, as the judge who’d sentenced him put it, ‘pure, unadulterated evil’. Currently serving a whole-life tariff for the double murder of two underage prostitutes he’d kidnapped, raped and partly eaten a decade earlier, both screws and prisoners tended to give him a wide berth.

  Fox nodded at one of the prisoners playing table tennis, a huge former white supremacist known as Lenny who was one of the softest men in there, and approached the table where Devereaux sat alone, an unlit cigarette sticking out of his mouth.

  ‘Got a smoke?’ asked Fox, who’d taken up a ten-a-day habit out of boredom since arriving in prison.

  ‘Sure,’ grunted Devereaux, both the skull’s mouth and his own mouth moving in perfect time as he pulled a tin of roll-ups from his pocket and put it down on the table.

  Fox leaned forward to take one. ‘Everything ready?’ he whispered.

  ‘Sorted,’ answered Devereaux. ‘What time, again?’

  ‘Six forty-five exactly,’ said Fox, his lips hardly moving.

  He got up and walked away, putting the roll-up in his mouth, thinking that it was ironic that at a time when smoking inside public buildings was banned, prisoners could still smoke in their cells. The moment he got out of this place, though, he’d give up on the spot.

  Which, if all went according to plan, was now only a matter of hours away.

  Twenty-seven

  15.29

  ‘WHAT THE HELL do you think you were doing in there?’ demanded Bolt, staring at Tina in exasperation rather than anger. They were standing out on the pavement, just down from Brozi’s house, and out of earshot of the dozen or so officers who were in the process of sealing off the street in both directions, while Brozi sat in the back of an arrest van. ‘I told you to get out of the house. It was one simple request, and you ignored it.’

  Tina took a deep breath, dragging air into her lungs. Her heart was still banging away in her chest, the adrenalin yet to dissipate, and she was experiencing the occasional wave of nausea. She wiped sweat from her brow, hoping she wasn’t going into shock. Having a gun pointed at you at point-blank range, knowing that if the person pointing it pulled the trigger you’d almost certainly die, was a truly terrifying experience, even for someone like Tina who’d been on the wrong end of too many guns in her time, and who’d actually been shot twice. There’d been times in her life when she’d been so angry and disillusioned with everything that she’d wanted to die – when she’d taken major risks because, in the end, the consequences hadn’t scared her – but now wasn’t one of those times.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asked Bolt, putting a hand on her shoulder, his exasperation turning to concern.

  ‘I’m fine.’ She brushed his hand aside, not wanting his pity. She knew she was the one in the wrong. ‘I just wanted to check his PC, that’s all, and fit a keystroke tracker.’

  ‘Well, you almost got us killed, Tina. Don’t you understand that? Or do you just not care?’

  ‘Of course I care. I was doing my job.’ She pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from her jeans pocket and lit one, conscious that her hands were still shaking.

  ‘But you weren’t. That’s your problem. You don’
t do your job. You do what you think’s right, and ignore the consequences, and the rules.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Christ, I wish I’d never taken you on.’

  His words stung. ‘I found a lead on his PC,’ she said with a calmness she wasn’t feeling. ‘It was an email in the drafts section written in Albanian.’

  ‘How do you know it’s a lead if it’s in Albanian?’

  ‘Because it was in the drafts section of an anonymous hotmail account. That’s how these guys communicate when they don’t want people listening in, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not good enough, Tina.’

  ‘Come on, Mike. We’ve got plenty to charge Brozi with now. He’s just shot at us, and he’s obviously up to his neck in illegal stuff, so he’ll almost certainly cooperate. This is the guy who Fox said organized the weaponry for the Stanhope attacks, remember? Who therefore has access to PETN, the explosive used in the bombs this morning.’

  Bolt sighed. ‘We’ll just have to wait and see what the investigating officers say, won’t we?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean we’re going to have to bring in another team from CTC to interview him. We can’t talk to him now. Not after he shot at us. Now, instead of trying to find the people behind the bombs this morning, we’re going to be stuck at the local nick making statements.’ He looked at her with a mixture of irritation and sadness, and shook his head. ‘I’m going to Islington so I can start getting things moving, just in case he does want to cooperate.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Stay here and make sure no one goes inside the house until SOCO arrive.’

  ‘You’re putting me on guard duty?’

  ‘Just be thankful you’re still on duty at all,’ he said, and with that he turned and walked away, leaving Tina wondering once again whether she’d messed up everything.