Ultimatum

by Simon Kernick

  Twenty-eight

  15.55

  OF ALL THE things I lost on the day I attacked Alfonse Webber, the worst, by far, was my family.

  My marriage hadn’t been the best in the world, but then whose is when you’ve got a young child and a stressful, time-consuming job? But up until that moment, we were still doing OK. I loved my wife; I loved my daughter. I think they both loved me.

  But clearly the bond between Gina and me wasn’t as strong as I’d thought because our marriage didn’t survive my prison sentence. Six months in, she said she wanted to end it, and no amount of pleading from me changed her mind. I think there was someone else – at least for a while. She never admitted it, and if there was someone on the scene, he was gone by the time they released me from prison, but there were plenty of nights when I was lying alone in my cell staring at the ceiling, torturing myself about what the woman I loved was up to, and who she was up to it with.

  The clouds were beginning to gather behind me and the wind was picking up as I walked up the narrow overgrown path to the front door of my old house in Stamford Hill and rang the doorbell – a process that never felt quite right.

  Gina appeared behind the frosted glass a few seconds later. I’d called to say I was coming because I had something for her, and she opened the door straight away.

  She was wearing track pants and a T-shirt, and had no makeup on, but she still looked fantastic. Gina might have been a single mother struggling to make ends meet, but the years had treated her well.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, with a forced smile. ‘You said you had something for me.’

  In the pantheon of enthusiastic welcomes it didn’t score particularly highly, but then I could hardly blame her. I hadn’t been round much lately, not since I’d fallen behind on the child support payments and she’d threatened to call in the CSA to hunt me down.

  How the mighty have fallen, eh?

  ‘Can I come in?’

  She nodded suspiciously and stepped aside to let me in. The TV was on in the kitchen showing BBC News. The Prime Minister was on screen saying that there would be no negotiations with terrorists, and that Britain would never bow down to blackmail. He advised all citizens to go about their business as usual, but to be on their guard against further attacks. Which of course was easy for him to say.

  ‘God, have you seen all this?’ she said, picking up a mug of coffee from the sideboard. ‘The terrorists have said there’s going to be another attack later today.’

  ‘They would say that. They want to scare people.’

  ‘And it’s working,’ said Gina quietly, running a hand through her thick curly hair as she stared at the TV screen. ‘I can’t believe this is happening again.’

  I fought the urge to put a protective hand on her shoulder and pull her to me, but it was hard. Very hard.

  ‘Wasn’t our involvement in Afghanistan meant to have protected us from this? I remember Gordon Brown saying that once while you were out there.’ She looked at me like it was somehow my fault, her body language instinctively defensive.

  ‘Politicians say a lot of things. Most of them are lies.’ I realized as I spoke that I sounded a lot like Cecil. Or the mysterious Mr Cain.

  She took a sip from her coffee – she hadn’t bothered to offer me one – and abruptly changed the subject, which was an old habit of Gina’s. She didn’t dwell on things. ‘So what is it that can’t wait?’

  ‘This,’ I said, producing a wad of cash secured by an elastic band and handing it to her. ‘There’s two grand there, in lieu of all my missed payments.’

  She frowned, looking down at the wad as if it was tainted. ‘Wow. That’s a lot of money. Where did you get it?’

  I committed an armed robbery. I shot up a police car containing people I used to work with.

  ‘I’ve been doing a lot of doorwork, and some bodyguarding too.’

  ‘It obviously pays well.’

  ‘Not particularly, but I’ve been saving up.’

  ‘You’re not doing anything illegal, are you, Jones? Because if you are, I don’t want this money.’

  ‘I’m not a criminal, Gina.’

  Her expression softened. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I know you’re not.’

  I am. I’m a violent thug. I’m worse than the men I used to put behind bars.

  ‘Thanks. I appreciate this. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to call off the CSA. I need regular payments, Jones.’

  ‘I know. And you’ll get them, I promise.’

  For a moment we just stared at each other, and I felt a lump rise in my throat. I’d never stopped loving her, and it hurt to look at her now, knowing she didn’t feel remotely the same way. When I’d come back from that last tour, she’d been there waiting for me at the air-force base. She’d touched the scar on my forehead – fresh then – and taken me in her arms and held me, sobbing against my shoulder, repeating over and over again that she’d never stop loving me, but that it was time for me to stay home for good and leave the army.

  So I’d left the army, knowing it was the only way of keeping my marriage intact. But in the end it had made no difference because she had stopped loving me. It had happened slowly, and I know it was my fault rather than Gina’s. I’d had mood swings; I was distant; I had bad dreams – dreams of murder and men dying; and the pressures of my new job as a cop kept pushing me closer and closer to the edge, until that final, bitter incident with Webber. The truth was that even before I was sent down, I could see that our marriage was over. The time inside just sealed it.

  ‘Where’s Maddie?’ I asked, looking around.

  ‘She’s having a nap. She’s got a bit of a cold at the moment. I think it’s the time of year.’

  ‘Can I go up and see her?’

  ‘I don’t want you disturbing her.’

  ‘I’ll just look in on her. That’s all I want to do.’ I hadn’t seen Maddie in close to two weeks and there was no way I was leaving without seeing her.

  Gina sighed. ‘OK. But if you wake her …’

  ‘I won’t. I promise.’

  I made my way up the narrow staircase, remembering when this had been my home. It was the first place we’d bought together, almost ten years back now. The house wasn’t much, nor was the area, but for the most part my memories of it were good which, to be honest, just made the situation feel worse.

  Maddie was fast asleep on her side on top of the covers, wearing jeans and the Dora the Explorer top I’d bought her the day I was released. A small lamp in the corner cast a dim glow over the room, showing the posters covering the wall and the toys that littered the floor.

  I approached the bed and looked down at my daughter. Gently, I lifted a lock of blonde hair from her forehead and touched a finger to her face. I wondered what the future held for this four-year-old girl. Was she really going to become like a foreigner in her own country, as Cain had suggested, or was she going to go on to do great things? Become a doctor or an architect? I didn’t honestly care so long as she was happy. And so long as she wasn’t ashamed of her father, which made it essential that she never found out what I’d done today.

  I mouthed the words ‘I love you’, and kissed Maddie once on the head, half-hoping she’d stir and smile up at me like she’d done when she was a toddler, so we could share a few snatched words before she fell asleep again.

  But she didn’t move, and reluctantly I turned away and went back downstairs.

  ‘You didn’t wake her, did you?’ asked Gina. She was still watching the news. The Prime Minister had been replaced by an aerial view of the block of flats in Bayswater where the second and third explosions had occurred. The death toll from these two was now five police officers and a civilian.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘she’s fine. A pack of hyenas wouldn’t wake her right now.’

  ‘Good.’ She gave me a lopsided smile. ‘Thanks for the money, Jones. It’s a real help.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, feeling a sudden flash of hope, ‘do you fancy going out for a bit
e to eat one night? Somewhere nice. You could get a babysitter.’

  The smile disappeared, and her expression saddened. ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ It looked like she was going to elaborate but she stopped herself, and I was reminded of something she’d said to me during one of the few infrequent prison visits she’d made: ‘When the light goes out, it doesn’t come back.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, turning away, conscious of an unfamiliar ringtone coming from my pocket.

  It was the phone Cain had given me.

  ‘Where are you?’ asked Cecil as I let myself out of the house. He sounded excited.

  ‘Visiting my kid,’ I told him.

  ‘Stay where you are. I’ll be with you in five minutes.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘You know that meeting Cain was telling you about? It’s on. Now.’

  He ended the call before I had a chance to reply, leaving me staring at the phone and wondering how he could only be five minutes away, unless he’d followed me here.

  I put the phone back in my pocket and zipped up my jacket against the cold. I thought about calling Mike Bolt but something stopped me. I wasn’t sure what. Maybe it was just instinct.

  Either way, it turned out to be one of the best moves of my life.

  Twenty-nine

  16.10

  TINA STOOD IN the doorway of Brozi’s house smoking another cigarette and stamping her feet in an effort to keep out the cold.

  About two dozen uniforms had now arrived at the scene, their vehicles blocking both ends of the street as they milled about, waiting for orders. Brozi’s Lexus and the Land Rover Freelander she and Bolt had been in earlier were still in the middle of the road where they’d collided, waiting for the photographer to turn up and take some evidence shots of the dramatic scene. So far there was no sign of anyone from CTC or Islington CID. Tina wondered if, when the Islington guys did turn up, she’d see anyone she used to know. She hadn’t done a good job of keeping in touch with her old colleagues, which was a habit of hers. When she moved on, she tended to leave her past behind completely, as if it was something best expunged.

  She turned and caught her reflection in the glass of Brozi’s front window. She was slimmer than she’d been in a while, courtesy of her obsession with the gym. Her hair looked different too. She’d dyed it jet black and had it cut short like it had been a few years ago – more to differentiate her from the woman whose photo had appeared all over the media after the Stanhope siege than because she liked the look, although it had begun to grow on her. She still looked attractive, but there was a hardness about her that seemed to become more pronounced year on year, as if it represented an accumulation of all the bad things that had ever happened to her. And Jesus, there’d been plenty of those.

  A thought suddenly struck her just as she was about to start feeling sorry for herself. When Brozi had been threatening her and Bolt on the street with the gun, he’d had a mobile phone sticking out of his front pocket. But she didn’t remember seeing it when they’d arrested him. She hadn’t seen him drop it either, but then he could easily have done so when he’d been running away from her down the street.

  Stubbing her cigarette underfoot, she called Mike Bolt, but he wasn’t answering, which she supposed was no great surprise under the circumstances. She left a message asking him to find out if Brozi had had a phone in his possession when he’d been nicked, then walked back down to the area where she’d wrestled him to the ground. A single drop of blood on the pavement marked the spot, and she wondered whether Brozi would try to press charges against her for assault.

  If he’d thrown away the phone when he was running, it would be round here somewhere. He’d had the gun in his left hand the whole time so he’d have to have thrown the phone away with his right, meaning it would most likely be in the road or under one of the parked cars. She crouched down and looked beneath the nearest one. There was nothing there, so she looked under the next one, then the next, slowly retracing Brozi’s steps, pleased at least that she now had something to do, however mundane it was.

  She’d been absorbed in this activity for several minutes when, out of the corner of her eye she saw a group of uniforms looking across at her. One said something and the others laughed, although they all looked away fast enough when she returned their gaze. She ignored them and continued her careful search, almost level with Bolt’s Freelander now, beginning to lose hope of finding anything.

  Then she saw it. A newish-looking black iPhone, identical to the one Brozi had been using in his bedroom. It was on the tarmac beneath the bumper of a stationary van, about a foot from the kerb. Not exactly well hidden, but then Jetmir Brozi had been a man in a hurry.

  Feeling a rush of vindication, she picked it up and switched it on. There was no password lock, as was often the case with criminals who were constantly changing their mobiles, and it was clear that Brozi hadn’t had it long because there were only six calls in the call log, all of them made in the past four days to different mobile numbers. The last call was the one Brozi had been making in the bedroom. He’d been speaking English then, even though she hadn’t been able to hear what was being said, but Tina had a feeling that the conversation might have been important. She checked the email section but it was blank, then almost as an afterthought, she opened the photos section.

  There were two grainy shots of a man in profile coming out of a house. They weren’t the best photos in the world but Tina felt her heart jump, because she recognized the man in them instantly.

  It was the man she’d seen run over by a lorry only a few hours ago.

  The terrorist who’d bombed the coffee shop.

  Thirty

  16.25

  TINA WAS STILL staring at the photo of the bomber when her mobile phone rang. It was Mike Bolt.

  Briefly she explained to him what she’d found.

  ‘And are you absolutely sure it’s him?’ he asked when she’d finished.

  ‘I won’t forget his face as long as I live,’ Tina said, suddenly feeling vindicated. ‘So now we’ve got a direct link between Brozi and the bombers.’

  ‘That’s brilliant, Tina. Well done.’

  ‘You’re pleased with me now then, are you?’ she said, unable to resist having a dig.

  He sighed down the other end of the phone. ‘It still doesn’t detract from the fact that your actions almost got us both killed, but it’s a great lead, there’s no question about that.’

  ‘We need to lean on Brozi fast.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘There’s only three and a half hours until the terrorists’ deadline, and I’d bet anything that he knows their identities.’

  ‘But we can’t. You know that. First of all, he’s going to deny the phone’s anything to do with him. We didn’t even see him drop it. And secondly, after what happened with him shooting at us, I’m not even allowed to see him in case it prejudices future proceedings. We’ve got a team from HQ coming over to interview him but they haven’t arrived yet, and nor has Brozi’s lawyer.’

  ‘So we’re just going to hang around until Brozi’s lawyer and the interview team decide to show their faces? Hoping that he might deign to cooperate with us?’

  ‘This isn’t 24, Tina. We can’t torture the information out of him. Just like we can’t torture it out of Fox either.’ He sighed. ‘Listen, it’s obvious from all this that Fox knows what’s going on. I need you to talk to him again.’

  ‘You’re not going to send me back to the prison, are you?’

  She could hear the smile in Bolt’s voice as he answered. ‘It wouldn’t do any harm to have you out of the way, but no, I’m not. We’re going to set up a secure line at Islington and you can call him from there.’

  ‘I need to offer him something. Otherwise he’s got no incentive to help us.’

  Bolt was silent as he thought about this. ‘Tell him we’re organizing moving him to a secure safehouse, but that it’s going to take another day or so to sort the paperwork.’

  ‘He w
on’t fall for that, Mike. He’s no fool. Let’s try to be a bit creative here. It’s clear from what’s happened that his info’s good. This isn’t a set-up.’

  ‘Right now, I haven’t got the authority to offer him anything else. I’ll speak to the commander but I doubt they’ll even contemplate moving him. It would be political suicide. Use your charm, Tina. You’ve got a name out of him already. See if you can get something else.’

  Politics, thought Tina. Policework, like everything else, was all politics, and covering your arse. She sighed. ‘OK, I’m on my way.’

  Thirty-one

  16.35

  VOORHESS’S TARGET, AZIM Butt, was bound tightly with bungee rope to a leather armchair in his spacious first-floor living room, and wearing wrist and ankle chains. A ball gag had been placed in his mouth, making it impossible for him to talk, and a blindfold covered his eyes. He’d been conscious for several hours now and after a lot of initial moaning beneath the gag, he’d long ago fallen silent.

  Voorhess sat down on a chair next to him with a bowl of hot noodles and removed the gag. ‘I’m going to feed you now, Mr Butt. Open your mouth.’

  ‘I’m not hungry. Please, can you not just take what you want and leave?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. I may need to stay for a little while.’

  ‘But why? What do you want? I haven’t done anything.’ There was a note of pleading in his voice.

  ‘I know it’s early to be having supper, Mr Butt, but there may be a delay until your next meal, and these are very tasty noodles. I’ve just eaten a bowl myself. I stir-fried some spring onions, ginger and chicken thighs in with them, then added soy sauce, rice wine and a splash of sesame oil. So I would appreciate it if you would do as you’re told.’

  Mr Butt wisely decided to acquiesce, and allowed himself to be fed from the bowl, chewing in a manner that suggested that, actually, he was quite hungry. When he’d finished, Voorhess put a bottle of water to his mouth and let him drink.