Ultimatum

by Simon Kernick

  ‘Am I some kind of hostage?’ asked Mr Butt, looking up at him from behind the blindfold.

  Voorhess put the bowl and the water down on the coffee table. ‘In a manner of speaking, yes. All I can say is that if you cooperate, you’ll come to no harm. As you can see from the fact that you’ve just been fed, I’m not here to hurt you.’

  ‘I don’t want to die,’ said Mr Butt quietly.

  ‘And you won’t,’ Voorhess told him, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘Just sit tight, stay calm, and I’ll be gone later this evening. I promise.’ His words had a soothing effect, but then Voorhess was good at that. He’d once been told by a nurse he’d gone out with back in Cape Town that he would have made an excellent doctor, because he had the perfect bedside manner, his voice exuding a potent mixture of confidence and kindness. It was, he thought almost ruefully, ironic that he did the job that he did.

  The downstairs buzzer sounded, reverberating round the whole house.

  Voorhess saw Mr Butt stiffen.

  ‘Who could that be?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Mr Butt’s voice was quavering now, which made Voorhess suspicious.

  ‘Are you expecting anyone?’

  ‘It might be my girlfriend. What’s the time?’

  ‘It’s quarter to five.’

  ‘It’s a bit early, and I wasn’t expecting her. But it might be her.’

  The buzzer sounded again.

  ‘Will she go away if there’s no answer?’

  Mr Butt didn’t reply. He looked scared.

  ‘Mr Butt,’ said Voorhess slowly, the bedside manner gone now, replaced by a cold, businesslike tone, ‘will she go away?’

  Mr Butt swallowed. ‘She has a key.’

  Ach, thought Voorhess, always complications.

  As if appearing to read his mind, Mr Butt looked up at him imploringly from behind the blindfold. ‘Please don’t hurt her. She’s everything to me. We’re getting married.’

  He would have said more too but Voorhess replaced the ball gag in his mouth and tightened it, before leaning down so that he was close to the other man’s ear. ‘Don’t make a sound, Mr Butt, because if you do, you will put your girlfriend in mortal danger. Nod once if you understand.’

  Mr Butt nodded once.

  Voorhess had already taken possession of his phone, and he picked it up now. The phone vibrated and a text appeared. It was the girlfriend asking where he was, with lots of question marks. She finished the message by saying she was extremely horny and was coming in to wait for him.

  Oh dear, thought Voorhess, walking out on to the first-floor landing.

  Darkness was beginning to fall and he made his way through the unlit gloom to the bathroom, grabbed a towel, then started down the stairs as a key turned in the lock.

  She had just closed the door behind her and switched on the lights when Voorhess reached the bottom of the staircase. It was the girl from the photo in the downstairs toilet. She turned round with a bright, sexy smile that vanished when she saw that it wasn’t her boyfriend but a big man in overalls, holding a gun in one hand and a towel in the other.

  In the flesh, she was even more attractive – a tall, willowy blonde with golden skin, wearing a short red dress that showed off her long shapely legs, and high-heeled red court shoes that Voorhess reckoned she probably wore when she was having sex. A short red leather jacket completed the ensemble.

  ‘Oh God,’ she said, her mouth dropping open in shock.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said calmly, lifting the gun. ‘I’m not going to hurt you. Put your hands in the air for me.’

  As she raised them uncertainly, he shot her once through her left eye, catching her as she stumbled, and simultaneously wrapping the towel round her head to stem the bleeding. The gun he’d used was the one he’d requested from the client, a .22 calibre with low-velocity bullets, designed to take people out at close range without making much noise or mess. He’d hoped he wouldn’t have to use it, but he knew from experience that it was always best to plan for any eventuality.

  She was still moving, clearly not dead yet, and he brought her slowly down to the carpet, placing her in a sitting position so that she was leaning back against him, her body juddering in the crook of his shoulder, the warmth of her skin giving him an unpleasant feeling. He didn’t like this kind of thing. Putting the gun down on the carpet, he produced a lock knife from his overalls, flicked open the blade and drove it deep into her heart to finish her off and stop it pumping blood, holding her while she died in his arms.

  When he was sure she was gone, Voorhess tied a knot in the towel, impressed at how little blood had been spilt, threw the body over one shoulder, and carried her into the adjoining garage. Mr Butt didn’t drive, preferring to take taxis everywhere, and Voorhess had parked his Shogun in there. He thought about putting the body in the Shogun’s boot, but that would just complicate matters. Instead he laid her down at the back of the garage, trying not to look as her dress rode up to reveal a bright red lacy thong with a black flower in the centre. It seemed such a terrible waste, destroying something so beautiful, and at such close quarters too, and he gave a sigh of relief as he covered her with a sheet of dusty tarpaulin, glad he didn’t have to look at his handiwork any more.

  Mr Butt didn’t make a sound as Voorhess walked back into the room where he sat bound to the chair, but tears were streaming down his face. It was obvious he knew what had happened. The .22’s retort hadn’t been loud, but he would still have heard it.

  Voorhess found a tissue and wiped away his tears.

  This was the cue for Mr Butt to make a long keening sound beneath the gag, like a wounded animal, and Voorhess turned away, having no desire to watch the other man’s pain. At the same time, there was a bleep from the mobile phone the client had provided him with.

  He slipped it from his overalls and checked the message. It read simply: GOODS READY FOR COLLECTION TWO HOURS. FOR USE 8 P.M.

  Voorhess nodded slowly, looking over at the holdall on the sofa. The black explosives vest was poking out and he picked it up, along with the medical kit containing the diazepam.

  It was time to make the final preparations.

  Thirty-two

  16.52

  ISLINGTON NICK HELD plenty of memories for Tina Boyd. She’d done two stints there as a detective – the first for four years, the second for two. It was the place where she’d fallen in love for the first and only time in her life. DI John Gallan had been her boss, a good-looking, good-hearted man who’d been snatched away from her far too quickly.

  She didn’t miss the place. It was a big ugly building next door to an even uglier Sainsbury’s superstore, and most of the memories only made her unhappy on those few occasions she chose to dwell on them. It was, after all, events that had happened there that had driven her to alcoholism and the steady decline into darkness that had followed.

  So it was with a hint of trepidation that she stepped through the doors, nodding briefly to a couple of civilian workers she didn’t recognize who were smoking just outside, and went into the reception area. The first thing she noticed was that there was no sense of urgency as a result of the bombs that morning and the terrorists’ ultimatum that had followed. The custody sergeant, an old timer called Barnes, was booking in a smiling drunk who appeared to have forgotten his own name and who was having to be held up by two PCSOs, while a second prisoner – young and feral – was arguing loudly with his escort as they tried to get him through the door to the cells. Other people – the lawyers, the civilian workers and the civilians caught up in the police system – wandered in and out, ignoring the dramas going on around them.

  Mike Bolt was already in reception. ‘The interview team should be here in the next fifteen minutes,’ he said as they took the stairs to the second floor of the building. ‘But Brozi’s refusing to say a word without his lawyer present, and we’re not expecting him until five thirty. Plus he wants an Albanian translator, and we’re still tryi
ng to sort one out.’

  ‘He spoke English well enough to me,’ said Tina.

  Bolt frowned. ‘The problem is, he’s not acting like a man who’s scared. I think his experience of the British justice system has made him pretty complacent.’

  ‘I’d have thought the fact that he’s being charged with the attempted murder of two police officers would have concentrated his mind.’

  ‘You know what it’s like, Tina. In this business, nothing’s cut and dried.’

  And it wasn’t. A clever lawyer could easily twist the facts to suit his client’s case, particularly as none of the bullets Brozi had fired had come anywhere near hitting either her or Bolt. Ironically, it would have been a lot better for the case, and for scaring Brozi into cooperating, if one of them had actually been shot.

  ‘Listen, Mike,’ she said as they walked out of the lift and turned in the direction of the CID offices, ‘that message on Brozi’s PC might be a clue to something. Can you run it by the Albanian translator whenever he turns up?’ She took out her mobile. ‘I photographed it on here.’

  ‘Text me the photo and I’ll see what I can do,’ he said, not sounding particularly interested.

  By now they were in an empty office where two phones sat on a desk with chairs at either end. ‘We’ve set up the secure line so you can talk to Fox from here.’ His expression was tense as he looked at her. ‘If he knows the names of the people involved in the attacks today, and he wants to help himself, then he’s got to tell us now, because we’re running short on time.’

  ‘Let’s get on with it then,’ said Tina, picking up one of the phones, while Bolt picked up the other so he could listen in.

  After being patched through to the prison governor’s office, and given a short lecture from Governor Goodman on how talking to a prisoner like this was highly unorthodox, she was rerouted to the office where Fox had been taken along with his escort to receive the call.

  ‘So the lead I gave you this morning was useful?’ said Fox calmly as he came on the line.

  ‘We have Mr Brozi in custody, yes.’

  ‘Would that have anything to do with the events in Islington this afternoon?’

  ‘How do you know about them?’

  ‘I’ve got a TV in my cell, and I like to keep up with current affairs. It’s all over the news that two police officers were shot at by an armed man, who was arrested at the scene. It was Brozi, wasn’t it?’

  Tina could tell he was trying to knock her off balance, as he’d done that morning. It was working too. The speed with which the media covered events, and Fox’s own access to their coverage, meant that even in prison he was only a few steps behind them. Briefly, she told him what had happened.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ he said when Tina had finished. ‘You get shot at by a suspect and still you stay on duty. I admire you. I really do.’

  Tina ignored him. ‘We’ve found evidence that links Brozi to the attacks this morning. Which links them to what happened at the Stanhope.’

  ‘Exactly as I predicted.’

  ‘But we still need the names of the people involved.’

  ‘I know you do,’ said Fox, a hard edge to his voice. ‘But you need to help me first.’

  ‘We’re already in the process of organizing your move to a safehouse but it requires approval at the highest level. We can’t move you before tomorrow.’ Tina glanced across at Bolt as she said this, and he gave her an approving nod. ‘If you give me another name, you’ll put yourself in a very advantageous position ahead of your trial.’

  Fox grunted dismissively. ‘Surely you can do better than that, Tina. You’ve got a reputation for getting things done. That’s why I chose to see you and not some patsy in a cheap suit bound by all the rules.’

  ‘Like I said, the authorities are prepared to cut a deal with you, I can guarantee that. And you will be moved to a safehouse.’

  ‘And when I’ve got that in writing, and I’m in this safehouse, then I’ll help you. But not until then.’

  Tina felt her frustration building. She pictured Fox on the other end of the phone, a smug expression on his face. A man with an ordinary demeanour but who’d been responsible for dozens of murders and felt not a moment’s remorse. She wanted to grab him by his short, thinning hair and drive his head into the table again and again. To make him spill his guts and tell her everything he knew.

  But she couldn’t.

  And he knew it.

  ‘Get me out of here and we’ll talk,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I can’t get you out of there tonight. I’ve just told you that.’

  ‘Then put me on to someone who can. Or as far as I’m concerned, this conversation’s over.’

  Tina was aware of Bolt shaking his head beside her, warning her to take it easy. But she no longer cared.

  ‘If people die because you won’t help—’

  ‘Then what?’ he said. ‘What’ll you do exactly?’

  ‘I’ll fuck you up. I don’t care how long it takes, I don’t know how I’ll do it, but make no mistake, I will.’

  Fox let out a dismissive sigh. ‘You won’t have to. If you leave me in here, other people will do it for you. And then it’ll be too late. For both of us.’

  Thirty-three

  17.25

  NIGHT WAS CLOSING in fast as the car headed south through Bermondsey, passing through a series of featureless industrial estates and retail parks in the direction of the Old Kent Road.

  Since Cecil had picked me up at the old family home over an hour earlier, we’d followed a round-about U-turn-filled route across north-east London, before detouring through the grand, ostentatious wealth of the City of London, and crossing the river at Tower Bridge. We’d met Cain a few minutes after that on a back street lined with trendy apartments near Jamaica Road, and it was there that we’d changed cars. We were now in an Audi A5 estate I hadn’t seen before. If anything, traffic had been lighter than usual and I wondered whether a lot of people had left work early as a result of the bomb threat that hung over the city like a black, menacing cloud.

  Once again Cecil had run the bug finder over me, and made me turn off my phone. I’d protested, but he wasn’t taking no for an answer. Not that it mattered. Bolt had been right. The bug finder hadn’t picked up the two GPS devices in my wallet, but it had still been a nerve-racking few seconds.

  Cain was driving now, with me in the front passenger seat next to him. Cecil was on his own in the back, sitting directly behind me, which was making me paranoid. We turned on to a quiet, poorly lit back road, flanked on one side by empty-looking warehouses, and on the other by a row of immense gas towers that stretched up into the cold dark sky behind a high brick wall. A car came past the other way, but otherwise the road was empty and there was a bleakness about the place that made it difficult to believe we were in the middle of a city. I suddenly wondered whether they’d somehow found out I’d met up with Bolt and concluded, quite rightly, that I was working for the cops. If they had, this would be as good a place as any to kill me. All Cecil had to do was put a gun against the back of my headrest and pull the trigger, and that would be that. It only takes half a second to die. I’ve seen it happen in war zones. A single explosion; a sniper’s bullet. Bang, it’s all over. Just like that. It took all my willpower to stop myself from turning round to see what Cecil was doing.

  Don’t panic, I told myself. They don’t know. They can’t. Mike Bolt’s the only man who knows my identity. If they suspected me, they’d drop me like a stone, not lure me into the middle of nowhere.

  Cain slowed the car and turned it into a short dead-end road with a high fence at the end and scrubland behind it. He turned to face us. ‘OK, these people we’re going to see. I’ve dealt with them before, and they’ve been reliable, but this is the biggest deal we’ve done together. I’m buying some contraband from them – contraband that’s going to be passed on very quickly, so neither of you needs to know what it is.’ He looked at us both in turn. ‘But I can guarantee you
this. It’s going to be used to strike a real blow against the establishment, which is what we all want. I’m using the bulk of the money the two of you earned this morning as payment, which is why we’ve got to be careful. Men can do stupid things where big money’s involved – we all know that.’

  ‘Who are we dealing with?’ I asked him.

  ‘Albanians from Kosovo. Ex-members of the KLA. They’re not nice people but, as I said, they’ve been reliable in the past. The meeting place is a scrapyard down a road off here. I reccied the place yesterday. There was no one around and the place was locked up, which means it’s probably not used much. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. We don’t want any unwanted attention, but it also means that if anything goes wrong, we’re on our own. Which is why we’re going in armed. Cecil, can you do the honours?’

  Cecil leaned down behind the driver’s seat and brought up the battered Lonsdale holdall that LeShawn Lambden had been using to carry his crack takings before we’d taken it from him. He opened it up to reveal two pistols and an MP5, all sitting on a huge wedge of cash.

  ‘I’m sure everything’s going to be fine,’ said Cain, taking one of the pistols and handing me the other. ‘We’re businessmen, and no one wants a bloodbath. But I’m also not the kind of man who takes chances.’

  I ejected the magazine, checked that it was loaded, then slipped the pistol into the back of my jeans where it couldn’t be seen beneath my jacket.

  ‘Jones, you and me are going to go in the front. I’ll do the talking. You’re just there for back-up. Follow my orders the whole time, OK?’

  I nodded.

  ‘What about me?’ asked Cecil.

  Cain pulled a sheet of A4 paper from his jacket pocket and unfolded it, revealing a Google aerial-view map of the area. ‘You get out here and take the holdall and the MP5 with you, but keep the gun hidden just in case you run into anyone. Cut through the fence at the end of the road and turn left. There’s a dirt path that leads behind the buildings. Follow it round until you come to the scrapyard, here.’ He tapped his gloved finger on a building near the top of the map, which he’d marked with a cross. ‘When you’re level with the main building, you’ll see a small hole in the fence. I made it yesterday and there’ll be just enough room for you to get through with the holdall. Text me on today’s number as soon as you’re inside the perimeter, then stay within earshot of the main building but out of sight. There are wrecked cars everywhere, so there’ll be plenty of hiding places. Don’t move until you hear me call you. Understood?’