Ultimatum

by Simon Kernick

  ‘Understood.’

  ‘But if you hear either me or Jones shout the words “This whole thing’s wrong”, you come in straight away with your finger on the trigger because that means we’re in trouble. And you take out anyone who gets in your way.’

  Cecil repeated the phrase and grinned. Those were just the kind of instructions he liked. ‘Got it.’

  The way Cain was talking left me in no doubt that I was about to cross a major line. If this meeting turned violent and I ended up pulling the trigger, I knew Mike Bolt wouldn’t be able to protect me.

  To be honest, I was sorely tempted to jump out of the car then and there, but there were way too many things stopping me, not least the fact that I might end up getting a bullet in the back of the head the moment I opened the door.

  Behind me, Cecil finished checking the MP5 before replacing it in the holdall, and slinging it over one shoulder. He gave Cain and me a nod, then disappeared into the night.

  We watched him jog down to the end of the road and disappear into the scrub. Above the trees and the flat roofs of the buildings, the tower at Canary Wharf rose up like a glowing finger in the distance, probably not much more than a mile away.

  ‘You know,’ said Cain after a couple of minutes, ‘the biggest robbers in the country work in there.’ He pointed at the tower. ‘Every day they steal thousands of times what you took from those crack dealers today. And they get away with it. Just like the MPs who fiddle their expenses and line their pockets. Or the pond scum like Alfonse Webber who laugh at the law and the justice system, and get stronger every day because no one’s able to stop them.’ He looked at me, something in his expression asking me for understanding. ‘All I want to do is create a fairer society. One that promotes hard work and decent values. Where the bad guys get punished and the good guys get rewarded. And you’ve got to fight for that. Sometimes it’s a lonely battle, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth fighting. Remember that.’

  The frightening thing was, he was right. If you wanted to change the world, you had to stand up and be counted. But that didn’t mean you had to kill civilians. Cain was a twisted individual – a typical extremist, who believed totally in the rightness of his cause, even if it meant killing hundreds of innocent people.

  Right then, he sickened me. But I didn’t show it. Instead, I just nodded and told him I agreed.

  A phone made an annoying doorbell sound somewhere on Cain’s person. He didn’t even bother taking it out to check it. Instead, he turned on the engine and put the car into gear.

  ‘You ready?’

  I could feel the warm metal of the gun pushing against the small of my back.

  ‘Always,’ I told him.

  Thirty-four

  17.35

  GINA BURNHAM-JONES DIDN’T like the position she’d found herself in.

  For a long time, she’d truly loved her husband. The fact that he was a soldier had never been ideal. Gina had never fancied herself as an army wife. She’d grown up in a loving family home within the same small Bedfordshire town, with both parents present, and had wanted the same for herself. But you can’t choose who you fall in love with. It just happens. And Jones had just happened. She’d met him in a wine bar in the West End while he’d been on leave and out with friends, and things had just clicked. He was tall and rangy, with model good looks, and eyes that were alive with promise. Even her mum, who’d never been keen on her previous boyfriends, announced that Jones had a really positive aura about him.

  In the end, it wouldn’t have mattered what her mother had said. Gina had been besotted, and she and Jones were married within six months. That had been back in 2002, in the summer before the Allied invasion of Iraq. Gina had known that her husband would have to serve away from home sometimes, but at that time it never occurred to her that he’d end up fighting two wars, and that the tall, handsome, laughing man from her wedding day would change irreversibly.

  The change had begun after his tour in Iraq, where he’d lost a friend to an IED. After the first tour of Afghanistan, it became even more marked. He stopped laughing. Occasionally Gina would come into a room and find him staring off into space, as if he was on drugs. He had bad dreams where he’d wake up either screaming in fear or shouting with rage. She tried to get him to leave the army, but he’d said it was his life, and that he couldn’t imagine doing any other job. Gina had reluctantly accepted his decision but had also decided she wanted a child to fill the void that was opening up in her life.

  Maddie had been born just before Jones went off to Afghanistan on his second tour. It had been a hard time for Gina. She’d suffered from post-natal depression, and her own mum, who would have helped lighten the load, was diagnosed with breast cancer. And with the TV news filled with reports of young soldiers dying in the dusty killing fields of Helmand Province, Gina was in constant fear that her own husband might not be coming back.

  When he did, she gave him an ultimatum. Leave the army or lose her.

  He left, but things were never the same between them, and their marriage had begun its steady disintegration, shattering completely when he’d been sent to prison.

  Even after she’d told Jones it was over, Gina hadn’t dated for a long time. She’d felt too guilty. After all, it wasn’t his fault that he’d become the dark, violent man he now was.

  But the fact remained that she no longer loved him, and as a healthy thirty-five-year-old woman she longed for companionship, and a chance to start again.

  She’d met Matt on the internet. He was a solid, serious man, ten years older, and very different in personality from how Jones had been in the good old days. But he cared for her, and he made her feel wanted, and she suspected she was beginning to fall in love with him. They’d been seeing each other for six months now, and had kept things very low-key, but Gina knew that soon she was going to have to tell Jones, because she wanted to make things official and have Matt meet Maddie. She’d almost said something to him when she’d seen him earlier, but it hadn’t felt like the right moment. It would have to happen soon, though.

  Gina looked at herself in the mirror. The face that looked back at her was still pretty. There were a few lines round the eyes, and crossing her forehead, but nothing that a little foundation couldn’t cure, and she wore the toughness of the last few years well. She wondered whether or not to put on lipstick. She was seeing Matt tonight. He was taking her out to a surprise destination for dinner and had asked her to dress up. She had no idea where it was, but it had been in the diary for weeks and Matt had begged her to keep the night free, and had promised that she’d enjoy it. Thankfully Maddie was feeling better now, and downstairs watching TV, otherwise Gina would have had to cancel it.

  In truth, she’d rather not go out, especially if it was into central London, what with the terrorists threatening another bomb attack, but she felt foolish, and maybe even a little cowardly, saying that to Matt. Gina knew how important tonight was for him and, not for the first time, she wondered if he was planning to propose. They’d talked more than once about living together, and the previous week when they’d been lying in each other’s arms in his bed, he’d told her he loved her, and she’d smiled and said ‘I love you’ back. It had felt good saying it too.

  She reached for her red lipstick, wondering whether she’d say yes if he asked her to marry him tonight, and smiled to herself, because she knew that she would.

  Thirty-five

  17.37

  THE PLACE WE were meeting was as deserted as anywhere you were going to get in London. You reached it down a winding side road right at the end of the industrial estate, which finished at a pair of heavily padlocked high-mesh gates with a large CLOSED sign stuck on one of them. A light glowed dimly in a Portakabin just inside the entrance but that was the only sign of life.

  We waited for a few seconds, and then a shifty-looking, unshaven guy smoking a cigarette appeared in the headlights on the other side of the gate as he checked out the car. He wore a heavy donkey jacket wi
th bright green illumination strips that may or may not have concealed a gun.

  ‘Recognize him?’ I asked Cain.

  ‘Never seen him before. He’ll just be muscle.’ Cain got out and went to speak to the guy, leaving the engine running.

  I knew this was my last chance. I could jump in the driver’s seat and drive off before either of them had a chance to react.

  But I didn’t. I just sat there waiting as the guy silently unlocked the gates and Cain came back to the car.

  We drove slowly inside and I watched in the wing mirror as the gates were shut and locked again, effectively trapping us inside. A potholed track led through a graveyard of burnt-out vehicles and huge tangled heaps of crushed metal, rising up on each side of us.

  ‘Have you been here before?’ I asked Cain, my words breaking the silence.

  ‘No,’ he answered, without looking at me, and I could see that, although he was trying to hide it, he was uneasy too.

  The track stopped in front of a large single-storey building with its double doors open and light flooding out from inside. Cain parked next to a Ford Transit van, which looked to be the only driveable vehicle in the whole yard, and we got out. There was a strong odour of acetylene, engine oil, and something else too – similar to chip-shop fat – that made me want to gag. I looked around, searching for a glimpse of Cecil and his MP5 amid all the crap, but there was no sign of him. In fact there was no sign of anyone. Somewhere off in the distance I could hear the rhythmic rumble of a commuter train as it gathered speed, and once again I had this uneasy feeling that this could all be a trap, and that the whole point of bringing me here was to kill me.

  I pulled my jacket down to conceal the gun, and joined Cain at the front of the car.

  ‘OK, let’s go,’ he said. ‘And remember, I do the talking. You just do the strong, silent routine.’

  We walked side by side through the building’s double doors, moving carefully as if we were back on patrol in the wilds of Afghanistan, and stopped just inside. The room was big and window less, one side lined with floor-to-ceiling shelving containing everything from copper piping to car radios, the other side dotted with newly arrived cars, some up on raised platforms, and various bits of machinery. An ancient-looking desk and chairs sat at the far end of the room, beyond which was an open door; and it was through this door that two men now emerged, both dressed in leather jackets and jeans – one small, the other large and powerfully built.

  ‘Hey, Mr Cain, glad you could make it,’ the small one called out as he and his friend started towards us. His accent was eastern European.

  ‘Good to see you, Dav,’ said Cain. ‘Have you got what we’ve come for?’

  ‘I have,’ answered Dav. ‘Have you got our payment?’

  Cain grinned. ‘Course I have. You know me. I’m a man of my word.’

  The two men, both Albanians by the look of them, stopped in front of us. Dav was somewhere in his forties, with a pinched, heavily lined face and long, straggly hair that had been dyed black by someone who didn’t care much about the quality of his work. He was grinning, showing teeth that looked like they needed some serious investment, and there was the malevolent gleam of the sadist in his eyes. Straight away I was on my guard. The other man, who looked like he was about to burst out of his leather jacket, was a lot younger, and by the way he was standing back, he was Dav’s bodyguard.

  Dav and Cain shook hands.

  ‘If you’re holding two hundred K, you’re hiding it well,’ said Dav, still grinning.

  ‘It’s near here. You can have it as soon as I’ve checked out the goods.’

  Dav nodded. ‘Sure. Come this way then, guys.’

  He motioned for us to follow him, and I’d just started to relax a little when a mobile phone started ringing. It was Dav’s, and he pulled it out of his leather jacket, frowning down at the screen. ‘Excuse me for a second, Mr Cain. I need to take this.’ He walked away from us, talking quietly on the phone in Albanian, while the rest of us stood in vaguely uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Everything all right?’ asked Cain when Dav had ended the call.

  ‘Sure,’ said Dav, but something in his tone didn’t ring true. ‘Business problems. I just need to make one more call.’

  I exchanged glances with Cain as Dav walked further away, his back to us. Cain shrugged, as if there was nothing to worry about. And maybe there wasn’t, but I could feel a tingling in the base of my spine that reminded me of the feeling I used to get out on patrol in Helmand, where danger lurked round every corner.

  Dav finished the call and replaced the phone in his leather jacket. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, coming back over. This time he was staring at me. ‘So who’s your friend, Mr Cain? I’ve never seen him before.’

  ‘He’s one of my people. He’s good.’

  ‘Yeah? Is that right? How long you known him?’

  I saw that Cain was frowning, and the tingling in my spine suddenly got a whole lot worse. ‘Long enough. Why?’

  ‘Look, what the hell is this?’ I demanded. ‘If you’ve got a problem with me, you ask me about it. Not him.’

  Dav’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yeah, I got a problem. A real problem.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ asked Cain, sounding confused.

  But before Dav could answer, I heard movement to my left. I swung round, instinctively going for my gun, as a guy holding a pump-action shotgun appeared in the gap between two of the shelf units, while at the same time the guy who’d let us in at the gates appeared at the double doors behind us. He too was holding a shotgun.

  ‘Don’t even think about it,’ Dav told me, taking a step back so he was out of the shotguns’ line of fire.

  My fingers were touching the pistol in my waistband, but right away I knew I was never going to be able to hit both gunmen before one of them blew a very large hole in me. Even if they were crap shots, they’d be hard pushed to miss from the range they were at, and I couldn’t rely on Cain, a man I’d only known for a few hours. I moved my hand away from the gun.

  ‘What the hell’s going on, Dav?’ demanded Cain, who’d also made the sensible decision not to go for his own gun.

  ‘That call I just had was from a good friend of mine,’ said Dav, bringing out a pistol from under his jacket, which he pointed at us. ‘The man we deal with over here, a guy called Brozi, has been arrested. You know anything about that?’

  Cain looked completely caught out by this revelation. ‘Of course not. We’re here to buy the merchandise we talked about.’

  ‘Brozi’s a careful guy. The only way he gets caught is if someone set him up.’

  ‘Look, I only ever deal with him by phone. I couldn’t even tell you what he looks like. And I only spoke to him to confirm this meeting a couple of hours ago.’ There was a long silence as both men sized each other up. Then Cain spoke again. ‘We’ve done business before. You know you can trust me.’

  ‘We have. But him.’ Dav flicked his head dismissively in my direction. ‘Him I don’t fucking trust.’

  I felt the adrenalin building inside me, but I knew my best bet was to stay calm and go on the attack. ‘What are you accusing me of?’

  I took a step towards Dav, who lowered his pistol and pointed it at my groin with a hand that was way too steady. ‘Don’t move, or I’ll blow your balls off.’ His eyes blazed with anger and his finger tightened on the trigger.

  He barked something in Albanian to the big bodyguard who produced a thin-cord garrotte from under his jacket, and walked round behind me.

  ‘What the hell’s he doing?’ I snapped, my hand hovering over the gun, knowing I was already too late. At the same time, the shotgun-wielding thug who’d been hiding behind the shelves walked towards me until the end of his barrel was only a few feet from my gut. His face was blank and I knew he’d kill me without a second’s thought.

  ‘Don’t go for that gun,’ said Dav quietly. ‘You won’t make it.’

  ‘I’m not a cop,’ I answered, looking him right in the
eye, working hard to keep my voice steady. I felt the gun being removed from the waistband of my jeans, leaving me completely unarmed.

  ‘Maybe you’re not. But we’re going to find out one way or another. And you, Mr Cain, get your gun out and drop it on the floor.’

  ‘Look, Dav,’ said Cain, raising his hands, palms outwards, in the universal gesture of reconciliation, ‘I can vouch for him. He’s definitely no cop.’

  ‘Drop your gun, or I get my friend to shoot you.’

  ‘This whole thing’s wrong,’ Cain called out, using the agreed code to tell Cecil we were in trouble.

  ‘Drop it. Now.’

  Reluctantly, Cain pulled out his gun and laid it down on the floor. He was scared now too, but he glanced at me briefly, his expression saying: Don’t worry, it’s going to be all right. This is just a misunderstanding.

  But it wasn’t. Someone, somewhere, had betrayed their contact, and the grim irony of it all was that it had absolutely nothing to do with me. I couldn’t see how Mike Bolt could be responsible, but if he was, then I’d tear him apart with my bare hands.

  But right now that was the least of my problems, because if Dav searched me, then there was a good chance he’d find the GPS units in my wallet, and that would be as good as a death sentence.

  And then suddenly I was being yanked backwards as the garrotte Dav’s bodyguard was carrying was whipped over my head and tightened round my neck. My breath was cut off like a light switch, and spots of light danced in front of my eyes as I was lifted up on to my toes. And all I could think was that this was it, the end, that I was about to die without saying goodbye to my daughter, and that they’d never find my body.