Ultimatum

by Simon Kernick

  ‘Listen, Mike,’ said Ingrams in a weary voice that told Bolt he’d already made up his mind, ‘we really appreciate all your efforts, and your bravery today, but there’s nothing more you can do.’

  ‘Have we caught the shooter yet?’

  ‘No. And we haven’t brought in Cecil Boorman yet either. Or the man he’s supposed to be working for, Cain.’

  ‘So there’s still plenty to do.’

  ‘It’s in hand, Mike.’

  ‘You need to talk to Jones. He might be able to help.’

  ‘We would do, but we can’t find him. We sent two officers round to his home address, and he wasn’t answering the door.’

  Bolt tensed. This wasn’t good. ‘Did they try to get inside?’

  ‘The door was locked and we haven’t got a warrant to break it down. I’ve had to pull the officers away for other duties.’

  ‘Let me go up there. He might be back now. Come on, sir. It’s not as if I’m on my deathbed.’

  ‘Sorry, Mike. According to the doctor, you’ve got concussion. I can’t let you carry on. You need to get to a hospital straight away.’

  Knowing he wasn’t going to win this particular battle, Bolt conceded defeat and ended the call.

  He took a deep breath, shivering against the cold. Ingrams and the doctor were right. He needed to go to hospital. But he’d always been a stubborn man, and fiercely competitive too. Tina had been in the firing line just as much as him today, and yet she was the one taking Fox to the safehouse. He was also worried about Jones. There was no reason for him suddenly to go AWOL. Two hours ago he’d been fully prepared to make a statement, and had promised to wait at the pub for the guys from CTC to pick him up. Which meant that either something bad had happened to him or, more likely, he’d turn up again soon.

  Bolt might have been officially off duty, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t go and have a look for him. After all, he was the one who’d got Jones involved in all this in the first place. Maybe he’d stop in at a hospital afterwards if his headache failed to dissipate.

  Having made the decision to carry on, and immediately feeling better for it, he walked back up towards the police cordon. It was time to retrieve Islington nick’s battered Ford Focus and make himself useful once again.

  Sixty-five

  21.05

  WHEN THE KNOCK on the cell door came, Fox had to resist smiling.

  ‘Prisoner 407886,’ came the barked command, ‘stand up and show yourself, and keep your hands where we can see them.’

  Fox got off the bunk and stood a few feet in front of the door, holding up his hands in a gesture of supplication as the guard peered through the inspection hatch. A second later the door was unlocked and four screws stood there, headed by Officer Thomson. All the guards were wearing plastic gloves, which could only mean one thing.

  ‘This looks ominous,’ said Fox, as the screws came inside.

  ‘You know the drill, Mr Garrett,’ said Thomson. ‘Clothes off. We’re going to give you a full body search.’

  ‘Any particular reason why?’

  ‘I don’t have to give you a fucking reason, Mr Garrett, but since you ask, you’re being transferred with immediate effect, and we’re making sure you don’t take anything that doesn’t belong to you.’

  ‘I have to say, I’ll feel a lot safer being out of here, sir. For some reason, the other prisoners don’t seem to like me. Sounds like they don’t like you much either.’ He nodded in the direction of the corridor where the sounds of shouting, yelping and banging as the prisoners vented their frustrations were clearly audible.

  ‘I don’t know what your game is, Garrett,’ hissed Thomson, coming close, ‘but whatever it is, remember this: you can be as cocky as you like, but you’re never going to taste freedom for as long as you live. And I’ll tell you something else. I hope you live a long fucking time.’

  Fox didn’t say anything. Thomson’s words reeked of frustration. In the end, he was a small fish trapped in exactly the same pond as the men he was guarding. All he had were empty threats, and both of them knew it.

  The search was thorough and invasive, just as it was supposed to be. Fox stood there and took it in cool silence, ignoring the jibes about how much he enjoyed having fingers rammed up his arse, ignoring the taste of those fingers then being deliberately shoved into his mouth, zoning out of the whole experience by staring unblinkingly at the wall and thinking of what lay ahead of him: the heat and the sunshine, and the sound of waves lapping gently on some distant shore.

  It was all over in a couple of minutes and they didn’t find anything. Though they tried to hide it, the guards were clearly in a hurry and Fox had hardly got the last of his clothes on before he was pushed up face first against the cell door and his hands cuffed roughly behind his back.

  ‘Come on, you fuck,’ said Thomson, grabbing him by the collar and almost lifting him off his feet as he hauled him out of the cell. It was as if he was trying to get as much unpleasantness in as possible while he still had the chance.

  Let him, thought Fox. In the end, Thomson was just like everyone else who chose to play by the rules. Impotent. He was probably hoping that Fox would snap and assault him, so that he’d have the justification to give him the kicking he’d doubtless been wanting to ever since the day Fox had first arrived. But there was no way Fox was going to give him the pleasure, and he didn’t resist as he was marched down the corridor towards the front of the main building.

  En route, they passed a long line of black-clad, helmeted officers heading the other way. This was the Tornado Team, the Prison Service’s equivalent of riot police, who were always sent in to deal with prison disturbances. Fox had never seen them before. Westmoor had been remarkably peaceful during his stay, but these guys looked suitably mean and moody behind their flame-retardant masks, and Fox had little doubt that they’d quell the trouble easily enough. Most of the prisoners had little stomach for a fight, not when there was real opposition. But it didn’t matter. The violence had achieved what it was supposed to, and now, whatever Officer Thomson might have thought, Fox was going to get his first taste of life outside the prison gates for fifteen months.

  There was still much that could go wrong but he felt a real excitement as he was led through various barred doors to the prison’s main reception area, and saw Tina Boyd waiting there, flanked by two armed cops carrying MP5s.

  This was it. He was finally on his way.

  Sixty-six

  21.13

  TINA SIGNED THE last of the papers giving her custody of Fox and handed them back to the worried-looking prison officer behind the reception desk. There was a definite tension in the air. The riot might not have been audible from where Tina was standing, but its effects were etched on the features of all the prison staff.

  She felt the fear as much anybody. She’d seen more than her fair share of destruction today. On her way here in the helicopter she’d had to pass the burning Shard, its base surrounded by emergency services vehicles, and as they’d come in to land a large fire in one of the prison’s wings had been clearly visible. It reminded her of the riots of August 2011 as they’d spread across London and the rest of the country like wildfire. It had seemed then as if society was on the verge of complete collapse. In a way, it felt like that now.

  But Tina had always been a fighter. Rather than letting the fear overwhelm her, she used it to keep her steadily building exhaustion at bay. She might not have been feeling top of her game but there was no way she was going to show Fox that as he stopped in front of her, flanked by his prison escort.

  ‘Hello, Miss Boyd,’ he said, keeping his tone neutral.

  ‘Hello, Mr Garrett,’ she answered curtly, once again struck by how insignificant he looked. Barely an inch taller than her, and probably no more than eleven stone at most, his thinning hair making him appear prematurely middle-aged, he stood there with shoulders slumped and his head bent forward. But she knew it was an act. Fox was a dangerous killer, however much he tried
to hide it. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Whenever you are.’

  Tina nodded to the prison officer who’d escorted her to the interview with Fox on her first visit, ten hours and a whole lifetime ago. Thomson, she thought his name was. ‘Thanks, we’ll take him from here.’

  ‘He’s all yours,’ said Thomson, giving Fox a hard shove in the back. ‘He’s been given a full body search, but I’d watch him if I were you. He’s a slippery bastard.’

  ‘Can I ask a favour, Miss Boyd?’ said Fox, as Tina led him by the arm out of the main doors and on to the front steps of the prison, where two police cars and a van waited to take him away. ‘Do you mind if I wear the cuffs in front of me rather than behind? They’re making the stitches on my arm rub in this position.’

  Tina met his eyes. There was none of the cockiness that he’d exhibited earlier, and his request seemed a genuine one, but she wasn’t fooled. ‘I’m afraid not.’ She gave his arm a tug and carried on down the steps.

  ‘That’s not getting us off to a very good start.’

  ‘Give me the names of everyone involved in today’s attacks and I’ll think about it.’

  ‘If I do that, you’ll just march me straight back in there. I need some leverage, and there’s no way I’m telling you anything until I’ve got it in writing that you’re keeping me in the safehouse until my trial.’

  ‘Then you’re going to have to travel in some discomfort.’

  ‘Let’s compromise,’ said Fox as they stopped next to the van where four more armed officers waited. ‘I’ll give you one name – the name of someone who was one hundred per cent involved today. Just to show willing. And then you show me a little respect by letting me travel with my hands cuffed in the front. Look at all these people escorting me. It’s not as if I can do anything anyway.’

  Tina thought about it. There were twelve armed officers in the convoy, plus herself. It was more than enough to keep Fox on a tight leash. And if she was honest with herself, she saw an opportunity to look good by squeezing out a second name before the real questioning had even begun.

  ‘Go on then. Give me a name.’

  ‘Cecil Boorman. Ex-soldier. Very reliable. He should have been involved at the Stanhope, but he had salmonella of all things. He’ll be part of this too, although not at a senior level. Cecil’s just a grunt.’

  Tina remembered Bolt telling her earlier that Boorman was the man his informant had been trying to get close to. ‘And you’ve got evidence to back this up?’

  ‘Plenty.’

  Tina sighed. Agreeing to Fox’s request went against all her instincts, but he’d now given her two useful names – more than anyone else had done.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s do it.’

  Sixty-seven

  21.20

  THE KEY IS to stay conscious. If you shut your eyes, even if it’s just for one moment, then that’s it. You’re dead. That’s why the medics keep talking to you while they wait for help. Because they know it’s the only way they’re going to keep you alive.

  But when there’s no one there to talk to you, it’s hard. Jesus, it’s hard.

  I had no idea how long I’d been lying there for. An hour. Two hours. Maybe even more. I’d tried crawling out of my hiding place but had managed barely a few feet on my belly before what little energy I had left simply slipped away. Now I was half in, half out of the tangle of bushes, lying on my side on the gravel curled up in a foetal position, surrounded by the blood that was dripping steadily from my wounds and wondering how long I had left. I could see the lights on in the old lady’s flat, no more than twenty yards away, yet it might as well have been twenty miles for all the good it would do me. I was stuck there, alone in the freezing cold, and it was taking all my resolve to keep myself fighting through the minutes, waiting for someone to turn up in the car park and see me.

  I had a vague recollection of a car containing two men turning up some time earlier. Of them getting out and walking round to the front of the house, missing my neighbour’s corpse completely, before coming back. At least I thought they must have come back, because the car was no longer there, and neither were they.

  Lying there now, I was reminded of a time just after I’d arrived on my first tour of Afghanistan. Our platoon had been stationed in an old brick fort five miles away from the Forward Operating Base in Southern Helmand, and one day we’d gone out on patrol and walked straight into a 360-degree ambush. Surrounded on all sides by dozens of Taliban fighters, and hopelessly outnumbered, we’d taken refuge in an irrigation ditch. As we engaged the enemy at close quarters, the radio operator tried to call in air support, only to discover that the radio had been hit by enemy gunfire and was totally useless. So there we were, trapped in no-man’s-land, with no hope of rescue, fighting for our lives, as the bullets and the RPGs whizzed around us, and I remember thinking at the time that if I had to die, I’d want it to be here, surrounded by my friends and fighting. The adrenalin was incredible. Like nothing you can imagine.

  And then the platoon commander, a good guy with a calm head called Mike Travers, got hit by a Taliban bullet. He was only ten feet away when he went down into the knee-deep, sludgy water clutching his shoulder, his face screwed up in pain. As some of the guys went to help him, he’d shouted for them to get back to the fight, which was typical of him. He didn’t want to be fussed over. But within a few minutes he’d gone very pale and, as the medic stripped off his body armour and examined the wound, things took a serious turn for the worse. The bullet had severed a major artery, and without a rapid blood transfusion there was no way he’d survive. The medic patched him up as best he could, but the commander kept bleeding, his blood turning the muddy water red as it dripped steadily out of him.

  We had to make a decision. Stay put until either we got the radio working or FOB realized we were missing and sent reinforcements, or fight our way back to base, carrying the commander as we went. The sergeant, who was now in charge, chose the latter, and I’ll always remember those brutal twenty-five minutes as we made our way along the irrigation ditches, before finally breaking cover a hundred yards from the base and running along completely open ground, firing as we went, faint and exhausted in the murderous forty-five-degree heat, knowing that at any moment any one of us could be the next casualty. Two of our number had volunteered to carry the commander over that open ground, knowing that as the slowest group they’d make the biggest and easiest targets. One of those men was Cecil. The other was me. He had the front. I had the back. And we’d done it. As Cecil had pointed out afterwards, if the Taliban had been as good shots as we were we’d have been peppered with more holes than a cheese grater, but the fact was they weren’t, and because we’d had the guts and the determination, we’d made it against all the odds.

  The commander didn’t make it, though. He died in the helicopter en route to Camp Bastion, having completely bled out.

  I was going to bleed out too now unless help came, and it was a supreme irony that one of the men who’d put me in this position was Cecil, my fellow soldier and friend.

  The war had fucked him up.

  But then, I thought ruefully, it had fucked me up too.

  Ten or so feet away the body of my neighbour, Rupert, lay motionless next to his car, a long dirty blood smear running down its paintwork where he’d slid down it after Cain had shot him. An innocent man, nothing to do with any of this, caught up in somebody else’s war. He was lying on his side facing me, eyes closed, a peaceful, almost bored expression on his face.

  You never think it’s going to happen to you. Death. If you did, you’d make a crap soldier. And I would never have got involved in half the things I’d done – especially those I’d been involved in today – if I’d thought I was going to end up like this, dying alone in the cold.

  I didn’t want to die. The thought came almost as a shock. I wanted to live. To watch my daughter grow up. To find a woman who’d love me for what I was: a flawed guy, but a decent one, I was sure. To settle dow
n and have a steady job and a steady income. I no longer even wanted revenge against the people who’d murdered my cousin in the Stanhope Hotel.

  I just wanted to be like everyone else.

  My eyelids felt like lead weights. If I just closed them for a moment, maybe I’d be able to reserve my energy. Just a moment.

  They began to flicker, then close ever so slowly, curtains shutting out the harshness of the outside world.

  The sound of tyres on gravel followed almost immediately by the harsh glare of headlights startled me, and as I forced open my eyes, I saw a car come into the car park and pull up a few yards away.

  I tried to call out but no words came. I tried to lift my arm but that didn’t work either, and I wondered grimly if it was already too late.

  Sixty-eight

  21.22

  THE BACK OF the police van was cramped, hot and airless, but when you’d spent over a year in a closed prison you were used to that kind of atmosphere, and Fox was visibly more relaxed than the four other men in there with him.

  He was sitting between two of them – big guys in helmets with plenty of body armour – while two more sat opposite him, resting the MP5s on their laps, the barrels pointed at his gut. As well as the four cops in the back, there were two in the front, and a car at each end of the convoy, each one containing three officers. In all, twelve armed men surrounded him. It was an impressive number and emphasized his importance to the authorities, as well as the danger he still represented.