Simon Kernick - Ultimatum

‘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.

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.