Simon Kernick - Ultimatum

‘I’m surprised you got the night off,’ she said as they got in the car, ‘what with all this terrorism stuff going on.’

‘There’s only so much we can do,’ he answered, ‘and there are plenty of people better qualified than me out there looking for them.’

‘Do you think the terrorists will do something when their eight p.m. deadline runs out?’ Whatever Gina might have said to Sue back in the house, she was still nervous.

‘If they do, it’ll be something small-scale. Whatever the media might say, these people bark a lot louder than they bite. And it’s not something you need to worry about.’ He smiled at her as he pulled the car away from the kerb, and there was a gleam in his eyes. ‘Tonight we’re going to enjoy ourselves.’

18.15

The street was quiet when Cain dropped us back where we’d parked Cecil’s car earlier, near Jamaica Road. The journey had been largely made in silence. All of us I think, even Cain, were shocked by the ferocity of what had just happened, and the fact that we’d left behind so many bodies.

In my left hand, unseen by the others, I clutched the second GPS device Bolt had given me. I didn’t know whether the Audi we were in belonged to Cain or not — I suspected not — or how long he was going to hold on to it for, but as I sat there next to him I decided to leave the GPS unit in it. It was a high-risk move but I no longer cared. The important thing was to stop him, and any attack he was planning on carrying out. I’d worry about everything else later.

Cain was talking again now. ‘You did well today, gentlemen,’ he said, as if he was giving us a pep talk at school. ‘Remember that. We had a challenge and we overcame it. There’ll be an extra bonus for this as well, Jones.’ He gave me a nod as he said this, as if this somehow made up for the fact that I’d been only seconds away from having my leg cut off and was now an accessory to mass murder.

‘Thanks,’ I said. I mean, what else could I say? The important thing was to get out of there and warn Bolt about what was happening.

As I got out of the car, I stuck the GPS unit on the underside of the passenger seat, well out of sight, and pictured a scene where Cain was spreadeagled against the Audi, surrounded by armed cops, while they took the Stinger out of the back.

Game, set and match, you arsehole .

A minute later, Cecil and I were standing on the pavement watching as Cain drove away into the night, taking the missile with him.

‘Is he going to be the one firing that thing?’ I asked Cecil as we got into his car and pulled away from the kerb going in the opposite direction.

‘I don’t want to think about it.’ Cecil looked at me. ‘You shouldn’t either.’

‘Do you have any idea of what the target is?’

Cecil shook his head, keeping his eye on the road. ‘No, but we’re doing it for the right reasons, you and me. We’ve got to make the people angry. We’ve got to make them rise up against all this multicultural shit, and if we manage that, it’ll have been worth it. Won’t it?’

I nodded, acting like I agreed with him, even though I found it hard to believe what I was hearing. I’d known Cecil a long time. He’d been a good soldier. A bit of a loose cannon, yes, but I’d always thought his heart was in the right place. And now here he was talking about committing mass murder on an industrial scale.

‘You look like you need a drink,’ he said. ‘And I know I do. Let’s grab one somewhere.’

I was horribly conscious of the terrorists’ eight p.m. deadline. ‘Just drop me home, can you?’ I said wearily.

Cecil gave me a suspicious sideways glance. ‘You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?’

‘Look, the fact is I almost got killed back there, so I just want to be alone for a while, all right? And let’s go the direct route. Because I think it’s pretty obvious now that we’re not being followed.’

‘Sure,’ he said, apparently mollified, and fell silent.

I counted the minutes in my head as we drove. The flat I called home was at the top end of Stoke Newington, a good twenty minutes away if the traffic wasn’t bad, which thank God it wasn’t. My head felt like it was going to explode. I needed to piss, I needed to stop this missile being fired and, more than anything, I needed to work out my next move. If either Cecil or Cain were arrested, they could testify against me in a court of law over the murder of Dav, and it was almost certain I’d be convicted and sent down for life. There was no way round that.

It was just after 6.30 when we pulled off the A10 at Stoke Newington, opposite the Abney Park Cemetery, still a good half mile from where I lived. The traffic had suddenly snarled up, but I knew there was a pub just round the corner.

‘Drop me here, I’ll walk the rest of the way.’ Cecil tried to protest but I cut him off with a look. ‘Like I said, I want to be alone.’

He seemed to accept what I’d said, and we shook hands and said our goodbyes. I heard him do a U-turn in the traffic and turn south, and I counted to ten, then sprinted for the pub, counting down in my head the minutes that the Stinger had been on the streets. Knowing that the moment I made the call I’d be setting in motion a chain of events that would either put me in the ground, or behind bars for the rest of my life.

18.41

Bolt and Tina watched the interview with Jetmir Brozi unfold through the one-way mirror that looked into the interview room.

It didn’t make for riveting viewing.

On one side of the table sat the two officers from CTC, a man and a woman in power suits, who’d only finished taking Bolt’s statement ten minutes earlier. They’d come across as competent and businesslike, and were treating the situation with the urgency it needed. Alongside them was Ridic, the Albanian translator. At the opposite end sat Brozi wearing a defiant, slightly bored expression. He had his own translator next to him, who was there to pass messages from his lawyer, a bald-headed Englishman with a moustache and an expensive suit who looked like he charged more by the hour than Bolt and Tina earned together in a day, and who was several feet back from the table, with his legs crossed and a notebook on his lap.

Brozi was adopting the professional criminal’s method of dealing with police interviews and answering every question with a heavily accented ‘No comment’. Bolt often wondered why criminals persisted with this line of defence. It might save them the effort of having to think up lies, or contradicting themselves, but it invariably made them look guilty in the eyes of a jury when the transcripts of the interviews were read out in court.

Bolt would have liked to be the one leading the interview but, to be fair, it didn’t look like it would have done much good anyway. Brozi was sticking to his routine, clearly unfazed by the scale of the charges facing him, or the prospect of spending the next ten years in prison. His arrogance was frustrating, but the interviewing officers were continuing regardless in the hope that he might weaken, or his lawyer might talk some sense into him.

It wasn’t working.

Bolt shook his head in frustration. ‘He’s not going to talk.’

Tina sighed. ‘So where does that leave us? Brozi won’t talk. Fox won’t talk. And we’re running low on time.’

‘I’ve got an informant out in the field, who I saw this morning. He has a connection to someone who’s been of interest to us for some time. He told me that he was providing security for a meeting today.’

Tina raised an eyebrow. ‘You never told me about this. Is that why you were so interested when I told you about the message on Brozi’s PC?’