Ultimatum

Ten

09.50

There are no noble causes.

They tell you there are, but they’re lying. When they sent me to Iraq they said we’d be liberating a downtrodden people from the shackles of a brutal dictatorship, but all we did was destabilize the whole region and start a civil war that’s still rumbling on today, losing a lot of good people in the process. And in Afghanistan they said we’d be in the forefront of the fight against global terrorism, and helping to keep the streets of Britain safe for present and future generations.

Bullshit.

The streets are no safer because we went there. In fact, they’re probably a lot less safe. The world’s Muslim extremists — the kind we were supposed to be defeating — can come and go inside Britain as they please, safe in the knowledge that, thanks to the Human Rights Act and the parasitic lawyers who uphold it, they can’t be deported. And they hate us even more because of what we’re doing in Muslim countries. We’re international aggressors and domestic appeasers, which seems to me to be the worst kind of combination there is.

And the politicians who sent us to those Godforsaken countries are sitting pretty at home, eating their vol-au-vents, fucking their secretaries, and fiddling their expenses, while harping on about freedom and sacrifice and all that shit, even though it’s not them who’ve lost limbs in IED attacks, or seen their best mate’s brains splattered all over some dusty rock thanks to a sniper’s bullet.

I did two tours of Afghanistan and we didn’t change a damn thing. Not a jot. The moment western forces leave, the Taliban will be all over the country like a rash. And you know why? Because they don’t want our democracy. Most of them don’t even have a clue what it is, and the few who do think it contradicts God’s law anyway, so won’t have anything to do with it. Democracy to them just means corruption — and one look at the western-backed government in Kabul and you can see they’ve got a point. So the whole thing will have been a complete waste of time, money and, most of all, the blood of far too many good men.

We changed cars less than a mile from the scene of the robbery, switching to a Renault Megane saloon Cecil had parked under some trees next to a stretch of deserted waste ground near the Lockwood reservoir. No one saw us as we torched the car we’d used for the robbery, along with the police caps. We kept the guns, though. In a country like Britain where even semi-automatic weapons are almost impossible to come by, they were way too valuable, and after putting them and the money in the boot, we changed into suit jackets and ties, got in our car, and drove off in the direction of Enfield. All without being seen. Even in the centre of a city like London you can still find some lonely places where people don’t go at ten o’clock on a cold, grey February morning.

I was still pumped up with a mix of adrenalin and anger. The plan had been to hold up LeShawn and his men and make them give up the cash with threats, a few shots into their car, but no actual violence. That way, even if there’d been witnesses, and the police had found empty shell casings at the scene, the crime would never have been reported. LeShawn was hardly going to say anything, and people who live near crackhouses tend to learn to look the other way. In other words, it should have been perfect.

But now LeShawn was dead. He might have been an arsehole and I might not have pulled the trigger, but that wasn’t much consolation. First off, the robbery had been a joint enterprise, which meant I was just as responsible for his murder as Cecil was in the eyes of the law. And second, I’d shot up a cop car, ripped the front of it to shreds, and scared the living shit out of the people inside, thereby making myself a very active participant. Worse, pulling the trigger had felt way too good.

My name’s Jones by the way. Richard Burnham-Jones to be exact, but I always hated the names Richard, Rick, Richie, and especially Dick, and I’m not a big fan of double barrels, so it’s always been Jones, which suits me fine. And I’m not a bad man either, whatever first impressions might suggest. You could say I’ve got in with the wrong crowd, and you’d be absolutely right, but not quite for the reasons you might think.

It was a cold day but I could feel the sweat on my brow, and I used my forearm to wipe it away.

‘What the fuck happened back there, Jones?’ demanded Cecil, fixing me with one of his trademark glares. ‘You almost let me down.’

The two of us have known each other a long time. We’ve served together in a war zone, and that creates a bond that other men just don’t have. That didn’t mean Cecil didn’t scare me. He did. He scared everyone. He might only have been a short bald guy, but he was also lean and wiry, with an intense energy that seemed to emanate from him in waves, and eyes like pieces of flint. Even his voice, with its hard Belfast growl, spelled aggression. Luckily, I knew how to handle him.

‘If I’d fired when we were fighting, I could have hit anyone, including you,’ I said. ‘That’s the problem when there are only two of us on the job. It was always going to be risky.’

‘You’re not going soft on me are you, big man?’ Cecil didn’t care that he’d just killed someone. As far as he was concerned, they’d disobeyed instructions, got what was coming to them, and now he’d moved on. That was what he was like.

‘I just shot up a cop car, Cecil, so no, I’m not going soft. We needed a bigger team, that’s all. I told you that before we got involved. I thought you had friends we could use.’

‘This was a test, Jones. To check your loyalty.’

‘I’m not interested in tests. You know you can trust me. We’ve got history.’ And we did. We had secrets too, forged on the battlefields of Helmand Province.

There was a pause, and then he nodded slowly. ‘I think it may be time to go up to the next level,’ he said, finding a gap in the parked cars at the side of the road and pulling up. ‘But first I’ve got to make a quick phone call.’

We were outside a parade of shabby-looking shops, and I watched as Cecil passed a group of even more shabby-looking drunks on a bench shouting incoherently to each other in what sounded like Polish. As I looked on, one tried to stand up and simply toppled over on his side, landing against a large overflowing litter bin, much to the mirth of the others, before rolling over on the pavement while somehow keeping his drink intact. A young woman in a business suit hurried past, head down and giving them a wide berth.

No, there are no noble causes. If you fight for something you believe in, innocent people will always get hurt, and even if you achieve whatever goal it is you’ve set yourself, it’ll always end up being a hollow victory, because everything comes at a price.

Cecil walked back to the car, giving the drunks a sideways look that temporarily silenced all of them, and got back inside.

‘There’s someone who wants to meet you.’

And that was when I knew I was in.