Ultimatum

Thirty-three

17.25

Night was closing in fast as the car headed south through Bermondsey, passing through a series of featureless industrial estates and retail parks in the direction of the Old Kent Road.

Since Cecil had picked me up at the old family home over an hour earlier, we’d followed a round-about U-turn-filled route across north-east London, before detouring through the grand, ostentatious wealth of the City of London, and crossing the river at Tower Bridge. We’d met Cain a few minutes after that on a back street lined with trendy apartments near Jamaica Road, and it was there that we’d changed cars. We were now in an Audi A5 estate I hadn’t seen before. If anything, traffic had been lighter than usual and I wondered whether a lot of people had left work early as a result of the bomb threat that hung over the city like a black, menacing cloud.

Once again Cecil had run the bug finder over me, and made me turn off my phone. I’d protested, but he wasn’t taking no for an answer. Not that it mattered. Bolt had been right. The bug finder hadn’t picked up the two GPS devices in my wallet, but it had still been a nerve-racking few seconds.

Cain was driving now, with me in the front passenger seat next to him. Cecil was on his own in the back, sitting directly behind me, which was making me paranoid. We turned on to a quiet, poorly lit back road, flanked on one side by empty-looking warehouses, and on the other by a row of immense gas towers that stretched up into the cold dark sky behind a high brick wall. A car came past the other way, but otherwise the road was empty and there was a bleakness about the place that made it difficult to believe we were in the middle of a city. I suddenly wondered whether they’d somehow found out I’d met up with Bolt and concluded, quite rightly, that I was working for the cops. If they had, this would be as good a place as any to kill me. All Cecil had to do was put a gun against the back of my headrest and pull the trigger, and that would be that. It only takes half a second to die. I’ve seen it happen in war zones. A single explosion; a sniper’s bullet. Bang, it’s all over. Just like that. It took all my willpower to stop myself from turning round to see what Cecil was doing.

Don’t panic, I told myself. They don’t know. They can’t. Mike Bolt’s the only man who knows my identity. If they suspected me, they’d drop me like a stone, not lure me into the middle of nowhere.

Cain slowed the car and turned it into a short dead-end road with a high fence at the end and scrubland behind it. He turned to face us. ‘OK, these people we’re going to see. I’ve dealt with them before, and they’ve been reliable, but this is the biggest deal we’ve done together. I’m buying some contraband from them — contraband that’s going to be passed on very quickly, so neither of you needs to know what it is.’ He looked at us both in turn. ‘But I can guarantee you this. It’s going to be used to strike a real blow against the establishment, which is what we all want. I’m using the bulk of the money the two of you earned this morning as payment, which is why we’ve got to be careful. Men can do stupid things where big money’s involved — we all know that.’

‘Who are we dealing with?’ I asked him.

‘Albanians from Kosovo. Ex-members of the KLA. They’re not nice people but, as I said, they’ve been reliable in the past. The meeting place is a scrapyard down a road off here. I reccied the place yesterday. There was no one around and the place was locked up, which means it’s probably not used much. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. We don’t want any unwanted attention, but it also means that if anything goes wrong, we’re on our own. Which is why we’re going in armed. Cecil, can you do the honours?’

Cecil leaned down behind the driver’s seat and brought up the battered Lonsdale holdall that LeShawn Lambden had been using to carry his crack takings before we’d taken it from him. He opened it up to reveal two pistols and an MP5, all sitting on a huge wedge of cash.

‘I’m sure everything’s going to be fine,’ said Cain, taking one of the pistols and handing me the other. ‘We’re businessmen, and no one wants a bloodbath. But I’m also not the kind of man who takes chances.’

I ejected the magazine, checked that it was loaded, then slipped the pistol into the back of my jeans where it couldn’t be seen beneath my jacket.

‘Jones, you and me are going to go in the front. I’ll do the talking. You’re just there for back-up. Follow my orders the whole time, OK?’

I nodded.

‘What about me?’ asked Cecil.

Cain pulled a sheet of A4 paper from his jacket pocket and unfolded it, revealing a Google aerial-view map of the area. ‘You get out here and take the holdall and the MP5 with you, but keep the gun hidden just in case you run into anyone. Cut through the fence at the end of the road and turn left. There’s a dirt path that leads behind the buildings. Follow it round until you come to the scrapyard, here.’ He tapped his gloved finger on a building near the top of the map, which he’d marked with a cross. ‘When you’re level with the main building, you’ll see a small hole in the fence. I made it yesterday and there’ll be just enough room for you to get through with the holdall. Text me on today’s number as soon as you’re inside the perimeter, then stay within earshot of the main building but out of sight. There are wrecked cars everywhere, so there’ll be plenty of hiding places. Don’t move until you hear me call you. Understood?’

‘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.