Ultimatum

Sixty-two

20.24

I retreated down the hall and into the kitchen at the back of the flat, hands in the air, as Cecil walked towards me, gun outstretched. Behind him, Cain quietly closed the front door.

‘I don’t work for anyone,’ I said, still indignant. ‘I’d have thought that was pretty obvious after what happened today. I killed a man. And it wasn’t self-defence. Or have you forgotten about that?’

It was clear that Cecil hadn’t. A flash of doubt crossed his face as I spoke, giving me a chink of hope, although it was quickly counter-balanced by the merciless gleam in Cain’s eyes.

I stopped in the middle of the kitchen, my back to the window, and kept talking, knowing it was my best chance of staying alive. ‘So who the hell am I meant to be working for?’

Cain and Cecil stopped a few feet in front of me. Cecil kept the gun pointed at my chest, while Cain kept his gun down by his side as he addressed me like a judge passing sentence. ‘The police knew about the Stinger attack before it happened. Our operative was almost caught. And, according to the news reports, the people inside the Shard had received a warning before the missile was fired.’

‘How the hell was I meant to have done that? I don’t even know who your operative was. Or what happened to the Stinger after you dropped us off.’ My tone remained confrontational, but inside I was reeling. The evidence against me was overwhelming, and I cursed myself for coming back here.

‘There was a bug in my car,’ continued Cain. ‘It led the police to me. It could only have been planted by you. That car was clean when I picked you up. I’d never used it before, and if it had been bugged before we went to the scrapyard then we would have been arrested as soon as the shooting started. But we weren’t. Which meant it was planted afterwards. So tell us who you’re working for, and I promise we’ll make it quick.’

‘How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not working for anyone. No police force or government agency’s going to let me get away with armed robbery or murder, are they? And I’ve committed both today. And why would I want to work for the authorities after what they’ve done to me? Come on, Cecil,’ I said, knowing he was the weak link, ‘you’ve served with me. You know what I’m like.’

‘He might be telling the truth, sir,’ said Cecil uncertainly, still keeping the gun pointed firmly at my chest.

‘He’s not,’ Cain told him, before addressing me again. ‘You’re working for someone, Jones, otherwise you wouldn’t have had access to a bug. And I’m guessing you got cold feet when you saw the Stinger. I told you it would have been better if you hadn’t looked in the box.’

‘Listen, there’s no way-’

‘Shut the fuck up!’ he snapped, his words cutting through the air like a shard of glass. He turned to Cecil. ‘He’s obviously not going to talk, and we haven’t got time to hang around. Finish it.’

‘Don’t do it, Cecil. I’m your friend.’

Cain grunted dismissively. ‘You’re a fool, Jones. That’s what you are. You had a chance to become one of us, and you threw it away. Finish it, Cecil. For The Brotherhood.’

I stared at my old army colleague, willing him to believe me, fully aware that this was my last chance.

But it was slipping away.

Cecil’s expression hardened. In the end, he was a soldier through and through. And a soldier obeys orders. ‘Turn round, Jones,’ he said, his harsh Belfast accent amplified in the stillness of the room. The accent of my executioner.

It was over.

I turned round.

Which was when I noticed the kitchen window was slightly ajar, and I remembered opening it earlier to let in some fresh air. In the next second my hand shot out and grabbed a frying pan sitting on the kitchen top, and I ducked suddenly, flinging the pan back in the direction of Cecil.

Even with the suppressors, the shots seemed loud in the confines of the room as I took a running jump at the window, adrenalin coursing through me, and leapt through it as if I was doing a bomb into a swimming pool, sending it flying open with a bang, before landing on the gravel of the residents’ car park at the rear of the building.

I rolled over and jumped to my feet, diving behind one of the cars as Cecil appeared at the window and fired a shot at me, just missing my foot. I heard Cain saying something from behind him but couldn’t make out what it was, and then Cecil disappeared. A couple of seconds later I heard my front door opening and shutting again, and I knew they were going to come round to cut off my escape.

Knowing I had only seconds to get out on the street and to safety, I got to my feet again.

Which was when all my strength seemed to sap out of me and I realized I’d been hit. I looked down. There was a hole in my gut and another in my chest, both of them pumping blood on to my check shirt — a gift from Gina a couple of Christmases ago. I thought of her then, and Maddie, and knew I had to survive this. For their sakes.

I staggered across the car park, clutching at my wounds, trying to stop the bleeding. But I was going too slowly to reach the street in time. Cain and Cecil would be out here any second and I’d be a sitting duck. I made a snap decision and dived into the bushes that bordered the property, wriggling as far as I could inside, wincing against the pain that was beginning to envelop me.

Just in time. Almost immediately, Cain and Cecil appeared round the side of the house, holding their guns and looking round urgently, only ten yards away.

‘He can’t be far,’ hissed Cain. ‘I hit him at least once, and you hit him too. Look, there’s blood on the gravel.’ He pointed to where I’d originally taken shelter behind the parked car, and I prayed one of my neighbours had heard the commotion and called the police. In the flat above, I could hear the old lady’s TV blaring away, drowning everything else out.

I held my breath as Cain approached the bushes, only a couple of yards away now, and bent down, pulling some of the foliage aside with the gun. I stayed absolutely still, knowing that if I made even the tiniest move he’d discover me. My lungs felt close to bursting and all the time I could feel the blood leaking out of me into the earth.

And then there was the sound of tyres on gravel and the glare of headlights as a car pulled into the car park.

I used the noise to exhale and drag in another lungful of air, peering through the gaps in the bushes as the car parked between two others. It was a BMW, and I recognized it straight away as belonging to the guy on the top floor, a brash City worker called Rupert who was a couple of years younger than me and who never bothered to say hello.

As he got out of the car, briefcase in hand, he looked accusingly towards Cecil and Cain, who’d both hidden their guns. ‘Can I help you, gentlemen?’ he asked, staring them down. He looked confident and at ease, clearly not expecting trouble, and I wanted to shout out to him to jump back in the car and reverse out of there.

But I didn’t say a word as Cain walked towards him, bringing round the gun from behind his back. ‘No,’ he said simply, and shot Rupert twice in the chest, waiting as his victim fell against the car with a gasp and slid down it, before landing in a heap on the gravel. He then put a third bullet in his head before walking back in the direction of the bushes.

‘We need to hurry,’ he snapped at Cecil. ‘Keep looking for him.’

I held my breath again as Cain stopped less than half a yard from where I was lying and began poking inside the foliage with the gun.

He was going to see me any second.

‘Jesus, where the fuck is he?’ I heard Cecil curse from a few yards further up. ‘He’s got to be somewhere.’

At that moment, Cain’s face appeared in the bushes just above my head, and I wondered in that instant if he could smell my blood. All he had to do was look down and I was finished.

I clenched my teeth, preparing to die.

Outside on the street, a car slowed down.

And then I heard something bleep loudly, and Cain’s head disappeared.

He moved away from the bushes, pulling a mobile phone from his pocket and staring down at the screen. ‘We need to move.’ He paused, then said something that completely threw me. ‘Fox is going to be en route at any moment.’

Fox. The only surviving terrorist from the Stanhope siege. What the hell did Cain mean?

‘But we’ve got to find Jones,’ said Cecil anxiously. ‘We can’t leave him. He’s a witness.’

But Cain was having none of it. ‘Even if he’s still alive, there’s nothing he can do to us. He’s in this as much as we are. Come on.’

And with that, they turned and walked away across the gravel, quickly disappearing from view.

I was still alive. But only just.