He immediately started to count it out, placing each individual wad on one of the other drums. I’m not a greedy man but I felt a slither of excitement as I stared at it. Apparently, LeShawn always insisted that the money was counted before he arrived to pick it up, and it had been divided into single-denomination five-grand wads.
‘What happened out there?’ asked Cain as he carried on counting. I was counting too and I’d already got to ninety grand.
‘LeShawn didn’t want to play ball,’ said Cecil. ‘He went for Jones’s gun. We had to shoot him.’
‘Who pulled the trigger?’
‘I did.’
‘How come
‘I didn’t get a chance.’
Cain gave me another look. His eyes were a watery grey but there was a fierce intelligence in them.
‘I shot up a cop car,’ I told him.
Cain smiled thinly. He was still counting the money. We were at a hundred and forty now. ‘I apologize for all the secrecy, but you were a cop once, and we have to be very careful who we trust.’
‘Well, thanks to what happened an hour ago I’m now an armed robber,’ I told him. ‘I think that means you can trust me.’
As I said this, I realized almost with a shock that I was now just like the criminals I’d been trying to put away. The only reason I’d agreed to do the armed robbery in the first place was because I’d thought we could get away with it, but now I’d compromised myself badly.
‘You’re not an armed robber, Jones. You’re a soldier raising funds from some bad people for a good cause. There’s a big difference.’
Cain finished counting. Two hundred and twenty-five grand plus change.
‘Cecil told you how the split worked, didn’t he? Fifteen grand each for you two?’
I nodded. ‘Seems like you get a very big cut.’
‘Firstly, I planned it. And second, the money isn’t going to me.’
I stared him down. ‘We could have done with some help out there today. The reason it went wrong was because there were only two of us. If there’d been three of us, the whole thing might have run a lot smoother.’
‘Come on, Jones,’ said Cecil, intervening. ‘You knew the score when you took the job.’
‘But that’s the problem,’ I said, turning back to Cain. ‘I still don’t know what the score is. Because no one’s actually told me. Cecil said there might be an opportunity for me to make some money and get involved in fighting the government, but so far all that’s happened is I’ve risked my neck and taken part in a very public murder, all for the price of a mid-range saloon car.’ I gestured at the wads of money. ‘So, where’s all this going?’
Cain and Cecil exchanged glances. Then Cain turned back to me. ‘Let’s take a walk.’
I followed him outside. Beyond the barn, a fallow field stretched away to some trees in the middle distance, and we started towards it.
‘We’re fighting a war, Jones, and in a war you need weapons. The other side have got weapons. Did you hear about the bombs this morning?’
I shook my head. We hadn’t had the car radio on at all on our way up here. ‘What happened?’
‘A bomb went off near Victoria Station three hours ago. Nine dead already, but the toll keeps rising. And then another two less than an hour back at a block of flats in Bayswater, which looks to have been aimed at the police. Four dead in that one so far. The Islamics have already claimed responsibility.’
‘And is it them? I remember in the Stanhope attacks there were white guys, ex-soldiers, involved.’
‘The coffee shop bomb was delivered by a suicide bomber who, according to the news, got spooked at the last minute and ran off. Ended up under the wheels of a lorry, but word is he’s a local Asian.’ Cain stopped and looked at me. ‘This country’s under attack, Jones. The Islamics are going to keep launching attacks like this because the government hasn’t got the backbone to fight back. They’d rather innocent British civilians died than stop people who don’t belong here pouring into the country and trying to destroy us. Cecil tells me you’ve got a family.’
‘I’ve got a daughter,’ I said carefully, reluctant to have Maddie dragged into this.
‘Do you want her to grow up as a minority in her own birthplace? Because that’s what’s going to happen if the government keep going with their multicultural experiment. The whites are going to end up outnumbered. There’ll be mosques on every street, and the government won’t do a damn thing to stop it because, like always, they’re too interested in showing how PC they are, and lining their own pockets. Look at Tony Blair. He’s a multimillionaire now on the backs of all those soldiers he sent to war.’ Cain’s vein was throbbing angrily in his cheek. ‘Cecil tells me you’re interested in fighting back.’
So, this was it. If I answered him correctly, I could be joining what was possibly the most dangerous terror cell in the country. I thought of my family. Thanked God they weren’t anywhere near central London. ‘Yeah,’ I said, looking him firmly in the eye, ‘I am.’
‘Cecil says you killed in Afghanistan.’
I shrugged. ‘I fired my gun at the enemy plenty of times.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ he said quietly. ‘He said you
So, Cecil had told him the secret that we’d carried since Afghanistan, something we’d all sworn we’d never repeat.
Cain gave me a predatory smile, his upper lip curling to reveal a perfect row of white teeth. ‘Your secret’s safe with me, Jones. But I want to know how far you’re willing to go in this war.’
‘I’ll do whatever it takes, Mr Cain,’ I said steadily. ‘You know my background. You know the shit I’ve been through. I only want two things. Revenge on the system that ruined my life and career, and humiliated my family. And money. I need money, so I can pay for my ex-wife and my kid. I don’t much care what I have to do to get either.’
So that was it. I’d laid my bait.
Cain was silent for a long few seconds before he spoke again. ‘I can get you both, Jones. I’ll put you on a retainer. Three grand a month cash. For that you need to be available at short notice for jobs which may involve guns, like today. Every time you do a job, there’ll be a serious bonus paid up front. How does that sound?’
I nodded slowly, not wanting to appear too enthusiastic. ‘It sounds OK.’
‘Good. Then do we have a deal?’
I said we did, and we shook on it.
He pulled a phone from his jacket and handed it to me. ‘Keep this on, and keep it with you. The only person who’ll phone it is me. Have you got any plans for today?’
‘Nothing that I can’t put on hold.’
‘Good. I’m trying to set up a meeting with some business associates on neutral ground. It may well happen later today, and I want you and Cecil there to back me up. I’ve done business with them before, and they’re generally pretty reliable, but there’s money involved, and money can sometimes make people do stupid things, so you’ll both be armed. The bonus is another grand.’
‘Who are the people we’re dealing with?’
‘The prisons are full of people who talk too much, Jones. With us, everything’s on a need-to-know basis. It’s a lot easier for everyone that way.’
I turned away from him, looking across the field to the woodland. ‘Still don’t trust me, eh?’
‘Let me tell you something,’ said Cain, lighting a cigarette with a gloved hand. ‘When I was in Lashkar Gah a few years back, we had an interpreter called Abdul. He came from a good family. Not exactly pro government, but not exactly anti it either. One of his brothers had been murdered by the Taliban, so he was considered safe. He was a nice guy too. Well educated, even quite enlightened by Afghan standards. He often used to eat with the men, and would ask us all these questions about England. What was the Queen like? Did the police really not carry guns? He liked talking about football too.’ Cain chuckled. It was an odd, artificial sound, as if he’d been practising it but still had some way to go. ‘I remember, Abdul supported Liverpool. He could name their 1978 and 1981 European Cup- winning teams. We used to test him, and he was never wrong.
‘One day, he was chatting with a couple of the privates over tea in one of the sangars. The next thing we heard a burst of gunfire, followed by screams. We rushed over there, weapons at the ready, just in time to see
