He motioned for us to follow him, and I’d just started to relax a little when a mobile phone started ringing. It was Dav’s, and he pulled it out of his leather jacket, frowning down at the screen. ‘Excuse me for a second, Mr Cain. I need to take this.’ He walked away from us, talking quietly on the phone in Albanian, while the rest of us stood in vaguely uncomfortable silence.
‘Everything all right?’ asked Cain when Dav had ended the call.
‘Sure,’ said Dav, but something in his tone didn’t ring true. ‘Business problems. I just need to make one more call.’
I exchanged glances with Cain as Dav walked further away, his back to us. Cain shrugged, as if there was nothing to worry about. And maybe there wasn’t, but I could feel a tingling in the base of my spine that reminded me of the feeling I used to get out on patrol in Helmand, where danger lurked round every corner.
Dav finished the call and replaced the phone in his leather jacket. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, coming back over. This time he was staring at me. ‘So who’s your friend, Mr Cain? I’ve never seen him before.’
‘He’s one of my people. He’s good.’
‘Yeah? Is that right? How long you known him?’
I saw that Cain was frowning, and the tingling in my spine suddenly got a whole lot worse. ‘Long enough. Why?’
‘Look, what the hell is this?’ I demanded. ‘If you’ve got a problem with me, you ask me about it. Not him.’
Dav’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yeah, I got a problem. A real problem.’
‘What’s happened?’ asked Cain, sounding confused.
But before Dav could answer, I heard movement to my left. I swung round, instinctively going for my gun, as a guy holding a pump-action shotgun appeared in the gap between two of the shelf units, while at the same time the guy who’d let us in at the gates appeared at the double doors behind us. He too was holding a shotgun.
‘Don’t even think about it,’ Dav told me, taking a step back so he was out of the shotguns’ line of fire.
My fingers were touching the pistol in my waistband, but right away I knew I was never going to be able to hit both gunmen before one of them blew a very large hole in me. Even if they were crap shots, they’d be hard pushed to miss from the range they were at, and I couldn’t rely on Cain, a man I’d only known for a few hours. I moved my hand away from the gun.
‘What the hell’s going on, Dav?’ demanded Cain, who’d also made the sensible decision not to go for his own gun.
‘That call I just had was from a good friend of mine,’ said Dav, bringing out a pistol from under his jacket, which he pointed at us. ‘The man we deal with over here, a guy called Brozi, has been arrested. You know anything about that?’
Cain looked completely caught out by this revelation. ‘Of course not. We’re here to buy the merchandise we talked about.’
‘Brozi’s a careful guy. The only way he gets caught is if someone set him up.’
‘Look, I only ever deal with him by phone. I couldn’t even tell you what he looks like. And I only spoke to him to confirm this meeting a couple of hours ago.’ There was a long silence as both men sized each other up. Then Cain spoke again. ‘We’ve done business before. You know you can trust me.’
‘We have. But him.’ Dav flicked his head dismissively in my direction. ‘Him I don’t fucking trust.’
I felt the adrenalin building inside me, but I knew my best bet was to stay calm and go on the attack. ‘What are you accusing me of?’
I took a step towards Dav, who lowered his pistol and pointed it at my groin with a hand that was way too steady. ‘Don’t move, or I’ll blow your balls off.’ His eyes blazed with anger and his finger tightened on the trigger.
He barked something in Albanian to the big bodyguard who produced a thin-cord garrotte from under his jacket, and walked round behind me.
‘What the hell’s he doing?’ I snapped, my hand hovering over the gun, knowing I was already too late. At the same time, the shotgun-wielding thug who’d been hiding behind the shelves walked towards me until the end of his barrel was only a few feet from my gut. His face was blank and I knew he’d kill me without a second’s thought.
‘Don’t go for that gun,’ said Dav quietly. ‘You won’t make it.’
‘I’m not a cop,’ I answered, looking him right in the eye, working hard to keep my voice steady. I felt the gun being removed from the waistband of my jeans, leaving me completely unarmed.
‘Maybe you’re not. But we’re going to find out one way or another. And you, Mr Cain, get your gun out and drop it on the floor.’
‘Look, Dav,’ said Cain, raising his hands, palms outwards, in the universal gesture of reconciliation, ‘I can vouch for him. He’s definitely no cop.’
‘Drop your gun, or I get my friend to shoot you.’
‘This whole thing’s wrong,’ Cain called out, using the agreed code to tell Cecil we were in trouble.
‘Drop it. Now.’
Reluctantly, Cain pulled out his gun and laid it down on the floor. He was scared now too, but he glanced at me briefly, his expression saying: Don’t worry, it’s going to be all right. This is just a misunderstanding.
But it wasn’t. Someone, somewhere, had betrayed their contact, and the grim irony of it all was that it had absolutely nothing to do with me. I couldn’t see how Mike Bolt could be responsible, but if he was, then I’d tear him apart with my bare hands.
But right now that was the least of my problems, because if Dav searched me, then there was a good chance he’d find the GPS units in my wallet, and that would be as good as a death sentence.
And then suddenly I was being yanked backwards as the garrotte Dav’s bodyguard was carrying was whipped over my head and tightened round my neck. My breath was cut off like a light switch, and spots of light danced in front of my eyes as I was lifted up on to my toes. And all I could think was that this was it, the end, that I was about to die without saying goodbye to my daughter, and that they’d never find my body.
‘This whole thing’s wrong!’ shouted Cain, using the code for a second time, his voice echoing round the room. ‘This whole thing’s wrong! Let him go!’
Dav said something else in Albanian and the cord was loosened enough for me to breathe again, but I was still unable to move and panting wildly for breath. The big guy was patting me down now, looking for more weapons. He found the mobile phone and lobbed it over to Dav, who caught it with his free hand and inspected it. Seeing that it was switched off, he lost interest and lobbed it away, ignoring my gasps for mercy.
Next came the wallet, and Dav put his gun away so he could use both hands to check through it more carefully.
Jesus, I’d messed up. My whole life was in that wallet, not just the two GPS units Bolt had given me. My address.
‘This whole thing’s wrong!’ yelled Cain again.
But there was no movement outside the door. No Cecil. No nothing.
‘Shut the fuck up, Cain!’ snapped Dav.
He shouted something in Albanian and one of the other gunmen came forward and searched Cain from behind. Cain tensed, and for a moment I thought he might go for the gun on the floor, but he didn’t resist as it was kicked away, out of reach.
‘This isn’t the way we do business in this country,’ he said angrily. ‘You treat your customers properly.’
Dav’s expression was like stone. ‘Someone betrayed Brozi. It wasn’t any of us. So it has to be you, or someone close to you. How long have you known this guy for? Uh?’ He waved an arm at me. ‘How long?’
Cain hesitated. For just one second, but it was one second too long. ‘Long enough.’
Dav shook his head emphatically. ‘Not long enough.’ He pulled a crumpled photo from the wallet. It was an old one my mum had taken of Gina and Maddie, when Maddie was about a year old, and we’d still been a family. ‘Nice picture.’ He grinned, showing his nicotine-stained teeth. ‘This your wife and kid?’
I swallowed hard, which with the thin cord round my neck was no easy feat, the anger rising in me at the thought of this arsehole holding such a precious photo. I thought about elbowing the big guy in the ribs and making a break for it, grabbing Dav’s gun and shoving it against his head, but there was no way I’d make it.
