‘You know I trust you, Cain,’ said Dav as they waited, trying unsuccessfully to hide the desperation in his voice. ‘I wouldn’t have fucked you up. You let me go, yeah, and no one’ll ever mention this again. I’ll get rid of the bodies of my friends.’
Cain didn’t say anything. He was still holding the cleaver above Dav’s hand.
Cecil came back into the room. ‘It’s there, and it’s still in the box.’
Cain nodded. ‘Good.’ He turned to me. ‘He’s all yours. Prove to him you’re no cop.’
Dav’s eyes widened. ‘I believe you! Please!’
I pushed the end of the barrel into his forehead, while he wriggled beneath it. It was only a minute since he’d been threatening to cripple me for life and yet my anger had dissipated. I almost felt sorry for him.
A bead of sweat rolled down my temple and suddenly I was back in Afghanistan on that single terrible day when I’d killed in cold blood for the only time in my life. Strength. I needed strength. Because if I didn’t shoot him, there was no way I was walking away from here.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cecil staring at me, his face taut with tension.
For a long, drawn-out second we all waited.
Then I pulled the trigger.
Thirty-six
17.45
I watched the body slide slowly to the floor, then dropped Dav’s gun into his lap and pulled my wallet from his pocket before turning away, having no desire to look at what I’d just done. For a few seconds the room was silent, bar the incessant ringing in my ears. I rubbed my neck where the cord had bitten into it and fought down a rising nausea.
‘Where the hell were you?’ I asked Cecil.
‘It’s a good question,’ said Cain. ‘We almost ended up dead in here.’
‘They had another guard posted near the fence. I had to get past him.’
‘Where’s he now?’
‘I was waiting for him to move. Then I heard you shout from inside, so I took him out with a knife, then came over as fast as I could.’ He was bouncing on his toes like a flyweight boxer as he talked, the adrenalin from the fire fight making him hyper. He looked round at the bodies littering the room. ‘What the hell happened in here?’
Cain sighed as he looked down at Dav’s body. ‘This one got a phone call to say that Brozi, the guy who set up this deal, had been arrested, and because they didn’t know Jones, they thought he might have had something to do with it. It’s a pain. These guys were useful suppliers. But at least we’ve got what we came for. And if they’re dead, they can’t talk. I’m sorry about what happened, Jones. I wasn’t expecting that.’
‘Neither was I,’ I grunted, not wanting to let him off the hook easily. I’d come far too close to dying, and it had scared me.
There was a pool of blood forming round Dav’s head and I tried to ignore it. I inspected the cut on my leg where Dav had caught me with the cleaver, but it was only a minor flesh wound and would stop bleeding soon enough.
Cain turned to Cecil. ‘Let’s grab the box and get out of here. Jones, make sure you’ve got everything. At some point, this place is going to be a major crime scene, and if any of us have left any trace we were ever here, we’re in real trouble.’
I nodded, but I was suddenly filled with an intense curiosity. Five men had just died, all for a single weapon. I was also damn sure that whatever the weapon was, it was going to be used against the people of this city. Cain clearly didn’t give a shit about taking innocent lives, so I needed to make sure that it wasn’t something that was going to affect my family.
I was following them into the back room when Cain turned round.
‘Where are you going?’ he snapped.
‘I want to see what I almost got killed for.’
Cain seemed to think about this for a moment, then exchanged glances with Cecil who was standing inside the sparsely furnished back room where an open six-foot-by-three-foot wooden crate rested on a metal table. From the angle I was standing at, I couldn’t see what was inside.
‘Jones is one of us now, sir,’ said Cecil. ‘We need to trust him.’
Cain paused, clearly not convinced, before finally he nodded.
We approached the crate and looked down.
And straight away I realized why they’d wanted to keep its contents a secret so badly.
Thirty-seven
17.48
After a twenty-minute argument with Islington nick’s chief superintendent, Mike Bolt finally managed to get out of his office with his job and his position still intact. The chief super was furious at the way an op on his patch had degenerated into a hail of gunfire in broad daylight, and that the captured suspect was now claiming he’d been violently assaulted by one of his arresting officers, and had injuries that appeared to back up his claim. The fact that the arresting officer was Tina Boyd had only added to his fury. It seemed the chief super didn’t have particularly fond memories of Tina’s tenure at the station.
On one hand, Bolt could see his point of view: the whole thing had almost ended in disaster thanks to Tina staying in Brozi’s house after she’d been told to leave. Yet the fact remained that the photos she’d found on his phone represented a hugely important lead. They linked that day’s bombings with Fox, and with the Stanhope attacks that Bolt had spent the previous fifteen months investigating. Fox might not be cooperating, but if Brozi talked, they might be able to break the case wide open before the terrorists’ eight p.m. deadline.
It frustrated Bolt that he couldn’t question Brozi himself, but at least now the CTC team had arrived at Islington and were fully aware of how urgent their task was. He took a deep breath. He needed a coffee. In fact, he needed a couple of cold pints and a whisky chaser to settle his nerves after what he’d been through that day. But a coffee was going to have to suffice because it was going to be a while yet before he’d be getting off duty.
That didn’t matter, though. He might have come within a few feet of getting shot, but for the first time in a long time, he actually felt good. Months of tedious detective work and repeated dead ends had been swept aside, and suddenly he was seeing action again, just like in those long-ago days when he’d been part of the Flying Squad, chasing down armed robbers in adrenalin-fuelled ambushes. And, whichever way he cared to look at it, most of what had happened today was down to Tina Boyd. An hour ago he’d been furious with her for taking the kind of extreme risks she always did, but now that fury was subsiding.
He was en route to the canteen when Tina appeared in the corridor up ahead talking to a very tall, gangly young man in an ill-fitting suit.
She smiled when she saw him. ‘Mike, this is Mr Ridic, the Albanian translator. He’s going to be assisting CTC with the Brozi interview.’
‘Good to meet you,’ said Bolt, shaking hands. He turned to Tina as Ridic excused himself. ‘I thought you were meant to be giving a statement.’
‘I’ve made it. It didn’t take long. I mean, the shooting was all over in a few seconds, wasn’t it?’ She gave him a look that suggested there hadn’t been any problems. ‘They want to see you now.’
‘Anything I should know?’
‘Only that I told them that Brozi was resisting arrest, and I only struck him once to make sure he released the gun.’
‘I heard Brozi’s claiming you assaulted him.’
Tina shrugged. ‘Well, he would do, wouldn’t he? But you know better, right?’
Bolt sighed. ‘Don’t worry, Tina, I’ve got your back.’ Then he remembered something. ‘Did you speak to Mr
