the other neighbours were commuters who were out most of the time.
‘Come on, what the hell is this, Jones?’ Cecil called again, clearly irritated now.
Alarm bells were sounding in my head. I decided then that, old friend or not, I wasn’t going to let him in.
A shadow suddenly appeared behind the window to my right, obscured by the curtain, and before I could react Cain was standing in front of me, his pale face ghostly in the moonlight, the vein throbbing obscenely on his cheek. He was holding a pistol with a suppressor attached, the end of the barrel touching the glass.
‘Pass the front-door keys through the window, Jones,’ he said, loudly and firmly.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ I demanded, putting just the right amount of indignation in my voice, knowing that I was too late to make a move.
Cecil had also brought a pistol with suppressor attached out from beneath his bomber jacket, and I could see that his eyes were alive with anger.
‘You’ve got questions to answer,’ announced Cain. ‘About who exactly you work for.’
And I knew then that they’d found out about me. Which meant I no longer had to worry about what I said to the police.
Because I was already a dead man.
‘I’ve got a home address for the informant, Richard Burnham-Jones,’ said Tina into the phone, shouting to be heard above a helicopter flying overhead, as she walked further down the road away from all the activity surrounding Azim Butt’s house. She read out the address, then waited while Commander Ingrams dictated it to someone next to him.
‘Right, we’ll get officers round there now,’ said Ingrams. ‘In the meantime, we have authority to move Prisoner Garrett. There’s a park two hundred yards south of where you are. A helicopter’s going to pick up you up there in five minutes and take you up to the prison to sign him out. We’re setting up a safehouse about eight miles from the prison. I want you to travel with Garrett and the escort to the safehouse by road.’
‘Why not by helicopter?’
‘It’s too risky. We haven’t picked up the Stinger shooter yet. If there are any more Stingers in circulation they could be used against a helicopter, and we really can’t afford to lose Garrett.’ He paused. ‘You’re to tell him that if he gives you the full names of everyone involved in the attacks today, and all those involved in the Stanhope siege, he’ll be kept in a safehouse until the trial, and we will ask the trial judge to strongly consider his cooperation when passing sentence. In other words, he won’t serve a life-term sentence.’
‘Are we allowed to do all that, sir?’ asked Tina. The idea of giving Fox all he’d asked for, with the Shard still burning barely half a mile from where she stood, stuck in her throat. It wasn’t right.
‘We’re effectively in a state of emergency here, DC Boyd. The attacks today, particularly the last one on the Shard, make the government look weak, and they can’t have that. If Garrett is the key — and it looks like he may well be — we have to make him talk. We can’t torture him, although God knows there are plenty of people here who would love to do it, so this is the only way. Tell him this, too. If he doesn’t talk, if he holds out for a deal that’s never going to happen, then he’ll be transferred to Belmarsh by car later tonight, held in solitary confinement until his trial, and if necessary for the next fifty years. We’re not pussyfooting around here, DC Boyd. You need to make sure he knows that.’
‘I’ll make sure he knows,’ said Tina coldly. ‘And I’ll make sure he talks.’
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
