holes than a cheese grater, but the fact was they weren’t, and because we’d had the guts and the determination, we’d made it against all the odds.
The commander didn’t make it, though. He died in the helicopter en route to Camp Bastion, having completely bled out.
I was going to bleed out too now unless help came, and it was a supreme irony that one of the men who’d put me in this position was Cecil, my fellow soldier and friend.
The war had fucked him up.
But then, I thought ruefully, it had fucked me up too.
Ten or so feet away the body of my neighbour, Rupert, lay motionless next to his car, a long dirty blood smear running down its paintwork where he’d slid down it after Cain had shot him. An innocent man, nothing to do with any of this, caught up in somebody else’s war. He was lying on his side facing me, eyes closed, a peaceful, almost bored expression on his face.
You never think it’s going to happen to you. Death. If you did, you’d make a crap soldier. And I would never have got involved in half the things I’d done — especially those I’d been involved in today — if I’d thought I was going to end up like this, dying alone in the cold.
I didn’t want to die. The thought came almost as a shock. I wanted to live. To watch my daughter grow up. To find a woman who’d love me for what I was: a flawed guy, but a decent one, I was sure. To settle down and have a steady job and a steady income. I no longer even wanted revenge against the people who’d murdered my cousin in the Stanhope Hotel.
I just wanted to be like everyone else.
My eyelids felt like lead weights. If I just closed them for a moment, maybe I’d be able to reserve my energy. Just a moment.
They began to flicker, then close ever so slowly, curtains shutting out the harshness of the outside world.
The sound of tyres on gravel followed almost immediately by the harsh glare of headlights startled me, and as I forced open my eyes, I saw a car come into the car park and pull up a few yards away.
I tried to call out but no words came. I tried to lift my arm but that didn’t work either, and I wondered grimly if it was already too late.
Sixty-eight
21.22
The back of the police van was cramped, hot and airless, but when you’d spent over a year in a closed prison you were used to that kind of atmosphere, and Fox was visibly more relaxed than the four other men in there with him.
He was sitting between two of them — big guys in helmets with plenty of body armour — while two more sat opposite him, resting the MP5s on their laps, the barrels pointed at his gut. As well as the four cops in the back, there were two in the front, and a car at each end of the convoy, each one containing three officers. In all, twelve armed men surrounded him. It was an impressive number and emphasized his importance to the authorities, as well as the danger he still represented.
He caught the eye of the cop sitting directly opposite him, a young mixed-race guy with a ridiculously square jaw and the build and looks of a rugby player. His dark eyes were simmering as he stared at Fox.
Fox held his gaze, noticing with interest that the cop’s finger was instinctively tightening on the trigger.
‘Try anything,’ said the cop in a cockney growl. ‘Anything at all. Because all I need’s the slightest fucking excuse and I’ll put a bullet right through your skull. I’d love that.’
Fox shrugged. ‘You and a couple of million other people, I’m sure. The point is, most of them wouldn’t have the spine to pull the trigger. They might think they have, but when it comes down to it … I don’t think so.’
The cop’s lips formed an exaggerated sneer. ‘I could.’
‘Really?’ Fox couldn’t resist a small smile. ‘Ever killed anyone? Or do you get your kicks from firing that thing down on the range? Shooting paper targets that can’t shoot back.’
‘I get my accuracy from firing it down the range, so when it comes to it, I won’t miss.’
‘All right, shut it, you two,’ grunted one of the older cops, who was clearly in charge, which suited Fox just fine. He had no desire, or need, to get involved in slanging matches with slow-witted coppers over whether or not he deserved to take a bullet for what he’d done. Of course he did. He was a bad man. He’d committed terrible crimes. He deserved to die. At least he had the self-awareness to confront it, unlike a lot of people.
But of course he had no intention of dying any time soon, or even spending much more time in custody.
Tonight was the night he was going to demonstrate how easy it was to outwit the people holding him. They’d searched him thoroughly as he’d left the prison, put him through a metal detector, made sure there was no way he could be carrying anything that would help him escape.
And he wasn’t carrying anything. But only because he’d already swallowed it. A postage-stamp-sized GPS unit, made entirely of plastic. If it worked — and Fox was very confident that it would — it would give the people following its signal his location down to the nearest yard.
He settled back in the seat and stretched his shoulders.
Checkmate.
Sixty-nine
21.23
‘Right,’ said Cecil, ‘they’ve just left the B158 heading east in the direction of a village called Epping Green.’
He was sitting with a Macbook Air on his lap watching the progress of Fox’s GPS unit, while Cain drove at a steady fifty miles an hour along the B157, three miles to the south of them.
Cain nodded, pleased with the way things were going. ‘Good. Then they’re definitely taking him to a safehouse, and it can’t be too far away.’
Cecil gave him a sideways glance. ‘How the hell are we going to do this, sir? Now that there are only two of us?’
‘The same way we’d have done it if there’d been three. By stealth. We get the location, we scope it out, and we move in. We’ll have the element of surprise on our side. They won’t be expecting a thing. If they were they’d never have taken him to a safehouse. And it’s not like we’re dealing with the SAS here. None of these coppers will have ever fired a gun in anger, I can guarantee you that.’
‘It’s still dangerous.’
Cain turned and glared at him. ‘This whole damn thing’s dangerous, Cecil. But that’s the way it has to be. We’re soldiers. It’s how we operate.’
Cecil sighed. ‘What if we haven’t killed him? Jones, I mean. He can testify against us.’
He can testify against you, you mean, thought Cain. ‘We shot him at least twice, and it’s freezing cold out there tonight. He won’t survive.’
‘We never saw his body, and he’s a tough bastard.’
‘Then we’ll take him out later if we have to. Accidents can be arranged, you know that.’
As he spoke, while still watching the road ahead, Cain could see that Cecil was looking at him suspiciously. Cecil had been in a difficult mood ever since he’d found out that Jones had to die, and Cain knew he had to keep his morale up while he still needed him.
‘Look, even if Jones survives, the good thing is that he’s in no position to talk to the police. He shot Dav in cold blood, remember? There’s no way he can spin himself out of that one. His best bet’s to keep his mouth shut, and he knows it.’
‘But that’s the thing,’ said Cecil, and Cain could hear the pain in his voice. ‘He shot the Albanian. He did the
