Ultimatum by Simon Kernick

robbery, switching to a Renault Mégane saloon Cecil had parked under some trees next to a stretch of deserted waste ground near the Lockwood reservoir. No one saw us as we torched the car we’d used for the robbery, along with the police caps. We kept the guns, though. In a country like Britain where even semi-automatic weapons are almost impossible to come by, they were way too valuable, and after putting them and the money in the boot, we changed into suit jackets and ties, got in our car, and drove off in the direction of Enfield. All without being seen. Even in the centre of a city like London you can still find some lonely places where people don’t go at ten o’clock on a cold, grey February morning.
    I was still pumped up with a mix of adrenalin and anger. The plan had been to hold up LeShawn and his men and make them give up the cash with threats, a few shots into their car, but no actual violence. That way, even if there’d been witnesses, and the police had found empty shell casings at the scene, the crime would never have been reported. LeShawn was hardly going to say anything, and people who live near crackhouses tend to learn to look the other way. In other words, it should have been perfect.
    But now LeShawn was dead. He might have been an arsehole and I might not have pulled the trigger, but that wasn’t much consolation. First off, the robbery had been a joint enterprise, which meant I was just as responsible for his murder as Cecil was in the eyes of the law. And second, I’d shot up a cop car, ripped the front of it to shreds, and scared the living shit out of the people inside, thereby making myself a very active participant. Worse, pulling the trigger had felt way too good.
    My name’s Jones by the way. Richard Burnham-Jones to be exact, but I always hated the names Richard, Rick, Richie, and especially Dick, and I’m not a big fan of double barrels, so it’s always been Jones, which suits me fine. And I’m not a bad man either, whatever first impressions might suggest. You could say I’ve got in with the wrong crowd, and you’d be absolutely right, but not quite for the reasons you might think.
    It was a cold day but I could feel the sweat on my brow, and I used my forearm to wipe it away.
    ‘What the fuck happened back there, Jones?’ demanded Cecil, fixing me with one of his trademark glares. ‘You almost let me down.’
    The two of us have known each other a long time. We’ve served together in a war zone, and that creates a bond that other men just don’t have. That didn’t mean Cecil didn’t scare me. He did. He scared everyone. He might only have been a short bald guy, but he was also lean and wiry, with an intense energy that seemed to emanate from him in waves, and eyes like pieces of flint. Even his voice, with its hard Belfast growl, spelled aggression. Luckily, I knew how to handle him.
    ‘If I’d fired when we were fighting, I could have hit anyone, including you,’ I said. ‘That’s the problem when there are only two of us on the job. It was always going to be risky.’
    ‘You’re not going soft on me are you, big man?’ Cecil didn’t care that he’d just killed someone. As far as he was concerned, they’d disobeyed instructions, got what was coming to them, and now he’d moved on. That was what he was like.
    ‘I just shot up a cop car, Cecil, so no, I’m not going soft. We needed a bigger team, that’s all. I told you that before we got involved. I thought you had friends we could use.’
    ‘This was a test, Jones. To check your loyalty.’
    ‘I’m not interested in tests. You know you can trust me. We’ve got history.’ And we did. We had secrets too, forged on the battlefields of Helmand Province.
    There was a pause, and then he nodded slowly. ‘I think it may be time to go up to the next level,’ he said, finding a gap in the parked cars at the side of the road and pulling up. ‘But first I’ve got to make a quick phone call.’
    We were outside