The Ninth Step - John Milton #8 (John Milton Thrillers) (28 page)

He returned to the Circus with five minutes to spare and found a spot next to a branch of the Allied Irish Bank where he was able to watch the ever-shifting throng of people as they emerged from and disappeared into the various subways that led to the underground station below. Olivia emerged at a minute before the hour and made her way to the statue. She was dressed in denim jeans, a white shirt and a faded brown leather jacket. She looked anxious, looking left and right in an attempt to locate Milton. He was partially obscured by a telephone box, and she didn’t see him. He watched the crowd. There were hundreds of people. It would be almost impossible for him to say whether she had been followed.

He crossed the road and made his way directly to her.

She was facing away as Milton reached her. He reached out and gently took her arm by the elbow.

“Shit,” she said. “You startled me.”

“This way,” Milton said. He impelled her to follow him toward Leicester Square.

“What’s going on?” she asked with a little concern.

“Just follow me.”

Milton picked a way through the crowds of tourists into Leicester Square. It had just recently been renovated, and it looked nothing like the seedy, dirty confluence that Milton remembered. Lazy pigeons were gorging on spilt popcorn from the Vue and they fluttered up as Milton led the way north into Leicester Court, the alley that led between the cinema and the Hippodrome Casino. It was pedestrianized, much less busy than the Square itself, and Milton paused at the junction with Lisle Street and looked back. A man had also paused. The man reached into his pocket and withdrew his phone, putting it to his ear, but not before Milton locked eyes with him. The man spoke into the phone and took a quarter turn away, facing the casino, no longer looking at Milton or Olivia.

Milton felt uneasy. “Come on,” he said.

“What?”

He didn’t reply. Lisle Street became Chinatown to the left of them. Strings of red, white and green paper lanterns hung overhead. Milton took Olivia by the arm and hurried into the throng of people. They passed restaurants on both sides of the street—Kintaro, Imperial China, Hing Loon, Beijing Dumpling—all of them marked by the gaudy menus in the windows and the waiters who patrolled the doorways, eager to usher wavering patrons inside. Milton turned his head as they walked and glanced back toward the junction. He couldn’t see the man, but that didn’t mean anything. If he had been correct and the man had been following Olivia, there could be others.

“What are we doing?”

Milton hurried them onward.

“Where are we going?”

“I think you were followed,” he said grimly. “We need to get away from here.”

They passed Waxy’s Little Sister, the pub hidden behind a row of scaffolding and protective sheeting, and reached the junction with Wardour Street. Milton looked north and saw a black cab heading toward them from Shaftesbury Avenue. He put out his arm and whistled. The cabbie indicated that he had seen him and pulled over. Milton opened the door, ushered Olivia inside, and sat down next to her.

“Where to, guv?” the cabbie asked.

“Liverpool Street,” he said.

Milton looked out of the smeared window as they rolled ahead, passing the entrances to Chinatown and then Leicester Square. There were hundreds of people on the street. There was no way of knowing whether any of them were watching Olivia, but he had survived for as long as he had by trusting his instincts, and he knew that this was the right thing to do. He looked back as they rolled through an orange light and picked up speed onto Whitcomb Street. He was looking for other cabs that might have been stopped, or vehicles that might have run the light in an attempt to keep up with them. He saw nothing.

LIVERPOOL STREET station was to the east of the city, on the edge of the financial district.

“What’s going on?” Olivia asked as they drove past Bloomsbury Square.

“You were followed.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know that. But there was a man behind us and I didn’t like the look of him.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Just a gut feeling.”

“You told me you were a cook, John.”

“Yeah,” Milton said. “I am. But I’ve done other things.”

It took thirty minutes to get to Liverpool Street, and they made the rest of the journey in silence. Milton spent the time looking out of the windows, checking the cars behind them in the event that he saw something that gave him cause for suspicion. The roads were busy, as they always were, and the traffic behaved normally. None of the cars or motorbikes seemed particularly interested in them. They reached the Rotunda, the roundabout that accommodated the Museum of London at the Barbican. Milton told the driver to go around it twice, and, as he stared back at the cars in their wake, none of them tried to follow their manoeuver. The busy nature of a city like London meant that you could never say for sure, but, as far as Milton was concerned, they were clean.

“John,” Olivia said, “what the hell?”

“Just wait,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything.”

THERE WAS A BRANCH of Starbucks on the north side of the station and Milton led the way inside. He told Olivia to go and buy two coffees. She did, and Milton used the opportunity to find a table at the back of the room where he could sit and face the entrance. He watched carefully, satisfying himself once again that they had not been tailed.

Olivia returned with two coffees and set them down on the table. She sat down, pried the lid off her cup and poured in a sachet of brown sugar. “So?” she said after she had taken a sip.

Milton left his coffee untouched and looked straight at her. “I need you to be honest with me.”

“What makes you think I haven’t been honest before?”

“Come on,” Milton said. “No more games. I know that Eddie told you things that you’ve kept from me. You have to be straight with me now. It’s very important.”

“About what?”

“There was more than just the abuse, wasn’t there? Eddie told you about more than that.”

She didn’t answer.

“This is how it’s going to be. I’m going to be straight with you and you’re going to be straight with me. No secrets. Okay?”

She nodded a little dubiously. “Okay.”

“Eddie was in Alcoholics Anonymous. I am, too. That’s how we met. He was having trouble with the ninth step. You know what that is?”

His admission didn’t fluster her. “No,” she said.

He looked her in the eye. “Alcoholics agree that they have to make amends to the people that they’ve hurt.” She shuffled in her chair a little. “Eddie was going to get justice for himself, for what happened to him when he was a boy. But he wanted justice for someone else, too. Someone he thought that he had hurt. He wasn’t a hypocrite. He wanted to make amends.”

He reached into his bag and took out the scrapbook that he had taken from Eddie’s flat. He laid his palm atop it and slid it across the table. Olivia took the book from him and flipped through the pages. She bit down on her bottom lip as she scanned the newspaper reports that Eddie had collected.

“He was involved in that robbery,” Milton said. “A man was killed. Eddie’s family was responsible. His brothers. Eddie had a lot of demons. He was going to unburden himself of everything. The things he’d done, and the things that were done to him. And that’s the other reason he was speaking to you.”

Olivia’s bottom lip had whitened from the bite. “He made me promise not to say anything about that,” she said.

“That doesn’t really matter any more.”

“No,” she said after a pause. “I suppose it doesn’t.”

“What happened?”

“He was there. He was the driver. His brothers had guns. They ambushed the truck and took the money. There was a struggle. One of the guards rugby-tackled Spencer Fabian, and Fabian shot him. Eddie has been cut up about it for years. It’s like you said. He said he blamed himself. You’re right: he did. He wanted to make it right.”

Milton exhaled. He understood everything now. The angles were all revealed, the connections that joined events, the motivations of the players. “Have you told anyone else that he was talking to you about it?”

Olivia paused, then looked away.

Milton’s heart sank. “Who?”

“Frankie Fabian.”

“What? When?”

“Two days ago. I went back to Halewell Close.”

Milton had to stifle his groan.

“What?” she protested. “Eddie was dead. What was I supposed to do? I wasn’t getting anywhere. I met you, but you went quiet. I didn’t think you were going to give me anything. The story was just going to die, and I wasn’t going to let it.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I told him that Eddie had spoken to me about being involved in a robbery. I asked him whether he had anything to say about it.”

Milton closed his eyes. “And?”

“He said it was crazy. He said Eddie was unstable. Eddie had said all sorts of things like that in the past—you just had to look at what he’d done to himself to know that he wasn’t rational. He said that what Eddie said couldn’t be trusted. Frankie’s a good actor, but I didn’t believe him. I didn’t press it too hard, either. He’s frightening.”

Milton put his elbow on the table and rested his forehead against his palm.

“What is it?” she asked.

He paused, wondering whether he could trust her with everything that he knew. She was a journalist; everything was subservient to the story. He decided that he would take the chance. He needed a second opinion. “A car registered to Eddie’s father was seen next to his cab in the driveway of the house where he killed himself. I think Frankie was there.”

“How on earth could you know that?”

Milton shook his head. “Someone saw it. I can’t tell you who. But Eddie got himself into a real mess. He was murdered that night. It wasn’t because of what he was going to say to you about Leo Isaacs. It was because he’d told his family that he was about to expose them.”

The colour drained from her face. “They did it?”

“I know they did.”

“Oh God.”

“You have to be careful now, Olivia. Very careful. I’m serious.”

“You thought I was being followed…?”

Milton nodded, his face severe. “You said Frankie was frightening. He’s all that and worse. He killed his own son—he’s not likely to have any compunction about going after anyone else who he thinks might threaten him. You
were
followed today. Maybe it was someone working for Fabian. Maybe it was someone to do with Isaacs. I can’t say; it doesn’t matter. Both are dangerous. You have to keep a low profile. You have to be careful.”

She found a little indignation and scowled at him. “Don’t patronise me, John. I know how to look after myself.”

“You think you do, but if it’s Fabian, he won’t play by the rules. You know what happened to Eddie. You’ve given the man who killed him a reason to think Eddie told you everything. And you’re a journalist. It won’t be too hard for him to join the dots. He’ll see you as a serious risk.”

“I’m a big girl,” she said.

“And if it’s someone to do with Isaacs, it’s worse.”

“Do you know something that you’re not telling me?”

He had promised transparency, but he was going to have to qualify that a little. He didn’t want to tell her about Hicks and the soldiers—not yet, and probably not at all. “No,” he lied. “But I am serious. You said it yourself: if this comes out—”

“
When
this comes out,” she corrected.

“Fine.
When
this comes out, it’ll be big. Don’t underestimate what you’re involved in.”

“You think I don’t know that?” she said. “That’s why this story is so important. My career is stuck in a rut. I need something to get me back on track again. Leo Isaacs could be it. Frankie Fabian could be it, too. And nothing this good comes without risk. I’ll take my chances.”

Milton could see that it was going to be difficult to persuade her to stand down. He reminded himself that Olivia wasn’t his responsibility. She had been involved right from the start, before he was, and, as she said, she was able to make her own decisions. He tried to persuade himself that he should take a step back, but he couldn’t. He saw it as it was: she was standing on the edge, teetering there, with no idea of just how steep the drop might be.

“Just do me a favour,” he said. “Lie low for a few days. Don’t go home.”

“So what do I do?”

“Check into a hotel. Get out of the city. Visit your relatives. Anything. All right?”

“The story needs to get out there.”

“Both of them do. Isaacs and Fabian, and you can tell both stories. But wait.”

“I don’t know if I can.”

“You can. I’ll make it worth your while.”

“How are you going to do that?”

Milton reached into his bag again and took out the document folders he had removed from the safe deposit box. He opened the top one, took out the photographs and handed them across the table to Olivia. She glanced left and right to make sure that they were not overlooked—the café was empty—and then shuffled through the glossy prints.

“These are what I think they are?”

Milton nodded.

“Where did you get them?”

“Doesn’t matter. Would they be useful for your story?”

“Of course they would!”

“Useful enough to wait?”

She bit her lip. “How long?”

“Not long. I need a few more days.”

“For what?”

“There are some things that I need to do.”

She paused, then nodded. “Okay.”

“You’ll wait?”

“Yes.”

He collected the photographs and put them back into the folder. “In that case, you can have them. I want them publicised. You can break the story.”

She looked as if she was going to ask Milton to give her the pictures now, but she did not. He put them back into his bag.

She sipped her coffee and put the cup back down onto the table. “These things you need to do? What are they?”

“People are going to pay for what happened to Eddie. His family, for one. Leo Isaacs. Writing your story will help make that happen. But there are others who won’t be affected. I need to take care of them first.”