The Ninth Step - John Milton #8 (John Milton Thrillers) (5 page)

The man reached down, slipped his hands beneath his friend’s shoulders, and hauled him to his feet. He was still struggling for breath, and the elbow to the side of his head had sliced open a cut in his brow. Blood was running down his face and down his neck. Milton stepped around the pair, reached for the door, and held it open as they stumbled out into the rain.

The three cabbies who had observed Milton’s display broke out in spontaneous laughter.

“Where did you learn to do that?” Jack asked as Milton went back to the kitchen.

“Army,” he said.

“Which regiment?”

“Infantry. Green Jackets.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. Did a decent stint.”

“I did four years. Territorial army. Fourth battalion. Get any action?”

Milton shrugged. “Enough for my taste.”

The man clenched his fist and mimed a right-handed swing. “You haven’t forgotten much.”

Milton shrugged.

“Remind me to leave you a generous tip.”

“Who wants a cup of tea?” Milton said. “On the house.”

MILTON’S SHIFT finished at seven and, after taking one of the first busses of the new day, he arrived home in Bethnal Green at eight. The streets were beginning to show the usual bustle and clamour. The activity only ever seemed to draw breath, never really stopping, and he passed queues of men and women at the bus stops, waiting to go into work.

He had rented a small flat in an old local authority block in Arnold Circus. A series of blocks had been constructed around a central area that was raised up from the road that ran around it. The island had been built from the spoil that had been collected from the razing of the notorious Victorian slum that had once occupied these streets. The mound had been furnished with a bandstand, and, although local benefactors had refurbished it recently, no music was played there any longer. Instead, young boys would congregate around it, smoking and listening to music and peacocking for the girls who idled by. The blocks that surrounded the bandstand were all the same: designed in the Arts and Crafts style, large hulking buildings that were constructed from red and yellow brick that had been dirtied by the passage of time. The estate had provided the first social housing in London and at one time, perhaps, it might have been something. It was grubbier today and, despite the influx of tenants working in the nearby Square Mile, it still had a rough edge to it. But its grubbiness meant that Milton could afford it. He had neither the desire nor the means to choose a more exclusive address, and this served him well enough.

The front door to Milton’s flat was accessed through a darkened vestibule that accommodated another three doors. The space was gloomy. The light bulb had popped, and Milton had forgotten that he had decided to get a new one and change it himself. The landlord was supposed to maintain the common parts, but the graffiti on the walls, the occasional discarded syringe and the smell of human waste were evidence that those obligations were not treated seriously.

He reached into his pocket for his key and paused. He heard the sounds of life from the other flats that opened out into the same space. There were families here, mothers and fathers with two and three children somehow crushed into apartments not much larger than his own. Ten years ago, he would not have envied them the chaos and disorder that seemed to comprise their days. But that was then, and he had changed. Now, especially when he was alone in his flat, a book laid out on his lap and music playing quietly, he often found himself wondering what it would be like to have a life like theirs. He wondered, sometimes, whether he would be prepared to exchange his Spartan existence for the noise and clamour and vigour of a family. Would he be prepared to swap his solitude for companionship? He had always enjoyed the peace of his self-imposed exile, but he was beginning to find that the benefits were less and less attractive the older he got.

He felt it now, that new longing, and quickly suppressed the sensation. Loneliness was weakness and a luxury that he could not afford. He had made his choice. By choosing to follow the career that had been presented to him, Milton had abjured his right to a normal life. The blood on his hands disqualified him from it. He did not deserve domesticity, and no amount of baring his soul at meetings would change that. And there were practical reasons why he could not allow himself to be drawn too close to another. There were people in the world who would have given much to know where he was. Some of those people—intelligence agencies, criminals, government officials—would have paid for him to be killed. They would have paid a lot. To bring another person into his life would be to expose her to danger. She would be leverage that could be used against him. And an untethered life meant that he could leave as soon as he smelled danger. Anything that moored him to a place or a person would be dangerous. That had been the reason he had left Australia, as well as his sense that he had been slip-sliding towards taking a drink. He was unable to deny that he had feelings for Matilda, and it was patent that she felt the same way. Being with him had already exposed her to real danger, and he couldn’t take the chance that she would be dragged into his affairs again.

After a selfish life, now he would be selfless. He wouldn’t risk someone else in order to allow himself happiness. That would be unfair.

He was brought out of his self-absorption by the sound of raised voices from the flat next to his. That was unusual: the mother and father of the two small children who lived there were quiet and respectful, and he rarely heard them save for a warm burble that was muffled by the wall that separated them. Their children, both young, were quiet and well behaved, too, and, as he paused, he realised that the voice he had heard was from someone else. There was another volley of angry conversation, the sound of a woman protesting, and then the sound of furniture falling to the floor.

Milton stopped, caught between staying where he was and investigating: he didn’t know whether he should do something, offer his help, or whether that would be overstepping a mark. He hadn’t decided what to do when the door to the flat was yanked open. There was a man in the hallway whom Milton had not seen before and, behind him, a second man. They were both in early middle age, dressed in cheap suits and cheap shoes. The first man was big, maybe six three, but padded out with fat rather than muscle. The second man was short and wiry, with tattoos that were visible on the skin of his neck above the collar of his shirt.

The fat one glared at Milton. “What you looking at?”

Milton glanced beyond him and into the flat. The door to the sitting room was open and Milton could see that the crash he had heard was from a set of bookshelves that had been pulled over. The floor was littered with disturbed books, photographs and the fragments of shattered ornaments.

The fat man stepped out into the vestibule. “I said what you looking at?”

Milton shortened his focus and regarded the man. He had a large face, with folds of fat that hung down beneath his chin, and thin stripes of whiskers that he had missed while he was shaving. He had hair in his nostrils and ears, and his skin had an unhealthy pallor, washed with a light sheen of sweat. Milton looked down, saw that the man had a large ring on the pinkie of his right hand and another on the index finger of his left. He noticed that his hands were bunched into fists and noticed that he favoured his right.

Milton felt the familiar tickle of adrenaline. He clenched his own fist, his right.

The man stepped up, raised a hand and pushed Milton on the shoulder. Milton took a step back. He let it happen. It wasn’t a bad thing. The extra space would be useful for generating extra force when he retaliated.

The man was oblivious to the danger he was in. “What is matter with you? You don’t talk?”

His accent was harsh and guttural. Eastern European. Polish? Russian, maybe. Milton felt the twitch in his arm. He had noticed that the man held his jaw loosely, and knew that if he struck him with even half of his usual force, he would be able to shatter the bone. The man had raised his hand to him, had pushed him; that would normally have been the trigger for Milton to respond. But he glimpsed the couple who lived in the flat. They were in the hallway, both rigid with fright, the mother in her colourful hijab clasping their young son against her legs. They were looking at him with big eyes, with faces that were full of fear, and he knew then that they did not want him to get involved. They wanted these men to leave them alone, to go away with no reason to return. Milton could have taken them both out, and he was sorely tempted to do that, but that would have been indulging himself. The family would have paid for his indulgence.

“I live here,” Milton said. “I don’t want trouble.”

“Then get into the flat,” the man said, “and stop looking at me like that.”

Milton did as he was told. He closed the door behind him, but watched through the spyhole. He waited twenty seconds, opened the door a crack, and saw the two men heading out of the vestibule and down the path to the street. He waited another moment and then followed them outside. They were at the end of the path and, as Milton watched, the fat man blipped the locks on a black BMW 5-series with tinted windows and they both got in. The engine revved loudly and the car pulled out into the road and drove away. Milton watched it, remembering the plate, and then went back inside.

THE GENERAL ordered Hicks to collect him from a pub outside Hereford railway station the next morning. Hicks knew that, as the most junior member of the Feather Men, it would fall upon him to chauffeur the old man around until he had proven his worth. He was happy enough with that, even if it meant that he had to get up at five in the morning, as he had done today. Leaving his wife in their warm bed was tough, and the certainty that he wouldn’t see his children today was difficult, but what he was doing was for them. He reminded himself of that as he let the water from the shower play over him, scouring away the sleep until he was fully awake. He dressed, prepared toast for a cursory breakfast, and went through into the garage.

He had allowed himself three hours for the one-hundred-and-fifty-mile drive back to Hereford from Cambridge and had added another hour so that he could make sure that his Range Rover was clean and tidy. Higgins was fastidious about cleanliness and appearance, a hangover from the military that they all shared. He took a vacuum cleaner to the car and spent twenty minutes working the nozzle over the upholstery. He polished the wooden accents, wiped the dirt from the mats and washed the windows. The car was spotless when he was finished.

The journey was straightforward until he ran into traffic just before Junction 7 of the M5. There had been a collision on the opposite carriageway, and drivers on his side of the road had slowed to gawp, causing a bottleneck that took an additional twenty minutes for him to negotiate. He made up a little time on the A4440, but he was still a little late as the buildings of Hereford appeared around the final bend.

The railway station was an old Victorian building and had probably been grand at one point in its life. These days, it was clogged with parked cars and ugly red industrial refuse bins, the walls pocked by fly posters for a travelling circus and advertisements for local bars. Hicks drove onto the one-way approach, looped around an island that had been carved out for cyclists to leave their bikes, and stopped outside the entrance. Higgins was sheltering from the wind inside the main building. He saw Hicks and came outside. He was dressed impeccably, as ever. His charcoal suit was newly dry-cleaned, with sharp creases running down his trousers. His shirt was freshly laundered and his shoes so polished that the sun’s dim light gleamed against the caps. His face was distorted by a dark frown. Hicks looked at the clock on the dash and saw that he was two minutes late. He gripped the wheel a little tighter.

Higgins opened the rear door and lowered himself inside. “When I say to pick me up at ten,” he said, “I mean ten. I don’t mean a minute past ten. I don’t mean two minutes past ten.”

“I understand, sir. Traffic was—”

“No excuses. You wouldn’t stand for it in the Regiment, would you?”

“No, sir.”

“I won’t stand for it now.”

“I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

“See that it doesn’t.”

Hicks put the car into first and pulled away. It would take around three hours to drive to London from here, more if the traffic was poor. He had never spent that much time in Higgins’s company and he found the prospect a little daunting. The general was quiet as Hicks drove them out of Hereford and onto the M50. Hicks glanced in the mirror and saw that the old man had opened his case and was reviewing a paper file. He set his eyes to the road and concentrated on the light traffic.

They had just passed the exit for Newent when Hicks heard the sound of the briefcase’s clasps snapping shut.

“You did well last night, Corporal.”

“Sir?”

“With Öztürk. It was good work.”

Praise from Higgins was a rare occurrence. “Thank you, sir.”

“How did you find it?”

“The operation, sir?” Hicks wasn’t sure where Higgins wanted to take the conversation. “It was fine. It was very well planned. I don’t think they had much of a chance.”

“You had no issues?”

“Issues?”

“Ethical considerations.”

“No, sir. None.” Hicks had done a little of his own research on Öztürk and had satisfied himself that the man deserved his fate. He had been involved in extrajudicial killings before—IRA chieftains, foreign agitators—and, since those men had deserved to die, too, it was something with which he had been able to make peace.

“How many men did you kill in the Regiment?”

The number was at the front of his mind and easy to recall. It was the same with most soldiers that Hicks knew. “Twenty, sir.”

“There’ll be more, Corporal, now that you’re working with us. As long as you’re comfortable with that, you’ll do well.”

Hicks didn’t answer, and the general fell silent again. “Doing well” meant making money, and perhaps a lot of it. That was the only reason he was doing what he was doing. It wasn’t because of greed, either. It was because of necessity.