The Ninth Step - John Milton #8 (John Milton Thrillers) (7 page)

“What’s that for?”

“You have kids, don’t you?”

The reference to his children made his skin prickle. “Yes, sir. Two boys.”

“You’ll get your cut from last night soon. This is an advance. Treat them. Treat your wife. You’re not going to be going home until we’ve fixed this mess.”

“Yes, sir.”

MILTON SLEPT UNTIL MIDDAY and, finding he was still a little sluggish, allowed himself an extra hour in bed. He woke again before one, got up and dressed for a run. The streets outside were wet, and, although the rain had stopped, another thick black cloudbank had collected over the city with the promise of another downpour.

Milton set off. He had always been a runner. It was his favourite exercise, an hour or so when he could switch off his consciousness and relax into the cadence of his stride, the sound of his shoes as they slapped against the pavement. Outside of the meetings, running was the best form of meditation that he had ever found.

He ran for an hour, east along the Old Bethnal Green Road until he could break into the open green spaces of Victoria Park. He ran hard, circling the large old boating lake with the fountain in the middle, then the café that served as a shelter for locals who had nowhere else to go. He kept running, all the way to the derelict bandstand, and then turned and started for home.

He ran back to the flat, showered and shaved, and dressed in a pair of jeans and a black sweatshirt. He looked around his little place. There was a lounge just big enough for a second-hand sofa and a table and chair. He had purchased the furniture from a charity that recycled pieces and sold them to those on low incomes. There was a tiny kitchen that was little more than a cupboard and a bathroom and a single bedroom. Milton had very little in the way of possessions. He had his well-thumbed copy of the
Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
, a phone and a set of Bluetooth speakers that he used to play his music, the oxidised Ronson lighter that his father had owned and a collection of books that he had bought from Oxfam. It was an ascetic kind of life and one that suited him very well.

Next, he attended to the making of his bed. There were many routines and habits that he had developed during his years of service, many of them so deeply ingrained now that he would have been unable to alter them even if he had wanted to. Presenting a neat and tidy bed was one of the more important ones. It was something that set him up for the rest of the day. That one small routine, the knowledge that it had been done to his satisfaction, was an excellent foundation for what was to come. It developed discipline and fostered attention to the smallest of details. He had seen it too many times for it to be a coincidence: men who struggled to get their lives together often went straight to the most challenging goals while the rest of their lives were left in a disorganized mess. Milton had always drilled it into the soldiers under his command: get the little things under control, and the sense of confidence and satisfaction will help you address the bigger ones.

He had followed the same routine for years. Fitted sheets were a lazy compromise, and he preferred a normal sheet. He stood at the foot of the bed and spread the bottom sheet evenly across it. He tucked the top and bottom edges of the sheet between the bottom of the mattress and the box springs, fashioning perfect hospital corners. He smoothed out the creases and wrinkles with brisk strokes of his hand, then spread out the top sheet and the blanket, making identical hospital corners for those, too. He folded down the tops of the blanket and the top sheet and then placed the pillows. When he was done, he took a fifty-pence piece from the pot on his bedside table and bounced it off the bed. It sprang back up into his hand. Perfect.

He prepared his breakfast. He had recently taken to starting his day with a large iced smoothie: he would prepare the fruit, add ice, protein powder and powdered vitamins, then blitz it in a blender that he had picked up for thirty pounds on eBay. The process took five minutes, and he found that repeating the same steps again and again was almost as calming as his running. He took the smoothie into the lounge and drank it while he flicked through the copy of
Time Out
that he had found on the seat of the bus this morning. There was a matinee showing of Casablanca at the Rio in Dalston. Milton had decided that he would like to see it.

Milton stepped out into the vestibule, locked the door and immediately heard the sound of arguing from the next-door flat. He stopped, his hand resting against his door, and listened. The words were muffled and difficult to discern, but it was obvious that the mother of the family was upset. Her voice was drawn and tight, her sentences broken up, and Milton could soon hear the sound of her sobbing. The father, the woman’s husband, was trying to console her. Milton couldn’t make out the words.

“Mister?”

Milton found that he had been standing with his eyes closed. He opened them, turned, and saw a young boy looking at him. He recognised him. He lived in the flat. He thought, from overhearing them as he passed them playing on the swings at the foot of the building, that the boy’s name was Ahmed. He had a football under his arm and he was regarding Milton with confusion.

“Are you all right?” the boy asked him.

“I’m fine.”

“You were just standing there.”

“I was a million miles away.”

The boy shuffled forward awkwardly.

“You’re Ahmed, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m John.”

The boy shrugged.

“Been playing football?”

He nodded.

“Who do you like?”

“What do you mean?”

“Which team?”

“Arsenal.”

“No,” Milton said with a smile. “Don’t say that.”

“What about you?”

“West Ham.”

“West Ham are rubbish,” the boy said.

Milton smiled. “I can’t argue with that.” Ahmed had lowered his defences a little. “Who’s your favourite player?” Milton asked him.

“Sanchez.”

“He’s good,” Milton conceded. “You don’t like Özil?”

“He’s all right. Sanchez is better.”

Milton could see that he was making progress. He decided to change tack just a little.

“Are your mum and dad okay?”

The wariness returned, and Milton doubted he would get anything out of him.

“What do you mean?”

Milton gestured to the door. “Some men came around the other day. I think they made a mess inside your flat. They pulled over your bookcase.”

The boy’s eyes hardened and, for a moment, Milton thought he was going to rebuff him. He bit his lip and grasped his football a little tighter to his chest.

“You don’t have to tell me about it,” Milton said. “I’m sorry.”

Ahmed shook his head. “My dad says I don’t need to worry about it. He gets angry when I ask, but I’ve heard him talking to my mum. They want money, but I don’t think my dad has enough. My mum says we might have to live somewhere else, but I don’t want to live anywhere else. I like living here. My friends live here.”

There came a loud sob from the flat. They both heard it. The boy flinched and looked as if he was very quickly going to become upset. Milton decided not to push things any more.

“Well, nice to meet you, Ahmed.”

He shuffled. “Yeah.”

“If there’s anything I can help you with, you just need to let me know. Okay?”

Ahmed shrugged and went to the door, but waited to open it. Milton realised that he wanted him to leave before he went inside. He took the hint, checked that the door to his flat was locked, followed the stairs down to the ground floor, and waited for a bus to take him to Dalston.

THE OFFICE that housed Transport for London’s customer service department was on Blackfriars Road. Hicks drove there and parked the Range Rover on a quiet side street. He took the bundle of notes and peeled off two twenties. He put them in his pocket and put the rest into the glove compartment. He stepped out, shut and locked the door, and went to the office.

It was a simple space with a row of chairs facing a smeared screen. A bored-looking clerk was chewing the nails of her left hand as she pressed a telephone receiver to her ear with her right. She saw Hicks and waved at him to sit down, mouthing that she would be with him soon. He did as he was told, sitting in one of the plastic chairs and looking at the posters that had been stuck to the walls.

Hicks found his thoughts returning to Isaacs. The old man disgusted him, and the thought of helping him was something he was finding very difficult to accept. No one had mentioned that the unit was engaged in work for clients like that. He realised that perhaps he hadn’t researched the opportunity that Higgins had presented with enough diligence. He could have said no then, before involving himself last night, but now that would be a difficult thing to do. No, he corrected himself. Not difficult. Impossible. And it would be similarly impossible to specify to the general which work he would accept and which he would decline. It didn’t work like that in the Regiment, and it wouldn’t work like that in the unit, either. Orders were orders. Work was work. You did as you were told. If you didn’t like it, you kept your mouth shut and did it anyway.

“Yes, darling?”

Hicks got up and went to the window.

“I’m looking for information on a taxi driver?”

“Not much I can give you, I’m afraid.”

“I have his number.”

“All I can do is tell you whether or not he’s registered.”

“Really? I left my luggage in the back of the cab. I was hoping I might be able to get in touch with him.”

“You need to go to the lost-property office. Baker Street. I can give you the number if you like.”

“I really need his address.”

She shook her head. “Can’t do that.”

“It’s very important,” he said.

She shook her head again.

Hicks took out the two twenties and slid them into the tray that was set into the counter beneath the screen.

“Please?”

She looked at the notes, paused, and, looking behind her to ensure that she wasn’t overlooked, nodded. “What’s the number, love?”

Hicks took out his phone, opened the note he had taken and recited it.

She tapped it into her computer. “His name is Edward Fabian. Ready to take his address?”

HICKS STEPPED outside into the gloomy afternoon and went back to his car. Edward Fabian’s address was listed as Wallwood Road in Leytonstone. He drove east. It was rush hour and there was a lot of traffic along the route. The drive took ninety minutes and it was early evening and already dark by the time he finally arrived.

The address was five minutes away from Leytonstone underground station, in the middle of a terrace in a rather downtrodden part of the district. Each house had a narrow slice of garden that separated it from the pavement, but none of the inhabitants seemed to be particularly interested in keeping them in good order. Weeds had been allowed to grow tall, and Fabian seemed to have used his garden as a depository for an old freezer and a sofa that had, at some point, been slashed with a knife so that the yellowed stuffing spilled out. A taxi was parked in the road; that, at least, was kept in good order, and the raindrops that rolled off the black paintwork glistened like little jewels in the dim light that filtered down through the angry clouds overhead.

Hicks stepped out of the car and approached the taxi. There was enough light from a streetlamp to read the licence number that had been fixed to the glass partition that separated the driver from the passengers. The number was the same as the one that Leo Isaacs had taken down. Hicks was satisfied: he was in the right place. He went back to the Range Rover and took out his phone. He dialled and waited for the general to pick up.

“Higgins.”

Hicks could hear the sound of a train in the background. The general was heading back to Hereford.

“I’m at the cabbie’s address, sir.”

“Where?”

“The East End. Leytonstone.”

“What’s his name?”

“Edward Fabian.”

“Is he at home?”

“His cab’s outside. There’s a light on inside the house.”

There was a pause.

“Sir? What do you want me to do?”

“Stay outside. I’ll call you back.”

HICKS WAITED. He had moved the car twenty feet down the road so that he wasn’t directly in front of the house. He had no idea whether Fabian was a particularly observant man, but there was no point in making his vigil an obvious one. His new vantage point offered an oblique view of the house, but it was still sufficient to see the lights, and there would be no way that Fabian would be able to leave without Hicks noticing him.

He spent the first hour getting a feel for the street and the surrounding area. It was quiet, residential, with very little passing traffic.

Ten o’clock came and went, and then eleven.

Hicks took out his phone and searched on Leo Isaacs’s name. A lot of results came back. There were articles on his ministerial career and others that suggested that he still had influence on policy from his position in the upper house. He went to the second and then the third page of results and found something else: a series of articles from several years earlier. They reported on a court case. Isaacs was alleged to have been found on Hampstead Heath with another man, engaged in what one of the more salacious newspapers described as an “unnatural sex act.” There had been a trial, but it had collapsed. Hicks looked for more, but that was as much as he could find.

The lights in the house remained lit.

Midnight.

The lights on the ground floor were extinguished and, after a pause, a light was turned on in a room on the floor above. A bedroom, perhaps. Eddie Fabian was turning in for the night.

Hicks stared up at the window. He was uncomfortable. He knew very little about Fabian, but he did know that Leo Isaacs was a deeply unpleasant man with an unpleasant past, and he would not have been disposed to help him under normal circumstances. Hicks had two boys, and if the things that Fabian had said about him were true, then he was a vile predator who deserved to rot in prison.