by Mark Dawson
“Doing well.”
“Coffee with one sugar?”
“You remembered.”
“Do this as long as I have, you remember everyone.”
Milton thanked her, waited for her to make his coffee and took the mug, together with a chocolate digestive biscuit, into the vestry room. It was bright and airy, with large windows that reached from the ceiling all the way down to panelled wainscoting. Engraved boards recorded the names and dates of service of all the vicars who had worked in the church. A cast-iron chandelier was suspended above a large oval table with twelve chairs. There were more chairs around the edge of the room and a fireplace with a large mirror fixed above the mantelpiece. The walls had not been painted for years and there were chips in the woodwork. It would have been a grand room, once, but now it had been allowed to become shabby. But Milton liked it. It was full of character, and its decrepitude reminded him of all the thousands of men and women who must have sat in this room over the course of the decades. Today, the room had been decked out with AA posters and the long scroll that held the twelve steps. A small table held a supply of pamphlets and several brand-new editions of the Big Book, the bible that set out the creed of the organisation’s founder, Bill Wilson.
Milton was one of the first inside and, instead of taking one of the chairs at the table, he sat in the corner at the back of the room. The idea of sitting where everyone could see him, his back to at least half of the room, was one he found profoundly unsettling. His position also allowed him to watch the others as they filed inside. It was a busy meeting, and the chairs around the table and then the others all around it were quickly taken.
Milton watched the doorway for Eddie, but he didn’t come through. He had been to the last three or four meetings that Milton had attended here, but his absence today wasn’t surprising. Milton wondered if he might have been embarrassed to have stood him up, or perhaps he was regretting his candour when he came to see him in the shelter. Or perhaps he had fallen off the wagon after all.
The secretary was a white-haired old lady who, Milton had heard, had once been something of a leading light in Tin Pan Alley, the street of musical shops that was close by the church. She sat down in the last remaining chair at the table and banged a small gavel.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “This is the regular meeting of the St Giles in the Fields group of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Edith and I am an alcoholic.”
“Hello, Edith,” they resounded.
“Let us open the meeting with a moment of silence followed by the Serenity Prayer.”
There was a pause as the attendees closed their eyes and reflected. Milton thought of Eddie again. He had skipped the meeting because he was ashamed. He must have known that Milton would be here tonight; he had chosen not to attend to spare himself the humiliation. Milton found himself hoping that he had found another meeting. He had had the look of someone who needed one very badly.
Edith spoke again, her words echoed by the others in the room. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
Milton closed his eyes. There was nothing he could do about Eddie now. There was another meeting tomorrow; perhaps he would see him then. For now, though, he would listen to the shares of the men and women who were here with him, and try to find the meditative peace that always helped him to calm his mind.
“Amen,” he intoned.
Chapter Twenty-One
THE POSTMAN was waiting outside the door to Milton’s flat as he returned from his run the following morning.
“Special delivery,” the man said. “John Smith?”
“That’s me,” he said, signing the docket and taking the package.
He went into the kitchen, took a knife and sliced through the brown paper. Inside was a cardboard box that contained the two smaller boxes that he had purchased from a private seller on eBay. The first contained what looked like the kind of passive infrared sensor that was fitted to the wall to detect motion for an alarm system. But this wasn’t a sensor; instead, it was a disguised camera that could record video or broadcast it via Wi-Fi. He had seen the sensors in the flat next door while the door had been left open and noticed that they were identical to the ones in his flat. The council, who had owned the building until relatively recently, must have fitted the same alarms to all of the properties. Milton took the fake sensor and compared it to the one in his hall. It wasn’t identical, but one bland white box was much the same as another, and there was enough of a resemblance that the fake would pass muster unless someone knew to look.
Milton went back to the kitchen and opened the second box. It contained a miniature microphone hidden within the fascia of a functional double wall socket.
Milton took two paperclips. He unfolded them and straightened the first all the way out, apart from a tiny upward kink at the tip. The first clip would be his pick. He removed both bends in the second clip until he had two straight wires with a curve at the end. He pressed the curved end down until he had a ninety degree bend that was about a centimetre long. This clip would be his tension wrench.
He took the camera, microphone, paperclips and a screwdriver, and went out into the vestibule. Ahmed’s family had gone out half an hour earlier; Milton had heard the door shut, and had watched through the window to be certain. Both parents were at work and the children were at school. It was unlikely that he would be disturbed.
The door was secured by the same flimsy lock that was fitted to his door. He checked to ensure that he was undisturbed, inserted the wrench into the lock and then applied pressure, turning it in the direction that the lock turned. He inserted the pick into the lock and raked it, applying upwards pressure and setting the pins. There were five of them; he set them all and then carefully turned the handle. The door opened.
Milton went inside and closed the door behind him.
The flat was laid out identically to his, exactly as he had expected. He saw boxes of children’s toys, shelves stuffed with children’s books, a scrupulously clean and tidy kitchen. But Milton had no interest in looking around; he wanted to be in and out as quickly as possible.
There were motion sensors in each room, but the one in the hallway overlooked the doorways to the sitting room and bedrooms; it was the one that would most likely offer the widest coverage. Milton took his screwdriver and removed the little white box. He switched on the camera. It was activated by sound or motion, and had a battery that would last for a week; Milton would break in again to change it if nothing had happened by the time it was exhausted. He peeled off the adhesive strips on the rear of the fake and placed it carefully where the sensor had been, and then stepped back and checked that it was unobtrusive. It was.
He went into the sitting room. There was a mess of wires behind the television, with two adaptors connecting the various appliances to the mains. Milton disconnected them all and unscrewed the fascia. He took the replacement, wired it back in, and screwed it to the wall. It was an excellent fake, and, especially after he had reconnected the appliances, completely indistinguishable from the socket he had removed. The bug was mains powered and had its own SIM card; it worked just like a mobile phone, but without a screen or keypad.
It had taken Milton five minutes to break in and install the bugs. He checked that he was leaving with everything that he had brought into the flat, opened the door, and left. He went to his own flat, took out his laptop and ensured that he was receiving both sound and vision. He was. Satisfied, he switched the laptop off. He had no interest in spying on the family. He would only activate the bugs when he needed them.
#
THAT NIGHT’S MEETING was at St Mary Abchurch. Milton had had a terrible time finding it on the occasion of his first visit; it was hidden between Lombard Street and Cannon Street, in the middle of London’s financial district. Both of those roads were busy thoroughfares, thronged with traffic and workers leaving their of
fices at the end of busy days, but as he turned south onto Sherborne Lane, the noise became more of a background hum. He felt the usual sense of tranquillity as he put the city behind him. There was a large pub called The Vintry at the end of the lane, and the church was to the left of that. The building was anonymous from this angle, a heavy red brick construction with stone dressings that, together with the office building on the right, provided the broad shoulders through which the narrow alleyway passed. Milton looked up at the four-storey tower, the leaded spire scraping the slate grey skies. A line of motorcycles was parked at the end of the alley, and the wide, studded oak door was open to allow access to the stone lobby and the church beyond.
The teas and coffees were served in the lobby, and smokers congregated outside to enjoy a cigarette before the meeting started. Milton took out his own packet, put one to his mouth and lit it. The secretary came into the lobby and announced that the meeting was about to start. Milton looked at his watch: seven. He finished the cigarette and dropped it to the ground. Rain started to fall, a light drizzle at first, but with the promise of something more. Milton went inside and the door was closed.
They had to pass through the main body of the church to get to the meeting room. It was an impressive sight, much grander than Milton would have expected having seen only the exterior of the building. The ceiling took the form of a large dome pierced by four windows. The interior of the dome was decorated with a painted choir of angels and cherubs surrounding a golden glow in the centre of which was the name of God in Hebrew characters. The church was cool and dark, and echoing acoustics had the effect of reducing conversations to reverent whispers.
The meeting room, on the other hand, was brightly lit and lively, with open three-bar fires providing the warmth. The others had taken their positions. Milton found an empty seat at the back of the room and sat down.
The secretary, a rotund American called Harry whom Milton found a little odd, was behind the table at the front alongside the man who had been asked to share his story.
Harry cleared his throat. “Good evening, everyone. This is the regular meeting of the St Mary Abchurch group of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Harry and I am an alcoholic.”
“Hello, Harry.”
“Thank you for coming on this damp and cold evening. First of all, I have some very sad news. I know some of you have heard already, but Eddie, a good friend of many of us and an occasional visitor to this meeting, passed away yesterday.” The words cut through Milton’s reverie and he sat up straight. “I don’t want to speculate when the details are still unclear, but, from what I understand, he took his own life. It is obviously a terrible, tragic loss that is difficult to understand. Those of us who knew Eddie also knew that he had been struggling with his sobriety lately, but that as recently as the last meeting here, just two days ago, he shared that he felt he was close to a breakthrough. I’ll say no more about it now, save that we should take this as a reminder that our disease can strike unpredictably and that it is something we must always be vigilant against. And it is something we should always look for in our fellow alcoholics. If we feel that someone is struggling, then it is our duty to reach out a helping hand. I don’t know if Eddie asked for help. He was a private man; I suspect he kept his problems to himself. But I’m sure he would be the first to say that we shouldn’t be afraid to ask for a helping hand. Let’s just have a moment of quiet to think of him before the Serenity Prayer.”
The room fell silent. Milton stared dead ahead, unable to concentrate. His mind was spinning. Dead? He immediately flashed back to the conversation that they had had in the shelter. Eddie had reached out for help. He had reached out to him. Why, then, after they had agreed on a way forward, had he done something as stupid—something as final—as this? He reached back, trying to remember the way that he had looked and the words that he had used. Had he been suicidal? Milton didn’t think so. He was going to see his sister. He looked frightened, but not resigned. There was a world of difference.
The meeting continued. The share was from a man who said that he worked in the film industry, but Milton didn’t hear a word of it. He thought about Eddie and what he had said to him and what could possibly have happened between him leaving the shelter and what had come next.
#
MILTON WOULD normally have left the meeting as soon as it was finished. He had to get to the shelter to relieve Cathy for the night, and it was a reasonable walk from here. But he waited in the church lobby as the others filed out. Harry was still in the meeting room, tidying away the posters and rolling up the scroll so that it could be slipped back into its cardboard case.
Milton cleared his throat. “Could I have a word?”
Harry looked up. “Hello, John. What’s on your mind?”
“It’s Eddie.”
“Awful,” Harry said. “It’s horrible.”
“You said you didn’t know whether he asked for help.”
“That’s right.”
“He did. He came to see me.”
“Really?”
“The same night.”
“And?”
“And he didn’t seem suicidal. I wondered if you knew anything else?”
Harry laid a hand on Milton’s arm. “If you stay in these rooms as long as I have, you’ll see this again. I know that’s no consolation. You know what we say about our disease: it is cunning, baffling and powerful. Eddie wouldn’t be the first to hide how he was really feeling, and he won’t be the last.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Milton said quietly, his mind starting to turn over again.
Harry continued, but Milton didn’t hear him.
“John,” he repeated.
“Sorry.”
“You know you’ll have to go to the police.”
“What?” Milton said vaguely.
“The police. Eddie came to see you. You’ll have to tell them about what Eddie said to you.”
Milton hadn’t thought of that. “Yes,” he said. “You’re right.”
“They’ll have questions for you.”
“Do you know where he was found?”
“In his taxi. He’d driven out into the countryside. I think it was near Oxford. Littleton? Littleworth? I can’t remember.”
“Do you know how?”
“They’re saying he gassed himself in his car.”
They continued for a moment or two longer, the usual platitudes that Milton was able to recite without really concentrating on what was being said.
“I better be going,” he said at last.
“You mustn’t blame yourself. It’s not your fault.”
Milton thanked him, but he wasn’t sure whether he agreed with him.
#
IT WAS A FORTY-MINUTE walk from the Bank of England to Russell Square. The rain was coming down more heavily now, and Milton would usually have taken a bus or the tube to Oxford Circus. He waited at the entrance to the underground for a moment, watching the men and women waiting patiently to file down the stairs into the steamy interior, and decided against it. He wanted to clear his head, and it would be easier to do that with a little exercise.
He set off to the east, passing St Paul’s Cathedral and following Newgate Street until it ran into Holborn. The traffic passed by, headlights reaching out into the gloom, red taillights refracting against the wet asphalt. The rain fell more heavily now, soaking his hair and running down into his eyes and mouth. He wiped it away, pulled up his collar and kept going.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Eddie. The more he thought about it, the less he could accept that he had killed himself. It was true what Harry had said: alcoholism was a cunning disease, and alcoholics made for skilful dissemblers. But Milton was a good judge of character. He had been in situations where he had needed to read people, often instantly, and he always backed his intuition. Nothing about their meeting had given him anything to think that the man might not have been truthful with him or that he was hiding his real feelings. The idea that he had
killed himself just felt wrong.
He turned onto Southampton Row and headed north. It was another half a mile and, by the time he reached the shelter, he was wet through. There were a couple of cabs parked outside and a third just pulling away. The driver, an Arsenal fan called Bob, sounded the horn as he saw Milton jog across the road and Milton raised his hand in greeting. He opened the door and stepped inside. Two cabbies were sitting on either side of the shelter, both of them working through bacon sandwiches and mugs of tea. The stove was lit and pumping heat around the small room. It was warm, almost stifling, and Milton was glad of it as he took off his coat and hung it on one of the hooks.
“Look at the state of you,” Cathy said. “You’re soaked through.”
“I’ll dry soon enough,” he said.
She gave him a dishcloth and he used it to scrub his scalp until his hair was dry.
“Are you all right, love?”
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You look preoccupied.”
“There’s a driver comes in here,” he said. “His name’s Eddie. Do you know him?”
“I can think of a couple,” she said.
One of the other men looked up. “You mean Eddie Fabian?”
“I don’t know his second name.”
“The bloke who topped himself?”
“Yes,” Milton replied. “Do you know him?”
“Well enough to pass the time of day with. He was a quiet bloke most of the time. Kept himself to himself. Terrible what happened, though.”
“What did you hear?”
“I was speaking to a couple of the other blokes this afternoon. They said they found him in his cab out in the countryside. Parked up, put a hose on his exhaust and gassed himself. Bloody awful.”
Milton went through into the kitchen. There was barely enough space for him and Cathy.
“Did you know him?” she asked quietly.
“Not really,” Milton said. He wasn’t about to tell her about AA. She seemed as if she was a broad-minded woman, but you never really knew, and Milton did not want to risk losing his job so soon after he had started it. AA was anonymous. And there was a duty of confidence, too. It was not his place to tell anyone else about Eddie’s problems.