by Mark Dawson
“We’ve got trouble, sir,” Hicks said.
“I already know that. Who did that to you?”
“His name is Milton.”
“Who?”
“He’s bad news, sir.”
The old man paused, his brow wrinkling as he tried to remember. “Milton. I know the name.”
“He used to be in the Regiment. He told me to tell you. He said you’d remember him.”
“John Milton?”
“Yes.”
“I do remember. He was good. Very good. MI6 poached him. He went into intelligence.”
“Yes, sir. The Firm. Group Fifteen. He was a headhunter, in the same unit they tabbed me for. He was the senior agent when I was being tested. It was him who bounced me out.”
“He did this to you?”
“Yes, sir. This afternoon.”
“Why?”
“It was Milton’s car I saw when Eddie Fabian died. Milton killed him.”
“What? How do you know that?”
“Because he told me.”
Hicks said it and tried to make it sound plausible. There were so many ways that he could be tripped up, and he tried not to think about them. If he allowed even the smallest sliver of doubt to enter his thinking, he wouldn’t be able to persuade Higgins that he was telling the truth.
Higgins sat. “This doesn’t make any sense, Corporal.”
“Milton saw me the night Fabian died. I didn’t think he did—I was in a ditch—but he did. And then he saw my car. We’d parked it up the road.”
“That’s true,” Shepherd said. “But we—”
“He’s observant. He saw it. Took the plate and got my details. He’s been following me ever since.”
Higgins closed his eyes.
“He jumped me. Put my lights out. I woke up and he had a gun in my face. I would never have said anything if it was just me, but he knew about my family. He threatened them. My kids. He said he’d kill them all if I didn’t tell him what he wanted to know. I know what Milton is capable of. He would have done it.”
Higgins raised a hand. “Wait a minute. Go back. What did Fabian have to do with Milton?”
“Milton’s freelancing. He’s been working for Frankie Fabian.”
Higgins scowled. “I don’t understand. Why would Fabian have Milton kill his own son?”
Hicks closed his eyes, desperately trying to remember the exact way that he and Milton had put the explanation together. “Eddie was involved with the Fabian family business. Milton said there was a robbery, years ago, and this guard got shot. Eddie was there. He regretted what happened, and he couldn’t keep it to himself any longer. Guilt. Eddie was going to grass them all up. But his old man found out.”
Higgins was staring right at Hicks. “Okay. Let me get this straight. Milton is an assassin.”
“Yes.”
“And Frankie Fabian pays Milton to kill Eddie Fabian.”
“Yes, sir. Milton drugged him, gassed him, made it look like he’d topped himself.”
Higgins frowned. Hicks didn’t know if he was making headway or not. “But then Milton went to the funeral. You saw him—you all did.”
“Yes, sir,” Shepherd said.
“Why would he go to the funeral?”
Hicks had anticipated that. “Because he’d been following me. He knew we were involved.”
“He took our photos,” Shepherd added.
“He wanted to know who we were,” Hicks explained.
Higgins held up his hands to stall the others from speaking. “So, he gets your registration. He tracks you down. He follows you. He takes you out. And then?”
“He took me to an empty lock-up. I don’t know where it was. He put me in the boot of the car when he let me out. He dumped me in the middle of nowhere.”
“What did he want?”
“Everything.”
“And?”
Hicks shrugged. He would not normally have wanted to rouse the old man’s anger, but now it was the only thing he wanted. Anger might mean that he believed what Hicks was saying. “I told him nothing, not at first. He worked me over; I kept my mouth shut. All I gave him was the usual: name, rank, number. He kept working me over, I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he told me he knew I was lying. He had audio to prove it.”
“What?”
“Milton bugged my car.” Hicks reached into his pocket and took out the voice recorder that Milton had given him. It was a BlackRange unit, available on the Internet for a hundred pounds. It was the size of his index finger, was equipped with a strong magnet, and had a battery life of seven days. “It was underneath my seat,” he explained, using the line that Milton had prepared for him. “I found it when I got back to the car.”
Higgins put his head in his hands. “Jesus. How long had it been there?”
“He put it in sometime after the night we went after Fabian, I don’t know when exactly, but he played a recording of me on the phone to Shepherd talking about Isaacs after you and I met him. We spoke about the photos.”
He turned to Shepherd. “Did you?”
“We might have done. It’s not impossible.”
“Did you say where they were?”
“I think we did,” Shepherd said quietly and then, with more heat, “but it wouldn’t have mattered if this fucking amateur hadn’t allowed his car to be bugged!”
The general’s face had gradually turned a deep shade of mauve. His temper was never far from the surface, and it was close to overflowing now.
“So Milton knew about the vault?”
Hicks nodded.
“He did it?”
“He went back to Frankie Fabian and told him. Fabian put a team together. But Milton was involved.”
“Fuck!”
“Fabian has it all now. The evidence. He doesn’t care about his son. Maybe he takes out the pictures with Eddie. Maybe he doesn’t. He sees the bottom line: it’s a chance to make a big score. Milton says he’s going to blackmail Isaacs and the others.”
“Good luck to him,” Higgins said.
“What?”
“You see the news, Hicks?” Woodward said. “You can’t blackmail a dead man.”
Hicks understood what must have happened. The general was tidying up.
Higgins was still glaring at him. “What about the rest of the box?”
“Sir?”
“It wasn’t just the evidence. I had assets there. Money. A lot of it.”
Hicks nodded that he understood. Milton had explained that to him, too. There had been cash in Higgins’s box. Milton had opened the bag and showed him.
Higgins was still talking, saying that Woodward had money in the vault, too, but Hicks had temporarily zoned out. He swallowed hard on a dry throat. This was it. He had baited the hook as best he could. Everything depended on the hope that he had done enough. He had to pray that Higgins would bite.
“Hicks,” the general was saying. “Hicks, wake up.”
“I’m sorry. I’m full of Brufen. I feel a bit light-headed.”
“Why did Milton let you out?”
“He wants to talk to you. Fabian has everything in your box and all the other boxes they opened.”
Higgins got up and paced the room. He turned back, his face dark with anger. “He wants to talk?”
“He has a business proposal for you.”
“You’re kidding? He stole from me; now he wants to talk business?”
“I—”
There was a glass on the table. Higgins swiped out with his arm, grabbed the glass and flung it against the wall. It shattered just behind Gillan. The big man flinched from the shock of it, the shards of glass falling down onto his shoulders.
Hicks recoiled. “He only cares about money. Fabian paid well. He said maybe you’ll pay better. He said he’ll help you get your property back in exchange for half of it. It’s not just your property, though. It’s half of everything they took. Milton says it’s millions. He says you’ll come out of this ahead.
”
“Anything else?” Higgins asked, not trying to hide his scorn and anger.
“He said you needed to remember him. What he’s capable of doing. He said accept what’s happened, that it was just business. If you’re not interested, then he said you should let it go. If you don’t, he’ll come after you.”
“He’s warning me off? Who the fuck does he think he is? Who the fuck?” He turned back to them all, his clenched fists resting on the table. Hicks knew that this was it: this was the moment where the decision as to whether he lived or died was to be taken. Had he played the part well enough? He couldn’t say.
Higgins was shrewd. He cleared his head, and, when he spoke again, there was more control in his voice. “Fine. I’ll speak to him. Have a little chat, see what he has to say. Maybe he can help, maybe he can’t. One way or another, I’m going to burn down Fabian’s house and then, when I’ve got my money back, I’m going to find Milton and take my time finishing him off.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
OLIVIA CAME AROUND as they dragged her out of the Ford. Her head pounded, as if she had been out drinking all day and now she was suffering with a brutal hangover. She had no strength in her legs, and she was too dazed to struggle as the men on either side of her carried her across a parking area and into a house that she thought she recognised. She let her head hang down, trying to suppress the bout of nausea that rose along her gullet, and failing. She threw up, hot vomit that spattered down onto the gravel that she was being carried across.
“Shit!” she heard one of the men protest.
“Not on my shoes!”
“Get her inside.”
She heard the crunch of their footsteps and the scrape of her feet as they dug furrows through the stone chips. She felt sick again and started to heave, but there was nothing left to bring up. She spat, trying to get the taste out of her mouth, and blinked her eyes to try to clear away the wooziness.
She started to remember.
“No,” she moaned, much too weak to do anything to disturb the men who were dragging her toward the house. “No. Let me go.”
They carried her into a porch and then into a hall. The difference in temperature was stark, and it made her feel queasy once more. Another wave of lassitude swept over her, and she lacked the strength to even raise her head. She closed her eyes again.
“What’ve you done to her?” a third voice asked.
“Just knocked her out for the journey. Where do you want her?”
“Put her in the kitchen. Give her a glass of water.”
She was carried through the house, aware of the sound of conversation around her, but unable to distinguish the words from the droning buzz. She felt something bump up against her legs and then something firm and flat onto which her weight was lowered. A hand on her shoulder held her upright. She heard the sound of running water and then tasted it on her lips. She sipped it, using it to wash away the taste of the vomit. It gave her a measure of strength, and she raised her head and opened her eyes.
She was in a big country kitchen. She saw a long wooden table, big enough for a dozen people, freestanding units, a large cast-iron range. There were four men in the room with her: one, to her right, was supporting her in the chair; another was to her left, the man who had badged her before she had been taken to the car; the third, the man who had driven the car, was older; the fourth, holding the glass to her lips, was Frankie Fabian.
“Hello,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“You… kidnapped me.”
“I wanted to have a talk. Some things have happened that have caused me a bit of a problem. I think you can help me to understand them.”
She turned her head to look at the driver of the car. “You… drugged… me.”
“Sorry about that,” the man said, chuckling as he turned away, and Olivia remembered where she had seen him before: it was the detective inspector to whom she had spoken in the aftermath of Eddie Fabian’s death. His name was Bruce.
Olivia felt the fatigue returning, and her head fell forward, her chin resting on her chest. There was a gentle slapping on her cheek.
“Wake up, Olivia,” Fabian said.
She felt water on her face. It was in her eyes, on her cheeks, in her nostrils and her mouth and her eyes. She shook her head and snorted, and blinked to clear her eyes. The sudden coldness shocked her back to awareness again. “Wake up,” Fabian was saying, his voice suddenly purposeful and stern. “I have some questions for you, and you are going to answer them.” He slapped her again, harder this time, and she opened her eyes and looked up into his. His face was close to hers, inches away, close enough to see the hairs in his nostrils and smell the alcohol on his breath. His eyes were blank and pitiless. “Let’s start with John Smith. Who is he, Olivia? Tell me everything.”
The last dregs of the narcotic fugue were blown away, and Olivia started to feel afraid.
Chapter Fifty
MILTON LEARNED ABOUT the death of Leo Isaacs on the news. He was back at the hotel, waiting to hear from Hicks. The phone was charging on the table, and Milton had been casting glances at it in the hope that, maybe, it would make it ring a little quicker. It did not, of course, and, as the hours passed, he had started to worry that Hicks had not been as persuasive as he would have needed to be. If Higgins didn’t believe him, his future prospects would not have been particularly bright. There was nothing that Milton could do to help him now. That would come later. For now, it was all on him.
He had switched on the television because he wanted a distraction. The hotel was budget, with a limited selection, and he had flicked through the end of a football highlights show before settling on the late news. He watched it distractedly, not really paying attention, until the newscaster mentioned Leo Isaacs’s name. Milton sat bolt upright, reached for the remote and turned up the volume. The woman explained that Isaacs, who she said had been a prominent member of the government during the 1980s, had been found dead that evening. She reported that the man’s body had been found in the gardens of the apartment block where he lived, the working hypothesis being that he had fallen over the edge of his balcony and plunged to his death. The police were investigating, but there were no current suggestions of foul play. It was, she said, looking like a tragic accident.
An accident? Milton shook his head. It wasn’t an accident. Higgins was moving quickly to insulate himself.
He was considering how that might change the equation when the telephone rang.
“Hello?” he said.
“John,” a voice replied. It wasn’t Hicks. It was a woman. Her voice was cracked and hoarse. She sounded terrified.
Milton felt a moment of intense worry. He recognised the voice. “Olivia?”
“I’m in the shit, John.”
“Where are you?”
She didn’t answer.
“Where are you?”
Olivia still did not reply.
“Olivia?”
“She’s with me.”
It was Frankie Fabian.
Milton clenched his jaw and tightened his grip on the telephone, but he did not respond.
“Are you there?”
“I’m here,” Milton said.
“You were with Miss Dewey yesterday. We picked her up after you left. I thought it would be helpful to have a discussion.”
“About?”
“Well, you, for one. You are a very interesting man. And then there’s the story she was thinking about writing. I say story—I should say stories, I suppose. The armed robbery and what happened to Eddie when he was a boy. She’s explained what you really wanted in the vault.”
“She has nothing to do with me. If you think you can get to me by threatening her, you’re wasting your time. Do what you like. I don’t care.”
“Really? You’re bluffing.”
“Try me.”
“Please, Mr. Smith, just stop. You are bluffing. You didn’t go into the vault for money. I’ve spoken to my boys’ brief. They said you
left almost everything there. No diamonds. Some cash, but not as much as you could have had. So what you told me, all that nonsense about extorting Eddie, it was all a pack of lies. You went to get photographs of Eddie from the eighties, didn’t you? I’ve been trying to work out why you would do something like that? Eddie is dead. You don’t owe him anything. And what you did was very, very dangerous.”
Milton knew he shouldn’t rise to the bait, but he couldn’t quench the upswell of anger. “Because Eddie deserves the chance for his stories to be told. Both of them.”
Fabian chuckled. “See, I was right. You have a conscience, Mr. Smith. You have a bleeding heart. You don’t want anything to happen to the girl. Stop pretending.”
Milton clamped his teeth together until the pressure made his jaw ache.
“Mr. Smith?”
“What do you want?”
“A second chance. We got off on the wrong foot. I’d like to start again. Do you think we could do that?”
“What’s the point?”
“Because there’s a way out of this that would make everyone happy. I don’t want the story about Eddie and my boys to be published. Olivia wants to get home to write the story about Eddie being abused. She should be able to do that. I’d like her to do that. I’d even be happy to help. And you, Mr. Smith, I think that should be enough for you, too. I won’t lie—I’m angry about what you did. But the damage can be repaired. My boys are coming out tomorrow.”
“What?”
“They’re being bailed. One of the benefits of having a bit of cash behind you is that you can hire the absolute best. They’re bang to rights, of course, no getting around the fact they were found in the vault, but there are ways we can manage the fallout. I’m telling you that because I don’t want you to think I’m going to hold what happens to them over your head. I’m bigger than that.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Let’s talk. Work it all out.”
“Where?”
“Come to the house.”
Milton laughed. “I don’t think so.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“Funnily enough, I don’t.”
“Fine. Somewhere public. Lots of people. There’s a restaurant in Covent Garden. Rules. Do you know it?”