by Mark Dawson
Milton went back to the café. A group of middle-aged women were sitting at a table, gossiping as they enjoyed their teas. Another table was occupied by three young men in cheap tracksuits. He went to the desk and ordered a coffee. The owner was in her early thirties, trying to grasp the last of her looks with a blonde bleach job that had dried her hair out badly. She flirted with him, then tried to get him to buy a pastry. She spoke in Polish, and Milton—who did not speak it, nor wanted to reveal that he did not—answered with a shake of his head and refused to engage with her. She eventually got the message and went back to the crossword that she was doing.
Milton took a seat where he could watch the door and observed for ten minutes. There were no comings and goings, and the door remained closed. He took out his phone and opened his browser. He Googled the name of the club and found a series of pages in Polish. He couldn’t read the text, but it was apparent that the door led to a bar and nightclub.
He weighed his options. He knew where the men were based now. He could return later, when he had been able to study the building a little more and perhaps get an idea of the business that ran the club. There might be a company there, and he would be able to search Companies House for details on it. He might be able to find plans for the building. And then he could break in and look around.
That would have been the most sensible, the most careful option.
But Milton had watched the two of them shake down seven different tenants this afternoon. He had watched as the fat man had struck Ahmed’s father and threatened him with more. There was no point in trying to pretend that he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t reckless and would never have allowed his decisions to be sullied by anger, but there was a benefit to harnessing it and acting now, rather than later.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
MILTON WAITED another hour, just getting a feel for the place and watching the door. There were no other comings or goings.
He navigated to Gmail and checked that the video and audio from the bugs had uploaded successfully. The file was there, and he watched it through to ensure that it would underline the point that he was going to make.
Satisfied, he collected his bag from the floor, collected his leather jacket and walked to the door.
He looked back to the rest of the open floor. People were going about their business. No one was paying him any attention.
He pressed the intercom.
“No visitors.”
The intercom crackled as it was shut off.
Milton pressed the buzzer again.
“I tell you! We are closed.”
“I’m not going until you let me in.”
“I send someone down, make you leave.”
“Fine. I’ll be right here. Send them down.”
The intercom hissed again and fell silent.
Milton took the mini-Maglite from his pocket. He clenched his fist around it, feeling the cold, hard metal as it solidified the structure of his fingers. He hid his hand in the pocket of his jacket.
He pressed the buzzer and then held his thumb against it.
The intercom stayed silent. Milton waited for twenty seconds until the door opened.
It was the smaller of the two men whom Milton had been tailing all afternoon. He was a similar height and build to Milton. He had taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirt to reveal sleeves of tattoos on both arms. Milton could smell alcohol on his breath. Perhaps he had been celebrating a successful afternoon’s work.
“I tell you. No visitors.” The man looked at him as he spoke. There was a flicker of recognition. “Wait—I know you.”
“My name’s Smith.”
“I see you before.”
“You did. I live at Chertsey House. I’ve been following you all afternoon.”
The man’s mouth twisted into a grimace of irritation. Milton stepped forward, planting his right foot against the door. The man cursed in Russian and tried to close the door but could not. Milton had distracted him, and he didn’t notice as Milton raised his fist, squeezed the flashlight even tighter into his palm, and drilled him with a stiff jab that landed square against his chin. The force of the blow, amplified by the flashlight and surprise, meant that the man was unconscious before he hit the floor. He toppled back, falling against the stairs, the back of his head bouncing against one of the treads.
Milton stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and climbed the stairs.
#
THE FAT MAN was eating a plate of kielbasa, cutting up the sausage and shovelling it into his mouth. He was sat behind a table, the edge pressed into his pendulous gut, so close that he was unable to stand quickly enough when he saw Milton approach him. There was a glass of vodka on the table and, next to that, a pistol. Milton recognised it as a Russian Makarov.
“Hello,” Milton said.
“Where is Yuri?”
“Relax,” Milton said, fighting the urge to take the man by the back of the head and drive his face into his dinner. “He’s fine. Just having a rest.”
The man shuffled back in his chair, making enough space that he was able to stand. His fat hand pawed the Makarov. He stood and aimed it across the room.
“Put that down,” Milton said wearily.
“You don’t tell me what to do. Where is Yuri?”
“Who’s in charge here?”
“Maybe me,” the man said, stabbing the pistol forward in Milton’s direction.
“No,” Milton said, allowing a little more weariness to drip into his voice. “You and your friend are the muscle. You don’t have the intelligence to run an operation like this. You want to know how I know?” He waited, but nothing passed across the man’s face to disturb the blackened, piggish anger; Milton’s sangfroid was confusing him. “I’ll tell you how I know. I just knocked out your friend, saw he was carrying a weapon and I still came up here. If you were smart, you’d be asking yourself what would possess me to do a thing like that. Either I have a death wish—and I don’t—or I have something to tell your boss, something I’m very confident indeed that he’ll want to hear. But you didn’t think about that, did you? You just pulled your gun. And that’s how I know that you’re just the monkey. I came here to talk to the organ grinder. So go and get him, please.”
The man stood there, confused, and Milton could almost see the gears in his head as they started to turn. He wondered if he was going to have to goad him into action, but, after a long moment, the man told him to stay where he was and disappeared into the adjoining room.
Milton waited. He looked around. It was a pleasant room, furnished to a standard that was out of step with the supermarket below and the rest of the building. There were pictures on the walls in ostentatious gilded frames, a chandelier hung from the ceiling, the bar was crafted from polished oak, and the bottles behind it were lit. Milton went over to the bar. There was a bottle of Zubrowka Bison Grass vodka standing there. Milton picked it up and glanced at the label, then returned it.
Milton waited for another minute until the fat man returned with another man trailing behind him. The newcomer was wearing a grey suit, a shirt that he wore with the top two buttons undone, and heavy jewellery on his fingers and around his wrist and his neck.
“What is your name?”
“Smith. And you?”
“My name is Emil Zharkov. How can I help you, Mr. Smith?”
“You own a property in Bethnal Green. A flat in Chertsey House.”
Zharkov looked to the fat man. “Dmitri?”
“There is a family there, Emil. This mudak lives next to them.”
“And this sooka should be careful how he talks to me,” Milton retorted, the imprecation delivered with a perfect accent.
The suggestion that Milton might understand their language evidently gave them pause for thought. The fat man, Dmitri, looked confused for a moment before he realised that he couldn’t afford to lose face in front of his boss. He squared up to Milton and stepped forward until his face was six inches away. Milton stood his gro
und. He could smell the vodka and garlic on the man’s breath and see a fragment of sausage caught between his teeth.
“Say that again,” Dmitri said.
“Step back,” Milton said instead.
“Or you will do what, mudak?”
The fat man raised both hands and pushed Milton on the shoulders. Milton took a step back so that he was closer to the bar and then, without giving him a second warning, backhanded him across the face. The fat man fell to the side, his nose streaming blood.
“I’d like to speak to you without being threatened,” Milton said to Zharkov, not even out of breath. “Will that be possible, Emil?”
Milton knew that he had taken a risk, but he wanted to demonstrate that he was not to be taken lightly. Emil might be offended. He would probably feel threatened. But he hoped that he would take him seriously. The Russian paused, appraising Milton, considering how to respond, and then, after ten seconds, he responded with a friendly chuckle.
“You are an interesting man, Mr. Smith.”
The fat man pushed himself to his hands and knees and raised his head; blood dripped out of both nostrils. “Emil! He hit me!”
“Shut up, Dmitri. Go and clean yourself up. I talk to Mr. Smith now. If I need you, I call you.”
The fat man used the back of the chair to help him rise to his feet. He gave Milton a baleful stare, but he was not prepared to disobey his boss. He looked woozy, and as he relinquished his support, it looked for a moment as if he was going to fall; he managed to find his balance and slowly left the room.
“What do you do, Mr. Smith?”
“I work in a café.”
“Really? You work in café yet you have the guts to come here, to my club, to beat two of my men in front of me, when you must know that I am dangerous man.” By way of emphasis, he flicked back his jacket to reveal a shoulder holster with a pistol inside it. “You know these things, yet you still come here. No, Mr. Smith, you do not just work in café. Who are you really?”
“It doesn’t really matter who I am. I’m here to make you an offer.”
Emil sucked his teeth. “Very mysterious, Mr. Smith. But I admire your courage. Make me your offer. I will consider it.”
“The couple in the flat next to mine can’t afford to pay the rent that you are charging. Maybe they could when they moved in, but perhaps you have increased it?”
“It is free market, Mr. Smith. A man must make a living in this world.”
“I understand that. I’m not telling you your business. You are obviously successful.”
“Yes, Mr. Smith, I am. And you work in café.” It was a gentle reminder of their respective stations, and Milton was not minded to question it. “What is your offer?”
“The flat in Chertsey House. How much did it cost?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“I’m guessing one hundred and fifty thousand pounds.”
Milton lowballed the value, knowing that it would have cost more, but knowing, also, that, if he was fortunate, they were about to enter into a negotiation. He didn’t want to start too high.
Zharkov grinned. “Ten years ago, perhaps. Price goes up as years go by. Today’s value, two hundred.”
Milton had already checked, and he knew that that was about twenty-five thousand more than the property would fetch on the open market, but he wasn’t about to dispute it.
“I’d like to buy the property.”
“You?”
“That’s right.”
“You work in café. Now you want to be landlord?”
“I leave you to your business, Emil. Leave me to mine.”
“You are funny man, Mr. Smith. How does man like you find money to buy flat for two hundred thousand?”
“Who said I was offering two hundred?”
“That is price.”
Milton smiled. “No, Emil. It’s not.”
Emil’s sunny disposition became occluded by irritation. “That is price, Mr. Smith. I do not wish to sell. If you wish to buy, you pay price I tell you to pay.”
“I was hoping we could conclude this without the need for unpleasantness.” Milton shook his head, making a play of his disappointment. “Are you sure that two hundred is your best offer?”
“Are you threatening me?”
“I suppose I am.” He took out his phone, opened the media tab and selected the video he wanted to play. He passed the phone across the table. “Watch.”
Milton had checked that the footage was clean and that it showed exactly what he wanted it to show. The tiny camera that he had hidden had recorded the moment where Dmitri and Pavel had come into the flat. Their faces were clearly captured. The microphone had picked up the conversation: the father’s pleading for more time, Dmitri’s threats, the shriek from the wife as her husband was struck, Ahmed rushing in to stand between his father and Dmitri. Everything had been recorded. Everything had been evidenced.
Milton watched Emil's face as the footage played. His brows lowered and came closer together, his eyes burned.
The footage stopped. Milton reached out and collected the phone.
Zharkov slammed his fist on the table. “You are blackmailing me?”
“This is just a negotiation,” Milton said calmly. “I want that flat. I’m telling you what I’ll offer for it. I have fifty thousand pounds in my bag. I’m prepared to give that to you, right now. In return, I want you to sell me the flat.”
“Fifty? You are crazy!”
“That’s not everything that I’m offering, Emil. It’s fifty thousand, and I won’t pass this to the police. A man like you can afford the best lawyers, and they could make it so that you had a way out of the mess that I could cause. But lawyers are expensive. And it would disrupt your business. So I want you to try to put a value on those things, too, and add them to the fifty. Do you think we’re getting close to your valuation now?”
All of Emil’s previous bonhomie was gone, revealed for the flimsy veil that Milton had known that it was. He glared at him without any attempt to disguise his fury.
“You are brave man, Mr. Smith, coming into my club and threatening me. People have been badly hurt for less. Killed for less.”
“I’m sure they have. But you’re wasting your breath. I’m not frightened of you.”
You should be frightened of me.
Milton didn’t need to look to remember the locations of the weapons that were to hand: the glass on the table, the knife on the bar, the bottle on the bar, the corkscrew.
“You have deal,” Emil said, finally. His face showed disgust; with himself, perhaps, for being backed into a position where he had no room to manoeuvre. “The money?”
Milton reached down, collected the bag and deposited it on the table. The Pole unzipped it and took out one of the bundles of banknotes. It was apt, Milton thought, that the dirty money that Higgins had hoarded was now being put to good use. Some would help Hicks and his family; the rest would help Ahmed and his parents.
“And the video?”
“I’ll keep that. Just in case you think it would be a good idea to do something foolish.”
“Not acceptable.”
“I don’t care. It’s the only choice you’ve got. What’s it going to be: yes or no?”
Emil must have realised that the files were digital and that Milton would have backups, and, after another moment of irritated contemplation, he spat a Polish curse and put out his hand.
Milton didn’t take it. “Contact your solicitor and have him draw up the transfer documents for the house. I’ll come back this time next week and we can sign them.”
He stood.
“Why you do this, Smith? Why you put yourself in my business like this?”
“I’ve been wading through shit for the last week, Emil, and I’ve had enough of it. I want to do something good.”
He left the money on the table, turned his back and, without a backward glance, walked to the door.
No one tried to stop him.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
MILTON WALKED through the supermarket and back outside into the darkening afternoon. He found the Volkswagen and set off. He needed to get back home. He wanted a shower, to wash the grime and muck from his body, and then he would have to start thinking about his shift at the shelter. He had missed a few nights recently. Cathy had been kind about it, but he didn’t want to let her down or take advantage of her good nature.
The traffic choked up on Newham Way as he headed back to the west. Milton stared out at the long row of red taillights ahead of him, curving around the bend as the road turned through Beckton Park.
Milton saw the Nissan again as the traffic started to flow a little more freely. He had just passed through Beckton District Park; he signalled and exited the road at the junction with the A112, and then turned sharp left onto Tollgate Road. The Nissan signalled, too, and followed him off the main road. Milton flicked his eyes back to the mirror and saw a second car turning left, the three of them now heading east on Tollgate Road.
It was a two lane road that was hemmed in with 1950s terraced housing. The residents parked their cars in bays that alternated on the left and right sides of the road. The channel that remained in the middle was narrow, with only just enough space for both lanes of traffic to navigate easily.
Milton dabbed the brakes to allow the Nissan to draw a little nearer.
Milton recognised the driver.
He sped up a little, continuing ahead until he passed onto a stretch of the road that cut through the park he had seen earlier. There were metal railings on either side and then wide open spaces.
The Nissan’s driver kept the distance down to twenty metres between the two cars.
Milton stamped on the brakes.
The driver behind him was too slow to react, and, although he managed to slow a little, it wasn’t enough to prevent his car from bumping into the back of Milton’s Volkswagen.