by Mark Dawson
“You didn’t. I’m not questioning that.”
“But you’re questioning something?” Milton said.
Again, his tone was harsh. Control ignored it. “You said it yourself. No witnesses.”
“The boy? Why I didn’t shoot him?”
“It might be distasteful, but you know how clear we are about how we conduct ourselves on operations.” Control was tense. The conversation was not developing as he had anticipated, and he was not in the business of being surprised. There was a whiteness around the edges of Milton’s lips. The blue eyes still stared blankly, almost unseeingly.
“I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies since I’ve been working for you, sir.”
Control replied with as much patience as he could manage. “Of course you have, Milton. You’re an assassin. Dead bodies are your stock in trade.”
He might not even have heard him. “I can’t keep pretending to myself anymore. We make decisions about who lives and who dies but it’s not always black and white when you’re in the middle of it. As you say, the rules of engagement were clear. I should have shot him. Ten years ago, when I signed up for this”––the word carried a light dusting of contempt––“I probably would have shot him. Like a good soldier.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I couldn’t.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Ten years is a long time for this kind of work, sir. Longer than anyone else. And I haven’t been happy lately. I don’t think I’ve ever really been happy.”
“I don’t expect you to be happy.”
Milton had become agitated and pressed on. “I’ve got blood on my hands. I used to tell myself the same things to justify it but they don’t work any more. That policeman didn’t deserve to die. The boy didn’t deserve to lose his parents. We made a widow and an orphan because of a lie. And I’m not doing it any longer, sir. I’m finished.”
Control spoke carefully. “Are you trying to resign?”
“You can call it whatever you like. My mind is made up.”
Control rose. He needed a moment to tamp down his temper. This was perilously close to insubordination and, rather than lash out, he went across to the mantelpiece and adjusted the photograph of his family. He spoke carefully: “What’s the Group for, Milton?”
“Framing. Extortion. Elimination.”
“Jobs that are too dirty for Her Majesty’s security services to touch.”
“Quite so, sir.”
“And your job?”
“Cleaner.”
“Which means?”
“‘From time to time Her Majesty’s government needs to remove people whose continued existence poses a risk to the effective conduct of public order. The government requires particularly skilled professionals who are prepared to work on a non-attributable basis to deal with these problems.’ Cleaners.”
He smiled without humour. That was the job description he had used when he recruited him all those years ago. All those neutral euphemisms, all designed to make the job easier to palate. “It takes a special kind of man to do that kind of work. There are so few of you––and, unfortunately, that makes you rather difficult to replace.” He paused. “Do you know how many people you’ve eliminated for me?”
Milton replied without even thinking. “One hundred and thirty-six.”
“You’re my best cleaner.”
“If you like.”
“Once, perhaps. Not any more. I can’t ignore it any longer. I can’t keep my mouth shut just to avoid being unprofessional. I’m lying to myself. We have to face facts, sir. Dress it up however you like––neutralisation, elimination––but those are just euphemisms for what it is I really do. I’m paid to murder people.”
Control was not getting through to him. “Murder?” he exclaimed. “What are you talking about, man? Don’t be so soft. You want to moralise? You know what would happen if the Iranians get the bomb. There’ll be a war. A proper war that will make Iraq look like a walk in the bloody park. Thousands of people will die. Hundreds of thousands. Removing those two made that prospect a little less likely. And they knew the risk they were taking. You can call it murder if you like but they were not innocents. They were combatants.”
“And the policeman? The boy?”
“Unfortunate, but necessary.”
“Collateral damage?”
Control felt he was being goaded. He took a breath and replied with a taut, “Indeed.”
Milton folded his arms. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m done with you. I’m finished.”
Control walked up to Milton, circled him close, noticed the tension in the shoulders and the clenched fists. “No-one is ever really finished with me. You can’t resign. You can’t retire. You’re a murderer, as you say. It’s all you know. After all, what can you chaps do after you leave me? Your talents are so specialised. You use a gun. You use your fists. You use a knife. What else could you do? Work with children? In an office? No. You’re unskilled labour, man. This is what you are.”
“Then find yourself another labourer.”
He banged a fist on the mantelpiece in frustration. “You work for me for as long as I bloody well want you to or I’ll have you destroyed.”
Milton rose to face him. His stature was imposing and his eyes were chilling. They had regained their clarity and icy focus. They were the eyes of a killer and he fixed him in a pitiless gaze. “I think we’re finished, sir, aren’t we? We’re not going to agree with each other.”
“Is that your final word?”
“It is.”
Control put his desk between them and sat down. “You’re making a terrible mistake. You’re on suspension. Unpaid. I’ll review your file but there will be discipline. Take the time to consider your position. It isn’t too late to repair the damage this foolish stand has caused you.”
“Very good, sir.” Milton straightened his tie.
“You’re dismissed.”
“Good day, sir.”
* * *
2.
MILTON FOUND A BAR. His anonymous, empty hotel room did not appeal to him. The confrontation with Control had unsettled him; his hands were shaking from anger and fear.
There was a place with a wide picture window that faced the river. He found a table that looked out onto the open water, the buildings on the opposite bank, the pleasure craft and barges churning through the surf and, above, the blazing sun in a perfectly clear sky. He wanted a large whiskey, to feel the alcohol, his head beginning to spin just a little. He knew one way to stop thinking––about everything––could be found in the bottom of his glass, but he managed to resist the urge. It was short-term relief with long-term consequences. He focussed on the number that he kept in his head––691––and ordered an orange juice instead. He sat brooding, turning the glass between his fingers, watching the boats.
There was a television above the bar. The volume was turned down with subtitles running along the bottom of the screen. The channel had been set to one of the twenty-four hour news programmes and an interview with a minister on Parliament Green was abruptly replaced by an overhead helicopter shot of a wooded mountain landscape. A caption flashed that it was near Lake Annecy, France. The camera jerked and zoomed until the screen was filled with a shot of a wine-coloured BMW. It was parked in small clearing. The camera zoomed out and a second car, blue with white-and-red chevrons, could be seen. Bloodstains were visible on the muddy ground around the cars. The captions along the bottom of the screen said “massacre,” and “outrage.”
The bartender shook his head. “Did you see that?”
Milton grunted.
“You know they found a boy in the car?”
Milton said nothing.
“I don’t know how someone could do that––murder a family on a holiday. How cold-blooded is that? You ask me, that little boy was lucky. If whoever it was had found him, I reckon he would’ve been shot, too.”
The news report switched to another story, but it was no good. Mil
ton finished the juice and stood. He needed to leave.
* * *
3.
THE PLATFORM for the Underground was busy. A group of young foreign travellers who didn’t know any better had congregated near the slope that led up to the surface, blocking the way with their suitcases and chattering excitedly in Spanish. Their luggage was plastered with stickers that proclaimed their previous destinations. Brazilians, he guessed. Students. Milton picked his way through them so he could wait at the quieter, less populated end of the platform. There was a lone traveller there, standing right up at the edge. She was black, in her early thirties, and wearing the uniform of one of the fast-food chains that served the area around the station. She looked tired and Milton saw that she was crying, her bottom lip quivering and tears rolling down her cheeks. Milton was not good with empathy, and he would not have known where to start were he to try and comfort her, but he had no interest in that. Not today. He had too much on his mind. He moved along.
He felt awful again. His mood had worsened. He felt light-headed and slumped down onto an empty bench. He started to sweat, his hands first, then his back, salty beads rolling down from his scalp into his eyes and mouth. He recalled the overhead shot of the forest from the television helicopter. There had been three pegs on the ground, marking the spots where the bodies had been found. He knew he should stop, think of something else, but he couldn’t, and soon he recalled the nightmare again, the flashes from years before: the flattened village, the blood splashed over the arid ground, the body of the boy, the peppery smell of high explosives and cloying death. He floated away from that, running onto all the other things he had done and seen in the service of Queen and country: dingy rooms and darkened streets, one hundred and thirty-six victims laid out in evidence of the terrible things he had done. A shot to the head from a sniper rifle, a knife to the heart, a garrotte around the throat pulled tight until the hacking breaths became wheezes that became silent, a body desperately jerking, then falling still. One hundred and thirty-six men and women faced him, accused him, their blood on his hands.
A loud scream yanked him around.
The students were staring down the platform at him. He took it all in, the details. Was it him they were pointing at? No. They were pointing away from him. The woman wasn’t there. Another scream, and one of the students pointed down onto the track. Milton stumbled to his feet and saw her, deliberately laid across the rails. It was an incongruous sight. At first he thought she must have been trying to collect something that she had dropped but then he realised that she had laid herself out in that fashion for a purpose. He spun around; the glowing digital sign said the next train was approaching and then Milton heard it, the low rumble as the carriages rolled around the final bend in the tunnel. There wasn’t any time to consider what to do. There was an emergency button on the wall fifty feet away but he knew he wouldn’t be able to reach it in time and, even if he did, he doubted the train would be able to stop.
He jumped down from the platform onto the sleepers.
He stepped over the live rail.
The train drew nearer, a blast of warm air pouring out of the mouth of the tunnel.
Milton knelt down by the woman.
“No,” she said. “Leave me alone.”
He slipped one hand beneath her back and the other beneath her knees. She was slight and he lifted her easily. The train turned the final bend, its headlights shining brightly. Its horn sounded, shrill and sudden, and Milton knew it was going to be touch and go. He stepped over the live rail again and threw the woman up onto the platform. The train’s brakes bit, the locked wheels sliding across the metal with a hideous shriek, as Milton planted his hands on the lip of the platform and vaulted up, rolling away just as the engine groaned by, missing him by fractions.
He rolled over, onto his back, and stared up at the curved ceiling. His breath rushed in and out.
The train had stopped halfway into the station. The driver opened the door and sprinted down the platform towards him. “Are you alright, mate?”
“Fine. Check her.”
He closed his eyes and forced his breathing to return to a regular pattern. In and out, in and out.
“I thought you was a goner,” the driver said. “I thought I was gonna hit you both. What happened?”
Milton didn’t answer. The students had made their way down the platform and the driver turned his attention to them. They reported what they had seen in singsong, broken English: how the woman had lowered herself from the platform and laid herself out across the rails, how Milton had gone down after and pulled her away from danger.
“You’re a bloody hero, mate,” the driver said.
Milton closed his eyes again.
A hero?
He would have laughed if that wasn’t so ridiculous. It was a bad joke.
* * *
4.
AN AMBULANCE arrived soon afterwards. Milton sat next to the woman on the bench as she was attended to by the paramedics. She had cried hysterically for five minutes but she quickly stopped and by the time the paramedics had arrived she was silent and unmoving, staring fixedly at the large posters for exotic holidays and duty-free goods that were plastered across the curved wall on the other side of the tracks.
One of the paramedics had taken the woman’s purse from her bag. “Is your name Sharon, love?” he asked. She said nothing. “Come on, love, you have to talk to us.”
She remained silent.
“We’re going to have to take her in,” the paramedic said. “I think she’s in shock.”
“I’ll come, too,” Milton said.
“Are you a friend?”
Leaving her now would be abandoning her. He had started to help and he wanted to finish the job. He would leave once her family had arrived.
“Yes,” he said.
“Come on, sweetheart, let’s get you checked out properly.”
Milton followed behind the ambulance as they took the woman to the Royal Free hospital. They wheeled her into a quiet room and made her a cup of warm tea, full of sugar. “We’re just waiting for the doctor,” they said to her. “Get that down you, it’ll make all the difference.”
“Thank you,” she murmured.
The paramedic turned to Milton. “Are you alright to stay with her? He’s on his way, but it might be twenty minutes.”
“Yes,” Milton said. “Of course.”
He took the seat next to the bed and watched the girl. She had closed her eyes and, after a few minutes, Milton realised that she had drifted into a shallow sleep. Her chest rose and fell with each gentle breath. Milton regarded her. Her hair was of the deepest black, worn cut square and low on the nape of her neck, fanned out on the white hospital linen to frame a sweet almond-shaped face. Her eyes were wide under finely drawn eyebrows, slightly up tilted at the corners. Her skin was a perfect chocolate-brown and bore no trace of makeup save a light lipstick on her wide and sensual mouth. Her bare arms were slender and her hands, folded beneath her breasts, were small and delicate. Her fingernails were chewed down, the red varnish chipped. There was no ring on her finger. The restaurant uniform was a utilitarian grey, lasciviously tight across her breasts. The trousers flowed down from a narrow, but not thin, waist. Her shoes were square-toed and of plain black leather. She was very pretty.
Milton let her rest.
* * *
5.
SHE AWOKE a full two hours later. At first her pretty face maintained the serenity of sleep, but that did not last for very long; confusion clouded across it and then, suddenly, came a terrible look of panic. She struggled upright and swung her feet off the bed and onto the floor.
“It’s alright,” Milton said. “You’re in hospital. You’ve been asleep.”
“What time is it?”
“Six.”
“Jesus,” she said. “I’m so late. My boys––I need to be home.” She looked around, panicked. “Where are we?”
“Hospital.”
“No,” sh
e said, pushing herself onto her feet. “I have to be home, my boys will be there, they won’t know where I am, they won’t have had their tea. No-one’s looking after them.”
“The doctor’s been. He wanted to speak to you. He’s coming back when you’re awake.”
“I can’t. And I’m fine, besides. I know it was a stupid thing to do. I’m not about to do it again. I don’t want to die. I can’t. They need me.” She looked into his face. Her expression was earnest and honest. “They can’t keep me in here, can they?”
“I don’t think so.”
She collected her bag from the chair and started for the door.
“How are you going to get home?” Milton asked her.
“I don’t know. Where is this?”
“The Royal Free.”
“Hampstead? I’ll get the train.”
“Let me drive you.”
“You don’t have to do that. I live in Dalston. That must be miles out of your way.”
“No, that’s fine. I live just round the corner––Islington.” It was a lie. “It’s not a problem.”
The medical staff were uncomfortable about their patient discharging herself but there was nothing that they could do to stop her. She was not injured, she appeared to be rational and she was not alone. Milton answered their reflexive concern with a tone of quiet authority that was difficult to oppose. She signed her discharge papers, politely thanked the staff for their care, and followed Milton outside.
Milton had parked in the nearby NCP building. He swept the detritus from the passenger seat, opened the door, waited until she was comfortable and then set off, cutting onto the Embankment. He glanced at her through the corner of his eye; she was staring fixedly out of the window, watching the river. It didn’t look as if she wanted to talk. Fair enough. He switched on the CD player and skipped through the discs until he had found the one he wanted to listen to, a Bob Dylan compilation. Dylan’s reedy voice filled the car as Milton accelerated away from a set of traffic lights.