The John Milton Series Boxset 1

by Mark Dawson

  “Gave the Russians a bloody nose when they tried to bring them in line, didn’t they? They’ll end up doing the exact same thing to us. If it was my decision, I’d get us out of there as soon as I could. We should never have gone in the first place.”

  Brady rambled on for a moment, his remarks scattered with casual racism. Milton nodded and made encouraging responses but he was hardly listening; he took the opportunity to scan the room more carefully: the stack of unpaid bills on the countertop; the newspaper, yellow highlighter all over a story about the Republican primary for the Presidential elections; a precarious stack of vinyl albums on the floor; the textbooks shoved haphazardly onto the shelves; framed photographs of two children and a woman Milton guessed must have been Brady’s wife. Nothing stood out. Nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing that was a reason for suspicion.

  “Milk and sugar?”

  “No thanks. Black’s fine.”

  He passed him a mug of coffee and went back around to sit. “So––the girl.”

  Trip leaned forwards. “Madison,” he said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you speak to her?”

  “Not really. I went to the door and called out but she didn’t even pause. Kept going straight on.”

  “She didn’t come in?”

  “No, she didn’t. Like I said, she ran off.”

  “Why would Mr. Leonard tell me that you said she did come in?” Milton asked.

  “You’ll have to ask him that. Between us, Victor’s an old man. His faculties… well, let’s be charitable about it and say that they’re not what they once were.”

  “He’s lying?”

  “I’m not saying that. Perhaps he’s just mistaken. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Right.”

  Brady spoke easily and credibly. If he was lying, he was good at it.

  The doctor sipped his coffee and rested the mug on the arm of the chair. “You’ve reported her missing?”

  “Of course,” Trip said tersely.

  “And?”

  “They were useless.”

  “Well, of course, in their defence, this isn’t a lost child, is it? She’s a grown-up. I suppose they might be inclined to think she’s gone off somewhere on her own and she’ll come back when she feels like it.”

  “She’s missing,” Trip said, his temper up a little. Milton felt the atmosphere in the room change; the boy was angry and the doctor’s air of self-importance would only inflame things. They had got all they were going to get from this visit. It was time to go.

  He stood. “Thanks for the coffee. I’m sorry we had to bother you.”

  Brady stood, too. “I’ll tell you what,” he said, reaching into his pocket and fishing out a business card. “This is my number. I’ll be happy to help out if you need anything. I’m on the board of the community association here. If you want to speak to anyone else or if you want to put flyers out, that sort of thing, please do just give me a call. Anything I can do, just ask.”

  Milton took the card. “Thank you,” he said as they made their way back down the corridor. They shook at the door. Brady’s hands were bigger than his but they were soft and his grip was flaccid and damp, unimpressive. Milton thanked him again and, impelling Trip onwards with a hand on his shoulder, they made their way down the steps to the pavement. Milton turned back to the house and saw Brady watching them from a side window; the man waved at him as soon as he realised that he had been seen. Milton turned back to the car, went around and got inside.

  “Bullshit,” Trip said. “One of them is lying, right?”

  “Yes,” Milton said. “But I don’t know who.”

  13

  MILTON MET TRIP in Top Notch Burger at noon the next day. Julius bagged up Milton’s cheeseburger and the Original with jalapeños that the boy had ordered and they ate them on the way back to Pine Shore. Trip had printed a missing person poster overnight and they had stopped at a Kinko’s to run off two hundred copies. The poster was a simple affair, with a picture of Madison smiling into the camera with a paper birthday hat perched on her head. MISSING was printed above the photograph in bold capitals, her name was below the photograph and then, at the foot of the flyer, was Trip’s cellphone number and his email address.

  Milton parked outside Andrew Brady’s house and they split up and set to work. He had purchased a stapler and staples from the copyshop and he used them to fix flyers to telegraph poles and fences. He went door-to-door, knocking politely and then, if the residents were home, explaining what had happened and what he was doing. Reactions varied: indifference, concern, a couple of the residents showing mild hostility. He pressed a copy of the flyer into the hands of each and left one in the mailboxes of those who were not home. It took Milton an hour to cover the ground that he had volunteered to take.

  He waited for Trip at the car and stared up at the plain wooden door to Andrew Brady’s house. The doctor had been the subject of several conversations with the other residents. He had visited the library that morning and his research, together with the information he was able to glean, enabled him to build up a more comprehensive picture. He was an interesting character, that much was obvious, and the more he learnt about him, the more questions he had.

  Brady had moved into Pine Shores in the middle 1990s. There was the doctor himself; his French wife, Collette; and their two young children, Claude and Annabel. Brady was the son of an army general who had served with distinction in Korea. He had followed his father into the military and had apparently enjoyed a decent, if not spectacular, career. Unable to work on the frontline after he lost his leg, he was moved into an administrative role. It had evidently been a disappointment after his previous experience. He gave an interview to the local press upon his appointment as Chief of Surgery at St Francis Memorial Hospital explaining that while he would always love the army, and that his military career had made him the man he was, he was a man of action and not suited to “riding a desk.” He wanted to do something tangible and “make a difference in the community.”

  The family appeared to be affluent. Their house was one of the more expensive in the neighbourhood and there was a Lexus and an Audi in the driveway. A couple of the neighbours made awkward reference to his leg; it wasn’t usually obvious that he was lame, a fact that Milton could attest to. He wore shorts in the summer, though, and, then, it was evident. The prosthesis was a cream colour, mismatched with the tan that he always developed from working in his garden. One of the women that Milton spoke with, a blue-rinsed matriarch who was full of spite, said that she found it distasteful that he would put his leg “on show” like that. Milton humoured her and was about to take his leave when she looked at him with a mixture of lasciviousness and conspiracy.

  “You know how he lost it? He told you what happened?”

  “Yes––a bomb in Iraq.”

  She chuckled. “He usually tells people that.”

  “There’s another story?”

  “It was a car crash,” she said, delivering the news with an air of self-satisfied smugness. “I don’t know all the details, but the story is that he’d been drinking. It was on the army base out there. He got drunk and drove his car into a tree. They had to amputate the leg to get him out.”

  There were some who spoke with a guarded warmness about the Bradys. Andrew and Collette were gregarious to a fault, becoming friends with their immediate neighbours. Andrew had been elected to the board of the residents’ association and it appeared that most of the other members were on good terms with him. There was Kevin Heyman, the owner of a large printing business. There was Charles Murdoch, who ran a real estate brokerage with another neighbour, Curtis McMahon. Those families were close, and there was talk of barbeques on the Fourth of July and shared festivities in the winter. The closeness wasn’t shared with all, and for all those who described Brady as friendly and approachable, there were others who described him as the head of a closed and overbearing clique. While some spoke of his kindne
ss, often visiting the sick to offer the benefit of his experience, others saw him as a loud-mouthed braggart, looking down on his neighbours and claiming status in a way that invited resentment.

  Apart from suggestion that he might not have lost his leg in Iraq, Milton heard other stories that called his honesty into question. The most troubling concerned his professional reputation. During his time at the hospital there had been a serious road crash on the Interstate outside of San Mateo. A truck loaded with diesel had jacknifed across the 101, slicking the asphalt with fuel so that a series of cars had ploughed into it. The resulting fireball had been hot enough to melt the metal guardrails that ran down the median. Brady had been forced to resign in the aftermath of the crash after local reporters suggested that he had embellished his role in the recovery effort. He had claimed that he had driven himself to the scene of the disaster, and, badging his way past the first responders, he had made his way into the heart of the inferno and administered first aid to survivors as they were pulled from the wreckage of their vehicles. The fire service later denied that he had been present at all, and stated that he would never have been allowed to get as close to the flames as he had claimed. In another incident, Brady recounted the story of being on his boat in Richardson Bay when a yacht had capsized and started to sink. He boasted that he had swum to the stricken boat and pulled a man and his son to safety. It was subsequently found that there was no record of a boat getting into difficulty that day and no father and son to corroborate the story. An anonymous source even suggested that Brady had not even been on the water.

  He had not taken another job since his resignation and the suggestion had been made that there had been a large pay-off to get rid of him. He had retreated to Pine Shore and made himself busy. He took it upon himself to act as the resident physician, attending neighbours and offering help that was sometimes not welcome. He rather ostentatiously attached a police beacon to the top of his car and monitored a police scanner for the barest sniff of an emergency so that he could hurry to the scene and offer his help. He had assisted locals with minor ailments and had attended the owner of a chain of delicatessens in the city when he complained of a soreness in his arm and a shortness of breath. He worked hard, seemingly intent on gaining the trust and respect of the community, but continually told tales that were simple enough to debunk and, when they were, they damaged the good that he had done. He suggested that he had worked with the police. He boasted that he was a qualified pilot. He spoke of having obtained a degree in law through distance learning while he was in the army. He seemed almost too eager to resolve any given crisis, no matter how small.

  It seemed to Milton that Brady was intent upon making himself the centre of the community. His role as the chair of the residents’ association seemed particularly important to him, and there was grudging acceptance from many that he did good and important work to make Pine Shore a better place to live. But not everyone felt the same way. More than one person confided to Milton that there was bad blood when it came to the committee. The chairmanship was an elected post and it had been contested when the previous incumbent had stood aside.

  The other candidate in an election that was described as “pointlessly vicious” was Victor Leonard.

  Trip opened the passenger door and slid inside.

  “How did it go?” Milton asked him.

  “Got rid of all of them.”

  “Learn anything?”

  “That this place is full of crap. You?”

  “The same.”

  Milton told him what he had learned about Brady.

  “He told others that he worked in Washington after coming out of the army. Homeland Security. He’s full of shit, Mr. Smith. How can we trust anything he’s told us?”

  “I’m not sure we can,” Milton admitted.

  “So where does that leave us? You ask me, Madison was in there.” He stabbed his finger angrily against the window three times, indicating Brady’s house.

  “I don’t know. But we need to find out.”

  14

  ONE OF THE CAMPAIGN BOOSTERS was a big wine grower, exporting his bottles all over the world for millions of dollars a year, and one of the benefits of that largesse was an executive box at Candlestick Park. Arlen Crawford could take it or leave it when it came to sports but his boss was an avid fan. The 49ers were his team, too, and so the prospect of taking in the game against Dallas was something that had kept him fired up as they approached the end of the week. It wasn’t all pleasure, Crawford reminded him as they walked through the busy stadium to the level that held the luxury suites. Plenty of potential donors had been invited, too, not all of them on board with the campaign yet. They needed to be impressed. Robinson needed to deploy that beguiling grin and his charisma needed to be at its most magnetic.

  They reached the door and Robinson opened it and stepped through into the box beyond. There was a long table laden with cold cuts, beers and snacks and, beyond that, an outside seating area. The Governor’s smile was immediate and infectious; he set to work on the other guests, working his way through the room, reaching out to take hands, sometimes pressing them between both of his, rewarding those who were already on the team with jovial backslaps or, for the lucky few, a powerful hug. It took him fifteen minutes to reach the front of the box and the open French doors that allowed access to the outside seats. Crawford stepped down to the front of the enclosure and allowed himself a moment to breathe. The field was brilliant green, perfectly lush, the gridiron markings standing out in vivid white paint. The stadium PA picked up the intensity as the teams made their way out through an inflatable tunnel in the corner of the stadium. Fireworks shot into the air, flamethrowers breathed tendrils of fire that reached up to the upper decks, music thumped, cheerleaders shimmied in formation. The 49ers’ offense was introduced by the hyperbolic announcer, each armoured player sprinting through a gauntlet fashioned by the defense, chest-bumping those that had made the procession before him.

  Crawford turned away from the noise and the pageantry to watch the Governor deep in conversation with the multi-millionaire who owned cattle ranches all the way across the south. Two good old boys, Crawford thought to himself. Winning him over would be a slam-dunk for Robinson. They would be drinking buddies by the end of the afternoon and a cheque with a lot of zeroes would be on its way to them first thing in the morning.

  Suddenly tired, he slid down into a seat and closed his eyes. He thought about the sacrifices he had made to get them as far as this. Robinson was the main draw, the focus, but without Crawford and the work that he did for him he would just be another talker, high on star-power but low on substance, and destined for the level he was at right now. If Robinson was the circus, Crawford was the ringmaster. You couldn’t have one without the other. It just wouldn’t work.

  He opened his eyes as the home team kicked off, the kicker putting his foot through the ball and sending it high into the air, spinning it on its axis all the way to the back of the end zone. The return man fielded it and dropped to one knee. Touchback.

  The others settled into their seats. Robinson saw Crawford, grinned and gave him a wink.

  He hoped that all this effort was going to be worth it.

  15

  TUESDAY NIGHT’S A.A. meeting was Milton’s favourite. He stopped at a 7-11 and bought two jars of instant coffee and three different types of cookies. Yet more mist had risen from the ocean and was beginning its slow drift across the town. It was a soft, heavy night, too cloudy for a moon. The streetlights were dim, opalescent in the mist; there was a slight neon buzzing from the signage of a bar on the opposite side of the street from the church. Milton parked and left the engine idling for a moment, the golden beams of the headlights glowing and fading against the banked fog. He killed the engine, got out and locked the door and crossed the street. He took the key from his pocket, unlocked the door and descended into the basement of the church.

  It was a tired room, with peeling beige paint and cracked half-windows
that were set far up towards the ceiling, revealing the shoes and ankles of the pedestrians passing by. Milton filled the urn with water and set it to boil. He took the coffee from the cupboard and then arranged the biscuits that he had brought on a plate, a series of neat concentric circles. The mugs hadn’t been washed from the last meeting that had used the room and so he filled the basin and attended to them, drying them with a dishcloth and stacking them on the table next to the urn.

  Milton had been coming to meetings for more than three years. London, all the way through South America, then here. He still found the thought of it counter-intuitive, but then the complete honesty that the program demanded would always be a difficult concept for a man who had worked in the shadows for most of his adult life. He did his best. It had been more difficult at the start, in that church hall in West London. There was the Official Secrets Act, for a start, and what would happen to him if it came out that he had a problem. He had hidden at the back, near the door, and it had taken him a month to sit all the way through a meeting without turning tail and fleeing. He had gradually asked a regular with plenty of years of sobriety and a quiet attitude if he would be his first sponsor. He was called Dave Goulding, a musician in his late forties, a man who had been successful when he was younger and then drank his money and his talent away. Despite a life of bitter disappointment he had managed to get his head screwed on straight and, with his guidance, Milton had started to make progress.

  The first thing he insisted upon was that he attend ninety meetings in ninety days. He had given him a spiral-bound notebook and a pen and told him that if he wanted him to remain as his sponsor, he had to record every meeting he attended in that notebook. Milton did that. After that, a little trust between them developed and they worked on his participation in the meetings. He wasn’t ready to speak at that point––that wouldn’t come for more than a year––but he had been persuaded to at least give the impression that he was engaged in what was going on. Dave called the back row at meetings the Denial Aisle, and had drummed into him that sick people who wanted to get well sat in the front. Milton wasn’t quite ready for that, either, but he had gradually moved forwards. Each month he moved forward again until he was in the middle of the action, stoic and thoughtful amidst the thicket of raised arms as the other alcoholics jostled to speak.