by Mark Dawson
Control focussed on the screen again as the prosthesis was carefully placed into Twelve’s wrecked joint.
John Milton was a chameleon. He had twenty years’ experience of blending into the background, surfacing only to do the bloody work of his trade before sinking out of sight again. Control felt an icy knot in the pit of his stomach. Milton was the most dangerous man he had ever met and now he knew that the State wanted him dead. He had no idea what he would do next and that was the kind of thought that would keep a man up at night.
* * *
59.
THE MOTORWAY stretched away into the distance, the slow-moving row of tail-lights painting a lazy swipe across the valley. There had been a crash outside Wolverhampton and the traffic had backed up, filtering slowly through two lanes while the grim wreckage was craned away. Milton had cursed the accident. He knew that it would only be a matter of time before the details of the stolen BMW were added to the national registry. The motorway was equipped with the CCTV masts that serviced the police’s number plate recognition system, and the longer he stayed on the road the greater the chance that the car would be noticed. He felt vulnerable and, even though he knew it would make no difference, he had tugged down the brim of the baseball cap he had found in the glove compartment so that his face was partially obscured.
He was tired and his shoulder throbbed. He had been driving for three hours. His instinct was not to stop until he reached Manchester but, as he passed the sign advertising the services at Stafford South he decided it was worth the risk for a strong cup of coffee.
Milton moved carefully into the crawler lane and pulled off the motorway.
The car park was quiet, a wide open space lit by a series of tall overhead lights. Milton parked in a shadowed area and walked across to the complex of buildings. There were very few drivers around, a handful of red-eyed travellers drinking coffee in the small Starbucks concession. Milton bought a packet of Nurofen from WH Smith and then ordered a double espresso and a bottle of water from the bored-looking barista.
Milton looked up at the screen fixed to the wall. The BBC’s rolling news channel was showing. He sipped from the Styrofoam cup as the anchor recapped the day’s news. The riots were the main focus. The worst of the disturbances had abated but the police had been short-handed and there was talk of calling in the army. Milton was stunned by their severity. Large parts of Croydon had been set alight, and a furniture store that he recognised had been razed to the ground by a ferocious blaze. There was footage from Hackney and Tottenham, crowds of rioters with scarves obscuring their faces, packs of looters that descended on retail parks and local businesses alike, taking whatever they could lay their hands upon. A police superintendent was interviewed, and promised that the culprits would be caught and punished. Milton thought of Elijah. Had they had got to him in time?
“And in other news, Police have launched a murder hunt after a man was found dead in the boxing club he ran in London’s East End. Dennis Rutherford was found this evening by one of his students. He had been shot.”
A picture of Rutherford was displayed. He was with a group of youngsters, holding a trophy and smiling into the camera. The picture switched to an outside broadcast. A reporter was standing in front of the boxing club, a policeman standing guard at the entrance.
The reporter spoke into the camera. “The Metropolitan police and London ambulance service were called here at 10.20pm, where the victim, from Hackney, was subsequently pronounced dead. A post-mortem is due to take place tomorrow but it is understood that he died from a single gunshot wound. Police sources say that they want to speak to John Milton, last seen in the London area. He is described as a middle-aged white male, six foot tall, well built and with short dark hair. They recommend that he is not approached and that members of the public with information on his whereabouts should contact officers as soon as possible.”
A head-and-shoulders picture of Milton flashed onto the screen. He recognised it: the picture had been taken from his Group file. Control was behaving exactly as he knew that he would. He would organise a manhunt, co-opting all the other agencies: the intelligence service, the police, everyone. His picture remained on the screen as the report continued. Milton looked around at the other customers anxiously. No-one was paying the television much attention but he replaced the cap on his head regardless.
He took his coffee with him and went back out into the hot night. The steady hum of the motorway was loud, the stand of trees that had been planted at the edge of the car park doing little to dampen the noise. Milton ignored the BMW. It had served him well, but he knew that it would have been reported by now. He found a spot that was poorly served by CCTV and approached a Ford Mondeo. He forced the door, slid inside and hotwired the engine.
The digital clock on the dashboard showed a little after three in the morning as he rejoined the motorway heading north. He passed through the gears, making sure to stay below the speed limit. In an hour and a half, the lights of Liverpool sparkled in the distance. Milton turned off the motorway and drove into town.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Dawson works in the film industry. He lives in Wiltshire.
ALSO BY MARK DAWSON
The Art of Falling Apart
Subpoena Colada
In the Soho Noir Series
The Black Mile
The Imposter
In the John Milton Series
One Thousand Yards
The Cleaner
DEDICATION
To Mrs D and FD.
COPYRIGHT
A BLACK DOG PUBLISHING ebook.
First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Black Dog
Ebook first published in 2013 by Black Dog
This ebook published in 2013 by Black Dog
Copyright © Mark Dawson 2013
Formatting by Polgarus Studio
The moral right of Mark Dawson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
Table of Contents
PROLOGUE
PART ONE
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
PART TWO
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
PART THREE
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
PART FOUR
36.
37.
38.
39.
40.
41.
42.
43.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
PART FIVE
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
EPILOGUE
57.
58.
59.
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS BOOK…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY MARK DAWSON
DEDICATION
COPYRIGHT