The Ninth Step - John Milton #8 (John Milton Thrillers)

by Mark Dawson

  There was a man waiting for them in reception. He was old, too, older than the general, and dressed in a slate grey suit, a black tie decorated with white stars, and a red pocket square. His hair, once a shock of blond, had turned white with age. His brow was furrowed and there was a restiveness in his eyes as he rose from the chair in which he had been sitting and crossed the space to meet them.

  Higgins took the man’s hand and shook it firmly. “Leo,” he said.

  “Richard.” He turned his head and looked at Hicks. “Who’s this?”

  “One of my men. He’s just joined us.”

  “I didn’t—”

  Higgins interrupted him. “Shall we go somewhere private?”

  Isaacs took the hint. “Yes, of course. My apartment.”

  The old man led the way through the reception and into an elevator lobby. They stepped into the first vacant car and rode it all the way up to the seventh floor. Hicks watched Isaacs in the mirrored wall of the car. The man was nervous, the fingers of his right hand toying with the cufflink that fastened his left sleeve. Higgins, on the other hand, was impassive. His face was severe and he stood straight as an arrow, all business.

  The doors opened and the three of them exited the car into a luxuriously furnished lobby. Isaacs led the way along a quiet corridor, their feet sinking into deep pile carpeting that muffled the sound of their progress. They reached the door to number eleven; Isaacs opened it and led the way inside. It was a two-bedroom apartment. Hicks assessed it as he passed through the small hallway. There were two doors that he assumed were bedrooms. They went through into a large sitting room containing pieces of furniture that looked as if they had been in place for decades. One wall held an old-fashioned serving hatch through which the kitchen could be accessed.

  Isaacs went over to a large French door that offered access to a narrow balcony beyond. He laced his fingers behind his back and looked outside, his back turned to them. Hicks noticed that the man was nervously squeezing his hands together.

  Higgins looked over at Hicks and gave a slight shake of his head. “What’s happened, Leo?” he said.

  Isaacs turned back to them. He pointed at Hicks.

  “This man. I don’t know him.”

  “His name is Corporal Hicks. He’ll be helping with this.”

  “I’d rather just—”

  “I’ve vouched for him, Leo. That should be enough for you. Move on. What’s the issue?”

  It was even clearer now that Higgins was in the position of authority here. Isaacs might well have had the glittering parliamentary career and the lordship that denoted it, but, between the two old men, Higgins was in control. There was something about the relationship that made Hicks feel uncomfortable. He would have been very happy to have been sent outside, but, instead, he stood quietly at the edge of the room, his arms folded across his chest.

  Isaacs cleared his throat. “I’ve been approached by someone who claims to have known me during the eighties.”

  “In what capacity does he know you?”

  The older man shuffled in his chair and clasped his skeletal hands together. “He says he met me here.”

  “The parties, Leo?”

  Isaacs coughed. “Yes. The parties.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I have no idea. It’s all very random. He’s a taxi driver. He picked me up in Westminster after a session at the Lords and drove me here. He was looking at me in the mirror as if he knew me the whole way, but he didn’t say anything. But then I saw him again a couple of days later. He was waiting for me outside the building in the morning. In his bloody cab. He got out and came over to me. He told me he remembered who I was. He said he remembered the building.” His voice trailed away. “The parties.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “Well, I didn’t recognise him, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Why would you? He would’ve been a boy.”

  The retort was delivered with just enough scorn to condemn Isaacs, and it provided enough context for Hicks to fill in the blanks. He felt a sudden blast of disgust.

  “Well, yes…” Isaacs said, his voice falling away.

  “Do you believe him?”

  “How else would he have known to say that?”

  Higgins didn’t answer. He walked across to the coffee table and picked up a paperweight that was anchoring a pile of papers.

  “What am I going to do?” Isaacs pleaded.

  Higgins replaced the paperweight. “First things first, Leo. What did he say? What exactly?”

  “He said he was going to go to the press.”

  “With what? Does he have any proof? Did he say?”

  “I don’t see how he could.”

  “Then it’s just rumours and innuendo.”

  “But what if he’s believed? You know how it is. What if he gets someone to publish what he says? There’s no smoke without fire, that’s what they’ll say, especially with what happened before.”

  “Yes,” Higgins said. “That would be unfortunate.”

  “You said you’d look after me.”

  “And we will.” Higgins looked over at Hicks again and then turned back to Isaacs. “This man—what else do you know?”

  “His taxi badge. I remembered the number.”

  “That’s better. Corporal—take a note, please.”

  Hicks took out his phone and opened the note application.

  “56381.”

  Hicks tapped the numbers and saved the note.

  “Anything else?” Higgins said.

  “He’s late thirties, early forties. Overweight. Not much hair. Looked nervous. That’s all.”

  “Very good, Leo. You can leave it with us.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Take care of it. You don’t need to worry. That’s what you pay me for, isn’t it? Peace of mind.”

  Payment. The politician paused, confusion wrinkling his brow before it was replaced by understanding and then a brief moment of resentment. Higgins noticed, and Hicks saw the anger that flashed in his eyes; Isaacs quickly mastered himself. He walked to a bureau and opened the lid. He took out an envelope and, telling them to wait a moment, went through into the bedroom.

  Higgins didn’t speak. He allowed a little of the distaste he so obviously felt for Isaacs to manifest itself on his face and went across to the window and gazed out. Hicks waited where he was, thinking that it would be a simple enough matter to find out the name of the man who had been given that taxi licence number. The thought of it, and what might follow, made him feel uneasy.

  Isaacs returned. The envelope had been filled, and it bulged in the middle. He handed it to the general. The end was unsealed, and Higgins made a show of reaching inside and withdrawing the contents. There were several bundles of bank notes secured with elastic bands. Higgins examined one of the bundles. The top note was a fifty, and Hicks estimated that there must have been thirty or forty notes in the bundle, with at least one other bundle in the envelope.

  “Thank you.”

  “Do you need anything else?”

  “I don’t think so. Stay here for the next day or two. I’ll let you know when it’s handled.”

  Higgins turned his back on the old man and left the room without a word.

  The old man looked at Hicks with anxious eyes.

  “Goodbye,” Isaacs said to Higgins’ retreating back.

  The general didn’t answer.

  #

  HICKS FOLLOWED THE GENERAL out of the apartment and caught him up as he stalked to the elevators. Higgins said nothing as they descended to the reception, and nothing as they passed through the space and onto the street beyond. It was only when they were both in the Range Rover that he provided his summation of the awkward twenty minutes that they had spent with Isaacs.

  “Pathetic.”

  “Sir?”

  “Drive, Corporal.”

  Hicks started the car and pulled away.

  Higgins shook his head. “What did
you make of it?”

  “This man Isaacs is worried about. He knew him when he was a boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when you said he had ‘personal weaknesses,’ is it what I think it is?”

  “What do you think it is, Corporal?”

  “He’s a paedophile?”

  “Him and plenty of others. Be frank, Hicks: is that a problem for you?”

  “I don’t understand why you would want to help him. I think he’s disgusting.”

  Higgins waited a moment before agreeing with a terse, “Undoubtedly. Him and the other men who were involved. They’re all scum, Hicks.”

  “And so why are we protecting them?”

  “Because the damage that would be caused, were the details of what they did to be released, would be catastrophic. Isaacs was a very senior politician. But it isn’t just him. He was involved with senior men from the military. The civil service. The police. And politicians who were even more senior than he was.”

  “How senior?”

  “The most senior. I’m sure I don’t have to spell it out.”

  There was no need to ask; Hicks knew what he meant. The clouds had cowled the sky again, and he stared into the glowing red lights of the car ahead until he had to blink to clear them from his vision. It was very likely true, but that didn’t make what Higgins was suggesting any more palatable. It felt as if he was taking steps out into deeper water, knowing that at some point, without warning, the seabed would fall away from beneath him and plunge him into the depths.

  “It is our duty to protect them,” Higgins said.

  Hicks glanced across at the envelope in the general’s lap and looked away again before Higgins could notice. Duty? Hardly. The motive was baser and more venal than that.

  Higgins had reached a decision. “Whoever was bugging Isaacs—find out whatever you can about him.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I’ll give some thought about the best course of action. Don’t worry, Corporal, I’ll be sure to let you know.”

  “Where to now, sir?”

  “Hatton Garden.”

  The general was silent as Hicks drove them to the northeast. He followed the line of the Thames until they reached the junction for Blackfriars Bridge, then he turned to the north and passed along Farringdon Street until they reached their destination. Hatton Garden was one of the most famous streets in London, a district with an unusually dense collection of shops and merchants concerned with jewellery and the diamond trade. The shop frontages advertised everything and anything that could be associated with jewellery: there were watchmakers, jewellery manufacturers, a dozen shops that specialised in engagement rings, and diamond traders. It was a little shabby, the bright displays shining out from shop windows that were set into bleak concrete buildings.

  “Straight ahead,” the general said. “On the left.”

  The London Vault Company was just to the north of the junction of Hatton Garden and Greville Street. It had jewellers’ businesses on either side of it. Hicks followed Higgins’s directions and parked the car in a space on the other side of the road.

  “Wait here. I won’t be long.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The general opened his case and put the envelope that Leo Isaacs had given him inside. Hicks glanced across and saw that the case was full of money. He saw it only briefly, turning away as the general looked up at him, but he saw the neat rows of banknotes. The money was from last night, Hicks guessed. The money that they had taken from Öztürk.

  The general closed the case, stepped outside and crossed the road. Hicks watched as he went through the plain double doors that were evidently the main way to get inside the business. The London Vault Company. He took out his phone, navigated to Google and searched for information. The business had a website, and Hicks flicked through the pages. It had been established sixty years earlier and offered safe deposit boxes to clients who wanted to store valuable items. It had a variety of different-sized boxes, together with walk-in safes, and the copy declared proudly that the vault had never been breached and was considered to be impregnable.

  It must be where the general kept his wealth.

  Hicks switched on the radio. He found that his mind was racing, and he wanted to distract himself from the thoughts that were starting to develop.

  Higgins came out after fifteen minutes. He crossed the road and slipped into the back of the car.

  “Where to, sir?”

  “Euston station.”

  He put the car into first and pulled out. He took Gray’s Inn Road and started to the west. The satnav suggested that the drive would take twenty minutes if the traffic was kind.

  Hicks watched in the mirror as the general reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a bundle of notes. He reached forward and dropped the bundle onto the passenger seat.

  “What’s that for?”

  “You have kids, don’t you?”

  The reference to his children made his skin prickle. “Yes, sir. Two boys.”

  “You’ll get your cut from last night soon. This is an advance. Treat them. Treat your wife. You’re not going to be going home until we’ve fixed this mess.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Chapter Nine

  MILTON SLEPT UNTIL MIDDAY and, finding he was still a little sluggish, allowed himself an extra hour in bed. He woke again before one, got up and dressed for a run. The streets outside were wet, and, although the rain had stopped, another thick black cloudbank had collected over the city with the promise of another downpour.

  Milton set off. He had always been a runner. It was his favourite exercise, an hour or so when he could switch off his consciousness and relax into the cadence of his stride, the sound of his shoes as they slapped against the pavement. Outside of the meetings, running was the best form of meditation that he had ever found.

  He ran for an hour, east along the Old Bethnal Green Road until he could break into the open green spaces of Victoria Park. He ran hard, circling the large old boating lake with the fountain in the middle, then the café that served as a shelter for locals who had nowhere else to go. He kept running, all the way to the derelict bandstand, and then turned and started for home.

  He ran back to the flat, showered and shaved, and dressed in a pair of jeans and a black sweatshirt. He looked around his little place. There was a lounge just big enough for a second-hand sofa and a table and chair. He had purchased the furniture from a charity that recycled pieces and sold them to those on low incomes. There was a tiny kitchen that was little more than a cupboard and a bathroom and a single bedroom. Milton had very little in the way of possessions. He had his well-thumbed copy of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, a phone and a set of Bluetooth speakers that he used to play his music, the oxidised Ronson lighter that his father had owned and a collection of books that he had bought from Oxfam. It was an ascetic kind of life and one that suited him very well.

  Next, he attended to the making of his bed. There were many routines and habits that he had developed during his years of service, many of them so deeply ingrained now that he would have been unable to alter them even if he had wanted to. Presenting a neat and tidy bed was one of the more important ones. It was something that set him up for the rest of the day. That one small routine, the knowledge that it had been done to his satisfaction, was an excellent foundation for what was to come. It developed discipline and fostered attention to the smallest of details. He had seen it too many times for it to be a coincidence: men who struggled to get their lives together often went straight to the most challenging goals while the rest of their lives were left in a disorganized mess. Milton had always drilled it into the soldiers under his command: get the little things under control, and the sense of confidence and satisfaction will help you address the bigger ones.

  He had followed the same routine for years. Fitted sheets were a lazy compromise, and he preferred a normal sheet. He stood at the foot of the bed and spread the bottom sheet evenly acr
oss it. He tucked the top and bottom edges of the sheet between the bottom of the mattress and the box springs, fashioning perfect hospital corners. He smoothed out the creases and wrinkles with brisk strokes of his hand, then spread out the top sheet and the blanket, making identical hospital corners for those, too. He folded down the tops of the blanket and the top sheet and then placed the pillows. When he was done, he took a fifty-pence piece from the pot on his bedside table and bounced it off the bed. It sprang back up into his hand. Perfect.

  He prepared his breakfast. He had recently taken to starting his day with a large iced smoothie: he would prepare the fruit, add ice, protein powder and powdered vitamins, then blitz it in a blender that he had picked up for thirty pounds on eBay. The process took five minutes, and he found that repeating the same steps again and again was almost as calming as his running. He took the smoothie into the lounge and drank it while he flicked through the copy of Time Out that he had found on the seat of the bus this morning. There was a matinee showing of Casablanca at the Rio in Dalston. Milton had decided that he would like to see it.

  Milton stepped out into the vestibule, locked the door and immediately heard the sound of arguing from the next-door flat. He stopped, his hand resting against his door, and listened. The words were muffled and difficult to discern, but it was obvious that the mother of the family was upset. Her voice was drawn and tight, her sentences broken up, and Milton could soon hear the sound of her sobbing. The father, the woman’s husband, was trying to console her. Milton couldn’t make out the words.

  “Mister?”

  Milton found that he had been standing with his eyes closed. He opened them, turned, and saw a young boy looking at him. He recognised him. He lived in the flat. He thought, from overhearing them as he passed them playing on the swings at the foot of the building, that the boy’s name was Ahmed. He had a football under his arm and he was regarding Milton with confusion.

  “Are you all right?” the boy asked him.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You were just standing there.”