The Ninth Step - John Milton #8 (John Milton Thrillers) Page 10

  He went through to the back and then climbed the stairs to the meeting room. The others were there.

  The general was at the head of the table. “So,” he said, “what do we know?”

  “The police were called out by a local farmer,” Woodward said. “He saw the cab with the engine running. They got there just after six. I spoke to my contact. They’ve put an old hand on it. They think it was suicide. They’re not going to dig too hard.”

  “Who owns the house?”

  “Yeah, I checked that. It’s Fabian’s sister. Lauren Fabian. Seems likely he was running there after Hicks warned him.”

  Higgins turned to Hicks. “Corporal?”

  “It’s possible. He would’ve been frightened. I was persuasive.”

  Higgins pursed his lips at that; an indication, perhaps, that he was unconvinced. “What about the other car?”

  “I got the plate.”

  “And?”

  “I’ve requested details.”

  The general nodded. “Any other thoughts?”

  “Whoever it was, they’re clean. Very professional.”

  “How did they subdue him?”

  “It wasn’t obvious, sir.”

  Higgins waved his hand irritably. “Speculate.”

  Hicks had been thinking about it. “They could have tied him to the seat. A roll of duct tape, maybe. But there would have been a struggle. It would have been noisy. Maybe I would’ve heard, and I didn’t.”

  “So they drugged him,” Gillan said. “Chloroform.”

  “Chloroform is detectable in a post-mortem,” Connolly said.

  “Only if there’s a lot of it,” Hicks corrected.

  “And only if they run the right tests,” Gillan added. “This looks straightforward. Maybe they won't bother with toxicology.”

  The general finished his pint and replaced the glass on the table, running his fingers up and down it. He had surprisingly delicate hands for an old soldier, with slender fingers and nails that were so smooth that they almost looked polished.

  “Yes,” Higgins agreed. “Maybe. Whoever did this saved us the effort. But I want to know who it was. I don’t like being in the dark like this.” He turned back to Hicks. “Corporal, call me when you know who owns the car. And keep an eye on the rest of his family. Find out what you can about the sister.” He pointed three times, including Hicks, Connolly and Woodward in the gesture. “Find out when the funeral is. The three of you go, keep an eye on it, see if anything comes up.”

  “What about the bloke he met in Russell Square?” Shepherd said.

  “What about him?”

  “Hicks thought he recognised him. Tell him, Hicks.”

  The general looked at him. “Corporal?”

  “I thought I did,” Hicks said, with an irritated sideways glance at Shepherd. “But I don’t think I do. Thought it was someone I knew from the army. It was a mistake.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have a look at him, too. Find out what you can. Fabian goes to see him, the next thing he does is drive out to his sister’s and gets topped. I need more information. I don’t like being blindsided like this. We should have been on top of Fabian and we weren’t. That can’t happen again.”

  The men nodded to acknowledge the old man’s order. They spoke about business for another five minutes, but the main purpose of the meeting had been concluded. They finished their drinks, collected their coats and left.

  #

  IT WAS late when Hicks finally got behind the wheel of his car for the long three-hour drive back to Cambridge. He followed the M5 to Birmingham and then took the M6 and A14 until the lights of the city appeared out of the darkness. It was two in the morning when he parked the Range Rover in the garage. He lowered the door and took a moment to look at his modest house and the small garden that spread out around it. He looked up at the window to his bedroom and thought of his wife. He thought of the cancer and the money he needed to find.

  He was confused. His thoughts were a riot, and he couldn’t control them.

  Would he have killed Fabian?

  Would he have gone through with it?

  He couldn’t say.

  What about Milton? What would he do if the general told him that Milton was a loose end who needed to be cut? What would he do if the general told him that offing him was his responsibility?

  What would he do then?

  Kill him?

  A wave of dizziness washed over him and he put out his hand to steady himself against the wall of the garage. He felt as if he was caught in a vice: on one side was Rachel, the cancer, and the thought of an impossible life without her; on the other side was the general and the rest of the unit. He was trapped in the middle, squeezed tighter and tighter.

  He thought of Fabian slumped against the wheel of his cab, and then to the other things that he and the rest of the men had done. He felt shame and then, as he thought of the general, there was anger with himself. He had allowed his desperation to lead him to the old man, to accept his offer of a place in the unit and all of the consequences that came with it. There was no way to leave the Feather Men once you were inside. It was a lifetime commitment.

  And because of that, ultimately, all he felt was fear.

  Chapter Twenty

  THAT NIGHT’S MEETING was at St Giles in the Fields. The church was on the fringes of Covent Garden and was a large, grand place. Milton was interested in history and had researched the building after his first visit there. It had been the last church on the route between Newgate Prison and the gallows at Tyburn, and the churchwardens had made it a custom to pay for condemned men to have a drink at the next-door pub, the Angel, before they went to be hanged. Milton found that wryly amusing.

  The meeting was held in the vestry house behind the church, and as Milton stepped off the busy street and into the church garden, he felt the usual peacefulness descend. He stopped outside the vestry room for a cup of coffee and a biscuit, nodding a hello to the woman who had held the role ever since he had started to attend here.

  “Hello, John,” she said. “How are you?”

  “Doing well.”

  “Coffee with one sugar?”

  “You remembered.”

  “Do this as long as I have, you remember everyone.”

  Milton thanked her, waited for her to make his coffee and took the mug, together with a chocolate digestive biscuit, into the vestry room. It was bright and airy, with large windows that reached from the ceiling all the way down to panelled wainscoting. Engraved boards recorded the names and dates of service of all the vicars who had worked in the church. A cast-iron chandelier was suspended above a large oval table with twelve chairs. There were more chairs around the edge of the room and a fireplace with a large mirror fixed above the mantelpiece. The walls had not been painted for years and there were chips in the woodwork. It would have been a grand room, once, but now it had been allowed to become shabby. But Milton liked it. It was full of character, and its decrepitude reminded him of all the thousands of men and women who must have sat in this room over the course of the decades. Today, the room had been decked out with AA posters and the long scroll that held the twelve steps. A small table held a supply of pamphlets and several brand-new editions of the Big Book, the bible that set out the creed of the organisation’s founder, Bill Wilson.

  Milton was one of the first inside and, instead of taking one of the chairs at the table, he sat in the corner at the back of the room. The idea of sitting where everyone could see him, his back to at least half of the room, was one he found profoundly unsettling. His position also allowed him to watch the others as they filed inside. It was a busy meeting, and the chairs around the table and then the others all around it were quickly taken.

  Milton watched the doorway for Eddie, but he didn’t come through. He had been to the last three or four meetings that Milton had attended here, but his absence today wasn’t surprising. Milton wondered if he might
have been embarrassed to have stood him up, or perhaps he was regretting his candour when he came to see him in the shelter. Or perhaps he had fallen off the wagon after all.

  The secretary was a white-haired old lady who, Milton had heard, had once been something of a leading light in Tin Pan Alley, the street of musical shops that was close by the church. She sat down in the last remaining chair at the table and banged a small gavel.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “This is the regular meeting of the St Giles in the Fields group of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Edith and I am an alcoholic.”

  “Hello, Edith,” they resounded.

  “Let us open the meeting with a moment of silence followed by the Serenity Prayer.”

  There was a pause as the attendees closed their eyes and reflected. Milton thought of Eddie again. He had skipped the meeting because he was ashamed. He must have known that Milton would be here tonight; he had chosen not to attend to spare himself the humiliation. Milton found himself hoping that he had found another meeting. He had had the look of someone who needed one very badly.

  Edith spoke again, her words echoed by the others in the room. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

  Milton closed his eyes. There was nothing he could do about Eddie now. There was another meeting tomorrow; perhaps he would see him then. For now, though, he would listen to the shares of the men and women who were here with him, and try to find the meditative peace that always helped him to calm his mind.

  “Amen,” he intoned.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE POSTMAN was waiting outside the door to Milton’s flat as he returned from his run the following morning.

  “Special delivery,” the man said. “John Smith?”

  “That’s me,” he said, signing the docket and taking the package.

  He went into the kitchen, took a knife and sliced through the brown paper. Inside was a cardboard box that contained the two smaller boxes that he had purchased from a private seller on eBay. The first contained what looked like the kind of passive infrared sensor that was fitted to the wall to detect motion for an alarm system. But this wasn’t a sensor; instead, it was a disguised camera that could record video or broadcast it via Wi-Fi. He had seen the sensors in the flat next door while the door had been left open and noticed that they were identical to the ones in his flat. The council, who had owned the building until relatively recently, must have fitted the same alarms to all of the properties. Milton took the fake sensor and compared it to the one in his hall. It wasn’t identical, but one bland white box was much the same as another, and there was enough of a resemblance that the fake would pass muster unless someone knew to look.

  Milton went back to the kitchen and opened the second box. It contained a miniature microphone hidden within the fascia of a functional double wall socket.

  Milton took two paperclips. He unfolded them and straightened the first all the way out, apart from a tiny upward kink at the tip. The first clip would be his pick. He removed both bends in the second clip until he had two straight wires with a curve at the end. He pressed the curved end down until he had a ninety degree bend that was about a centimetre long. This clip would be his tension wrench.

  He took the camera, microphone, paperclips and a screwdriver, and went out into the vestibule. Ahmed’s family had gone out half an hour earlier; Milton had heard the door shut, and had watched through the window to be certain. Both parents were at work and the children were at school. It was unlikely that he would be disturbed.

  The door was secured by the same flimsy lock that was fitted to his door. He checked to ensure that he was undisturbed, inserted the wrench into the lock and then applied pressure, turning it in the direction that the lock turned. He inserted the pick into the lock and raked it, applying upwards pressure and setting the pins. There were five of them; he set them all and then carefully turned the handle. The door opened.

  Milton went inside and closed the door behind him.

  The flat was laid out identically to his, exactly as he had expected. He saw boxes of children’s toys, shelves stuffed with children’s books, a scrupulously clean and tidy kitchen. But Milton had no interest in looking around; he wanted to be in and out as quickly as possible.

  There were motion sensors in each room, but the one in the hallway overlooked the doorways to the sitting room and bedrooms; it was the one that would most likely offer the widest coverage. Milton took his screwdriver and removed the little white box. He switched on the camera. It was activated by sound or motion, and had a battery that would last for a week; Milton would break in again to change it if nothing had happened by the time it was exhausted. He peeled off the adhesive strips on the rear of the fake and placed it carefully where the sensor had been, and then stepped back and checked that it was unobtrusive. It was.

  He went into the sitting room. There was a mess of wires behind the television, with two adaptors connecting the various appliances to the mains. Milton disconnected them all and unscrewed the fascia. He took the replacement, wired it back in, and screwed it to the wall. It was an excellent fake, and, especially after he had reconnected the appliances, completely indistinguishable from the socket he had removed. The bug was mains powered and had its own SIM card; it worked just like a mobile phone, but without a screen or keypad.

  It had taken Milton five minutes to break in and install the bugs. He checked that he was leaving with everything that he had brought into the flat, opened the door, and left. He went to his own flat, took out his laptop and ensured that he was receiving both sound and vision. He was. Satisfied, he switched the laptop off. He had no interest in spying on the family. He would only activate the bugs when he needed them.

  #

  THAT NIGHT’S MEETING was at St Mary Abchurch. Milton had had a terrible time finding it on the occasion of his first visit; it was hidden between Lombard Street and Cannon Street, in the middle of London’s financial district. Both of those roads were busy thoroughfares, thronged with traffic and workers leaving their offices at the end of busy days, but as he turned south onto Sherborne Lane, the noise became more of a background hum. He felt the usual sense of tranquillity as he put the city behind him. There was a large pub called The Vintry at the end of the lane, and the church was to the left of that. The building was anonymous from this angle, a heavy red brick construction with stone dressings that, together with the office building on the right, provided the broad shoulders through which the narrow alleyway passed. Milton looked up at the four-storey tower, the leaded spire scraping the slate grey skies. A line of motorcycles was parked at the end of the alley, and the wide, studded oak door was open to allow access to the stone lobby and the church beyond.

  The teas and coffees were served in the lobby, and smokers congregated outside to enjoy a cigarette before the meeting started. Milton took out his own packet, put one to his mouth and lit it. The secretary came into the lobby and announced that the meeting was about to start. Milton looked at his watch: seven. He finished the cigarette and dropped it to the ground. Rain started to fall, a light drizzle at first, but with the promise of something more. Milton went inside and the door was closed.

  They had to pass through the main body of the church to get to the meeting room. It was an impressive sight, much grander than Milton would have expected having seen only the exterior of the building. The ceiling took the form of a large dome pierced by four windows. The interior of the dome was decorated with a painted choir of angels and cherubs surrounding a golden glow in the centre of which was the name of God in Hebrew characters. The church was cool and dark, and echoing acoustics had the effect of reducing conversations to reverent whispers.

  The meeting room, on the other hand, was brightly lit and lively, with open three-bar fires providing the warmth. The others had taken their positions. Milton found an empty seat at the back of the room and sat down
.

  The secretary, a rotund American called Harry whom Milton found a little odd, was behind the table at the front alongside the man who had been asked to share his story.

  Harry cleared his throat. “Good evening, everyone. This is the regular meeting of the St Mary Abchurch group of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Harry and I am an alcoholic.”

  “Hello, Harry.”

  “Thank you for coming on this damp and cold evening. First of all, I have some very sad news. I know some of you have heard already, but Eddie, a good friend of many of us and an occasional visitor to this meeting, passed away yesterday.” The words cut through Milton’s reverie and he sat up straight. “I don’t want to speculate when the details are still unclear, but, from what I understand, he took his own life. It is obviously a terrible, tragic loss that is difficult to understand. Those of us who knew Eddie also knew that he had been struggling with his sobriety lately, but that as recently as the last meeting here, just two days ago, he shared that he felt he was close to a breakthrough. I’ll say no more about it now, save that we should take this as a reminder that our disease can strike unpredictably and that it is something we must always be vigilant against. And it is something we should always look for in our fellow alcoholics. If we feel that someone is struggling, then it is our duty to reach out a helping hand. I don’t know if Eddie asked for help. He was a private man; I suspect he kept his problems to himself. But I’m sure he would be the first to say that we shouldn’t be afraid to ask for a helping hand. Let’s just have a moment of quiet to think of him before the Serenity Prayer.”