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

  She was carried through the house, aware of the sound of conversation around her, but unable to distinguish the words from the droning buzz. She felt something bump up against her legs and then something firm and flat onto which her weight was lowered. A hand on her shoulder held her upright. She heard the sound of running water and then tasted it on her lips. She sipped it, using it to wash away the taste of the vomit. It gave her a measure of strength, and she raised her head and opened her eyes.

  She was in a big country kitchen. She saw a long wooden table, big enough for a dozen people, freestanding units, a large cast-iron range. There were four men in the room with her: one, to her right, was supporting her in the chair; another was to her left, the man who had badged her before she had been taken to the car; the third, the man who had driven the car, was older; the fourth, holding the glass to her lips, was Frankie Fabian.

  “Hello,” he said. “How are you feeling?”

  “You… kidnapped me.”

  “I wanted to have a talk. Some things have happened that have caused me a bit of a problem. I think you can help me to understand them.”

  She turned her head to look at the driver of the car. “You… drugged… me.”

  “Sorry about that,” the man said, chuckling as he turned away, and Olivia remembered where she had seen him before: it was the detective inspector to whom she had spoken in the aftermath of Eddie Fabian’s death. His name was Bruce.

  Olivia felt the fatigue returning, and her head fell forward, her chin resting on her chest. There was a gentle slapping on her cheek.

  “Wake up, Olivia,” Fabian said.

  She felt water on her face. It was in her eyes, on her cheeks, in her nostrils and her mouth and her eyes. She shook her head and snorted, and blinked to clear her eyes. The sudden coldness shocked her back to awareness again. “Wake up,” Fabian was saying, his voice suddenly purposeful and stern. “I have some questions for you, and you are going to answer them.” He slapped her again, harder this time, and she opened her eyes and looked up into his. His face was close to hers, inches away, close enough to see the hairs in his nostrils and smell the alcohol on his breath. His eyes were blank and pitiless. “Let’s start with John Smith. Who is he, Olivia? Tell me everything.”

  The last dregs of the narcotic fugue were blown away, and Olivia started to feel afraid.

  Chapter Fifty

  MILTON LEARNED ABOUT the death of Leo Isaacs on the news. He was back at the hotel, waiting to hear from Hicks. The phone was charging on the table, and Milton had been casting glances at it in the hope that, maybe, it would make it ring a little quicker. It did not, of course, and, as the hours passed, he had started to worry that Hicks had not been as persuasive as he would have needed to be. If Higgins didn’t believe him, his future prospects would not have been particularly bright. There was nothing that Milton could do to help him now. That would come later. For now, it was all on him.

  He had switched on the television because he wanted a distraction. The hotel was budget, with a limited selection, and he had flicked through the end of a football highlights show before settling on the late news. He watched it distractedly, not really paying attention, until the newscaster mentioned Leo Isaacs’s name. Milton sat bolt upright, reached for the remote and turned up the volume. The woman explained that Isaacs, who she said had been a prominent member of the government during the 1980s, had been found dead that evening. She reported that the man’s body had been found in the gardens of the apartment block where he lived, the working hypothesis being that he had fallen over the edge of his balcony and plunged to his death. The police were investigating, but there were no current suggestions of foul play. It was, she said, looking like a tragic accident.

  An accident? Milton shook his head. It wasn’t an accident. Higgins was moving quickly to insulate himself.

  He was considering how that might change the equation when the telephone rang.

  “Hello?” he said.

  “John,” a voice replied. It wasn’t Hicks. It was a woman. Her voice was cracked and hoarse. She sounded terrified.

  Milton felt a moment of intense worry. He recognised the voice. “Olivia?”

  “I’m in the shit, John.”

  “Where are you?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Where are you?”

  Olivia still did not reply.

  “Olivia?”

  “She’s with me.”

  It was Frankie Fabian.

  Milton clenched his jaw and tightened his grip on the telephone, but he did not respond.

  “Are you there?”

  “I’m here,” Milton said.

  “You were with Miss Dewey yesterday. We picked her up after you left. I thought it would be helpful to have a discussion.”

  “About?”

  “Well, you, for one. You are a very interesting man. And then there’s the story she was thinking about writing. I say story—I should say stories, I suppose. The armed robbery and what happened to Eddie when he was a boy. She’s explained what you really wanted in the vault.”

  “She has nothing to do with me. If you think you can get to me by threatening her, you’re wasting your time. Do what you like. I don’t care.”

  “Really? You’re bluffing.”

  “Try me.”

  “Please, Mr. Smith, just stop. You are bluffing. You didn’t go into the vault for money. I’ve spoken to my boys’ brief. They said you left almost everything there. No diamonds. Some cash, but not as much as you could have had. So what you told me, all that nonsense about extorting Eddie, it was all a pack of lies. You went to get photographs of Eddie from the eighties, didn’t you? I’ve been trying to work out why you would do something like that? Eddie is dead. You don’t owe him anything. And what you did was very, very dangerous.”

  Milton knew he shouldn’t rise to the bait, but he couldn’t quench the upswell of anger. “Because Eddie deserves the chance for his stories to be told. Both of them.”

  Fabian chuckled. “See, I was right. You have a conscience, Mr. Smith. You have a bleeding heart. You don’t want anything to happen to the girl. Stop pretending.”

  Milton clamped his teeth together until the pressure made his jaw ache.

  “Mr. Smith?”

  “What do you want?”

  “A second chance. We got off on the wrong foot. I’d like to start again. Do you think we could do that?”

  “What’s the point?”

  “Because there’s a way out of this that would make everyone happy. I don’t want the story about Eddie and my boys to be published. Olivia wants to get home to write the story about Eddie being abused. She should be able to do that. I’d like her to do that. I’d even be happy to help. And you, Mr. Smith, I think that should be enough for you, too. I won’t lie—I’m angry about what you did. But the damage can be repaired. My boys are coming out tomorrow.”

  “What?”

  “They’re being bailed. One of the benefits of having a bit of cash behind you is that you can hire the absolute best. They’re bang to rights, of course, no getting around the fact they were found in the vault, but there are ways we can manage the fallout. I’m telling you that because I don’t want you to think I’m going to hold what happens to them over your head. I’m bigger than that.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Let’s talk. Work it all out.”

  “Where?”

  “Come to the house.”

  Milton laughed. “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t trust me.”

  “Funnily enough, I don’t.”

  “Fine. Somewhere public. Lots of people. There’s a restaurant in Covent Garden. Rules. Do you know it?”

  “I’ll find it.”

  “Be there tomorrow night. I’ll have a table booked for seven.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  A COLD WIND blew in off the Thames and its frequent gusts flung stinging drops of rain against the faces of the few commuters wh
o hurried across the bridge on their way to work.

  Milton was in the middle of the span, as he had said that he would be when General Higgins had called him on the number that Milton had given to Hicks. He had chosen this location for several reasons. First, and most important, was that it would be very difficult for him to be approached without being aware of it. There were only two ways to approach him—from the left and the right—and the bridge was three hundred and seventy metres wide. From his placement in the middle, anyone approaching would have to cover one hundred and eighty-five metres without being seen, and Milton trusted his instincts well enough to know that he would be able to detect a threat with enough time to formulate a response. Second, there was an easy escape, should he need it. He would vault the railing and trust that he was strong enough to withstand the treacherous currents in the river ten metres below.

  He looked out over the rails toward the National Theatre and, beyond that, the dome of St Paul’s and the skyscrapers of the city beyond. Most of the men and women whom Milton had known who had shared his line of work had at least a passing interest in the golden age of espionage between the end of the war and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Most knew, for example, that Georgi Markov had defected from Bulgaria and found a job in London with the BBC. The KGB, displeased with the trenchant views that Markov was now broadcasting, had determined to put an end to them—and him—in 1978. Milton could have pointed to the bus stop, the site of which was unchanged to the day, where Markov had been assassinated by a KGB agent. The man had been killed by a ricin pellet that had been injected into his thigh by a rigged umbrella. Milton knew the case well because Group Fifteen had kept a file on the assassination and had liquidated the main suspect in Copenhagen several years after the original hit. The files were easy to recall, and the possibility that he might face a similar fate to Markov and in a similar spot was not lost on him.

  He saw Higgins approaching from the south side of the river. There were twenty-one people between Milton and the general, but he recognised him quickly from the description that Hicks had given him. He was walking purposefully, a black umbrella held aloft to provide some defence against the elements.

  Milton waited against the rail as the other twenty people filed past. As he drew closer, Milton noticed more and more about the old soldier: the lines in his face, the way the rain had flattened his hair against his head, a robustness that belied his age.

  Milton stepped out to meet him.

  “Milton,” Higgins said.

  “General, shall we take a walk?”

  They set off together, one next to the other. The commuters behind them and the men and women who drove by in taxis and on busses might have seen the two men and mistaken them for work colleagues chatting amiably as they walked to their office.

  “Did we ever meet, soldier?”

  “Not really, sir.”

  “But I do know you. Your reputation, I mean. What are you doing getting involved in something like this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Assassinations I can understand, especially with your experience. But theft? It doesn’t match what I know of you.”

  “It doesn’t sound as if you know me at all.”

  “Well, let me see. I might have been out of the game for a while, but I still have a few connections. I was able to pull your Regiment file overnight, just to fill in some blanks. I remember you went to the Firm after the Regiment. You were a headhunter?”

  “I was.”

  Higgins nodded. “What happened? Why did you leave?”

  “A civil servant’s salary seemed a poor substitute for what I could make on the open market.”

  “Really?”

  “I think you know, sir. You’ve done something similar.”

  They walked on for several steps without speaking.

  Milton broke the silence. “You’ve been busy, General. You’ve started to clean up behind you.”

  “You mean Isaacs? Yes, of course. That’s because of you, not that I’d expect you to care. You compromised everything. I didn’t have a choice. Leo Isaacs was a weak man. I’m not talking about his perversions, although those were bad enough. He wouldn’t have been the sort who would have been able to keep his mouth shut. It would have taken the police ten minutes to get the whole sorry story out of him. Best to make sure that didn’t happen.”

  “The police think it was suicide?”

  “Yes, that’s very straightforward. He’s been hounded by these unfortunate rumours for years. The pressure—I don’t know, it must all have gotten too much for him.”

  “What about the others?”

  “There was only one other. The rest died years ago. Isaacs and Harry Grainger were the only ones still alive.”

  “And Grainger?”

  “The same, I’m afraid. Heart attack. He lived alone. His cleaner does his house every Friday. She’ll find him then. Terrible shame.”

  They walked on.

  Higgins glanced at him. “Hicks says you have a business proposal for me?”

  “I do. What do you care about, General?”

  “My money.”

  “I can get you a lot more than the money you lost.”

  “But you want half of it.”

  “I do.”

  “You think that’s a little generous?”

  Milton shrugged. “Half of what you could get is a lot more than what you had in that box. And you don’t get anything without me.”

  “After you took it in the first place, Milton? You expect me to trust you?”

  “Not really. But you’ll have to get used to the idea.”

  A bus rumbled by in the outside lane, throwing a curtain of water over two tourists who were pausing to take a selfie with the Houses of Parliament in the background.

  “If I said yes, what would it look like?”

  Milton knew what he had to say. This was it: the sell. He would reinforce what Hicks had already said. “Frankie Fabian trusts me. He’s seen what I can do and he wants me to work with him on a permanent basis. I’ve said I’d think about it. I could tell him I wanted to see him to talk about it. I could tell you when the sit-down might take place. It would probably be at his house. I could tell you what his security disposition is like. How many guards he has, what they carry, how they patrol. It’s minimal. Nothing that would give you and your men any trouble.”

  “And?”

  “You go at it. Send your men—all they need to do is create a distraction. I go in, too. If Fabian has the money there, I’ll top him and bring it out. If he doesn’t, if he has it somewhere else, I’m betting you know how to get what you need out of him. And if you don’t, I do—but that would cost you another ten per cent.”

  “Don’t worry, Milton, I won’t need any help for that.”

  They were nearly at the end of the bridge now, the lights at the junction with the Strand glowing in the gloom.

  “And if I said yes?” Higgins said.

  “Then you wait for me to tell you when it’s going down. You do your part, I get your money, you give me half.”

  “And if I say no?”

  “I know you’re a dangerous man, Higgins. I know the men who work for you are dangerous, too. And I know that you’re not the sort to let bygones be bygones. I don’t know how it’ll end up. But I like peace of mind. So, if you turn me down, one way it might end up is that I go after all of you. And you know enough about me to know that that’s my special skill. I’ll go after you one by one until I feel safe again. I wouldn’t recommend calling my bluff, but that’s for you to decide.”

  They reached a bus stop with a double-decker waiting to pull away.

  “You’ve got my number,” Milton said. “Call me. If I don’t hear from you by this time tomorrow, I’ll take it that you’re not interested.”

  Milton didn’t wait for Higgins to speak again. He hopped aboard the bus just before the doors hissed shut, pressed his prepaid card to the reader and then went to take a seat at the back. The bus
edged away from the kerb before being caught in the traffic at the junction. Milton sat down and exhaled, the tension of what he had just done flowing out of him. He turned in his seat and looked back through the rear window. It was partially obscured by condensation, but there were patches that were clear and Milton could see Higgins standing on the pavement where Milton had left him, watching the bus as it rolled ahead, crossed the junction and carried him away.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  MILTON STAYED in the Waterloo hotel room for most of the day. He watched the news, always nervous that details of the investigation into the robbery would be revealed. If the police announced that they had suspects under arrest after finding them in the vault, it would make his selling job on Higgins that much more difficult. There would be questions, then, that he would be unable to answer.

  But the story passed down the running order with each successive bulletin. By five o’clock, it had been dropped altogether. There were no damaging revelations.

  There was a branch of Ned’s Noodles opposite the hotel, and Milton went down to it for his dinner. He ordered udon noodles with chicken and yakisoba sauce. He was sitting at a window seat, gazing out into the dreary evening, and he found himself thinking of Olivia. He wasn’t responsible for her, and she was in the mess she was in because she had ignored his very clear advice. But that didn’t mean he was able to abandon her. If she was still alive, it was only because Fabian thought that she might prove to be useful leverage against Milton. The moment that calculation changed, she would serve no further purpose, and Milton was in no doubt that Fabian was not the sort of man to just let her go. He had demonstrated how ruthless he was with Eddie. She was worth nothing to him by comparison.

  He was collecting a pair of plastic chopsticks when his burner phone rang.

  It could only really be one of two people: Fabian or Higgins.

  “Hello?” Milton said.

  “Milton?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Higgins.”

  Milton lodged his chopsticks in the mess of noodles and switched the phone to his right ear.