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

  “And?”

  “We’re in.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “How do we proceed?”

  “I’ll need to make the arrangements.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I told you. I need to set up a meeting with Fabian.”

  “Where? His house?”

  “Leave it to me. I’ll call you tomorrow. Be ready to move. We won’t have time to wait.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  MILTON WENT STRAIGHT to Covent Garden. Rules was on Maiden Lane and was, according to the sign outside, the oldest restaurant in London. Milton glanced in through the window and saw Frankie Fabian sitting in a booth at the back of the room. He went to the door, pushed it open and went inside.

  “Good evening, sir,” the maître d’ said.

  “I’m here to see a gentleman. He’s inside.”

  The woman smiled and gestured that he should go through into the dining room.

  Milton did as she suggested. The room was old fashioned, with lots of wood and a gloomy, slightly stultifying atmosphere. It was quiet, too, with just a handful of diners, the only sounds the low murmur of conversation and the chink of cutlery ringing against china. Milton glanced back at Fabian’s table. He was dining alone, a bowl of soup set out before him. Two large men were sat in the booth next to him, neither of them much interested in the meals before them. Milton could identify bodyguards when he saw them. They were muscle, there to make sure that the meeting passed off without incident. Milton felt comfortable enough. Nothing would go down in a public place like this.

  Milton approached Fabian’s booth and sat down opposite him.

  “Mr. Smith.” Fabian laid his spoon down and stared at Milton. His expression was eloquent, and Milton was left in no doubt as to what he would like to do to him if he was given the chance. “Thank you for seeing me.”

  “Shall we get something straight, right away?” Milton said. “You’re wasting your time with the reporter. She doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  Fabian smiled. “You would say that, but I don’t believe you. Let’s not start off on the wrong foot again. I’m going to send the young lady back to London. I want her to write the story.”

  “Which one?”

  He smiled at that. “The one about Isaacs. I want that to be published. You might not believe me, but I loved Eddie. And those perverts deserve to be punished.”

  “And the other story? About the robbery?”

  “That’s what I’d like to talk to you about.”

  Milton shook his head. “I can’t help you. I’m sorry if you came here on false pretences, but it’s not up for discussion. Neither of them are. They both have to be written. It’s what Eddie wanted.”

  “How do you know what he wanted?”

  “Because he told me. He wanted to make things right. The things he’d done and the things that were done to him. He wanted to get justice and dispense justice. And I’m going to make sure that happens.”

  “Eddie’s dead. Maybe you should think about what his father wants.”

  “I don’t think you have a right to speak on his behalf.”

  “And I don’t—”

  Milton interrupted him. “Enough. Stop. I know what you did. I knew the first time we met. You murdered him.”

  Frankie Fabian was an excellent actor, his poker face honed through interviews with hostile police and during three criminal trials, but Milton’s mild threat generated a flicker of discomfort that passed quickly across his face. “You know Eddie was adopted?”

  “Yes. He told me.”

  “I didn’t want him originally. Funny, the way things play out. It was my wife. She’s a soft touch. Always has been, bless her. She wanted to adopt a child who needed a family. A hard-luck case. I couldn’t care less about charity, but I let her do it. And that was Edward. He was a lovely boy. Sweet as you like. Had his problems, but he’d been moved around from pillar to post, so we put it down to that. Who wouldn’t have had problems with that kind of history?”

  Milton didn’t react and waited until Fabian continued.

  “Treated him like my own flesh and blood. Got him involved in the family business. But his problems got worse. He had no stomach for it. I tried, but it made no difference. I think I knew something had happened to him before we adopted him. Something in the homes. Something made him the way he was.”

  “The way he was?”

  “My boys would say that he was a faggot, but I didn’t care about that. My old man’s father was gay. Built my family into what it is today. Couldn’t give a shit. No, I mean it was the way he was wired. This guilt he had. The way he couldn’t be happy with anything. The way he couldn’t take the things I gave him and be grateful for them.” Fabian shook his head sadly. “I don’t care whether you believe me or not, but I loved him. Despite everything, all the trouble he gave us, I loved him.”

  “Even when he threatened to go to the police about the guard who got shot?”

  “He said he couldn’t stand the guilt about what happened.” Frankie shook his head, and Milton thought he looked almost sad. “Couldn’t stand the guilt. Ridiculous. He said it’d been eating him up. It’s the most pathetic thing I ever heard. The bloke had it coming to him. You see a man waving a shotgun at you, what do you do? You do what you’re told. He didn’t, he was stupid, he got shot. End of story. But Eddie couldn’t get over it. Just couldn’t. He said it was his fault. Started drinking, said the only way he could live with himself was when he was too pissed to remember what had happened. I couldn’t get it into his thick head that he was overreacting. And the drinking just made it worse.”

  “So you killed him.”

  He took his glass and sipped from it. “That’s right,” he said diffidently.

  There was no sadness there, not now. The melancholy had gone as soon as it had appeared. He glared at Milton. There was defiance and anger. It was what Milton had expected to see. It was what he had needed to see to decide, once and for all, that the course of action he had set in play was the right thing to do. Coming here had been a chance for Frankie Fabian to argue for his right to continue to draw breath. His arguments had been selfish. They had utterly failed. If he had known the danger he was in, perhaps he would have behaved differently.

  Milton had heard all he needed to hear. “Thank you,” he said, and started to rise.

  Fabian carried on. “One thing about me you need to know. Family is the most important thing in my life.”

  Milton paused.

  “I’d do anything for my boys. Anything. I gave Eddie a life he never would’ve had otherwise. Money. Lifestyle. Choices. He couldn’t accept any of it. He was too fucked up. Too broken. They did that to him. Those men in the photographs. I tried and tried, but none of it did any good. And in the end I didn’t have a choice.”

  Milton listened to it all—the attempt to justify what he had done—and fixed him throughout with a steely, icy gaze. He knew the effect that his cold and emotionless eyes could have on a person; he had seen it hundreds of times before.

  Milton sat down again. “Does it feel better to get that off your chest?”

  Fabian looked rattled at Milton’s complete lack of a reaction. He glanced over at the muscle on the other table. The men started to rise.

  “Do I look like a priest?” Milton asked. “Did you think I was here to take your confession?”

  “What, then? Why are you here?”

  “Because I wanted to tell you what’s going to happen next. I’m not negotiating with you. I’m telling you. And I want you to know why.”

  He jutted out his chin a little. “And what’s that?”

  “I’m going to kill you, Frankie.”

  Milton watched his face, the infusion of blood in his cheeks, the way his brow lowered just a fraction, the stiffening of his jawline. Milton could see that his words had had the desired effect. Fabian’s larynx jerked involuntarily and a tiny muscle in his cheek twitched once and then a s
econd time. His hand scurried back across the table to the place setting and his fingers traced over the knife that had been left there. Fabian was a hard man, but he was worldly enough to know when he was looking into the eyes of a predator. Fabian was frightened.

  “Do you think I’m afraid of you?” he said, regardless.

  Milton kept staring. He had to be his most persuasive here; his plan depended upon Fabian taking him seriously. “You should be afraid. You asked what I used to do. I never did tell you. I was in the military, at first. The SAS. But then I was transferred into intelligence. I did wet work. You know what that is? I was the person who was sent to kill you when you became a threat to the government’s interests.”

  Frankie responded with an unconvincing laugh. “Don’t make me laugh. What are you trying to say? You were James fucking Bond?”

  “I’ve killed more than a hundred and fifty people in my life. I scouted them, learned everything there is to know about them, and then, at a time of my choosing, I reached out and snuffed out their lives. That’s what I’m going to do to you. I could’ve done it when we met, after the funeral, but I needed your help to get into the vault. I don’t need your help any more, Frankie.”

  “You’re full of it.”

  “You won’t know when, you won’t know how, and you won’t see me coming. It might be quick or it might not. But I want you to know that I’m going to do it, and the reason I’m doing it is because you murdered Eddie. You killed your own son.”

  Milton stood. The two men at the adjacent table were on their feet, too, but Milton froze them to the spot with a glare. The promise of violence was written in his eyes.

  “There’s one other choice. One chance.”

  “To do what?”

  “To bring this to an end without any more bloodshed. Your blood, Frankie. And your sons, your wife, and anyone else who stands between me and you. First, you let the girl go. She doesn’t mean anything to me, but she needs to write the story about Leo Isaacs. And, second, you go to the police and confess to what you did. About how you killed Eddie, and about how your son murdered that guard. You’ve got one day. If you don’t do it, I’m going to pay you a visit. And it won’t be nearly as civilised as this.”

  Fabian stood, brushed his hands down his shirt and the front of his trousers, and collected his jacket from the back of the chair.

  “You do that, Mr. Smith. You’d be welcome. I think you’re bluffing, but maybe you’re not. Maybe you’re as stupid as you sound. I don’t know. But you know where to find me. I’ll be waiting for you.”

  Fabian took out his wallet, pulled out a fifty-pound note, and laid it on the table. He left without looking back. Milton turned to watch him as he went, saw him leave the restaurant and cross the street to his car. He waited until the taillights came on and the car drove away, and then, finally, he took out his phone. He dialled a number and waited for it to connect.

  “It’s me,” he said.

  “I’m here,” replied Alex Hicks. “I’ve got him.”

  “Follow him.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  MILTON WENT to a meeting that evening. He wanted an hour’s worth of peace, a small interval where he could close his eyes and listen to the shares of the men and women who were just like him, with the same compulsions and problems, the same urge toward self-destruction. The meeting was in Fitzrovia, at the St Charles Borromeo Church on Ogle Street. He hadn’t been to the church before; it was a Step & Tradition meeting, focusing on the twelve steps and the twelve traditions. The step that had been chosen for discussion was the third, requiring that alcoholics made a decision to turn their will and their lives over to the care of God as they understood Him. Milton sat at the back and listened. He didn’t have the piety of others, and, although he did not believe in God, he tried to clear his mind in the hope that he might receive a sign that what he was about to do was right. He had orchestrated a course of events that had its own momentum now, and there could be no resiling from it, no stopping it from hurtling toward its inevitable conclusion. Milton had done it for Eddie, but he realised as he sat in his plastic chair that he hadn’t considered whether this was what Eddie would have wanted. The realisation flooded him with uncertainty. He wondered whether—instead of the selflessness that he thought he had been striving for—his behaviour was, in fact, selfish. An attempt to seek redress for his own wrongs by arrogantly assuming that he was doing good.

  He didn’t get the peace of mind that he had hoped to find at the meeting. All he left with were more doubts.

  #

  THEY MET in a lay-by on the road just outside Oxford. It wasn’t far from Littleworth, the village where Eddie had been murdered. Milton pulled off the road and parked his battered Volkswagen next to Alex Hicks’s sleek Range Rover. He got out and hurried ahead, sliding into the passenger-side seat. It was dark, and rain was falling heavily onto the windscreen. The two men sat there for a moment, watching as it sluiced down the glass. The taillights of the cars passing by on the road became indistinct red swipes, blurred and smeared by the water. They were both wearing black. Milton was wearing a tactical shirt and matching trousers, and he had a balaclava and a pair of gloves in his bag back in the car. Hicks was dressed in similar fashion.

  Milton broke the silence. “You ready?”

  “I think so.”

  “You need to do better than that, Hicks.”

  “I’m ready.”

  “You get what I asked for?”

  “There,” Hicks said, jerking his head to indicate the leather satchel on the back seat. “It’s all there.”

  Milton swivelled around and reached for the straps of the satchel. He hauled it into the front, unzipped it, and looked inside. There were three items: the first was a holstered Sig P226. It was a superb weapon, with a twenty round magazine capacity, double-action first round capability and class-leading accuracy and reliability. This one was chambered in 9mm. Milton had used the Sig on many occasions and was as comfortable with it as he could be.

  “Is this yours?” Milton asked him.

  “Yes. You don’t need to worry. It’s in good condition.”

  The second item was a pair of night-vision binoculars.

  The last piece of equipment was a small box with a belt clip, a press-to-talk switch and a headset. It was a H4855 Personal Role Radio, the same model that the British army used.

  “What channel will the men be on?”

  “Two.”

  “And us?”

  “Twelve. You used this before?”

  “Of course.” It was an excellent piece of kit. The inbuilt receiver enabled the radio to be keyed remotely with the press-to-talk switch fob. Milton would attach the radio and the pressel to his belt.

  “Has Higgins bought the story?”

  “I think so. He’s on board, anyway.”

  “What’s he planning?”

  “A five-man fire team. All of us. He’s not taking any chances.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’ll stay out of range.”

  “But he’ll be there?”

  “Yes.”

  “What does he want you to do?”

  “Lay back and snipe. I’ve got my HK in the back.”

  Milton nodded. That was about as fortuitous an assignment as Hicks could have hoped for. It meant he would be able to stay out of the way. It was fortuitous for Milton, too. It was more than likely that he would need covering fire at some point, and Hicks would be able to provide it.

  “Are you clear on what we need to do?”

  Hicks nodded. “You’re taking the biggest risk.”

  Milton shrugged that off. “If there’s enough of a distraction, I’ll be able to get in and get out. You don’t need to worry about me. Just watch your back, that’s all. If Higgins sees through the plan, he’ll come for you.”

  “I know that.”

  “Your wife and kids?”

  “They’re still out of the way.”

  “Good.”

>   Milton collected the leather satchel, opened the car door and stepped outside. Traffic sped by in both directions, and a large eighteen-wheeler rumbled past just a few feet from where he was standing. The air was damp, and the grim sky promised yet more rain.

  Milton held the door open. “Good luck.”

  “You too,” Hicks said. “And thank you. For helping. You didn’t have to.”

  “I’m not doing it for you,” Milton said.

  He closed the door and made his way back to his car. He opened the door and dropped down into the seat. He put the satchel on the passenger seat, the mouth of the bag falling open so that he could see the ominous blackness of the Sig inside.

  Part Four: Halewell Close

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  MILTON HAD chosen a good spot from which to surveil the house and a wide portion of the southern grounds. The estate was surrounded by a dry stone wall, typical for the Cotswolds. He had driven to the main gate and then followed it around to the west and then the north, trailing the perimeter until he found a spot that he liked. He had parked out of sight at the side of a switchback lane and then prepared himself. He applied camo paint to his face, smearing it across every last inch of skin until only the whites of his eyes stood out when he checked his handiwork in the mirror. He pushed the in-ear plugs into place, pulled his balaclava over his head and settled it all the way down so that the skin around his neck and throat was covered, too. He put on the shoulder holster, jammed the Sig into place, and checked that he could easily withdraw it. He could.

  He collected the small rucksack that was sitting on the seat next to him, stepped outside and went around to the boot of the car. He had stopped at a Shell garage on the drive west and bought the additional supplies that he thought he might need. He opened the plastic carrier bag and took out the two bottles of wine. He unscrewed the tops of each bottle and poured the wine out onto the verge. Then, he took out two bottles of motor oil and a jerry can that he had filled with petrol, filling each wine bottle half and half with each. He took a thick rag, used his knife to slice it in two, and used the halves to seal the mouths of the bottles, covering each with several layers of duct tape. He opened a packet of tampons, removed two, and taped them to the sides of the bottles.