The Ninth Step - John Milton #8 (John Milton Thrillers) Page 6

  “I was a million miles away.”

  The boy shuffled forward awkwardly.

  “You’re Ahmed, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m John.”

  The boy shrugged.

  “Been playing football?”

  He nodded.

  “Who do you like?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Which team?”

  “Arsenal.”

  “No,” Milton said with a smile. “Don’t say that.”

  “What about you?”

  “West Ham.”

  “West Ham are rubbish,” the boy said.

  Milton smiled. “I can’t argue with that.” Ahmed had lowered his defences a little. “Who’s your favourite player?” Milton asked him.

  “Sanchez.”

  “He’s good,” Milton conceded. “You don’t like Özil?”

  “He’s all right. Sanchez is better.”

  Milton could see that he was making progress. He decided to change tack just a little.

  “Are your mum and dad okay?”

  The wariness returned, and Milton doubted he would get anything out of him.

  “What do you mean?”

  Milton gestured to the door. “Some men came around the other day. I think they made a mess inside your flat. They pulled over your bookcase.”

  The boy’s eyes hardened and, for a moment, Milton thought he was going to rebuff him. He bit his lip and grasped his football a little tighter to his chest.

  “You don’t have to tell me about it,” Milton said. “I’m sorry.”

  Ahmed shook his head. “My dad says I don’t need to worry about it. He gets angry when I ask, but I’ve heard him talking to my mum. They want money, but I don’t think my dad has enough. My mum says we might have to live somewhere else, but I don’t want to live anywhere else. I like living here. My friends live here.”

  There came a loud sob from the flat. They both heard it. The boy flinched and looked as if he was very quickly going to become upset. Milton decided not to push things any more.

  “Well, nice to meet you, Ahmed.”

  He shuffled. “Yeah.”

  “If there’s anything I can help you with, you just need to let me know. Okay?”

  Ahmed shrugged and went to the door, but waited to open it. Milton realised that he wanted him to leave before he went inside. He took the hint, checked that the door to his flat was locked, followed the stairs down to the ground floor, and waited for a bus to take him to Dalston.

  Chapter Ten

  THE OFFICE that housed Transport for London’s customer service department was on Blackfriars Road. Hicks drove there and parked the Range Rover on a quiet side street. He took the bundle of notes and peeled off two twenties. He put them in his pocket and put the rest into the glove compartment. He stepped out, shut and locked the door, and went to the office.

  It was a simple space with a row of chairs facing a smeared screen. A bored-looking clerk was chewing the nails of her left hand as she pressed a telephone receiver to her ear with her right. She saw Hicks and waved at him to sit down, mouthing that she would be with him soon. He did as he was told, sitting in one of the plastic chairs and looking at the posters that had been stuck to the walls.

  Hicks found his thoughts returning to Isaacs. The old man disgusted him, and the thought of helping him was something he was finding very difficult to accept. No one had mentioned that the unit was engaged in work for clients like that. He realised that perhaps he hadn’t researched the opportunity that Higgins had presented with enough diligence. He could have said no then, before involving himself last night, but now that would be a difficult thing to do. No, he corrected himself. Not difficult. Impossible. And it would be similarly impossible to specify to the general which work he would accept and which he would decline. It didn’t work like that in the Regiment, and it wouldn’t work like that in the unit, either. Orders were orders. Work was work. You did as you were told. If you didn’t like it, you kept your mouth shut and did it anyway.

  “Yes, darling?”

  Hicks got up and went to the window.

  “I’m looking for information on a taxi driver?”

  “Not much I can give you, I’m afraid.”

  “I have his number.”

  “All I can do is tell you whether or not he’s registered.”

  “Really? I left my luggage in the back of the cab. I was hoping I might be able to get in touch with him.”

  “You need to go to the lost-property office. Baker Street. I can give you the number if you like.”

  “I really need his address.”

  She shook her head. “Can’t do that.”

  “It’s very important,” he said.

  She shook her head again.

  Hicks took out the two twenties and slid them into the tray that was set into the counter beneath the screen.

  “Please?”

  She looked at the notes, paused, and, looking behind her to ensure that she wasn’t overlooked, nodded. “What’s the number, love?”

  Hicks took out his phone, opened the note he had taken and recited it.

  She tapped it into her computer. “His name is Edward Fabian. Ready to take his address?”

  #

  HICKS STEPPED outside into the gloomy afternoon and went back to his car. Edward Fabian’s address was listed as Wallwood Road in Leytonstone. He drove east. It was rush hour and there was a lot of traffic along the route. The drive took ninety minutes and it was early evening and already dark by the time he finally arrived.

  The address was five minutes away from Leytonstone underground station, in the middle of a terrace in a rather downtrodden part of the district. Each house had a narrow slice of garden that separated it from the pavement, but none of the inhabitants seemed to be particularly interested in keeping them in good order. Weeds had been allowed to grow tall, and Fabian seemed to have used his garden as a depository for an old freezer and a sofa that had, at some point, been slashed with a knife so that the yellowed stuffing spilled out. A taxi was parked in the road; that, at least, was kept in good order, and the raindrops that rolled off the black paintwork glistened like little jewels in the dim light that filtered down through the angry clouds overhead.

  Hicks stepped out of the car and approached the taxi. There was enough light from a streetlamp to read the licence number that had been fixed to the glass partition that separated the driver from the passengers. The number was the same as the one that Leo Isaacs had taken down. Hicks was satisfied: he was in the right place. He went back to the Range Rover and took out his phone. He dialled and waited for the general to pick up.

  “Higgins.”

  Hicks could hear the sound of a train in the background. The general was heading back to Hereford.

  “I’m at the cabbie’s address, sir.”

  “Where?”

  “The East End. Leytonstone.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Edward Fabian.”

  “Is he at home?”

  “His cab’s outside. There’s a light on inside the house.”

  There was a pause.

  “Sir? What do you want me to do?”

  “Stay outside. I’ll call you back.”

  Chapter Eleven

  HICKS WAITED. He had moved the car twenty feet down the road so that he wasn’t directly in front of the house. He had no idea whether Fabian was a particularly observant man, but there was no point in making his vigil an obvious one. His new vantage point offered an oblique view of the house, but it was still sufficient to see the lights, and there would be no way that Fabian would be able to leave without Hicks noticing him.

  He spent the first hour getting a feel for the street and the surrounding area. It was quiet, residential, with very little passing traffic.

  Ten o’clock came and went, and then eleven.

  Hicks took out his phone and searched on Leo Isaacs’s name. A lot of results came back. There
were articles on his ministerial career and others that suggested that he still had influence on policy from his position in the upper house. He went to the second and then the third page of results and found something else: a series of articles from several years earlier. They reported on a court case. Isaacs was alleged to have been found on Hampstead Heath with another man, engaged in what one of the more salacious newspapers described as an “unnatural sex act.” There had been a trial, but it had collapsed. Hicks looked for more, but that was as much as he could find.

  The lights in the house remained lit.

  Midnight.

  The lights on the ground floor were extinguished and, after a pause, a light was turned on in a room on the floor above. A bedroom, perhaps. Eddie Fabian was turning in for the night.

  Hicks stared up at the window. He was uncomfortable. He knew very little about Fabian, but he did know that Leo Isaacs was a deeply unpleasant man with an unpleasant past, and he would not have been disposed to help him under normal circumstances. Hicks had two boys, and if the things that Fabian had said about him were true, then he was a vile predator who deserved to rot in prison.

  But then Hicks thought of the money that the general had so insouciantly dropped onto the seat of the car. Thousands of pounds, just like that. He thought of the money that they had taken. Tens of thousands, maybe more. He thought of his wife, Rachel, and the cancer. It had changed everything. It had bent his principles and twisted his morals until he didn’t recognise himself any more.

  The cancer. He didn’t want to think about it, but he couldn’t stop himself. It had started with a melanoma on her back. He had seen it one morning after she had come out of the shower. The National Health Service had removed it, but the disease had already spread. The MRI discovered a five-centimetre growth under her left breast that had burrowed deep into her chest wall. There was another growth on her right lung. The doctors were talking about surgery and then aggressive chemotherapy, but Hicks had been able to tell from the way that they delivered the prognosis that they were not hopeful of being able to do very much at all.

  Hicks had immediately started to research their options. Foreign treatment seemed like the best hope. The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York was offering an experimental combination of two drugs: Opdivo and Yervoy. They were among a vanguard of new medicines that worked by bolstering the immune system so that it attacked the tumours. Patients who had taken the cocktail had reported incredible results. There was a story in the press that Hicks had fastened onto. One patient, a woman of similar age to Rachel, had returned for a follow-up examination to be told that her tumour had gone. The melanoma cells had simply been dissolved. Hicks spoke to Rachel’s oncologist and suggested that they try the treatment. The man shook his head. It wasn’t available on the National Health Service. Hicks called the clinic in New York. Treatment was possible, but the drugs were expensive. Two courses would cost over a hundred thousand pounds.

  They didn’t have that. Not even close.

  Hicks had no choice. He had to find the money.

  If he couldn’t find it, or if he was too slow, then Rachel would die. He would be widowed. His children would lose their mother.

  And that was not going to happen.

  Hicks wouldn’t let it.

  He had served with Gillan in the Regiment and they had kept in touch afterwards. The two of them met for a drink once or twice a year, and the last time Gillan had suggested that he had been getting extra work with a group of other ex-SAS men. Hicks had been working in private security, body guarding for rich Arabs who treated London like their own private playground. They showered money around like confetti, yet they were parsimonious when it came to paying their staff. Gillan had asked whether Hicks would be interested in learning more about the opportunity, but he had said he wasn’t interested. It was before the diagnosis, and he hadn’t needed to know any more to suspect that it wasn’t completely legitimate. But then came the cancer, and Hicks’s priorities had changed. He would never be able to make the money he needed by working for the Arabs. He was open to alternatives.

  He called Gillan and said that he might be interested. They had met again and, this time, Gillan had brought the general with him. Higgins explained the kind of jobs that they undertook: they targeted serious criminals, robbing them at the same time as they removed them from the street. He made it sound as if it was a public good.

  Hicks saw that for the fig leaf that it was, but he said that he was interested.

  Öztürk had been his first. That operation had been just as advertised. A bad man had been taken out. The fact that he had a lot of money was a useful side benefit.

  But now this.

  Isaacs.

  Fabian.

  It was not the job that had been advertised at all.

  The reality of becoming a member of the Feather Men was not what he had been sold.

  He was jolted out of his reverie by the ringing of his telephone.

  “What’s going on?” It was Alistair Woodward.

  “Fabian’s still inside. No sign that he’s awake. Where are you?”

  “London.”

  “What are we doing?”

  “Not we—you. The general wants you to break in and give him a warning.”

  “What kind of warning?”

  “He needs to know that it’s not a good idea to threaten people we’re looking after. Be persuasive.”

  “How persuasive?”

  “Use your imagination. But make it good.”

  Chapter Twelve

  HICKS PUT the car into first and pulled out, driving down the road until he was completely out of sight of Fabian’s house. He had no desire to make it easy for the man to spot his registration plate after he had done what he was going to have to do. He waited until the only other car he had seen in the last hour had rolled past the window and then opened the glove box. He pulled a pair of latex gloves onto his hands and checked that his Browning was easily accessible in its shoulder holster. It was. He took off his jacket, slipped the holster on, and then replaced his jacket.

  He got out of the car, leaving the door unlocked, and quickly walked back to the house. The gate to the front garden was unoiled and it opened with a creak that seemed much louder than it actually was. He paused on the step for a moment, assured himself that all was well, and then crossed the garden in three paces. The front door was made of wood, thin and flimsy enough that it would have opened with a firm kick. That was not an option, though. Hicks had to be quiet. He knelt before it and flipped aside the hinged lid that obscured the keyhole. The lock was a simple mortice. He took out his lock pick, slipped it into the keyhole and then followed it with the long L-shaped tension wrench. He used the wrench to apply torque to the pins to prevent them from being pushed back down into place and, once he had found the correct alignment for the pins, he turned the handle and gently pushed the door open.

  He slipped inside and closed the door quietly behind him.

  He stood there for thirty seconds and just listened. As far as he had been able to ascertain, there was no one else in the house. Hicks closed his eyes and acclimatised. He heard the tick of water falling into a metal basin from a leaking tap. He heard the creak of a pipe. He heard the sound of a cat mewling in the back garden and then the louder screech of a fox. He held his breath and strained his hearing, concentrating on the first floor, listening for anything that might suggest that Fabian was awake. He heard nothing until, after a moment, he heard the unmistakeable sound of snoring.

  Good.

  He opened his eyes and took a balaclava from his pocket. He put it on, settling the woollen garment so that only his eyes were visible. He took a pair of thin latex overshoes and slipped them over his boots. Finally, he took out a small shielded flashlight, switched it on and cast the light around so that he could survey his surroundings more thoroughly. The hall was a mess. There was a pile of mail on the floor just behind the door, surely several weeks’ worth, and another stack
that had been precariously balanced on a small table that also held a telephone and a bunch of keys. He reached out and took an envelope from the pile, holding it between gloved thumb and forefinger. It was a bill, angry red showing through the envelope window, addressed to Edward Fabian. He put it down again.

  Hicks reached into his jacket, released the clip on his shoulder holster, and withdrew the pistol. It was a Hi-Power, the model favoured by the Regiment, and one that had never let him down before.

  He walked ahead and quickly checked that the rooms downstairs were empty. There was a sitting room, kitchen and bathroom. They were all untidy, with mismatched furniture, abandoned clothing, and discarded newspapers and food packaging, and they were all empty.

  Hicks returned to the hall and ascended the stairs. The boards beneath his feet were old and they creaked; he stepped on the outsides of the steps, closer to the stringers, and minimised the noise.

  He reached the landing. The snoring was much louder here, and it was easy to locate. There were three doors off the landing: two bedrooms and a second bathroom. He checked the other rooms first, confirmed that they were empty—and thus that the house was empty apart from the sleeper—and approached the final room. He pushed it open with his fingertips. The hinges were in good condition and the door swung back noiselessly.

  Hicks stepped inside.

  The window was uncovered and it admitted a little indirect light from the streetlamp outside. There was enough for Hicks to be able to look around without the flashlight, so he switched it off and put it back in his pocket. The room was as untidy as all of the others. There was a bed and the shape of a recumbent figure beneath a duvet that was pulled all the way up. There was a pile of clothes at the foot of the bed. There was a set of drawers with an old-fashioned clock radio sat atop it, the red figures glowing.

  He approached the bed.

  Eddie Fabian was sleeping on his side, his face turned toward Hicks. His head rested on his arm, and his right foot protruded out from underneath the cover. Hicks drew the Browning, rested his finger against the trigger guard, and then slowly lowered himself onto the bed so that he was sitting next to Eddie’s body. The man exhaled and shifted position a little. Hicks let him settle again and then pressed the barrel of the pistol against the side of his head.