by Mark Dawson
“Ziggy says the police are coming,” the second man said. “We need to go.”
Milton gestured over at Elijah. “Untie him.”
The man came over to the chair and, using the knife that Milton had been stabbed with, sliced through the cable ties that had fastened his wrists to the arms of the chair.
Milton had found a rag and was holding it to his shoulder.
“Are you okay?” Elijah asked him.
“I’m fine.” He glanced over at Pinky’s body. “I’m sorry.”
Elijah felt tears in his eyes; he didn’t know what to say.
“We need to go,” the newcomer said again.
“You need to come with us,” Milton said to him. “You don’t want them to find you here.”
Elijah nodded. He was confused, and the outburst of violence had been as horrifying as it had been sudden, and he knew that he had to reach out for something. He trusted Milton and realised now that he should always have trusted him. He looked at the man, the rag already reddening with blood that had been spilt on his behalf, and he felt foolish for ever doubting him.
The second man opened the door and they stepped outside. Snow was falling: huge, fat flakes that spiralled down from the blackness, twisting and twirling as they dropped through the golden glow of headlamps from the Range Rover that was parked on the patch of rough ground in front of the garages. The snow was settling; a white covering already lay atop the corrugated roofs of the garages. Elijah allowed himself to be led to the car. He saw that there were two people inside.
The second man opened the door, reached into the back and dragged out one of those people.
It was Alesha.
She tripped and fell to her knees in the snow. Her hands were secured behind her back, but the second man released them.
“She’s not who she said she was,” Milton said.
“Who is she?”
“Tiffany Brown. She’s Solomon and Israel Brown’s sister.”
Alesha looked up at him, defiant and full of rage, but Elijah ignored her. There was nothing to say. Her thirst for vengeance had led her here: abandoned and about to discover the body of a second dead brother. Elijah had no sympathy for her. He felt nothing at all.
“Let’s go,” Milton said.
Elijah got into the back seat. There was a man in the driver’s seat, and police radio played from a laptop that had been placed on the dashboard. Milton got in next to him, and the second man pulled himself into the front passenger seat. The driver started the engine and they pulled away. Elijah looked back and saw Alesha as she stumbled towards the open garage door.
She screamed.
Elijah heard the sound of sirens in the distance. The snow started to fall more heavily now, the wipers scraping it off the windshield.
The car slowly accelerated away.
Epilogue
M ilton made his way down the aisle to the bathroom at the back of the coach. He unbuttoned his shirt and took it off, hanging it from the hook on the back of the door. The coach swept around a corner, and Milton put out his hand to brace himself; he winced in discomfort, his shoulder aching from the effort.
The bathroom was small, with just enough room for him to stand in front of the sink. He looked into the mirror and peeled off the dressing. Hicks had stitched up the wound. Pinky’s blade had sliced into his muscle, its progress halted as it had butted up against his scapula. There had been a fair amount of blood, but Milton had been fortunate; it was a flesh wound, not particularly deep, and it had missed anything that might have made it more complicated to fix. Milton had been confident that he would be able to treat it himself. Ziggy had found a pharmacist that was open, and he had somehow faked a prescription for antibiotics. Milton had collected it on his way to the coach station.
The wound had been neatly stitched with a surgeon’s knot, sealing the two edges of the incision. Milton pressed gently on it and a little fluid leaked out between the sutures. Milton unwrapped an antiseptic wipe and cleaned the wound, then applied a fresh dressing. He cleaned up, put his shirt on and buttoned it up, and went back outside.
* * *
There was a PA on the coach, and the driver had been playing Christmas songs ever since they had left London: ‘Santa Baby,’ ‘The First Noel,’ ‘Baby, It’s Cold Outside.’ It was nice—comfortable—and Milton had even found himself tapping his feet as some of the other passengers joined in. He made his way back up the aisle. Elijah and Sharon were sitting in a pair of seats near the front of the coach, and Milton had a seat to himself on the other side of the aisle. He lowered himself down, moving slowly, wincing as his shoulder touched the back of the seat.
“You okay?” Sharon asked him.
Elijah caught Milton’s eye.
“Slept on it,” he explained. “Aches and pains. One of the problems about getting old.”
“You’re not old,” Sharon said.
“Yes, he is,” Elijah said.
Milton looked across the aisle at the young man, who was smiling ever so slightly.
“This bus probably doesn’t help,” Sharron said. “The seats aren’t the most comfortable.”
“You won’t be travelling on busses much longer,” Milton said.
“We had return tickets,” Sharron said. “I didn’t bring Elijah up to be wasteful.”
Elijah rolled his eyes.
They hadn’t told Sharon what had happened in the garage. Milton had left the decision as to what they would say to Elijah, and he had decided that there was no point in worrying her unnecessarily. Milton had imposed what he had thought was right on the young man before, and that hadn’t gone so well for him. This time, he had decided that he would step back; Elijah was an adult now, and what happened next was his decision. Milton might not have agreed with his choice—he didn’t—but it was his choice to make.
Milton exhaled and looked out of the window. The National Express coach had set off from Victoria coach station at half three, and now, at just before eight, they were approaching Chesterfield.
It had been a long day.
Milton had given thought to whether the police would have been able to put Elijah at the scene of the murders. Ziggy had checked for CCTV at the club and had found nothing to show him and Tiffany Brown leaving together. It did not appear that there were any witnesses who might have seen them, and Elijah had been taken away from the club in the boot of the car. The garages were not overlooked by neighbours, so the events that had taken place inside would not have been noticed, either. The only person who would have been able to put Elijah at the scene of the crime was Tiffany, and she would have had to compromise herself in order to do so. Milton needed to ensure that he was in the clear, too, and had taken the gun with his prints on it and had disposed of it.
Ziggy had found the initial reports that had been filed by the investigating officers who had had their Christmases ruined by the discovery of the four dead men in the Woodford garage, and they had—prompted by the discovery of the cannabis farm—concluded that they had been murdered thanks to a local drug feud.
There was no reference to Tiffany being at the scene; Milton assumed that she had fled. The woman had been interviewed at her home late on Christmas Day and had, according to the reports, been convincing in her grief. No, Tiffany said, she had no idea why her brother was in the garage, and she could not identify the bodies of the three young men who had been found next to him. It didn’t take the police long: Solomon Brown, Rowmando Silcott, Tyrone Godwin and Shaquille Abora were confirmed as the dead men, their affiliation with the London Fields Boys was established, and they were marked down as just four more victims of London’s postcode war.
Hicks had taken Milton and Elijah back to London. Pinky had taken and destroyed Elijah’s phone, so Milton had texted Sharon to say that he was with her son and that the two of them had settled their differences. He told her that Elijah had lost his phone, and that he had asked Milton to tell her that he had gone back to the hotel. Milton didn’t say anything else—Sharon woul
d have assumed that her son was with a girl—and she had evidently believed it. Milton didn’t like lying to her, but it was what Elijah wanted, and he could see that his motives were pure.
The coach slowed down as they approached the station.
“Another twenty-five minutes and we’ll be home,” Sharon said. “I hope you’re not expecting too much.”
“He doesn’t care, Mum,” Elijah said.
“It’s very kind of you to invite me,” Milton said.
“What else was I going to do? It’s Christmas. You’re not spending it on your own.”
“It wouldn’t have been the first time,” Milton said.
“Well, not this year. I’ve got food in the fridge. You had a Caribbean Christmas dinner before?”
“Never.”
“Turkey, ham, pastelles, macaroni pie,” she said.
“You got calallo?” Elijah said.
“John won’t know what that is.”
“Like collard greens,” Milton said.
“How’d you know that?”
“I’ve travelled a bit,” Milton said, allowing himself a smile.
“And duchess potatoes, Mum,” Elijah said. “Please say you’ve got duchess potatoes.”
“We’re not going to eat until midnight if I have to do duchess potatoes.”
Milton turned away from the two of them and looked out of the window again. Snow had been falling throughout their journey, with more of it the farther north that they had travelled. The pavements around the coach station had been cleared, but several inches had settled on the cars that had been parked next to the depot. Milton saw his reflection in the glass and closed his eyes. He would have been happy to spend the day in his hotel room, waiting to take the next flight back to Tenerife, but he had wanted to make sure that Elijah and Sharon returned home without any further incident.
That was what he told himself, anyway. Elijah had suggested he spend a couple of days with them, and Sharon had quickly agreed; Milton had not been able to say no.
The brakes wheezed as the driver angled the bus into the bay and disgorged the passengers who were finishing their journeys here. Milton reached into his bag, took out his phone, and slipped his AirPods into his ears. He scrolled through his playlists, found his Bauhaus albums, and hit play. The coach jerked into motion again as the driver backed out of the bay. Milton listened to Peter Murphy’s rich baritone and closed his eyes.
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Also By Mark Dawson
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