by Mark Dawson
“Thank you.”
“Do you need anything else?”
“I don’t think so. Stay here for the next day or two. I’ll let you know when it’s handled.”
Higgins turned his back on the old man and left the room without a word.
The old man looked at Hicks with anxious eyes.
“Goodbye,” Isaacs said to Higgins’ retreating back.
The general didn’t answer.
#
HICKS FOLLOWED THE GENERAL out of the apartment and caught him up as he stalked to the elevators. Higgins said nothing as they descended to the reception, and nothing as they passed through the space and onto the street beyond. It was only when they were both in the Range Rover that he provided his summation of the awkward twenty minutes that they had spent with Isaacs.
“Pathetic.”
“Sir?”
“Drive, Corporal.”
Hicks started the car and pulled away.
Higgins shook his head. “What did you make of it?”
“This man Isaacs is worried about. He knew him when he was a boy?”
“Yes.”
“And when you said he had ‘personal weaknesses,’ is it what I think it is?”
“What do you think it is, Corporal?”
“He’s a paedophile?”
“Him and plenty of others. Be frank, Hicks: is that a problem for you?”
“I don’t understand why you would want to help him. I think he’s disgusting.”
Higgins waited a moment before agreeing with a terse, “Undoubtedly. Him and the other men who were involved. They’re all scum, Hicks.”
“And so why are we protecting them?”
“Because the damage that would be caused, were the details of what they did to be released, would be catastrophic. Isaacs was a very senior politician. But it isn’t just him. He was involved with senior men from the military. The civil service. The police. And politicians who were even more senior than he was.”
“How senior?”
“The most senior. I’m sure I don’t have to spell it out.”
There was no need to ask; Hicks knew what he meant. The clouds had cowled the sky again, and he stared into the glowing red lights of the car ahead until he had to blink to clear them from his vision. It was very likely true, but that didn’t make what Higgins was suggesting any more palatable. It felt as if he was taking steps out into deeper water, knowing that at some point, without warning, the seabed would fall away from beneath him and plunge him into the depths.
“It is our duty to protect them,” Higgins said.
Hicks glanced across at the envelope in the general’s lap and looked away again before Higgins could notice. Duty? Hardly. The motive was baser and more venal than that.
Higgins had reached a decision. “Whoever was bugging Isaacs—find out whatever you can about him.”
“And then?”
“And then I’ll give some thought about the best course of action. Don’t worry, Corporal, I’ll be sure to let you know.”
“Where to now, sir?”
“Hatton Garden.”
The general was silent as Hicks drove them to the northeast. He followed the line of the Thames until they reached the junction for Blackfriars Bridge, then he turned to the north and passed along Farringdon Street until they reached their destination. Hatton Garden was one of the most famous streets in London, a district with an unusually dense collection of shops and merchants concerned with jewellery and the diamond trade. The shop frontages advertised everything and anything that could be associated with jewellery: there were watchmakers, jewellery manufacturers, a dozen shops that specialised in engagement rings, and diamond traders. It was a little shabby, the bright displays shining out from shop windows that were set into bleak concrete buildings.
“Straight ahead,” the general said. “On the left.”
The London Vault Company was just to the north of the junction of Hatton Garden and Greville Street. It had jewellers’ businesses on either side of it. Hicks followed Higgins’s directions and parked the car in a space on the other side of the road.
“Wait here. I won’t be long.”
“Yes, sir.”
The general opened his case and put the envelope that Leo Isaacs had given him inside. Hicks glanced across and saw that the case was full of money. He saw it only briefly, turning away as the general looked up at him, but he saw the neat rows of banknotes. The money was from last night, Hicks guessed. The money that they had taken from Öztürk.
The general closed the case, stepped outside and crossed the road. Hicks watched as he went through the plain double doors that were evidently the main way to get inside the business. The London Vault Company. He took out his phone, navigated to Google and searched for information. The business had a website, and Hicks flicked through the pages. It had been established sixty years earlier and offered safe deposit boxes to clients who wanted to store valuable items. It had a variety of different-sized boxes, together with walk-in safes, and the copy declared proudly that the vault had never been breached and was considered to be impregnable.
It must be where the general kept his wealth.
Hicks switched on the radio. He found that his mind was racing, and he wanted to distract himself from the thoughts that were starting to develop.
Higgins came out after fifteen minutes. He crossed the road and slipped into the back of the car.
“Where to, sir?”
“Euston station.”
He put the car into first and pulled out. He took Gray’s Inn Road and started to the west. The satnav suggested that the drive would take twenty minutes if the traffic was kind.
Hicks watched in the mirror as the general reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a bundle of notes. He reached forward and dropped the bundle onto the passenger seat.
“What’s that for?”
“You have kids, don’t you?”
The reference to his children made his skin prickle. “Yes, sir. Two boys.”
“You’ll get your cut from last night soon. This is an advance. Treat them. Treat your wife. You’re not going to be going home until we’ve fixed this mess.”
“Yes, sir.”
Chapter Nine
MILTON SLEPT UNTIL MIDDAY and, finding he was still a little sluggish, allowed himself an extra hour in bed. He woke again before one, got up and dressed for a run. The streets outside were wet, and, although the rain had stopped, another thick black cloudbank had collected over the city with the promise of another downpour.
Milton set off. He had always been a runner. It was his favourite exercise, an hour or so when he could switch off his consciousness and relax into the cadence of his stride, the sound of his shoes as they slapped against the pavement. Outside of the meetings, running was the best form of meditation that he had ever found.
He ran for an hour, east along the Old Bethnal Green Road until he could break into the open green spaces of Victoria Park. He ran hard, circling the large old boating lake with the fountain in the middle, then the café that served as a shelter for locals who had nowhere else to go. He kept running, all the way to the derelict bandstand, and then turned and started for home.
He ran back to the flat, showered and shaved, and dressed in a pair of jeans and a black sweatshirt. He looked around his little place. There was a lounge just big enough for a second-hand sofa and a table and chair. He had purchased the furniture from a charity that recycled pieces and sold them to those on low incomes. There was a tiny kitchen that was little more than a cupboard and a bathroom and a single bedroom. Milton had very little in the way of possessions. He had his well-thumbed copy of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, a phone and a set of Bluetooth speakers that he used to play his music, the oxidised Ronson lighter that his father had owned and a collection of books that he had bought from Oxfam. It was an ascetic kind of life and one that suited him very well.
Next, he attended to the making of his bed. There were
many routines and habits that he had developed during his years of service, many of them so deeply ingrained now that he would have been unable to alter them even if he had wanted to. Presenting a neat and tidy bed was one of the more important ones. It was something that set him up for the rest of the day. That one small routine, the knowledge that it had been done to his satisfaction, was an excellent foundation for what was to come. It developed discipline and fostered attention to the smallest of details. He had seen it too many times for it to be a coincidence: men who struggled to get their lives together often went straight to the most challenging goals while the rest of their lives were left in a disorganized mess. Milton had always drilled it into the soldiers under his command: get the little things under control, and the sense of confidence and satisfaction will help you address the bigger ones.
He had followed the same routine for years. Fitted sheets were a lazy compromise, and he preferred a normal sheet. He stood at the foot of the bed and spread the bottom sheet evenly across it. He tucked the top and bottom edges of the sheet between the bottom of the mattress and the box springs, fashioning perfect hospital corners. He smoothed out the creases and wrinkles with brisk strokes of his hand, then spread out the top sheet and the blanket, making identical hospital corners for those, too. He folded down the tops of the blanket and the top sheet and then placed the pillows. When he was done, he took a fifty-pence piece from the pot on his bedside table and bounced it off the bed. It sprang back up into his hand. Perfect.
He prepared his breakfast. He had recently taken to starting his day with a large iced smoothie: he would prepare the fruit, add ice, protein powder and powdered vitamins, then blitz it in a blender that he had picked up for thirty pounds on eBay. The process took five minutes, and he found that repeating the same steps again and again was almost as calming as his running. He took the smoothie into the lounge and drank it while he flicked through the copy of Time Out that he had found on the seat of the bus this morning. There was a matinee showing of Casablanca at the Rio in Dalston. Milton had decided that he would like to see it.
Milton stepped out into the vestibule, locked the door and immediately heard the sound of arguing from the next-door flat. He stopped, his hand resting against his door, and listened. The words were muffled and difficult to discern, but it was obvious that the mother of the family was upset. Her voice was drawn and tight, her sentences broken up, and Milton could soon hear the sound of her sobbing. The father, the woman’s husband, was trying to console her. Milton couldn’t make out the words.
“Mister?”
Milton found that he had been standing with his eyes closed. He opened them, turned, and saw a young boy looking at him. He recognised him. He lived in the flat. He thought, from overhearing them as he passed them playing on the swings at the foot of the building, that the boy’s name was Ahmed. He had a football under his arm and he was regarding Milton with confusion.
“Are you all right?” the boy asked him.
“I’m fine.”
“You were just standing there.”
“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?”
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.
