by Mark Dawson
The second car that had turned off the main road was a Ford, a dowdy Mondeo that had seen better days. Milton recognised it: it was Alex Hicks’s second car. He watched in the mirror as it pulled out and drove alongside the Nissan.
Richard Higgins didn’t even have time to open the door and run.
Hicks raised a snub nosed Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. He aimed across the cabin of the Mondeo and fired a contained burst through the open window. Hicks was close to the general, and he was an accurate shot. The spray of 9x9mm rounds blew out the window of the Nissan and perforated Higgins.
Hicks aimed and fired again.
The general slumped to the side until Milton could no longer see him through the mirror.
The engine still running despite the collision, Milton put his Volkswagen into gear and pulled away, heading east.
Chapter Seventy
THE SHOOTING of Richard Higgins made the news that night. Milton listened to it on the radio with some of the regulars in the shelter. While the police suggested that it was possible that the drive-by was connected to the story of the Westminster paedophiles with which Higgins was so intimately connected, there was no other clue to suggest what might have happened or who might have killed him. Milton wasn’t concerned. There had been no witnesses that he had been able to see. The police had very little to go on.
It was one in the morning when Milton looked out of the hatch and saw the man waiting against the railings, his outline silhouetted by the streetlamp behind him. Milton waited until the shelter was empty and then opened the door.
Alex Hicks came inside.
“Evening, sir.”
“I told you, Hicks, don’t call me that.”
Milton noticed that the younger man was walking a little gingerly, bent over very slightly to the left. The shoulder. His left hand was also heavily bandaged.
Milton sat down beside him. Hicks had been shadowing Milton for the last few days. They knew that Higgins had no idea where either of them lived, but it wasn’t too much of a stretch to think that he would put two and two together and realise that Hicks had first seen Milton that night at the shelter. Hicks had telephoned Milton yesterday evening to tell him that the general was onto him. He had been outside the shelter when Milton arrived at the start of his shift and he had stayed in the area until the morning. Higgins was wily, and there had been no opportunity for Hicks to take him out then. Milton had led Higgins all the way home; it had been all he could do to stifle his instinct to shake him off, but he was the bait, and it was necessary. Hicks had been there, too—Milton had seen him—but the underground was unsuited to a quiet hit and the walk back to Arnold Circus had been busier with pedestrians than it usually was. There had been no opportunity for Hicks to put the general down then, either.
Hicks had reported what had happened. The old man had stayed outside Milton’s flat for five minutes and then he had disappeared. Hicks stayed in the area, hiding out inside a flat in the tenement on the other side of the street. Milton had proposed it because he knew that it was unoccupied. The flat offered a broad view of Milton’s building and its surroundings, and Hicks could observe from there without being seen.
And, true enough, the general had been back later in the morning.
“Was he following me all afternoon?”
“All the way to Beckton. God knows what he thought you were doing.” Hicks paused. “Actually, what were you doing?”
“Never mind,” Milton said. “I saw him. I saw you, too.”
“Yeah, well,” Hicks said, defensively, “you knew I was there. He didn’t.”
“No,” Milton said. “He did not. You did well, Hicks. It was clean.”
Hicks nodded with feigned indignation. Milton could see that his praise meant something to him.
Milton indicated Hicks’s shoulder. “How is it?”
“Been better.” Hicks smiled, a mixture of bitterness and rue. “I saw a friendly doctor I used to know from the Regiment. The general made a bit of a mess of it. Nerve damage, the scapula is chipped and he nicked the artery, too. All in all, I got lucky.”
“And the hand?”
Hicks held up his left hand. It was dressed and wrapped in a bandage. “A little worse. Severed some tendons. Some nerve damage, too. I won’t be able to use it properly again. But, you know what, all in all? I reckon I got away with one.”
“What did you tell your wife?”
“Haven’t seen her yet. She’s keeping the kids out of the way.”
“You don’t have to worry about that any more.”
“No, I don’t suppose I do.”
Milton took out his cigarettes and offered the packet to Hicks. He shook his head; Milton took one of the cigarettes and lit it. “How is she?”
“Rachel?” Hicks shrugged. “No better and no worse.”
“So how much do you need?”
“What for?”
“The treatment.”
“A hundred thousand dollars.”
“How much have you got?”
“About half.”
Milton got up and went into the kitchen. He still had the second of the two sports holdalls he had brought with him today. He collected it and put it on the floor next to Hicks’s legs. “There,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“Open it.”
Hicks unzipped it and looked inside.
Milton watched him do it. “Higgins had a lot of money in the vault. There’s enough in there for what you need.”
“Seriously?”
“Money doesn’t mean anything to me. I live a simple life. I’m not ambitious. And your family needs it. Take it.”
Hicks turned and looked at Milton. His eyes were damp. “Thank you.”
Milton got up and inhaled on his cigarette. “Don’t make a song and dance about it,” he said. “You’re still an idiot.”
Hicks stood, too, and wiped his eyes with the back of his jacket. “I know I am. I won’t forget what you did.”
“Like I said: forget it.”
Hicks put out his hand. Milton took it and they shook.
“Go on,” Milton said. “Fuck off.”
Hicks smiled and, taking the bag in his uninjured hand, he opened the door and stepped down onto the street. Milton got up and watched him go. He didn’t know whether he would see him again. Probably not.
Milton closed the door and crossed the room to change the radio to 6 Music. The DJ was holding a retrospective for The Bluetones, and ‘Broken Starr’ started to play as Milton reached over to fill the sink so that he could wash the dirty dishes. The fabric of his shirt was pulled taut, rubbing against his breast. He felt a prickle of discomfort and ran his fingers over the tight skin that reminded him of the fresh tattoo above his heart.
THE JUNGLE
PROLOGUE
NADIA BLINKED. It took a moment to realise that her eyes were open. It was completely dark. She was lying down on something hard. She felt her hands folded across her chest, but she couldn’t see them. She blinked her eyes again. She unclasped her fingers and brought her right hand right up to her face. All she could see was the suggestion of a shape passing through the thicker black.
She squeezed her eyes shut and listened. She heard her breathing, quick and shallow, and then, beyond that, the low rumble of an engine.
The muscles in her back were sore. Her legs twitched with cramp. She reached up. Her hands could only have been a few inches above her chest when her knuckles grazed something hard. She turned her hands over and probed with her fingers. She felt something solid and rough, an abrasiveness that snagged against her fingernails.
She felt the first icy stabs of fear in her stomach.
Her memory was foggy, clouded with uncertainty, and she tried to make sense of what had happened to her. It came back to her in fragments. She remembered the trip across the desert; she remembered the boat, so loaded with passengers that she had been certain that it would capsize and tip them all into the ocean; she remembere
d the way that her brother had clasped her hand and told her everything would be all right; she remembered the way that she had felt at the first sight of land, of Europe, at the promise of a new life that it represented. She had knelt down and kissed the concrete of the dock.
And five minutes later she had been picked up and tossed into the back of the van.
She remembered: the men with guns who took her from Samir; the long drive north in the back of the van with two other women, Amena and Rasha; the tented city that teemed with refugees, men and women like her; the tent, and the big man with the shaven head who had looked at her and nodded; her arms being held behind her back, the prick of the needle in her neck, the plunge into darkness.
Nadia opened her eyes again and pressed up once more, tracing the fingers of both hands to the left and right. She felt another panel, perpendicular to the one that was above her. She found the join between them. Her finger caught in the otherwise flat panel and she realised that she had found a knot in the wood.
She realised where she was.
She was in a wooden box.
“Help!”
Her voice was both loud and deadened, all at once.
She became frantic. “Help! Please, help me!”
She banged her fists on the sides of the box and slapped her palms against the lid until her skin burned. Her heart raced and she started to sweat. She kept banging and screaming until she was gasping for breath.
No-one came.
She heard the rumble of the engine again and then the sensation of renewed motion. She banged the lid and kicked out with her legs, her feet thumping against the end of the box, but it was all in vain. No-one came.
She lay back, panting, her eyes stinging with hot tears.
She had been taken. She had been stolen from her brother, their hopes of a better life ruined. She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know what was going to happen to her.
She stopped struggling.
There was no point. No-one was coming to help her.
Nadia was alone.
And she was scared.
Part One
Calais and Dover
Chapter One
JOHN MILTON’S SATURDAY MEETING was held in the sports hall of a school in Chelsea. It was one of his favourites: it was early, at eight o’clock, which meant that he had gotten the meeting out of the way before most people were up and about, and had given himself the best possible start to the day that he could; and, just as important, it was a lively, friendly meeting that was full of positive energy. Milton occasionally felt closer to taking a drink at the weekend, and he had found that the meeting was an effective bolster to help him get through to Monday.
He helped himself to a cup of coffee and a biscuit and took a seat in the middle of the room. He recognised many of the other regulars and exchanged smiles and nods of greeting with a few of them.
Milton closed his eyes and relaxed, feeling the usual serenity that he had only ever found in the meetings.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.”
Milton opened his eyes. The secretary of the meeting was Tommy McCall, a burly Glaswegian with a shaven head and tattoos on both forearms. He was an imposing character, but Milton had quickly warmed to him as soon as he heard him speak for the first time. He had a thick accent, occasionally impenetrably so, but his almost constitutional dourness was leavened with a quicksilver sense of humour that belied his aggressive appearance. He was ruthlessly funny, lambasting the other attendees and, more often than not, himself.
“A word or two about my appearance,” McCall said, holding up his right arm. It was encased in plaster from the wrist all the way up to just below his shoulder. “Despite what you bastards might think, I haven’t fallen off the wagon. I was playing football with my son. I tripped, put my arm down to break my fall and…” He left the arm up, nodding to it with a rueful smile. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’m bullshitting you, but I swear to God I’m not. And believe me, the irony that I’d do twenty years of hard Scottish drinking and emerge with not even a scratch on me and then I’d trip over a seven-year-old and do my arm in two places like this, well, I can assure you, that’s not lost on me at all.”
Tommy put his arm down, resting it on the table with a deliberate clunk that drew more good-natured laughter. He started the meeting properly, welcoming newcomers and then beginning the prayers, a familiar routine that Milton had come to find particularly reassuring. He had been to meetings all over the world, and, barring a few minor differences, the structure and content was almost always the same. There was a reassurance in that routine.
Milton closed his eyes and intoned the prayers with the others.
#
THE SPEAKER at the meeting was a young mother who laid out, during the course of her share, an unfortunate life that had seen her fight to bring up her two children after her husband had died of lung cancer. Six months after he had died, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She reported, to warm applause, that the cancer was in remission, but that an old predisposition toward alcoholic thinking had been awakened by her struggles.
Milton listened intently throughout, thinking that her experiences cast his own in stark relief. His drinking had been to drown out the clamour of his guilt. But the source of his guilt were the decisions that he had made and the career that he had chosen for himself. Comparing his life to hers seemed selfish and inappropriate, and he started to feel uncomfortable until Tommy reminded everyone that they should focus on the similarities and not the differences. She had relied on drink to solve a problem. Milton had done the same. They had both lost control of their drinking, and both had ended up in the rooms as a last resort. That was what they shared, and, in that knowledge, Milton found his usual measure of peace.
The meeting came to an end and the men and women started to disperse. Some went for breakfast at a greasy spoon on the King’s Road. Milton had his running gear in his bag. He had planned to change into it and then go for a long run along the towpath of the Thames, following it into central London and then looping back in a route that he could stretch out to fifteen miles if he was in the mood. It was a beautiful day, clear and crisp, and the prospect of the exercise was very appealing.
He would get changed in the bathroom. He returned his empty cup to the table, thanked the old woman who had taken on the responsibility for the refreshments, and, as he turned, Tommy was behind him.
“Hello, John.”
“All right?”
“Not so bad,” he said, holding up his arm, “all things considered.”
Milton nodded at the cast. “Is that really what happened?” he said with a grin. “You tripped?”
“I’m serious. I caught my foot and went over. Bloody agony. Cried like a baby. Had to turn down the morphine, too. Last thing I want to do is to end up on that again.”
Milton could relate to that. He had been on gabapentin and oxycodone for years, a cocktail to take the edge off the pain caused by the long list of injuries that he had suffered during his career with the Group. He had stopped taking those when he decided that he wasn’t going to put anything in his body that might artificially alter the way that he felt. He was going to live an entirely unmedicated life from now on. The occasional ache was a welcome reminder of the things that he had done, and a gentle—and sometimes not so gentle—reminder of his need to atone. And, he had discovered, simple things like long runs, meetings and meditation had the same effect as the drugs.
“How are you managing at work?”
“That’s the thing,” Tommy said. “I’m supposed to be driving to France tomorrow. I’ve just signed a contract to bring a shipment of furniture over.”
Milton remembered. Tommy ran his own import/export business.
“Do you have another driver?”
“Not for tomorrow.”
Milton wondered whether he should help. Service was one of the central tenets of being in the rooms, and he knew that he could help To
mmy.
He decided that he would offer. “I could do it.”
“Thanks, but that won’t work—you need an HGV licence.”
“I’ve got one.”
“Really?”
“Passed it when I was in the army. Used to drive trucks around Salisbury Plain.”
“What about your work?”
Milton had been working in the taximen’s shelter in Russell Square until the previous month. “They let me go,” he explained. “There wasn’t the demand for it to be open nights anymore. Uber is killing black cabs.”
“So you’re not working?”
“I’m keeping an eye open. Something will come up. Until then, I’ve got a lot of free time on my hands. Happy to help. It wouldn’t be a problem.”
“I’ll pay you,” Tommy said. “I don’t expect you to do this for nothing.”
“Whatever you like,” Milton said. “Just tell me when and where, and I’ll be there.”
Chapter Two
TOMMY HAD A WAREHOUSE in Hounslow, beneath the Heathrow flight path. He told Milton that they would need to make an early start the next day, so he had risen at four, gone for a thirty-minute run, and then caught the first tube from Bethnal Green.
He arrived at the industrial park at six thirty, just as the sun was rising.
Tommy was preparing the tractor unit. It was an old Scania R480 Topline that looked as if it had already clocked up a good number of miles. Tommy had the bonnet up and was checking the engine oil.
“Morning,” Milton said.
Tommy turned. “Morning.” He closed the bonnet and wiped his hands on a dirty cloth that he had tucked into his belt. “We’re booked on the eleven o’clock ferry from Dover. You ready to go?”
“Whenever you are.”
Milton went around to the cab, opened the door and climbed up. The interior was showing its age. The upholstery of the seats was battered, the leather cracked and the padding secured in place with cross-hatches of gaffer tape. The floor was scuffed, one of the mats was missing, and a groove had been worn into the carpeting beneath the clutch from where Tommy, or whoever else had owned the vehicle, had rested his foot. A stack of old newspapers and freight documents sat on the passenger seat.
