by Mark Dawson
Hicks might have been able to stomach working with Higgins, but it was when he learned that the general was involved in the protection of senior establishment figures who had been involved in a paedophile ring in the seventies and eighties that he had decided that he had to get out.
Milton, who had been investigating the death of one of the victims of the conspiracy, had helped him to extricate himself. There had been a vicious gunfight on the estate of a grand house in the Cotswolds, during which Milton had pitted the general’s men against a small army of underworld goons who were protecting the man whom Milton wanted dead. Hicks had been badly injured during the melee when the general had surprised him, but he had escaped with his life.
Milton’s objectives had been settled, and he could have left Hicks to deal with the general alone. He didn’t do that. Milton used himself as the bait in a trap to lure the old man out of hiding, and Hicks had taken him out in a drive-by that had been executed cleanly, with no witnesses, and with minimal risk that they might be discovered.
Milton had stolen the general’s cash and given Hicks the balance that he needed for his wife’s treatment. That was a reason for lifelong gratitude in itself. And then Milton had saved his life, too. He wouldn’t—couldn’t—forget that.
But there was more, too. Another reason why Hicks was minded to help. Milton was a quiet man, not prone to outbursts of emotion, not really prone to emotion at all. It was difficult to like him because Milton didn’t care whether he was liked. He was solitary and seemingly happy with his solitude; certainly no one would have been able to describe him as a conversationalist. But there was a coldness that lurked beneath the surface, an implacability that Hicks found unsettling. It was expressed in his eyes—icy blue and pitiless—and Hicks had no interest in finding himself in opposition to him. He knew about Milton’s history as an assassin, and his reputation, and he had seen, at first hand, what it was like when he allowed the coldness to find its full expression. John Milton was probably the most dangerous man that Hicks had ever met and, while he doubted that Milton would take offence if he turned him down, he had no interest in testing that supposition.
A day or two conducting low-level surveillance was nothing compared to what Hicks owed Milton, and not enough of an imposition that he would risk upsetting him by saying no.
#
EAST LONDON. MIDNIGHT.
The building that Milton wanted Hicks to watch was in Wanstead, an area that Hicks did not know very well at all. But Milton’s directions were good, and Hicks was able to find it without trouble. It was at the end of New Wanstead, near to the large Green Man roundabout, and, since it was late and the road was quiet, Hicks reduced his speed and crawled by it so that he could take a good look. It was an average sort of place, and Hicks couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The windows were all dark. The lobby was dark.
He drove on, found a road that he could turn around in, and came back again on the opposite side of the road. He parked the car when he was still a quarter of a mile away so that he could return on foot.
He strolled along the pavement, slowing his pace as he passed the building and regarding it carefully. There was nothing out of the ordinary that he could see.
He stopped, took out his phone and pretended to take a call. He glanced around again. There was nowhere obvious that he could make discreet observation of the property save the car park of the vet’s directly opposite. That wasn’t ideal; there were only two other cars in the car park, and a man in a car at this time of night was going to be obvious to anyone who was suspicious enough to be looking. How careful did he have to be? Milton hadn’t given him very much in the way of a briefing.
He started off again, back toward his car.
#
HICKS’S PHONE RANG AT TWO IN THE MORNING.
He picked it up and put it to his ear.
“It’s me,” Milton said. “Anything?”
“I’ve been outside. There’s nothing going on.”
“No activity?”
“Nothing. Everything is quiet. What am I looking for?”
“Anything that says the brothel is still open.”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
There was a pause.
“What do you want me to do?” Hicks asked. “It’s not easy to put surveillance in right now. There’s no one here. I’ll stand out if I park outside it.”
“Get some sleep and go back tomorrow. I’ll call you in the morning.”
Chapter Sixteen
THE NIGHTTIME VIGIL had revealed how difficult it would be for Hicks to keep a watch over the property for a whole day. He could park in the car park, but anyone with even the most basic counter-intelligence experience would notice him there. A vacant building to hide inside would have been perfect, but there was none. He could walk up and down the street, but that, too, was less than optimal. He would be noticed.
Milton had been right: he would have to be creative. During his visit to the property the previous night, he had noticed something that would offer him the chance to stand out a little less. He checked out of the cheap hotel where he had spent the night and navigated to the nearest builder’s yard. He needed supplies. He loaded a trolley with the things that he needed: a canvas bag, a fluorescent tabard, overalls, a tool belt, steel-capped boots, small plastic CAUTION signs, and a collection of screwdrivers. He paid the clerk, took the trolley to his car, and loaded the goods into the back.
He returned to Wanstead and parked his car farther up the road, out of sight. He collected the bag from the boot and put on the overalls, work boots and tabard. He returned to the telephone junction box that was located on the pavement near the building and set out the warning signs on either side of the box. He knelt down, took out a suitable screwdriver and used it to open the door. There was a tangle of colourful wires, red and yellow and green, a confusing nest that made no sense to him.
It was a tenuous disguise that wouldn’t pass even the most cursory of inspections, but he hoped that the ruse would shield him from curiosity.
He pretended to busy himself with work.
#
HICKS SPENT the morning outside the property without incident. It was an excellent position from which to observe. He saw three men and two women emerge from the property. The men and the younger woman were obviously off to work, dressed in smart clothes, some with cases. The other woman, much older, looked as if she was off to the shops when she left at a little past nine. Hicks had seen nothing all day to make him think that there was a brothel there: no obvious customers, no working girls, nothing.
Milton called at midday for an update. Hicks reported and said that he would stay in position through the afternoon.
Milton called again at four and said that if there was still no activity by six, he should leave and come to meet him.
Hicks settled into place again for another stint. Two hours passed and still there was nothing.
That was enough.
He closed the box and secured it again, folded up his warning signs, and took them and the rest of his gear back to his car. He stowed them away, took off the tabard and dropped that in too, and got into the front. He started the engine, glanced across at the building one more time as he went by, and then drove away.
#
HICKS DROVE deeper into East London. He knew London a little, but not Bethnal Green. He knew it by reputation—he had just finished reading a biography of the Kray twins, and he recognised some of the road names as he went by them—but he had never spent any time here. He hadn’t given much thought to where Milton was living. The idea of him in any kind of domestic setting was difficult to picture. Hicks didn’t know him well enough to say for sure, but Milton didn’t strike him as someone who would put down roots. There was something elusive about him, and Hicks had already concluded that he wouldn’t have been surprised if he never heard from him again after the business with Higgins was concluded.
Hicks turned onto Arnold Circus and glanced up at
the names of the blocks that were fixed to the walls. He checked Milton’s address once again: he had said that his flat was in Hurley House. He found the right building, parked and got out of the car. He looked around. There was the circus, the large central space penned in by iron bars, with cars parked in bays around its circumference and a bandstand in the middle. There were the impressive buildings, seven storeys tall and obviously built decades ago, with different coloured courses of bricks so that they reminded Hicks of the layers of a cake. This little patch of East London was still poor and had escaped the relentless process of gentrification that was seemingly pressing out from the centre of the city to swallow the districts to the east. These buildings were solid and well constructed, some of the flats were large, and they were all within walking distance of the Square Mile. Hicks liked tradition and history, but he knew that the benefits of the area meant that it could only be a matter of time before the council sold up to developers and the inhabitants were pushed out.
It was not the sort of place that he would have expected to find a man like Milton, but then he realised that he had never considered the sort of place that a man like Milton might favour. He thought about that now and, as he started towards Hurley House, he could see that it made sense. Each building in this congregation must have held twenty or thirty flats, with perhaps a thousand people washing in and out of the streets that fed into the circus every day. For Milton, who favoured swimming beneath the surface, it must have been ideal.
The entrance to Hurley House was through an old green door with eight opaque glass panels and a covering of gaffer tape where the ninth pane should have been. There was an intercom on the left of the door, but as Hicks pressed the handle with his hand, he saw that the lock had been damaged and the door was standing open. He went inside and followed the adjoining corridor. It was a foul-smelling passage, with litter strewn on the floor and graffiti on the walls. Hicks followed it to a vestibule that had three doors. Milton’s flat was in the middle. Hicks knocked. He glanced back into the vestibule as he waited. It, unlike the corridor through which he had passed, had been kept reasonably clean.
The door opened.
“Hello, Hicks.”
Hicks turned back. Milton was standing in the doorway.
“Come in.”
There was a small hallway, and Milton directed him to the door to the left. Hicks went through into the sitting room. It was a simple, plain room with nothing much to soften the harsh white walls. There was a neatly folded sheet and blanket on the sofa. The furniture was plain and economical, there was a copy of the Times on the coffee table, and the only concession to personality was the music playing through the Bluetooth speaker that had been left on the windowsill.
“What are you wearing?” Milton asked him.
Hicks looked down at the overalls and boots. “I’ve been working as a telephone engineer.”
“Very inventive.”
“My stuff’s still in the car. I’ll get changed in a minute.”
“Do it now if you like. I’ll make us a drink. What would you like?”
Hicks said that he would like a coffee, and Milton told him to change in the sitting room while he went to make them. Hicks went back out to the car, grabbed his clothes, went back into the sitting room and changed into them.
The decor was ascetic. A set of Ikea shelves had been arranged against the wall. Milton had stacked a small row of books there; Hicks saw volumes by Dickens, Hardy, Joyce, Orwell and le Carré. A tightly rolled sleeping bag had been left on the floor next to the sofa. There was a small table with two wooden chairs and, atop it, a vase of yellow daffodils. There was a packet of opened cigarettes on the table with a black oxidised Ronson lighter resting atop it. There was also a watch on the table, a silver Rolex Oyster Perpetual that was most likely the most expensive object in the entire flat. It was certainly worth more than the beaten-up laptop on the sofa next to him. Hicks opened the lid and saw a video player on the screen, the image frozen on a man and a woman in a darkened lobby. He closed it.
He looked around. It was small. There was a hallway, with doors leading to the bathroom and the bedroom. He heard the sound of a shower from inside the closed bathroom door. Someone was in there. The bedroom door was closed, but Hicks pushed it open and saw that the bed had been left unmade. Milton and Hicks were both former soldiers, and Hicks suspected that Milton shared the same foible as he did when it came to leaving an unmade bed. Hicks made his as soon as his wife was having her morning shower; the discipline of making up the bed, the same routine every morning, repeated day after day, was the foundation upon which an organised and productive life could be built. Hicks guessed from that and the sleeping bag that Milton had given someone else his room.
“Hicks?”
“Coming,” he said.
Milton came out of the kitchen with two mugs. He took them into the sitting room and put them on the table.
“How’s your wife?” he asked.
“Good,” Hicks said.
“The cancer?”
“It’s gone.”
“Full remission?”
“They’re never going to give us a guarantee, but they can’t find any right now. It’s better than we could have hoped for. She only had months left. If it wasn’t for the money—”
“Forget it,” Milton said, interrupting him.
Hicks nodded. “I am grateful, John.”
Milton waved it off. “Just means you owe me a few favours. I’ll call them in when I need them.”
“I can live with that.”
“What did you see?”
“Nothing. If there’s a brothel there, they didn’t have any business going on last night or today. It’s like I said: I saw residents going in and out, but that’s it. The men visiting places like that have a look about them that’s hard to miss. And I didn’t see anyone who looked that way.”
Milton nodded.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Hicks said.
Milton took a sip of his coffee and then set the mug down again. He told Hicks about how he had met Samir, and what the young man had told him about his sister and what had happened to her. He explained what had happened in the flat yesterday, about the man he had killed and the woman he had taken out with him.
As Hicks listened, he remembered what Milton had done for Eddie Fabian. The man had been threatened and Milton had helped him, staying the course even when it was obvious that the men who wanted Fabian dead were dangerous. Helping those who had no one else to whom they could turn was evidently something that Milton was focussed upon. Hicks had no idea why that should be so important to him. It was difficult to reconcile with Milton’s history in Group Fifteen.
“So the girl—Nadia—she wasn’t in the flat?”
“No,” Milton said. “That’s the problem. They took her away the day before. And the flat was the only lead I had. If they’ve abandoned it, I’m out of options.”
“There must be something else you can do. This other girl?”
“Her name is Sarah,” Milton said. “And she doesn’t know anything. I’ve asked.”
“What are you going to do, then?”
Milton paused. “There is something. I need another favour.”
Hicks parted his hands, inviting Milton to continue.
“The other girl.” Milton angled his head and gave a nod. “Sarah. She’s in the bathroom.”
“You brought her here?”
“She had nowhere else to go.”
“You trust her?”
“There’s no reason not to trust her,” Milton said. “I couldn’t leave her on the street. But I need you to look after her.”
“Babysitting?” Hicks replied.
Milton said yes.
“Why do you need me to do that?”
“She’s a refugee, like Nadia and Samir. Syria. The smugglers who helped her get to Europe sold her to the Albanians, just like they sold Nadia.”
“So take her to the police.”
/> “She won’t go. She’s scared. She thinks they’ll just give her back to the pimps.”
“So tell her it isn’t like that.”
“I’ve been trying. But look at it from her perspective. You ever been to Syria?”
“Never had the pleasure.”
“I have. I did a job there. It was bad then, and it’s even worse now. The police there are corrupt. She thinks it’s the same here. She thinks she’ll just get handed over to them again. I get it. She doesn’t know any better.”
Hicks looked at Milton with scepticism. “This is just business for you?”
“What do you mean?”
Hicks shuffled uncomfortably. “The girl…”
Milton rolled his eyes. “Come on, Hicks.”
His irritation was obvious, and Hicks backtracked. “I had to ask.”
“It’s business,” Milton said. “Jesus, what do you take me for? I want to help her.”
“Okay,” Hicks said. “Sorry.”
“I’m not going to be here for the next few days, and I don’t want to leave her on her own.”
“‘The next few days?’”
“Maybe a week. I’m going to Libya.”
Hicks looked blankly at him. “What?”
“Nadia is gone. Unless you’ve got an idea I haven’t thought of, I’ve no way of finding out where she is.”
“You could ask around.”
Milton frowned and shook his head.
“There are ways of asking,” Hicks added. “You know—shake a few trees.”
“There are more than a handful of Albanian mafiosi in London, Hicks.”
“But maybe you could get something.”
“Yes, maybe,” Milton said. “Maybe I could find her, but that would take time, and I just don’t have that luxury. What if they know I’m after her? There was another girl in the brothel who ran. Maybe she’s told them who I was asking about. That might not be the best thing for Nadia. If they hear someone is looking for them… well, it’s not going to take a genius to put it all together.” He shook his head. “No. I need to be smarter than that.”
