The Jungle - John Milton #9 (John Milton Thrillers)

by Mark Dawson

  Milton was alert. Florin walked with a slouch, an arm’s breadth away from him. Hicks stayed just behind.

  They were a quarter of the way across when Milton saw Pasko. He was approaching them from the South Bank. His right hand was in his pocket. There was a woman ahead of him.

  Nadia.

  Florin straightened up and walked a little faster.

  Milton reached out and took his shoulder. “Nice and easy,” he said.

  They met in the middle, between two of the seven pylons that suspended the bridge.

  Milton took Florin’s shoulder again. “Stop.”

  Florin did as he was told. A train rumbled out of the station and headed out across the river, the lights from the carriage flickering between the metal struts of the railway bridge.

  Milton looked at Nadia. She looked frightened, staring at him with a mixture of confusion and trepidation. The first time she had laid eyes on him, he had been naked, yet he had killed one man and blinded another. She knew nothing about him beyond that he was capable of moments of extreme brutality; it was reasonable that he made her anxious.

  Pasko grabbed Nadia by the elbow and told her to stop. He kept his right hand in his pocket. Milton knew that he was hiding his own weapon there.

  There were six feet between the two groups.

  “Nadia,” Milton said, “are you okay?”

  The young woman nodded.

  Milton looked over at Pasko. “Let’s make this quick. And no drama. Hicks has a weapon. You have a weapon. We’re surrounded by witnesses, and there’s a camera above you.”

  Pasko smiled coldly. “There will be no drama.”

  “Simultaneous, then.”

  “Fine.”

  Pasko released Nadia.

  Milton released Florin.

  He stepped across the space until he was next to his father, and then he turned back and glared at Milton.

  Nadia took a step and then froze, caught between Milton and Pasko.

  “It’s all right,” Milton said. “You’re safe now.”

  Another train thundered into the station, its brakes screeching. Milton looked back, beyond Nadia, to Pasko and Florin. He wanted this to be done. The longer they all stood here, the better the chance that something might go wrong.

  “Please, Nadia. Trust me.”

  She swallowed and, after another moment, she stepped toward him.

  Milton reached out and gently took Nadia’s hand.

  “We are not finished,” Pasko said. “This is not over.”

  Milton fished into his pocket and took out Florin’s phone. “Here,” he said, holding it up so that they could see it and then tossing it over at them. Florin caught it.

  “Give it to me,” Pasko said.

  His son did as he was told. Pasko stepped over to the rail and dropped the phone over the side.

  “Father—”

  Pasko turned back to Milton. “Do you think I am a fool?” he said, his face twisted with scorn. “What was it? A tracking app?”

  Milton didn’t answer.

  “You do not find us. We find you.”

  Pasko started to back away. Florin followed and, when the distance between them and Milton was sufficient, they turned and walked away.

  “Come on,” Milton said to Nadia. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  THEY MADE their way back to Florin’s BMW.

  “You drive,” he said to Hicks.

  He opened the door for Nadia, waited for her to get in, then went around to the other side. He lowered himself into the back so that he was next to her. She was quiet, sitting with her legs pressed together and her hands folded in her lap.

  “Are you okay?” Milton asked as Hicks turned the car around and pulled away.

  “Yes,” she said in a soft, careful voice. “You mentioned my brother. Is he here?”

  “He’s in the country. He came to find you.”

  “He said Dover. Is that right?”

  Milton explained. He told her everything: about how Samir had tried to get into the country, how he had been caught and detained, and how Milton had promised to help. There was no need to mention Libya or the crossing or the drive through France to Calais. All that was important was that he was helping Samir, and that, now he had her, he would do everything he could to get them back together.

  “I want to see him,” she said. “Is it possible?”

  “We need to think about that,” Milton said. “You’re here illegally. I’m not sure going to an immigration centre is the best thing to do right now.”

  “So what do I do?”

  “You need to claim asylum.”

  “How can I do that?”

  “There’s someone I want you to meet. She’s helping your brother. She’ll be able to help you, too.”

  The light at the junction of Villiers Street and the Strand went to red. Hicks stopped and immediately stretched across to the glove compartment and started to empty it out onto the passenger seat. There were papers, a folder with the RAC logo stamped on it, a bottle of Diet Coke. Hicks emptied everything out and then cursed under his breath.

  “What is it?” Milton asked.

  “Pasko. We can’t leave him out there.”

  “We’re not going to.”

  “And he’s not going to forget what you did.”

  “I know.”

  “You…” He didn’t finish the sentence, remembering that Nadia was in the back. “What you did to his son, Milton.”

  “I don’t want him to forget.”

  “But we don’t know where they are.” He gestured to the mess of papers and other debris on the passenger seat. “There must be something. Registration documents. Insurance. Something. Have you looked?”

  “I don’t need to.”

  “Why not? What do you mean?”

  “Give me your phone.”

  “What—”

  “Give it to me.”

  Hicks reached into his pocket, took out his phone, and passed it back. Milton opened up the browser and navigated to the page for iCloud. He logged into his account and opened the Find My Phone app. A map appeared. It showed the grid of roads to the south of the South Bank Centre. After a moment, a red dot was placed in the middle of the map. The dot jerked along Belvedere Road toward Waterloo Bridge.

  Milton handed the phone back to Hicks.

  He looked at the screen. “You’re kidding?”

  The car behind them tooted its horn. The light was green.

  “Best I could do on short notice. Let’s get to work.”

  Chapter Fifty-Nine

  MILTON SAT in the front seat of the car he had stolen and looked across the road at the pub.

  It was a large building on the corner of Maida Vale and Kilburn Park Road. It was detached, with a decent amount of space between it and the nearest buildings on either side. The building was set across two storeys and was deep, running back a fair distance from the street. There was a small beer garden behind railings at the front and a larger space for cars and the wheeled industrial bins to the rear. Tables were pushed up against the building along Kilburn Park Road with an A-frame that promised food and live Albanian music. Banners for BT and Sky Sports had been lashed to the railings at the Maida Vale side of the building, and a line of cars separated the wide pavement from the street. The pub had been whitewashed and the awnings painted black in an effort, perhaps, to evoke Tudor design and make it look a little older than it was; in reality, Milton guessed the building had been put up forty years ago at the longest.

  Milton had parked opposite the twenty-four-hour Milad Supermarket, partially obscured by a white van that had been double-parked on the yellow lines. He had followed the GPS signal here and, as he checked his phone again, he saw that the signal was still registering from the inside of the building.

  The pub was busy. Milton watched the comings and goings for an hour. There was a small group of men in the space at the front of the garden, using a fixed brick oven to barbecue me
at that they ate with their beers. It wasn’t warm, yet they were outside wearing T-shirts and laughing raucously as they ate and drank and smoked.

  Hicks had given Milton his phone to use, and now it rang. It was Hicks.

  “It’s me,” Milton said. “How is she?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Where are you?”

  “On the road. There’s a place up ahead. You?”

  “I’m here. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Good luck, John.”

  “And you. I’ll speak to you afterwards.”

  He ended the call and scrolled across to the Find My Phone app again. The red dot was where it had been before, pulsing in and out at the junction of Kilburn High Road and Maida Vale. He put the phone down on the dash and maintained his vigil, watching as the men extinguished the flame in the oven, covered the grille with a metal cloche, and then went inside.

  He checked the time.

  Eleven.

  Last orders.

  #

  PASKO AND FLORIN climbed the stairs to the room at the back of the pub. The window was open, and they could hear the conversation of the drinkers at the tables along the side of the building and the sound of the traffic as it turned off and onto Maida Vale. Pasko went across to the window and glanced outside; he could see the edge of the large satellite dish that they used to get the TV channels from Eastern Europe, the back of the apartment block that faced the pub and, overhead, the blinking lights of a passenger jet as it passed below the plump moon.

  Pasko hated frustration. He had lived his life with the aim of always moving forward, never stopping, like a shark. And this man—Milton—had stymied him. That could not be allowed to go uncorrected.

  He clenched his fists and rested them on the sill as he looked outside, allowing the breeze to play over his face.

  “Are you all right?” Florin said.

  Pasko didn’t answer.

  “How are we going to find him?” Florin said. “He is not an amateur, Father. You saw what he did. He blinded Hashim. He killed Llazar. He could’ve killed me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. There are two of them. Only two. We have men everywhere. Someone knows who they are. And we still have leverage. The brother—they are holding him at Dover. I have a friend there. Very corrupt. We can pay to have him released into our care. If Milton cares for the girl so much, he will care that we have the brother. We will use him to flush him out.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow. I will drive there tomorrow.” Pasko turned back from the window. “We were lazy. We underestimated him. We will not do that again. He is my priority now. I will find him, and I will make him suffer for what he has done.”

  Chapter Sixty

  MIDNIGHT.

  Milton checked the app one more time. The signal was where it had been for the last two hours, at the junction of Maida Vale and the Kilburn High Road.

  His cellphone was still inside the pub.

  The pub had emptied out over the course of the last forty minutes. Milton wondered whether it might be the sort of place where a drinker would stay after hours, but it was on a main road, and unlicensed drinking would be easy to spot by anyone who happened to be passing by.

  Twenty and then thirty men, together with the occasional woman, came outside and dispersed in taxis and on foot.

  The lights inside the building were switched off and the doors were closed.

  Milton decided to take a closer look.

  He got out of the car and stopped in the supermarket. He bought a roll of duct tape for a pound, walked down Maida Vale and turned left onto Kilburn High Road. The building to his immediate left was a five-storey Victorian block, since turned into office space. There was a line of cars parked next to the pavement, and Milton stayed behind them as he continued down the road and observed the pub from this new angle. The empty glasses had been removed from the picnic tables, the rubbish removed and the ashtrays taken inside to be emptied. The pub’s name was stencilled on the wall between two large bay windows; shutters had been pulled across the windows, with just a sliver of light visible down the point where they came together.

  He walked until he was at the end of the property. The pub was next to a modern three-storey apartment block. There were cars parked in the parking space, next to the bins. There was a window above the bins, next to a large satellite dish. The window was open, and the room inside was lit.

  Milton stood next to a Nissan SUV and watched the window for a moment. He saw movement, a man passing across it, then nothing, then a man looking up into the sky.

  Pasko.

  He was unmistakeable.

  Milton was level with the window, and Pasko would only have been able to see him if he looked sharply to his left. He didn’t, and Milton didn’t wait long enough for him to get a second chance. He turned back until he was shielded by the edge of the building and then crossed the road between a Jaguar and a Mercedes. He paused at each of the bay windows, but the blinds were drawn too closely together and it was too dark inside for him to see anything. But it was quiet, and he was satisfied from what he had observed that the room was empty.

  As far as he was able to tell, the only room that was occupied was the one on the first floor where he had seen Pasko.

  The front door was substantial and almost certainly locked. It was also plainly visible from the road, and there would be innumerable witnesses if he tried to force it to get inside.

  He would try the back, instead.

  #

  HICKS GLANCED over at Nadia.

  “You sure you’re all right?” he asked, for at least the fourth time since they had started off.

  “I am.” She nodded.

  “You hungry?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are services up ahead. We’ll get something to eat and a couple of rooms for the night.”

  She didn’t respond, and, as Hicks saw the signage for Medway Services up ahead, he flicked the indicator and pulled into the slow lane, then onto the slip road.

  He thought about Milton. He should have been there with him. He was still sore from the beatings that he had taken from the Albanians, but every time he felt the tender bruises on his legs and buttocks or the weals across his back, it reminded him of the liberties that Pasko had taken. He would have liked to have been able to pay that back himself. More than that, and his selfish reasons aside, he didn’t like the idea that Milton was going after the Albanians alone. He knew that Milton was more than able to take care of himself, but the odds would have been better with the two of them.

  But Milton had insisted and, eventually, Hicks had conceded.

  He approached the entrance to the car park and slowed down to twenty. Milton had been clear. The girl was the priority. Hicks was to get her out of harm’s way. He looked across the cabin to Nadia sitting with her hands clasped in her lap, her face betraying the anxiety that she was so obviously feeling.

  It was late and the car park for the Travelodge was almost empty. Hicks turned into a vacant space and rolled to a stop.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’m exhausted. Let’s get inside.”

  Chapter Sixty-One

  THE BACK DOOR TO THE PUB was shielded from the street by one of the large industrial bins. Milton approached it and, after confirming that he couldn’t be seen from the pavement, he paused there and listened. He filtered out the buzz of the city, the steady hum of traffic passing by on Maida Vale, and focussed on the interior of the building beyond the door. Nothing. He thought he could hear the sound of a television from the open window above him, and, as he took a step back and looked up at it, he saw the flickering light playing against the thin sliver of whitewashed ceiling that he could see.

  He tried the handle.

  It was locked.

  The door had a glass panel above the handle. Milton took the duct tape and covered the entire sheet with a lattice of interlocking strips. There was no glass visible when he was finished. A heavy glass ashtray had bee
n left out on one of the tables; Milton collected it and used it to gently tap against the covered glass. He increased the force until he was rewarded with a cracking noise. He pushed at the corner of the panel with his fingers, pressing the weakened part until it broke away from the rest of the glass, the tape preventing all but the smallest pieces from falling to the floor inside. The opening was wide enough for Milton to reach through and turn the key from the inside.

  He took out his pistol and opened the door. It opened into a small lobby. He closed the door behind him. There were no windows and it was dark. He waited until his eyes had adjusted to the gloom and then examined the space more carefully.

  The lobby was around two metres wide and three metres long. There were three doors leading off it: two were normal, and looked plain. The third, to Milton’s left, was much more significant. He approached it. It was made of metal, fitting snugly into the frame. There was an eye-slit two-thirds of the way to the top, the handle looked sturdy and the hinge areas looked to have been reinforced. There was an intercom unit to the right of the frame.

  Milton laid his fingers against the cold steel. Pasko had provided himself with a secure area on the upper floors of the building. There was no way that Milton was going to be able to open it.

  He stood still and held his breath. He listened. He could hear the muffled sound of a TV from behind the heavy door, but nothing else.

  He checked the remaining two doors. He crept forward, the pistol held in a loose two-handed grip. He paused when he reached the door to the right of the door through which he had entered, listening intently, his breath reduced to a shallow in and out. He still couldn’t hear anything. The door was slightly ajar, and Milton took his left hand off the pistol and reached down to give it a gentle push with the tips of his fingers.

  The door opened and Milton stepped through into the main room of the pub. There was a standard lamp in the corner of the room and, as Milton watched, it switched itself off. Amber light from the streetlamp outside the windows leaked in through a gap in the curtains, and there was still enough brightness for Milton to be able to make out the details of the room. The chairs had been turned over and rested on the tables. The floor had been mopped, the dim light glittering against streaks of moisture that had still to dry.