by Mark Dawson
Milton stood quietly in the doorway, confident that the room was empty but waiting until he was sure.
Milton backed up, stepped into the corridor again, and pushed the door almost closed, leaving it just slightly ajar once more.
He went to the third door. There was a key in the lock, but it, too, had been left ajar. He opened it fully. There was a small commercial kitchen inside. A sash window overlooked the street and there was plenty of light for Milton to look around. He saw a gas cooker and combi oven, a large dishwasher and racks of glasses and plates that had been left out to dry.
He had an idea.
He returned to the main room and crossed over to the standard lamp. It was connected to the power via a digital timer plug. Milton unplugged the plug from the socket. He took it, and the lamp, back into the kitchen.
He put the lamp down and laid his fingertips on the light bulb; it was still hot. There was a stack of dishcloths on the counter and he took one, wrapped it around the bulb and very carefully unscrewed it. He put the bulb on the counter, covered it with the cloth, and used the end of a knife to tap firmly against it until he heard the glass crack. He removed the cloth and examined his handiwork: the bulb was shattered, but the filament was still intact.
Milton screwed the bulb back into the lamp and connected the timer plug to the mains.
He took another four dishcloths and ran them under the tap until they were sopping wet. He pressed the damp cloths against the join where the sash window met the sill so that it was as airtight as he could make it.
He went to the refrigerator and unplugged it. Next, he turned to the cooker and disconnected the electronic ignition. He needed to reduce the chance of a premature detonation.
Finally, he opened all of the gas taps, listening as the hiss of the escaping gas grew louder with every new tap that he opened.
The kitchen was a small space, and, as far as he could make it, sealed. Some of the gas might leak out, but not too much. The pressure in the gas lines would be low, perhaps 0.3 psi, not much stronger than a child blowing bubbles through a straw. But there were six taps, including one larger central burner, and they were all open. Now he just had to judge how long it would take to fill the kitchen with enough gas so that the air would be combustible.
How long?
Three or four hours.
He looked at his watch.
Twelve thirty.
He crouched next to the timer plug and set it to come on at five in the morning.
He left the kitchen and locked the door. The bottom edge was flush to the floor. The gas was lighter than air and would rise to the top of the room; not much would be able to get out this way. He pocketed the key and paused in the lobby, listening intently. He could hear muffled conversation from upstairs, but the sound of the open gas taps inside the kitchen was inaudible.
Milton considered the situation for one final time.
He had watched the building for long enough to be as confident as he could be that it was empty save for Pasko and Florin.
He had heard nothing to suggest otherwise since he had been inside.
It was detached, with space between it and the neighbouring properties.
And it was late.
Milton went back to the car to wait.
Chapter Sixty-Two
PASKO WENT TO THE WINDOW AGAIN. He gazed out. It was ten minutes to five and he could see the faintest signs of the approaching dawn on the horizon. It was cool and fresh. Neither he nor Florin had been able to sleep, and now he was beginning to feel the start of a headache. The air was pleasant on his face. Florin had put on the television. There was a highlights show from the week’s Champions’ League, and he was staring at it dumbly. Pasko would normally have been happy to watch it, too, but he was distracted and frustrated.
The sound from the television stopped. Pasko turned to see that Florin had the remote in his hand.
“What is it?”
He was quiet for a moment, his head cocked as if he was listening for something. “I thought I heard something.”
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“I heard something.”
They both paused to listen.
“It’s a phone,” Florin said.
“What?”
“It must be yours. I don’t have mine.”
“It’s not mine. What the fuck? Where is it?”
Florin frowned. He closed his eyes until he could place the location of the noise. “It’s coming from my jacket.”
He reached into his pockets, the two at the front and then the two inside, but found nothing. The phone was definitely inside. It kept ringing.
“Give it here,” Pasko snapped, snatching the jacket and spreading it out on the floor. He looked down at it and saw a line of three staples just above the bottom of the garment. He took a knife from the table and pressed the tip so that it pierced the material. Florin made as if to complain, but, before he could say anything, Pasko dragged the knife down and ripped the lining straight down the middle. He dropped the knife, took the lining in both hands, and tore it open.
The phone had been hidden between the lining and the rest of the jacket.
It kept ringing.
Pasko glared at his son as he pressed the button to answer the call and put it to his ear.
“Hello, Pasko.”
“Milton, where are you?”
“Come to the window.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m not going to shoot you.”
“I won’t take the chance.”
“Relax, Pasko. I’m just outside. I’ve been here all night. I saw you at the window. You’re wearing the same jacket you were wearing on the bridge. If I was going to shoot you, I could have done it ten times over by now.”
Pasko moved slowly to the window, unable to resist. He pressed himself flat against the wall, and then, very carefully, he glanced outside.
“That’s it,” Milton said. “I’m on the other side of the street. I’m waving.”
Pasko looked and saw him. Milton was standing beneath a streetlamp, his arm raised.
“You should have been more careful,” Milton said.
“Very inventive. But it won’t do you any good. There’s only one of you. Two if your friend is here, too. What do you propose to do? Are you going to force your way inside? It is impossible.”
“I’ve already been inside.”
“No, Milton, you have not.” He tried to find his usual bluster, but he felt a twist of anxiety in his gut as he said it.
“You’re behind a locked door. I saw it. I had a good look downstairs.”
“You should have stayed. I would have come and had a drink with you.”
“I didn’t have time for that. I was a little busy.”
“Really?”
“The kitchen is directly below you, isn’t it?”
Pasko frowned. He turned his head and looked back at Florin; his son was watching him, confusion on his face. “What?” he mouthed.
“You don’t need to answer, Pasko. I know it is. I could hear you moving about upstairs when I was in it.”
“Doing what?”
“I sealed the room and opened the gas taps. They’ve been on for four hours. I’m not an expert, Pasko, but that’s a small room and the pressure out of those gas lines was reasonable. I’m thinking that there’s enough gas in there now for it to make for a healthy explosion.”
Pasko put his hand over the phone. He stepped closer to Florin and hissed, “Go downstairs and check the kitchen.”
“Why?”
“See if anyone has been inside.”
Florin took Pasko’s pistol from the table and hurried out of the room. Pasko heard him clatter down the stairs.
“Still there, Pasko?”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Am I? I suppose we’ll find out in a minute.”
“What do you want?”
“You’ve caused a lot of misery and unhappiness. I want you to pa
y for what you’ve done.”
Florin lumbered up the stairs again. Pasko covered the phone. “Well?”
Florin’s face was white. “The door’s locked and the key is gone. And I can smell gas.”
“Pasko,” Milton said. “Have you checked?”
“What do you want?” Pasko said. “You want me to apologise?”
“No. It’s too late for that. Let me explain something for you. I look at life like I’m running a ledger. You’ve got the things you’re proud of on one side, things you’re ashamed of on the other. For a long time, all I did was bad. Everything on the one side of the ledger. Like you, really. I’m trying to find some balance now.”
Pasko looked out of the window again. Milton was nowhere to be seen.
“Where are you?” he said.
There was no answer.
“I’m not scared of you, Milton!”
Milton spoke again. “Goodbye, Pasko.”
The line went dead.
Chapter Sixty-Three
MILTON CHECKED HIS WATCH.
Two minutes to five.
He walked away and headed south along Kilburn High Road.
The explosion was powerful. Milton turned. The pressure wave rushed out, picking up the large bin and tossing it into the street, shoving the parked cars across the road and blowing in the windows of the office block. A large cloud of grey smoke and debris billowed out of the freshly opened space, fragments of brick and debris from inside clattering down onto the street. The dust cloud rose up and wreathed the building, so thick that it was impossible to see inside.
Milton got into his car as alarms started to blare, a frantic cacophony as a dozen different sounds clamoured in a discordant harmony. The dust and smoke started to clear and, as he glanced back in his mirrors, Milton was able to see the extent of the damage. The naked filament would have combusted without the inert gas to protect it, and that, in turn, would have caused the gas in the air to ignite. The building had been torn in two. Half of it was still standing, albeit with severe damage, but the other half was simply not there anymore. There were small stretches of the walls on the ground floor that remained, but everything else had been reduced to a smoking pile of debris. Timbers had collapsed on top of one another, and piles of bricks were strewn all the way across the road. The seat of the explosion had been the kitchen. It was gone. The rooms above it—the rooms where Milton knew Pasko and Florin had been waiting—were gone, too.
Milton started the engine and, carefully and deliberately, pulled out into the empty road and drove away to the south. He was three minutes away when he heard the sirens of the first emergency vehicles.
He drove on.
Chapter Sixty-Four
THE WAITING ROOM was as quiet as it had been the last time Milton had visited the holding facility. He waited patiently, the sharp edges of the plastic chair digging into his ribs and aggravating the bruises that had developed following the fight with the Albanians two days earlier. He had gingerly examined his body in the mirror after he had showered this morning. The cuts from Florin’s knife were superficial and had not required stitches, but they had left lurid purple scores across his skin. His knuckles were bruised, and he had a prominent black eye from where he had been butted in the face. His brow had been cut, too, and a raised sickle, with crusted blood scabbed across the wound, reached down to just above his eyelid. The receptionist had looked at him with a wariness that she wasn’t able to suppress, and, for a moment, Milton thought that she was going to ask him to leave. Cynthia Whitchurch had stepped forward, telling the woman—who evidently recognised her—that Milton was her guest and that she would vouch for him. That had done the trick, and the woman had invited them—a little reluctantly, perhaps—to take their seats and wait for the doors to open.
Milton glanced over to his right. Whitchurch was sitting next to Nadia. She was taking down the details that she would need in order to represent her as a client in the application for asylum that they were going to make this afternoon. Nadia had already explained what had happened to her; she had started the story with the commencement of their journey in Eritrea, followed with the crossing to Lampedusa, described her abduction, and then what the Albanians had made her do.
Milton had counselled her not to mention any of the events that had led to her freedom; instead, they had settled on a version of events that had seen her simply walk away from the brothel in which she had been held, with Samir sending Milton to collect her after the siblings had made contact once again. If Cynthia harboured any suspicion that she was being fed an abbreviated version of the truth, it wasn’t obvious. Milton doubted that she would dig too deep. Her motivation, written plainly on her face, was to secure the safety of her clients. Samir and Nadia were fortunate to have her.
The doors opened. “You can go through now,” the guard called out.
“Ready, Nadia?” Cynthia said.
“Just a moment, please.”
“Of course. I’ll see you inside when you’re ready.” Cynthia got to her feet and made her way over to the entrance.
Nadia paused, seemingly reluctant to follow.
Milton went to her. “It’s all right,” he said. “Your brother will be there in a minute. He’ll be glad to see you.”
She held his gaze for a moment, and Milton thought that he could see the pain and fear of the last few months in her deep brown eyes. She blinked and found a shy smile, and the moment passed.
“Thank you,” she said, placing her hands on his shoulders and laying a cool kiss on his cheek.
Milton found himself smiling.
She turned away from him and joined the lawyer at the door. Milton stayed a few steps away, reluctant to share in a moment that he thought best to be private. He could see through the door, though, and he noticed Samir as he came in through the doors at the other side of the visiting room. The young man stood in the doorway for a moment, the other inmates passing on either side of him, and then he saw his sister. He grinned, beaming out his happiness, and hurried ahead. Nadia went inside, too, and the siblings met in the middle of the room, embracing fiercely, their sobs loud enough for Milton to hear.
He watched them for a moment. They were so swept up in themselves that they did not notice him, and, as Samir showed his sister to the table that he and Milton had sat at just over a fortnight ago, Milton turned and made his way quietly towards the exit.
#
“MR. SMITH!”
Milton stopped at the exit. He turned. Cynthia Whitchurch was hurrying toward him.
“Are you going?”
“Yes,” he said. “They haven’t seen one another for months. They don’t need me around to get in the way.”
“But you’ve done so much for them. For both of them.”
“There’ll be another time for that,” Milton said. “I’ll wait until you get them asylum.”
“That might be a few months.”
“But you think you can?”
She paused. “It’s possible. I mean, on a compassionate level, there’s no question that they should get it. What’s happened to them—everyone can see they deserve it. But what’s right and what’s legally possible are not the same thing.”
“But?”
“I’m quite confident.”
Milton put out his hand. “I have to go,” he said.
“You have my number,” she said. “Give me a call in a couple of weeks. I think this will all be sorted out by then.” The lawyer shook his hand. “What are you doing now?” she asked him. “I was going to buy you a coffee.”
“It’s kind of you, but I can’t—I’ve got a plane to catch.”
“Somewhere nice?”
“Not that kind of trip, I’m afraid.”
“Business?”
“That’s right,” Milton said. “Business.”
He shook her hand again, told her to call him if there was anything that he could do to help, and pushed the exit door open. He passed through security, nodded to the guard standi
ng by the X-ray machine, and went outside into the cold, bright morning.
EPILOGUE: Libya
Chapter Sixty-Five
ALI TESSEMA OPENED HIS EYES. His bedroom was dark. The window was open, and he could hear the soft susurration of the sea as it rolled against the beach below.
He thought that he had heard something.
He lay still, damp sheets clinging to his sweaty body, and listened. There was nothing. No sound. He must have been dreaming. He had been drinking all night, expensive Russian vodka that he had smuggled into the country to beat the ban on alcohol. There had been rather a lot of it, and he had been drunk when he had finally stumbled into bed. He still felt a little drunk, and now he was hearing things.
He exhaled, allowing his shoulders to sink back against the mattress, and closed his eyes again.
“Wake up, Ali.”
He stopped breathing; his heart felt as if it had stopped beating in his chest. He put down his right arm and levered himself to a half-sitting position. The gentle wind parted the curtains, with just enough moonlight admitted for him to see the man sitting in the armchair on the other side of the room. He was dressed all in black: black combat trousers, a black tactical jacket and black boots. He was wearing a black balaclava that obscured everything save for his eyes and mouth. His left leg was crossed over his right knee and his hands were in his lap. Ali glanced down and saw a pistol in his right hand, the metal sparkling in the dim light.
“Wake up.”
Ali had a pistol of his own in the drawer next to the bed. “Who are you?”
The man turned his head so that a little more light fell down onto him. His lips were pressed together in a tight line.
Ali’s left hand was still beneath the covers. He carefully, slowly, started to slide it toward the drawer. “What is your name?”
