The Ninth Step - John Milton #8 (John Milton Thrillers) (12 page)

The body was propped against the wheel.

The window was fogged. He reached out a gloved hand and opened the door, careful not to dislodge the hose from the gap between the glass and the frame. The cabin was thick with acrid smoke, and it leaked out in lazy tendrils that were quickly smothered by the rain.

Edward Fabian was slumped forward, his sternum pressed against the wheel and his head lolling over the top of it. His face was angled to the door, and his eyes, open and unblinking, stared out at Hicks.

He depressed the pressel and spoke into the mic. “Hicks to Woodward.”

“Go ahead, Hicks.”

“He’s dead.”

“What do you mean?”

“Fabian’s in his car. The engine is on. There’s a hosepipe from the exhaust into the cabin. He’s dead.”

“Pull out, Hicks. Confirm.”

“Confirmed. Pulling out.”

He closed the door again and watched for a handful of seconds as the interior became clouded with fumes once more. He checked the windows of the house and confirmed, again, that there were no signs of occupation. He went to the gate and looked left and right. The road outside was empty. All he could hear was the sound of the raindrops as they exploded onto the pitted and potholed tarmac.

He wiped the water from his face again and set off, jogging back to the spot where Shepherd was waiting for him.

THE RAIN stopped at dawn. Milton watched through the open hatch as the sun broke through the clouds. Light arrowed down onto the small park in the middle of the Square, droplets falling from sodden leaves and branches and dropping through the golden shafts.

Milton finished the shift and handed over to Cathy’s son, a quiet and pleasant young man called Carl. It was a mile from Russell Square to Piccadilly Circus, and Milton was there at half past nine, thirty minutes early. The wide space around Eros was busy, even at this hour, with tourists sitting on the steps and others holding up their phones to take selfies with the statue and the kaleidoscopic billboards in the background. Milton walked on a little farther and found Savile Row. He ambled onwards until he reached the first of the suit-makers that had given the street its reputation. He looked in through the open doors to an oasis of beautifully minimal chic, expensive fabrics and a security guard with a Bluetooth headset nestled in his ear. Milton had worn suits like these, once, and had worn them in Monte Carlo and St Moritz and the Hamptons. It was a different world to the one he moved through now, and he found that he preferred his scuffed boots, dirty jeans and the white T-shirts he picked up in bundles of five for less than ten pounds in Primark.

He turned and returned to the Circus, where he scanned the crowd. Eddie wasn’t there. He checked his watch. It was a minute after ten. He walked to the Criterion Theatre, leaned against the wall and took out a cigarette. A line of buses rumbled out of Regent Street and proceeded along Shaftesbury Avenue. Milton lit the cigarette and drew on it. A white flatbed truck pulled out into the steady flow of traffic. The tide of tourists thickened as more emerged from the underground, following a guide with a small Japanese flag hoisted atop a stick. Milton finished the cigarette, dropped it to the pavement and crushed it underfoot. He pushed himself away from the wall and looked left and right.

He checked his watch.

Twenty past.

Eddie was not here.

He looked for the journalist, searching for someone who might be waiting for a rendezvous. There were several candidates, but then this was a standard meeting place and Milton had nothing to go on save the reporter’s gender. There was an older woman looking at her phone. A younger woman, early twenties, with her phone pressed to her ear. Three other single women, one sitting on the steps and the other two standing near to the theatre. Milton had no way to guess who it was who wanted to speak to Eddie. He considered whether he might approach them and ask, decided that was unlikely to be productive, and went back to waiting.

He gave it another ten minutes, until half past the hour, and then gave up. Eddie wasn’t coming. He had lost his nerve. Milton had known that was a possibility. The man was frightened of the consequences of speaking out about what had happened to him, and it seemed that the thought of it had proven to be too much. That wasn’t unreasonable. He’d been given a terrific fright. It was understandable that he would want to stay with his sister, away from the city. Milton was not about to criticise him for that.

There was a meeting of the fellowship tonight that Milton usually attended. Eddie often went to it, too. He wondered whether he would see him there and, if he did, what he would say.

Milton walked toward Regent Street. He would get the tube at Oxford Circus and head east. It would take him half an hour to get back to Bethnal Green. He was tired and ready for bed.

HICKS ARRIVED at the Cock of Tupsley at six the following evening. The Regiment was based at Credenhill, just outside the town, and it was always a standing joke that the three hundred men who formed its complement could easily be identified when they left camp for a drink or a little bit of R & R. Hicks looked around now and saw a couple of men at the bar who matched the profile of the typical SAS man: athletic rather than large, hair kept neat and tidy, wearing boots beneath well-pressed pairs of jeans. The two kept themselves to themselves, talking quietly and enjoying a couple of pints. If someone had asked them what they did for a living, they would have said that they were in the army. They would be charming and discreet and would go no further, but it would still be obvious to anyone with any experience.

He went through to the back and then climbed the stairs to the meeting room. The others were there.

The general was at the head of the table. “So,” he said, “what do we know?”

“The police were called out by a local farmer,” Woodward said. “He saw the cab with the engine running. They got there just after six. I spoke to my contact. They’ve put an old hand on it. They think it was suicide. They’re not going to dig too hard.”

“Who owns the house?”

“Yeah, I checked that. It’s Fabian’s sister. Lauren Fabian. Seems likely he was running there after Hicks warned him.”

Higgins turned to Hicks. “Corporal?”

“It’s possible. He would’ve been frightened. I was persuasive.”

Higgins pursed his lips at that; an indication, perhaps, that he was unconvinced. “What about the other car?”

“I got the plate.”

“And?”

“I’ve requested details.”

The general nodded. “Any other thoughts?”

“Whoever it was, they’re clean. Very professional.”

“How did they subdue him?”

“It wasn’t obvious, sir.”

Higgins waved his hand irritably. “Speculate.”

Hicks had been thinking about it. “They could have tied him to the seat. A roll of duct tape, maybe. But there would have been a struggle. It would have been noisy. Maybe I would’ve heard, and I didn’t.”

“So they drugged him,” Gillan said. “Chloroform.”

“Chloroform is detectable in a post-mortem,” Connolly said.

“Only if there’s a lot of it,” Hicks corrected.

“And only if they run the right tests,” Gillan added. “This looks straightforward. Maybe they won't bother with toxicology.”

The general finished his pint and replaced the glass on the table, running his fingers up and down it. He had surprisingly delicate hands for an old soldier, with slender fingers and nails that were so smooth that they almost looked polished.

“Yes,” Higgins agreed. “Maybe. Whoever did this saved us the effort. But I want to know who it was. I don’t like being in the dark like this.” He turned back to Hicks. “Corporal, call me when you know who owns the car. And keep an eye on the rest of his family. Find out what you can about the sister.” He pointed three times, including Hicks, Connolly and Woodward in the gesture. “Find out when the funeral is. The three of you go, keep an eye on it, see if anything comes up.”

“What about the bloke he met in Russell Square?” Shepherd said.

“What about him?”

“Hicks thought he recognised him. Tell him, Hicks.”

The general looked at him. “Corporal?”

“I thought I did,” Hicks said, with an irritated sideways glance at Shepherd. “But I don’t think I do. Thought it was someone I knew from the army. It was a mistake.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have a look at him, too. Find out what you can. Fabian goes to see him, the next thing he does is drive out to his sister’s and gets topped. I need more information. I don’t like being blindsided like this. We should have been on top of Fabian and we weren’t. That can’t happen again.”

The men nodded to acknowledge the old man’s order. They spoke about business for another five minutes, but the main purpose of the meeting had been concluded. They finished their drinks, collected their coats and left.

IT WAS late when Hicks finally got behind the wheel of his car for the long three-hour drive back to Cambridge. He followed the M5 to Birmingham and then took the M6 and A14 until the lights of the city appeared out of the darkness. It was two in the morning when he parked the Range Rover in the garage. He lowered the door and took a moment to look at his modest house and the small garden that spread out around it. He looked up at the window to his bedroom and thought of his wife. He thought of the cancer and the money he needed to find.

He was confused. His thoughts were a riot, and he couldn’t control them.

Would he have killed Fabian?

Would he have gone through with it?

He couldn’t say.

What about Milton? What would he do if the general told him that Milton was a loose end who needed to be cut? What would he do if the general told him that offing him was his responsibility?

What would he do then?

Kill him?

A wave of dizziness washed over him and he put out his hand to steady himself against the wall of the garage. He felt as if he was caught in a vice: on one side was Rachel, the cancer, and the thought of an impossible life without her; on the other side was the general and the rest of the unit. He was trapped in the middle, squeezed tighter and tighter.

He thought of Fabian slumped against the wheel of his cab, and then to the other things that he and the rest of the men had done. He felt shame and then, as he thought of the general, there was anger with himself. He had allowed his desperation to lead him to the old man, to accept his offer of a place in the unit and all of the consequences that came with it. There was no way to leave the Feather Men once you were inside. It was a lifetime commitment.

And because of that, ultimately, all he felt was fear.

THAT NIGHT’S MEETING was at St Giles in the Fields. The church was on the fringes of Covent Garden and was a large, grand place. Milton was interested in history and had researched the building after his first visit there. It had been the last church on the route between Newgate Prison and the gallows at Tyburn, and the churchwardens had made it a custom to pay for condemned men to have a drink at the next-door pub, the Angel, before they went to be hanged. Milton found that wryly amusing.

The meeting was held in the vestry house behind the church, and as Milton stepped off the busy street and into the church garden, he felt the usual peacefulness descend. He stopped outside the vestry room for a cup of coffee and a biscuit, nodding a hello to the woman who had held the role ever since he had started to attend here.

“Hello, John,” she said. “How are you?”

“Doing well.”

“Coffee with one sugar?”

“You remembered.”

“Do this as long as I have, you remember everyone.”

Milton thanked her, waited for her to make his coffee and took the mug, together with a chocolate digestive biscuit, into the vestry room. It was bright and airy, with large windows that reached from the ceiling all the way down to panelled wainscoting. Engraved boards recorded the names and dates of service of all the vicars who had worked in the church. A cast-iron chandelier was suspended above a large oval table with twelve chairs. There were more chairs around the edge of the room and a fireplace with a large mirror fixed above the mantelpiece. The walls had not been painted for years and there were chips in the woodwork. It would have been a grand room, once, but now it had been allowed to become shabby. But Milton liked it. It was full of character, and its decrepitude reminded him of all the thousands of men and women who must have sat in this room over the course of the decades. Today, the room had been decked out with AA posters and the long scroll that held the twelve steps. A small table held a supply of pamphlets and several brand-new editions of the Big Book, the bible that set out the creed of the organisation’s founder, Bill Wilson.

Milton was one of the first inside and, instead of taking one of the chairs at the table, he sat in the corner at the back of the room. The idea of sitting where everyone could see him, his back to at least half of the room, was one he found profoundly unsettling. His position also allowed him to watch the others as they filed inside. It was a busy meeting, and the chairs around the table and then the others all around it were quickly taken.

Milton watched the doorway for Eddie, but he didn’t come through. He had been to the last three or four meetings that Milton had attended here, but his absence today wasn’t surprising. Milton wondered if he might have been embarrassed to have stood him up, or perhaps he was regretting his candour when he came to see him in the shelter. Or perhaps he had fallen off the wagon after all.

The secretary was a white-haired old lady who, Milton had heard, had once been something of a leading light in Tin Pan Alley, the street of musical shops that was close by the church. She sat down in the last remaining chair at the table and banged a small gavel.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” she began. “This is the regular meeting of the St Giles in the Fields group of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Edith and I am an alcoholic.”