The Ninth Step - John Milton #8 (John Milton Thrillers) (39 page)

They stopped six more times, visiting similar properties in Bethnal Green and Hackney. Each time the men returned to the BMW with broad smiles and laughter, and each time Milton hated them just a little bit more.

The drizzle was falling a little more heavily now, persuading the pedestrians who were out to hurry to their destinations, some sheltering beneath umbrellas and others with their heads bent as they maintained a determined pace. Cars and busses passed on both sides of the road, each one sending up a cascade of spray as wheels rolled through the quickly gathering puddles that pooled around glutted drains. Milton glanced in the mirrors and noticed that the same Nissan Note that he had seen earlier was still behind him. He was being followed, too. He knew who it was, and he relaxed; it was under control.

The fact that the rent collectors stopped so many times in such a short space of time should have meant it was impossible for them to have been tracked by just one operative in a single car. Even the most rudimentary of anti-surveillance routines would have meant that they would have seen the battered old Volkswagen that stayed with them throughout the afternoon, following a hundred yards behind them, stopping just out of sight when they stopped, picking them up when they set off again. If they had been just a little more vigilant, then he would have had a devilishly difficult time remaining unobserved, but they were so wrapped up in the ease of each collection and the sense of power that they seemed to derive from each freshly beaten-down tenant that they paid little heed to their surroundings. Their arrogance made them lazy and overconfident, and it meant that Milton was able to stay behind them without being noticed. He remembered similar targets that he had followed in police states where the strength of the regime meant that the suggestion of hostile action was so preposterous as to be beyond consideration. Those men and women had been easy kills. It was the targets who were wary or fearful for their lives that made for the most difficult assignments. These two had more in common with the arrogant than the fearful.

Their journey finally brought them to Beckton. It was a grim, joyless area that had once been promised as a utopia, served by the futuristic Light Railway, but had since had its optimism ripped away. The locals who had been persuaded to leave the inner city now looked resentfully at the immigrants who poured in for the cheap housing that no one else wanted. Milton drove by pubs and cafés that were full of white faces, early drinkers staring balefully out into the street, many of them wearing England football shirts.

The two men drove south on the A117, turned off onto Alpine Way, and then took the first right onto Whitings Way. Milton checked behind him again, but couldn’t see the Nissan. He put it out of mind.

The goons slowed at the entrance to a large retail park, waited for a man to push a large double pram across the road, and then drove through the open iron gates. There was a wide selection of stores inside the park, all of them housed in hangar-sized industrial units.

Milton parked the car. He opened the glove box, took out a mini-Maglite and put it into his pocket. He stepped outside and continued on foot. The car pulled into an empty space and he watched as the two men got out and made their way to the largest unit in the park. A colourful green and yellow sign announced it as Polanka Delikatsey. The two men went inside. Milton followed them.

It was large and spacious inside. While the business catered explicitly to Polish immigrants, it stocked brands from across Eastern Europe. Milton followed the two men along an aisle of Lithuanian pickles. He passed a table that had been decorated with a banner that seemed, to Milton’s inexpert eye, to be encouraging votes in a referendum on some domestic Polish matter or another. Another table was stocked with anti-Putin pamphlets.

There was a flight of stairs at the end of the store that rose up to the first floor. Milton followed the men as they ascended. The stairs led to a confusing mishmash of stores and businesses. There was an art gallery, with ugly Russian paintings hung around the walls. There was a stall selling cheap phone cards for those who wanted to call home. An Internet café. A small bookshop stocked with Polish books.

The men walked to a plain door, knocked, and went inside. The door closed. Milton paused, attending to a lace that did not need to be tied, and then walked on, slowing as he approached the door. He examined it: plain, solid, expensive. There was a window next to the door, but the glass was smoked and he couldn’t see inside. There was also an intercom next to the door. A notice below the intercom read Klub Orła Białego. A single line of English below that offered a translation: White Eagle Club.

Milton went back to the café. A group of middle-aged women were sitting at a table, gossiping as they enjoyed their teas. Another table was occupied by three young men in cheap tracksuits. He went to the desk and ordered a coffee. The owner was in her early thirties, trying to grasp the last of her looks with a blonde bleach job that had dried her hair out badly. She flirted with him, then tried to get him to buy a pastry. She spoke in Polish, and Milton—who did not speak it, nor wanted to reveal that he did not—answered with a shake of his head and refused to engage with her. She eventually got the message and went back to the crossword that she was doing.

Milton took a seat where he could watch the door and observed for ten minutes. There were no comings and goings, and the door remained closed. He took out his phone and opened his browser. He Googled the name of the club and found a series of pages in Polish. He couldn’t read the text, but it was apparent that the door led to a bar and nightclub.

He weighed his options. He knew where the men were based now. He could return later, when he had been able to study the building a little more and perhaps get an idea of the business that ran the club. There might be a company there, and he would be able to search Companies House for details on it. He might be able to find plans for the building. And then he could break in and look around.

That would have been the most sensible, the most careful option.

But Milton had watched the two of them shake down seven different tenants this afternoon. He had watched as the fat man had struck Ahmed’s father and threatened him with more. There was no point in trying to pretend that he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t reckless and would never have allowed his decisions to be sullied by anger, but there was a benefit to harnessing it and acting now, rather than later.

MILTON WAITED another hour, just getting a feel for the place and watching the door. There were no other comings or goings.

He navigated to Gmail and checked that the video and audio from the bugs had uploaded successfully. The file was there, and he watched it through to ensure that it would underline the point that he was going to make.

Satisfied, he collected his bag from the floor, collected his leather jacket and walked to the door.

He looked back to the rest of the open floor. People were going about their business. No one was paying him any attention.

He pressed the intercom.

“No visitors.”

The intercom crackled as it was shut off.

Milton pressed the buzzer again.

“I tell you! We are closed.”

“I’m not going until you let me in.”

“I send someone down, make you leave.”

“Fine. I’ll be right here. Send them down.”

The intercom hissed again and fell silent.

Milton took the mini-Maglite from his pocket. He clenched his fist around it, feeling the cold, hard metal as it solidified the structure of his fingers. He hid his hand in the pocket of his jacket.

He pressed the buzzer and then held his thumb against it.

The intercom stayed silent. Milton waited for twenty seconds until the door opened.

It was the smaller of the two men whom Milton had been tailing all afternoon. He was a similar height and build to Milton. He had taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirt to reveal sleeves of tattoos on both arms. Milton could smell alcohol on his breath. Perhaps he had been celebrating a successful afternoon’s work.

“I tell you. No visitors.” The man looked at him as he spoke. There was a flicker of recognition. “Wait—I know you.”

“My name’s Smith.”

“I see you before.”

“You did. I live at Chertsey House. I’ve been following you all afternoon.”

The man’s mouth twisted into a grimace of irritation. Milton stepped forward, planting his right foot against the door. The man cursed in Russian and tried to close the door but could not. Milton had distracted him, and he didn’t notice as Milton raised his fist, squeezed the flashlight even tighter into his palm, and drilled him with a stiff jab that landed square against his chin. The force of the blow, amplified by the flashlight and surprise, meant that the man was unconscious before he hit the floor. He toppled back, falling against the stairs, the back of his head bouncing against one of the treads.

Milton stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and climbed the stairs.

THE FAT MAN was eating a plate of kielbasa, cutting up the sausage and shovelling it into his mouth. He was sat behind a table, the edge pressed into his pendulous gut, so close that he was unable to stand quickly enough when he saw Milton approach him. There was a glass of vodka on the table and, next to that, a pistol. Milton recognised it as a Russian Makarov.

“Hello,” Milton said.

“Where is Yuri?”

“Relax,” Milton said, fighting the urge to take the man by the back of the head and drive his face into his dinner. “He’s fine. Just having a rest.”

The man shuffled back in his chair, making enough space that he was able to stand. His fat hand pawed the Makarov. He stood and aimed it across the room.

“Put that down,” Milton said wearily.

“You don’t tell me what to do. Where is Yuri?”

“Who’s in charge here?”

“Maybe me,” the man said, stabbing the pistol forward in Milton’s direction.

“No,” Milton said, allowing a little more weariness to drip into his voice. “You and your friend are the muscle. You don’t have the intelligence to run an operation like this. You want to know how I know?” He waited, but nothing passed across the man’s face to disturb the blackened, piggish anger; Milton’s sangfroid was confusing him. “I’ll tell you how I know. I just knocked out your friend, saw he was carrying a weapon and I still came up here. If you were smart, you’d be asking yourself what would possess me to do a thing like that. Either I have a death wish—and I don’t—or I have something to tell your boss, something I’m very confident indeed that he’ll want to hear. But you didn’t think about that, did you? You just pulled your gun. And that’s how I know that you’re just the monkey. I came here to talk to the organ grinder. So go and get him, please.”

The man stood there, confused, and Milton could almost see the gears in his head as they started to turn. He wondered if he was going to have to goad him into action, but, after a long moment, the man told him to stay where he was and disappeared into the adjoining room.

Milton waited. He looked around. It was a pleasant room, furnished to a standard that was out of step with the supermarket below and the rest of the building. There were pictures on the walls in ostentatious gilded frames, a chandelier hung from the ceiling, the bar was crafted from polished oak, and the bottles behind it were lit. Milton went over to the bar. There was a bottle of Zubrowka Bison Grass vodka standing there. Milton picked it up and glanced at the label, then returned it.

Milton waited for another minute until the fat man returned with another man trailing behind him. The newcomer was wearing a grey suit, a shirt that he wore with the top two buttons undone, and heavy jewellery on his fingers and around his wrist and his neck.

“What is your name?”

“Smith. And you?”

“My name is Emil Zharkov. How can I help you, Mr. Smith?”

“You own a property in Bethnal Green. A flat in Chertsey House.”

Zharkov looked to the fat man. “Dmitri?”

“There is a family there, Emil. This
mudak
lives next to them.”

“And this
sooka
should be careful how he talks to me,” Milton retorted, the imprecation delivered with a perfect accent.

The suggestion that Milton might understand their language evidently gave them pause for thought. The fat man, Dmitri, looked confused for a moment before he realised that he couldn’t afford to lose face in front of his boss. He squared up to Milton and stepped forward until his face was six inches away. Milton stood his ground. He could smell the vodka and garlic on the man’s breath and see a fragment of sausage caught between his teeth.

“Say that again,” Dmitri said.

“Step back,” Milton said instead.

“Or you will do what,
mudak
?”

The fat man raised both hands and pushed Milton on the shoulders. Milton took a step back so that he was closer to the bar and then, without giving him a second warning, backhanded him across the face. The fat man fell to the side, his nose streaming blood.

“I’d like to speak to you without being threatened,” Milton said to Zharkov, not even out of breath. “Will that be possible, Emil?”

Milton knew that he had taken a risk, but he wanted to demonstrate that he was not to be taken lightly. Emil might be offended. He would probably feel threatened. But he hoped that he would take him seriously. The Russian paused, appraising Milton, considering how to respond, and then, after ten seconds, he responded with a friendly chuckle.

“You are an interesting man, Mr. Smith.”

The fat man pushed himself to his hands and knees and raised his head; blood dripped out of both nostrils. “Emil! He hit me!”

“Shut up, Dmitri. Go and clean yourself up. I talk to Mr. Smith now. If I need you, I call you.”

The fat man used the back of the chair to help him rise to his feet. He gave Milton a baleful stare, but he was not prepared to disobey his boss. He looked woozy, and as he relinquished his support, it looked for a moment as if he was going to fall; he managed to find his balance and slowly left the room.