The Cleaner

Control watched the screen, his eyes a little glazed. He was not bothered by the blood and the gore; Heaven knows, he had seen enough of it over the years, and much worse than this. He was not really concentrating on Twelve at all. His mind was on Milton.

His liquidation should have been straightforward. Twelve had had the benefit of surprise and Milton was not as young as he had once been. And, yet, here they were, with a badly injured agent and Milton a ghost.

He had been working on damage control ever since Twelve had limped out of the church hall and called for emergency pickup. He had taken the response team himself to ensure that there was no trace of Twelve ever having been there. The blood from his leg had been scrubbed away and footage from local CCTV cameras had been deleted. The dead man — Rutherford — was left where he was. Twelve had explained what had happened. The surprise of Rutherford’s appearance had saved Milton’s life and so now, in death, he would have to pay back the damage that he had caused. His body would prove to be useful. It was easy to fabricate the story. CCTV footage placed Milton at the scene and showed Rutherford arriving moments before he was shot.

A camera at the entrance to the park had footage of Milton heading north. He was wounded, too, a bullet to the shoulder. They had immediately checked local hospitals for admissions but it was perfunctory; Milton was much too savvy to do something as foolish as that. An hour later they had intercepted a call to local police of a break-in. A couple had returned to their house on the edge of the nearby park to find that someone had forced the door to the garden. Their car and a few clothes had been stolen. That, in itself, would have been enough for Control to have investigated but they had also reported that their first aid cabinet had been ransacked, that a lamp had been moved onto the kitchen table and that kitchen utensils had been found covered in blood. Control took command of the investigation himself and visited the house. He went through into the kitchen and sat at the table, glancing at his reflection. He knew that Milton had been sitting in the same chair a couple of hours earlier. He had operated on himself, cleaned the wound and made it safe until he found someone that he could trust to do the job properly. He had showered, changed clothes, taken their car and fled. The police were looking for the vehicle but they had not located it yet. It would not matter. They would find it eventually, abandoned at the side of the road when Milton switched vehicles. It would be too late then. He would stay ahead of them unless he made a mistake or he chose to be found.

Control focussed on the screen again as the prosthesis was carefully placed into Twelve’s wrecked joint.

John Milton was a chameleon. He had twenty years’ experience of blending into the background, surfacing only to do the bloody work of his trade before sinking out of sight again. Control felt an icy knot in the pit of his stomach. Milton was the most dangerous man he had ever met and now he knew that the State wanted him dead. He had no idea what he would do next and that was the kind of thought that would keep a man up at night.

59

The motorway stretched away into the distance, the slow-moving row of tail-lights painting a lazy swipe across the valley. There had been a crash outside Wolverhampton and the traffic had backed up, filtering slowly through two lanes while the grim wreckage was craned away. Milton had cursed the accident. He knew that it would only be a matter of time before the details of the stolen BMW were added to the national registry. The motorway was equipped with the CCTV masts that serviced the police’s number plate recognition system, and the longer he stayed on the road the greater the chance that the car would be noticed. He felt vulnerable and, even though he knew it would make no difference, he had tugged down the brim of the baseball cap he had found in the glove compartment so that his face was partially obscured.

He was tired and his shoulder throbbed. He had been driving for three hours. His instinct was not to stop until he reached Manchester but, as he passed the sign advertising the services at Stafford South he decided it was worth the risk for a strong cup of coffee.

Milton moved carefully into the crawler lane and pulled off the motorway.

The car park was quiet, a wide open space lit by a series of tall overhead lights. Milton parked in a shadowed area and walked across to the complex of buildings. There were very few drivers around, a handful of red-eyed travellers drinking coffee in the small Starbucks concession. Milton bought a packet of Nurofen from WH Smith and then ordered a double espresso and a bottle of water from the bored-looking barista.

Milton looked up at the screen fixed to the wall. The BBC’s rolling news cha

“And in other news, Police have launched a murder hunt after a man was found dead in the boxing club he ran in London’s East End. De

A picture of Rutherford was displayed. He was with a group of youngsters, holding a trophy and smiling into the camera. The picture switched to an outside broadcast. A reporter was standing in front of the boxing club, a policeman standing guard at the entrance.

The reporter spoke into the camera. “The Metropolitan police and London ambulance service were called here at 10.20pm, where the victim, from Hackney, was subsequently pronounced dead. A post-mortem is due to take place tomorrow but it is understood that he died from a single gunshot wound. Police sources say that they want to speak to John Milton, last seen in the London area. He is described as a middle-aged white male, six foot tall, well built and with short dark hair. They recommend that he is not approached and that members of the public with information on his whereabouts should contact officers as soon as possible.”

A head-and-shoulders picture of Milton flashed onto the screen. He recognised it: the picture had been taken from his Group file. Control was behaving exactly as he knew that he would. He would organise a manhunt, co-opting all the other agencies: the intelligence service, the police, everyone. His picture remained on the screen as the report continued. Milton looked around at the other customers anxiously. No-one was paying the television much attention but he replaced the cap on his head regardless.

He took his coffee with him and went back out into the hot night. The steady hum of the motorway was loud, the stand of trees that had been planted at the edge of the car park doing little to dampen the noise. Milton ignored the BMW. It had served him well, but he knew that it would have been reported by now. He found a spot that was poorly served by CCTV and approached a Ford Mondeo. He forced the door, slid inside and hotwired the engine.

The digital clock on the dashboard showed a little after three in the morning as he rejoined the motorway heading north. He passed through the gears, making sure to stay below the speed limit. In an hour and a half, the lights of Liverpool sparkled in the distance. Milton turned off the motorway and drove into town.