The Cleaner (29 page)

“Damn it,” Rutherford said.

“What’s the matter?”

“I put the alarm on. Milton will set it off if he opens the door.”

“Want me to run back and tell him?”

“I better do it.” He handed over a set of keys and pointed. “No need for you to come too––we’re nearly there. You know my house? Last one on the left. Let yourself in, make yourself at home. I’ll get the takeaway on the way back––what do you want?”

“Curry,” he said. “Milton, too. Chicken korma for him. Beef madras for me.”

“Two chicken kormas and a beef madras, then. There are DVDs in the living room––put one on if you want. Go on, get inside. Don’t hang around outside, you hear? It still ain’t right around here.”

Rutherford waited until Elijah had crossed the road and was at the door to the maisonette. The door opened and closed, the boy disappearing inside. Satisfied, Rutherford turned on his heel and retraced his steps back to the church hall.

54.

MILTON PUT down his screwdriver and concentrated on the aches and pains that registered around his body. His joints throbbed with a dull ague, his muscles felt stiff and there was a deep-seated fatigue all the way in the marrow of his bones. There was no point in pretending; he was getting old. Old and stiff.

He recognised, dimly, that he needed sleep more than anything else.

He was screwing the cover onto the new socket when he heard a knock on the door from outside. He waited, wondering whether he had misheard, but the knock was repeated. Three times, quite hard, urgent. He stood. His eye fell on his Sig Sauer, hanging in the shoulder holster against the back of the nearby chair. There was no need. It was Rutherford or, in the worst case, kids who were mucking about. He tossed it behind the ring, out of sight.

He crossed the wide space to the front door, unlocked it and pulled it back.

Milton did not recognise the man outside.

The man brought up a gun and pointed it directly at his chest.

“Back inside,” he said.

The gun was a Sig Sauer 9mm, like his own. He knew what that meant.

“About time,” he said.

“Inside.”

“Control sent you?”

The man didn’t answer.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Who are you? Eleven? Twelve?”

“Twelve,” he said. The muzzle was aimed at his heart, unwavering in a steady hand, and the man’s face was blank and inscrutable. There would be no sense in appealing to his better nature. He would have no better nature. Twelve followed him into the hall and pushed the door closed with his foot. Milton assessed him. He looked like an athlete with wide shoulders and a tapered trunk. The eyes stared out coldly from beneath pale lashes. They were opaque, almost dead. The eyes of a drowned man.

“What’s this about?”

“Are you armed?” Twelve said. His voice was flat, the sentence trailing away on a dead note.

“No.”

“Pull up your shirt.”

Milton did as he was told.

“Turn around.”

He did.

“Where is it?”

“In the car.”

“Anyone else here?”

“No. Just me. Why don’t you tell me what this is all about?”

Again, there was no response. Milton assessed. Was there any way of putting Twelve off his stride? Upsetting his balance? He knew with grim certainty that there was not. Twelve and all the other young agents in Group Fifteen were brutally professional. Milton knew how well he had been trained––he would have gone through the same programme as he had, after all––and he was able to anticipate all of the variables that he would be considering. First, he would assess the threat that Milton posed: significant, but limited as it stood. Second, he would confirm that the surroundings were suitable for an elimination: perfect. Once those quick assessments had been made to his satisfaction he would carry out his orders. It would be quick and efficient. Milton guessed that he had a handful of seconds. A minute if he was lucky and could muddy the waters.

He would not go down without a fight. If there was a chance, a half-chance, he would take it. He assessed the situation himself. Six feet separating him from Twelve. Another indication that the agent was good; not enough to compromise his aim but enough to make sure that Milton could not attack before he could fire. Milton explored his own body, his posture, tensing his muscles and assessing how quickly he might be able to move. The position of his feet. The angle of his hips, of his shoulders. He would need to be decisive but, even then, he knew that his chances were slim. He would certainly be shot before he could reach him and, even if he was not, he did not fancy his chances in unarmed combat with Twelve. He was younger, his muscles more pliant and less damaged and scarred than Milton’s.

“Control sent you?” he asked again, probing for a weakness, some conversational gambit he could spin out into hesitation, then work the hesitation into doubt.

Nothing. He took a step into the hall. The gun did not waver.

“He doesn’t trust me?”

Nothing.

“Come on, Twelve, I’m owed a reason.”

Finally, he answered the question. “Your mental health is in question.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Twelve’s eyes darted left and right, taking in his surroundings, scanning for threats. “Look at this place! What are you now, a handyman?”

Milton ignored that. “It might have been in question before, but it isn’t now. Ten years doing what we do, it’s enough to make you hate the world. I’m not doing it anymore. I’m finished––I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”

Twelve turned his gaze back onto Milton. “I used to look up to you,” he said, a cruel smile briefly creasing his alabaster white skin. “You were a legend. But that was then, wasn’t it? Before whatever it is that’s happened to you.”

“Is that what Control thinks? That I’ve gone mad?”

“I’ve been following you. Moving into that dump of a place down the road. That woman you’ve been seeing. And going to those meetings. You’re saying you’re an alcoholic now, with all the intelligence you’re privy to? Fuck, after what happened in France, what did you think he’d think? How could he possibly let that stand? You’ve been classified as a security risk. ‘Most Urgent, Marked for Death.’ What else did you expect? He can’t have you running around like that, can he? You’re a liability.”

He tried to think of something that might deflect Twelve from his mission but there was nothing. “There’s no need for this,” he said, hopelessly.

“Comes to us all in the end. And I can’t lie––this will be the making of me. I’m the one who gets to retire the famous Number One.”

Behind them, the door handle pressed down. Milton saw it first, an advantage of a second or two that his body spent readying itself for sudden action. Twelve heard it too and, the gun continuing to cover Milton, he took a sideways step and then a quarter turn, allowing him to see both Milton and the doorway at the same time. The door opened inwards.

Rutherford stood there.

Oh no.

A warning caught in Milton’s throat, stifled by the steady gun.

“Forgot to tell you about the alarm––” Rutherford said, the sentence trailing away as he noticed the tension in Milton’s posture. His face creased with confusion as he looked to the right, at Twelve, and then that became anxiety as he saw the gun.

“Come inside and shut the door,” Twelve instructed him in the same cold, flat voice.

Milton knew Rutherford had seconds to live. He was a witness, and there could be no witnesses. He had to act, right now, but the gun remained where it was, as if held by a statue, pointed implacably at his heart. Rutherford did as he was told, stepping inside and pushing the door behind him. The mechanism closed with a solid click.

“You don’t need to shoot him,” Milton said, desperately trying to distract Twelve from the course he would already have determined the moment Rutherford set his hand on the door. “He doesn’t know who you are. He doesn’t know who I am. Let him go. We can settle this between us.”

“We’re going to settle it,” Twelve said.

He swung the gun away from Milton and aimed it at Rutherford.

55.

IN ONE VIOLENT corkscrew of motion, Milton threw himself across the room.

The gun spat out once and then swung back towards Milton again.

Twelve’s reflexes were unbelievably quick and a second––unaimed––shot rung out.

The bullet caught Milton in the shoulder, razor shards of pain lancing down his arm. Milton disregarded it, shut it down, and threw himself into the younger man. He tackled him around the waist, his momentum sending them both stumbling backwards until they clattered against the wall. Twelve tried to bludgeon him with the butt of the gun but he blocked the clumsy swipe, their wrists clashing and the gun falling to the floor. They collapsed downwards, Milton ending up on top, and he drove the point of his elbow into Twelve’s face. He felt the bones of his nose crumple and snap as they crunched together, blood immediately running over the pale white skin. Milton rolled away and scrambled for the gun. His fingers closed around it as Twelve sprung up to his feet, his face twisted with fury.

“Don’t,” Milton said. The pain from his shoulder washed over him in nauseous waves, but he managed to aim the pistol.

Twelve stopped. He was six feet away. Blood ran freely from his broken nose. His eyes shone with anger.

Milton slowly got to his feet. His left shoulder felt as though it had been mangled, the arm hanging uselessly down by his side. He was woozy from the pain. He knew, from experience, that it would get worse. It was the adrenaline that was holding him together, but the pain would overwhelm him eventually. He held the advantage, but he would not have it for long.

“Put the gun down,” Twelve said.

Milton looked across the room. Rutherford body was sprawled across the floor. Twelve’s shot had struck him in the forehead. He had landed in an untidy sprawl, his arms outflung. His body was still. There was no hope for him.

Milton tightened his grip on the pistol. He felt the old, familiar flick of his anger. His finger tightened around the trigger.

“Put it down,” Twelve said calmly.

He tried to tune out the pain. Twelve had sunk down a little, spreading his weight between both legs. He could see that Milton was injured. He would have noticed the way that his aim was slowly dropping, his gun arm gradually falling towards the floor. He would be making the same calculations that Milton had made moments earlier. The distance between them. How quickly he could close it. The odds of a shot stopping him before he could reach his target. Milton knew his weakness was obvious; Twelve would be able to smell it like a shark smells blood.

Milton fought the anger and the pain. “I’m not going to kill you,” he said, his voice quiet. “I’m finished with that, not unless there’s no other choice, and if you’re sensible you won’t back me into a corner.”

“Alright,” Twelve said, showing him his open palms, placating him. “I won’t. Take it easy.”

“I’m not going to kill you but you know I can’t have you following me.”

Milton stiffened his arm, switched to a lower aim and pulled the trigger.

The bullet struck Twelve in the right knee. His face distorted with agony and he fell back.

Milton closed in and swept his good leg. Twelve dropped to the floor. Milton backed away, covering him with the gun, until he reached the door. “Tell Control not to come after me.”

“He’ll come after you,” he gasped through the pain.

“Tell him I’m out.”

Twelve grunted; Milton realised that he was laughing. “We’re never out.”

“I am. Tell him if he sends anyone after me, I’ll send them back in boxes. And then I’ll bring him down.”

He looked again at Rutherford’s unmoving body, then at Twelve, staring up at him through a mask of pain. He reached around and pushed the gun into the waistband of his jeans and pulled out the tails of his shirt to cover it. The pain was reaching a crescendo.

He had to move now.

Right now.

He opened the door and hurried across the road towards the unlit stretch of park. He passed through the open gate and kept going until the darkness swallowed him.

56.

THE HOUSE WAS EMPTY. Milton had forced his way in through a door to the garden; he put his fist through the glass and unlocked the door from the inside. It was on one of the most expensive streets in the neighbourhood, a long curved
cul-de-sac
which faced onto the peaceful expanse of a common adjacent to the main area of the park. Expensive SUVs and four-by-fours competed for space on the road. The houses were large, set behind railed front gardens with wide bay windows and broad front doors.

Milton had started to feel faint as he crossed the common. The pain had started to dull and fade, a sensation he knew was dangerous. He kept his hand clamped to his shoulder but the blood kept coming. He knew enough about battlefield medicine to know that a lodged bullet could be sometimes be a blessing, plugging up the entry wound until it could be carefully removed and the blood staunched. Milton had not been so fortunate. This bullet had nicked a vein and the blood continued to seep out around it, squeezing through his fingers and soaking into the fabric of his shirt.

He found a packet of ibuprofen in a first aid box in the bathroom cabinet. He tapped out three and swallowed them dry and then laid out his tools on the kitchen table. He placed an adjustable mirror before the chair and stood an anglepoise lamp next to it, the shade turned so that the bright cone of light was cast back onto the chair. He opened the first aid box again and took a tube of antiseptic gel, a gauze dressing and a roll of bandages. He crossed the room to the gas hob and removed the small kitchen knife from where he had rested it, the blade suspended in the blue flame. He raised the knife before his cheek; the metal glowed red and radiated heat. That was good. He lodged the blade of a larger, broader metal spatula in the flame instead.

He went back to the table and took off his shirt, using it to mop the blood from around the wound. He sat in the wooden chair, adjusting the lamp so that its light fell on the wound and then turning the mirror so that he could stare right into it. A neat hole had been burrowed out, blackened around the edges and scabbed in parts with partly congealed blood. He grimaced with pain as he reached his left hand back up to his left shoulder and then gasped as he used his forefinger and thumb to spread the edges of the wound, opening it so that he could look a little way inside.