The Cleaner (3 page)

A loud scream yanked him around.

The students were staring down the platform at him. He took it all in, the details. Was it him they were pointing at? No. They were pointing away from him. The woman wasn’t there. Another scream, and one of the students pointed down onto the track. Milton stumbled to his feet and saw her, deliberately laid across the rails. It was an incongruous sight. At first he thought she must have been trying to collect something that she had dropped but then he realised that she had laid herself out in that fashion for a purpose. He spun around; the glowing digital sign said the next train was approaching and then Milton heard it, the low rumble as the carriages rolled around the final bend in the tunnel. There wasn’t any time to consider what to do. There was an emergency button on the wall fifty feet away but he knew he wouldn’t be able to reach it in time and, even if he did, he doubted the train would be able to stop.

He jumped down from the platform onto the sleepers.

He stepped over the live rail.

The train drew nearer, a blast of warm air pouring out of the mouth of the tunnel.

Milton knelt down by the woman.

“No,” she said. “Leave me alone.”

He slipped one hand beneath her back and the other beneath her knees. She was slight and he lifted her easily. The train turned the final bend, its headlights shining brightly. Its horn sounded, shrill and sudden, and Milton knew it was going to be touch and go. He stepped over the live rail again and threw the woman up onto the platform. The train’s brakes bit, the locked wheels sliding across the metal with a hideous shriek, as Milton planted his hands on the lip of the platform and vaulted up, rolling away just as the engine groaned by, missing him by fractions.

He rolled over, onto his back, and stared up at the curved ceiling. His breath rushed in and out.

The train had stopped halfway into the station. The driver opened the door and sprinted down the platform towards him. “Are you alright, mate?”

“Fine. Check her.”

He closed his eyes and forced his breathing to return to a regular pattern. In and out, in and out.

“I thought you was a goner,” the driver said. “I thought I was gonna hit you both. What happened?”

Milton didn’t answer. The students had made their way down the platform and the driver turned his attention to them. They reported what they had seen in singsong, broken English: how the woman had lowered herself from the platform and laid herself out across the rails, how Milton had gone down after and pulled her away from danger.

“You’re a bloody hero, mate,” the driver said.

Milton closed his eyes again.

A hero?

He would have laughed if that wasn’t so ridiculous. It was a bad joke.

4.

AN AMBULANCE arrived soon afterwards. Milton sat next to the woman on the bench as she was attended to by the paramedics. She had cried hysterically for five minutes but she quickly stopped and by the time the paramedics had arrived she was silent and unmoving, staring fixedly at the large posters for exotic holidays and duty-free goods that were plastered across the curved wall on the other side of the tracks.

One of the paramedics had taken the woman’s purse from her bag. “Is your name Sharon, love?” he asked. She said nothing. “Come on, love, you have to talk to us.”

She remained silent.

“We’re going to have to take her in,” the paramedic said. “I think she’s in shock.”

“I’ll come, too,” Milton said.

“Are you a friend?”

Leaving her now would be abandoning her. He had started to help and he wanted to finish the job. He would leave once her family had arrived.

“Yes,” he said.

“Come on, sweetheart, let’s get you checked out properly.”

Milton followed behind the ambulance as they took the woman to the Royal Free hospital. They wheeled her into a quiet room and made her a cup of warm tea, full of sugar. “We’re just waiting for the doctor,” they said to her. “Get that down you, it’ll make all the difference.”

“Thank you,” she murmured.

The paramedic turned to Milton. “Are you alright to stay with her? He’s on his way, but it might be twenty minutes.”

“Yes,” Milton said. “Of course.”

He took the seat next to the bed and watched the girl. She had closed her eyes and, after a few minutes, Milton realised that she had drifted into a shallow sleep. Her chest rose and fell with each gentle breath. Milton regarded her. Her hair was of the deepest black, worn cut square and low on the nape of her neck, fanned out on the white hospital linen to frame a sweet almond-shaped face. Her eyes were wide under finely drawn eyebrows, slightly up tilted at the corners. Her skin was a perfect chocolate-brown and bore no trace of makeup save a light lipstick on her wide and sensual mouth. Her bare arms were slender and her hands, folded beneath her breasts, were small and delicate. Her fingernails were chewed down, the red varnish chipped. There was no ring on her finger. The restaurant uniform was a utilitarian grey, lasciviously tight across her breasts. The trousers flowed down from a narrow, but not thin, waist. Her shoes were square-toed and of plain black leather. She was very pretty.

Milton let her rest.

5.

SHE AWOKE a full two hours later. At first her pretty face maintained the serenity of sleep, but that did not last for very long; confusion clouded across it and then, suddenly, came a terrible look of panic. She struggled upright and swung her feet off the bed and onto the floor.

“It’s alright,” Milton said. “You’re in hospital. You’ve been asleep.”

“What time is it?”

“Six.”

“Jesus,” she said. “I’m so late. My boys––I need to be home.” She looked around, panicked. “Where are we?”

“Hospital.”

“No,” she said, pushing herself onto her feet. “I have to be home, my boys will be there, they won’t know where I am, they won’t have had their tea. No-one’s looking after them.”

“The doctor’s been. He wanted to speak to you. He’s coming back when you’re awake.”

“I can’t. And I’m fine, besides. I know it was a stupid thing to do. I’m not about to do it again. I don’t want to die. I can’t. They need me.” She looked into his face. Her expression was earnest and honest. “They can’t keep me in here, can they?”

“I don’t think so.”

She collected her bag from the chair and started for the door.

“How are you going to get home?” Milton asked her.

“I don’t know. Where is this?”

“The Royal Free.”

“Hampstead? I’ll get the train.”

“Let me drive you.”

“You don’t have to do that. I live in Dalston. That must be miles out of your way.”

“No, that’s fine. I live just round the corner––Islington.” It was a lie. “It’s not a problem.”

The medical staff were uncomfortable about their patient discharging herself but there was nothing that they could do to stop her. She was not injured, she appeared to be rational and she was not alone. Milton answered their reflexive concern with a tone of quiet authority that was difficult to oppose. She signed her discharge papers, politely thanked the staff for their care, and followed Milton outside.

Milton had parked in the nearby NCP building. He swept the detritus from the passenger seat, opened the door, waited until she was comfortable and then set off, cutting onto the Embankment. He glanced at her through the corner of his eye; she was staring fixedly out of the window, watching the river. It didn’t look as if she wanted to talk. Fair enough. He switched on the CD player and skipped through the discs until he had found the one he wanted to listen to, a Bob Dylan compilation. Dylan’s reedy voice filled the car as Milton accelerated away from a set of traffic lights.

“Thanks for this,” Sharon said suddenly. “I’m very grateful.”

“It’s not a problem.”

“My boy should be home. He’ll be wanting his tea.”

“What’s his name?”

“Elijah.”

“That’s a nice name.”

“His father liked it. He was into his Bible.”

“How old is he?”

“Fifteen. What about you? Do you have any kids?”

“No,” Milton said. “It’s just me.”

He pulled out and overtook a slow-moving lorry and she was silent for a moment.

“It’s because of him,” she said suddenly. “This morning––all that. I know it’s stupid but I didn’t know what else to do. I still don’t, not really. I’m at the end of my tether.”

“What’s happened?”

She didn’t seem to hear that. “I don’t have anyone else. If I lose him, there’s no point in carrying on.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” She looked out of the window, biting her lip. “How have you lost him?”

She clenched her jaw. Milton shrugged and reached for the radio.

She spoke hurriedly. “There’s a gang on the Estate where we live, these young lads. Local boys. They terrify everyone. They do what they want––cause trouble, steal things, deal their drugs. No-one dares do anything against them.”

“The police?”

She laughed bitterly. “No use to no-one. They won’t even come onto the Estate unless there’s half a dozen of them. It’ll calm down a bit while they’re around but as soon as they go again, it’s as if they were never even there.”

“What do they have to do with Elijah?”

“He’s got in with them. He’s just a little boy, and I’m supposed to look after him, but there’s nothing I can do. They’ve taken him away from me. He stays out late, he doesn’t listen to me anymore, he won’t do as he’s told. I’ve always tried to give him a little freedom, not be one of those rowdy Jamaican mothers where the kids can’t ever do anything right, but maybe now I think I ought to have been stricter. Last night was as bad as it’s ever been. I know he’s been sneaking out late at night to be with them. Normally he goes out of his bedroom window so I put a lock on it. He comes into the front room and I tell him he needs to get back to bed. He just gives me this look and he says I can’t tell him what to do anymore. I tell him I’m his mother, and he has to listen to me for as long as he’s under my roof. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”

“Very.”

“So he says that maybe he won’t be under my roof for much longer, that he’ll get his own money and find somewhere for himself. Where’s a fifteen-year old boy going to get the money for rent unless it’s from thieving or selling drugs? He goes for the door but he’s got to come by me first, so I get up and stop him. He tells me to get out of the way and when I won’t he says he hates me, says how it’s my fault his father isn’t around, and when I try and get him to calm down he just pushes me aside, opens the door and goes. He’s a big boy for his age, taller than I am already, and he’s strong. If he won’t do as he’s told, what can I do to stop him? He didn’t get back in until three in the morning and when I woke up to go to work he was still asleep. “

“Have you thought about moving away?”

She laughed humourlessly again. “Do you know how hard that is? We were in a hostel before. I used to live up in Manchester until my husband started knocking me about. There was this place, for battered women, we ended up there when we got into London. I’m not knocking it but it was full up. It was no place to bring up my boys. I was on at the social for months before they gave us our flat. You have no idea the trouble it’d be to get them to move us somewhere else. No. We’re stuck there.”

She paused, staring out at the cars again.

“Ever since we’ve been on the Estate we’ve had problems. I worry about Elijah every single day. Every single day I worry about him. Every day I worry.”

Milton had started to wonder whether there might be a way that he could help.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Here I am telling you all my troubles and I don’t even know your name.”

Milton almost reflexively retreated to his training, and to his long list of false identities, but he stopped himself. What was the point? He had no stomach for any of that any longer. A foundation of lies would not be a good place to start if he wanted to help this woman. “I’m John,” he said. “John Milton.”

He approached the junction for the Whitechapel Road and turned off.

“I’m sorry for going on. I’m sure you’ve got your own problems. You don’t need to hear mine.”

“I’d like to help.”

“That’s nice of you, but I don’t see how you could.”

“Perhaps I could talk to him?”

“You’re not police, are you?”

“No.”

“Or the Social?”

“No.”

“I don’t want to be rude, Mr. Milton, but you don’t know Elijah. He’s headstrong. Why would he care what you said?”

He slowed down as they approached a queue of slower-moving traffic. “I can be persuasive,” he said.

6.

CONTROL HAD REQUESTED Milton’s file from the archive and, after it had been delivered, he shut himself away in his office with a pot of tea and a cigar and spread the papers around him. It was late when he started, the sun long since set and the lights of the office blocks on the opposite side of the Thames glittering in the dark waters of the river. He lit the cigar and began his search through the documents for a clue that might explain his sudden, and uncharacteristic, decision. Their conversation had unsettled him. Milton had always been his best cleaner. His professionalism had always been complete. He maintained a vigorous regimen that meant that he was as fit as men half his age. His body was not the problem. If it was, he mused ruefully, this would have been easier to fix. The problem was with his mind and that presented a more particular issue. Control prided himself on knowing the men and women who worked for him and Milton’s attitude had taken him by surprise. It introduced an element of doubt into his thinking and doubt, to a man as ordered and logical as Control, was not tolerable.

He held the smoke in his mouth. Milton’s dedication and professionalism had never wavered, not for a moment, and he had completed an exemplary series of assignments that could have formed the basis for an instruction manual for the successful modern operative. He was the Group’s most ruthless and efficient assassin. He had always treated his vocation as something of an art form, drawing satisfaction from the knowledge of a job well done. Control knew from long and vexatious experience that such an attitude was a rarity these days. Real artisans––real
craftsmen
––were difficult to find and when you had one, you nurtured him. The other men and women at his disposal tended towards the blunt. They were automatons that he pointed at targets, then watched and waited as they did their job. Their methods were effective but crass: a shower of bullets from a slow-moving car, a landmine detonated by mobile phone, random expressions of uncontrolled violence. It was quick and dirty, flippant and trite, a summation of all that Control despised about modern intelligence. There was no artistry left, no pride taken in the job, no assiduity, no careful deliberation. No real nerve. Milton reminded Control of the men and women he had worked with when he was a field agent himself, posted at Station M in the middle of the Cold War. They had been exact and careful, their assignments comprising long periods of planning that ended with sudden, controlled, contained violence.