John Milton: The Jungle Part 31

He stepped across the s.p.a.ce until he was next to his father, and then he turned back and glared at Milton.

Nadia took a step and then froze, caught between Milton and Pasko.

"It's all right," Milton said. "You're safe now."

Another train thundered into the station, its brakes screeching. Milton looked back, beyond Nadia, to Pasko and Florin. He wanted this to be done. The longer they all stood here, the better the chance that something might go wrong.

"Please, Nadia. Trust me."

She swallowed and, after another moment, she stepped toward him.

Milton reached out and gently took Nadia's hand.

"We are not finished," Pasko said. "This is not over."

Milton fished into his pocket and took out Florin's phone. "Here," he said, holding it up so that they could see it and then tossing it over at them. Florin caught it.

"Give it to me," Pasko said.

His son did as he was told. Pasko stepped over to the rail and dropped the phone over the side.

"Father-"

Pasko turned back to Milton. "Do you think I am a fool?" he said, his face twisted with scorn. "What was it? A tracking app?"

Milton didn't answer.

"You do not find us. We find you."

Pasko started to back away. Florin followed and, when the distance between them and Milton was sufficient, they turned and walked away.

"Come on," Milton said to Nadia. "Let's go."

Chapter Fifty-Eight.

THEY MADE their way back to Florin's BMW.

"You drive," he said to Hicks.

He opened the door for Nadia, waited for her to get in, then went around to the other side. He lowered himself into the back so that he was next to her. She was quiet, sitting with her legs pressed together and her hands folded in her lap.

"Are you okay?" Milton asked as Hicks turned the car around and pulled away.

"Yes," she said in a soft, careful voice. "You mentioned my brother. Is he here?"

"He's in the country. He came to find you."

"He said Dover. Is that right?"

Milton explained. He told her everything: about how Samir had tried to get into the country, how he had been caught and detained, and how Milton had promised to help. There was no need to mention Libya or the crossing or the drive through France to Calais. All that was important was that he was helping Samir, and that, now he had her, he would do everything he could to get them back together.

"I want to see him," she said. "Is it possible?"

"We need to think about that," Milton said. "You're here illegally. I'm not sure going to an immigration centre is the best thing to do right now."

"So what do I do?"

"You need to claim asylum."

"How can I do that?"

"There's someone I want you to meet. She's helping your brother. She'll be able to help you, too."

The light at the junction of Villiers Street and the Strand went to red. Hicks stopped and immediately stretched across to the glove compartment and started to empty it out onto the pa.s.senger seat. There were papers, a folder with the RAC logo stamped on it, a bottle of Diet c.o.ke. Hicks emptied everything out and then cursed under his breath.

"What is it?" Milton asked.

"Pasko. We can't leave him out there."

"We're not going to."

"And he's not going to forget what you did."

"I know."

"You..." He didn't finish the sentence, remembering that Nadia was in the back. "What you did to his son, Milton."

"I don't want him to forget."

"But we don't know where they are." He gestured to the mess of papers and other debris on the pa.s.senger seat. "There must be something. Registration doc.u.ments. Insurance. Something. Have you looked?"

"I don't need to."

"Why not? What do you mean?"

"Give me your phone."

"What-"

"Give it to me."

Hicks reached into his pocket, took out his phone, and pa.s.sed it back. Milton opened up the browser and navigated to the page for iCloud. He logged into his account and opened the Find My Phone app. A map appeared. It showed the grid of roads to the south of the South Bank Centre. After a moment, a red dot was placed in the middle of the map. The dot jerked along Belvedere Road toward Waterloo Bridge.

Milton handed the phone back to Hicks.

He looked at the screen. "You're kidding?"

The car behind them tooted its horn. The light was green.

"Best I could do on short notice. Let's get to work."

Chapter Fifty-Nine.

MILTON SAT in the front seat of the car he had stolen and looked across the road at the pub.

It was a large building on the corner of Maida Vale and Kilburn Park Road. It was detached, with a decent amount of s.p.a.ce between it and the nearest buildings on either side. The building was set across two storeys and was deep, running back a fair distance from the street. There was a small beer garden behind railings at the front and a larger s.p.a.ce for cars and the wheeled industrial bins to the rear. Tables were pushed up against the building along Kilburn Park Road with an A-frame that promised food and live Albanian music. Banners for BT and Sky Sports had been lashed to the railings at the Maida Vale side of the building, and a line of cars separated the wide pavement from the street. The pub had been whitewashed and the awnings painted black in an effort, perhaps, to evoke Tudor design and make it look a little older than it was; in reality, Milton guessed the building had been put up forty years ago at the longest.

Milton had parked opposite the twenty-four-hour Milad Supermarket, partially obscured by a white van that had been double-parked on the yellow lines. He had followed the GPS signal here and, as he checked his phone again, he saw that the signal was still registering from the inside of the building.

The pub was busy. Milton watched the comings and goings for an hour. There was a small group of men in the s.p.a.ce at the front of the garden, using a fixed brick oven to barbecue meat that they ate with their beers. It wasn't warm, yet they were outside wearing T-s.h.i.+rts and laughing raucously as they ate and drank and smoked.

Hicks had given Milton his phone to use, and now it rang. It was Hicks.

"It's me," Milton said. "How is she?"

"She's fine."

"Where are you?"

"On the road. There's a place up ahead. You?"

"I'm here. Let's leave it at that."

"Good luck, John."

"And you. I'll speak to you afterwards."

He ended the call and scrolled across to the Find My Phone app again. The red dot was where it had been before, pulsing in and out at the junction of Kilburn High Road and Maida Vale. He put the phone down on the dash and maintained his vigil, watching as the men extinguished the flame in the oven, covered the grille with a metal cloche, and then went inside.

He checked the time.

Eleven.

Last orders.

PASKO AND FLORIN climbed the stairs to the room at the back of the pub. The window was open, and they could hear the conversation of the drinkers at the tables along the side of the building and the sound of the traffic as it turned off and onto Maida Vale. Pasko went across to the window and glanced outside; he could see the edge of the large satellite dish that they used to get the TV channels from Eastern Europe, the back of the apartment block that faced the pub and, overhead, the blinking lights of a pa.s.senger jet as it pa.s.sed below the plump moon.

Pasko hated frustration. He had lived his life with the aim of always moving forward, never stopping, like a shark. And this man-Milton-had stymied him. That could not be allowed to go uncorrected.

He clenched his fists and rested them on the sill as he looked outside, allowing the breeze to play over his face.

"Are you all right?" Florin said.

Pasko didn't answer.

"How are we going to find him?" Florin said. "He is not an amateur, Father. You saw what he did. He blinded Has.h.i.+m. He killed Llazar. He could've killed me."

"It doesn't matter. There are two of them. Only two. We have men everywhere. Someone knows who they are. And we still have leverage. The brother-they are holding him at Dover. I have a friend there. Very corrupt. We can pay to have him released into our care. If Milton cares for the girl so much, he will care that we have the brother. We will use him to flush him out."

"When?"

"Tomorrow. I will drive there tomorrow." Pasko turned back from the window. "We were lazy. We underestimated him. We will not do that again. He is my priority now. I will find him, and I will make him suffer for what he has done."

Chapter Sixty.

MIDNIGHT.

Milton checked the app one more time. The signal was where it had been for the last two hours, at the junction of Maida Vale and the Kilburn High Road.

His cellphone was still inside the pub.

The pub had emptied out over the course of the last forty minutes. Milton wondered whether it might be the sort of place where a drinker would stay after hours, but it was on a main road, and unlicensed drinking would be easy to spot by anyone who happened to be pa.s.sing by.

Twenty and then thirty men, together with the occasional woman, came outside and dispersed in taxis and on foot.

The lights inside the building were switched off and the doors were closed.

Milton decided to take a closer look.

He got out of the car and stopped in the supermarket. He bought a roll of duct tape for a pound, walked down Maida Vale and turned left onto Kilburn High Road. The building to his immediate left was a five-storey Victorian block, since turned into office s.p.a.ce. There was a line of cars parked next to the pavement, and Milton stayed behind them as he continued down the road and observed the pub from this new angle. The empty gla.s.ses had been removed from the picnic tables, the rubbish removed and the ashtrays taken inside to be emptied. The pub's name was stencilled on the wall between two large bay windows; shutters had been pulled across the windows, with just a sliver of light visible down the point where they came together.

He walked until he was at the end of the property. The pub was next to a modern three-storey apartment block. There were cars parked in the parking s.p.a.ce, next to the bins. There was a window above the bins, next to a large satellite dish. The window was open, and the room inside was lit.

Milton stood next to a Nissan SUV and watched the window for a moment. He saw movement, a man pa.s.sing across it, then nothing, then a man looking up into the sky.

Pasko.

He was unmistakeable.