“I might shank you, the moment you turn your back.” Milton noticed a group of boys cycling across to them from the edge of the park. “Don’t turn your back on me, big man. You don’t mean nothing to me. I might do it, just for a laugh.”

The group on the bikes reached them. There were half a dozen of them. Milton recognised Elijah at the back. The biggest boy — Milton guessed he was seventeen or eighteen — propped his bike against the bench and strutted over to them.

The boy walked across to the group. “Alright, Pinky?” he said to the youngster who had threatened him. “What’s the beef?”

“Nah,” the boy said. “Ain’t no beef.”

Milton ignored him and addressed the newcomer. “Are you in charge?”

“You could say that.”

Milton pointed over at Elijah. “I want to talk to him.”

“You know this man, Elijah?”

A look of suspicion had fallen across his face. “Yeah,” he said warily. “He was with my Mums.”

“And do you want to talk to him?”

Elijah shook his head.

“Sorry, bro. He don’t want to talk to you.”

“He say he a writer,” one of the boys reported, loading the last word with scorn.

“That right?”

“That’s right. A journalist.”

“Bullshit. You ain’t a journalist, mate. If you’re a journalist then I’m going to win the fucking X Factor. You must think I was born yesterday. What are you? Social?”

“He’s po-po!” one of the other boys cried out. “Look at him.”

“He ain’t a Fed. Feds don’t come into the park unless they’ve got backup.”

The atmosphere was becoming fevered. Milton could see that it had the potential to turn quickly, and dangerously. He concentrated on the older boy. “What’s your name?”

“You don’t need to know my name.”

“I don’t want any trouble.”

“Then you don’t wanna come walking through our ends late at night, do you, bruv?”

“I’m not police. I’m not social. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

The boy laughed scornfully. “Do I look worried?”

“No, you don’t,” Milton said. He raised his voice so that the others could hear him. “Tell Elijah that I want to talk to him. I’m going to have my breakfast in the café on Dalston Lane every morning from now on. Eight o’clock. Tell him I’ll buy him breakfast, too. Whatever he wants. And if he doesn’t want to meet me, he can call me here instead.” Milton reached into his pocket and took out a card with the number of his mobile printed across it. He gave it to the older boy, staring calmly into his face. A moment of doubt passed across the boy’s face, Milton’s sudden equanimity shaking his confidence. He took the card between thumb and forefinger.

“Thank you,” Milton said.

Milton turned his back on the group and set off. He felt vulnerable but he made a point of not looking back. He felt an itching sensation between his shoulder blades and, as he walked, an empty Coke can bounced off his shoulder and clattered to the pavement. They whooped at their insolent bravado and called out after him but he did not respond. He kept walking until he reached the gate next to the lido. He stopped and looked back. The boys were still gathered in the centre of the park. No-one had followed.

On his return to the house he examined one of his own, thick hairs which still lay undisturbed where he had left it earlier in the evening, stuck between the panel and the jamb of the door to the lounge. Next, he went up to his bedroom and examined the dusting of talcum powder he had spread beneath the wardrobe door. It, too, appeared to be untouched. The routine might have appeared pointless, but it had been driven into him by his training, and then ingrained by years of experience. It did not make him feel self-conscious or foolish. It came naturally, an easy habit that he had no interest in quashing however pointless it might have appeared to someone without the particular experience of his strange profession. He was an assassin, and the observance of small rituals like this one had helped to keep him alive.

He was satisfied that the house had not been disturbed while he was away and, allowing himself to relax, he took off his shirt and stood bare-chested at the open window. He snapped open the jaws of his lighter, put flame to a cigarette and stared into the hot, humid night. The atmosphere was feverish, as taut as a bow-string. He took a deep lungful of smoke and expelled it between his teeth with a faint hiss. He could hear the sound of children on the street, the buzz of televisions, a siren fading in and out of London’s constant metropolitan hum.

What on earth was he doing here?

Milton blew more smoke into the darkness and tossed the spent dog-end into the garden below.

He undressed and got into bed. The mattress was lumpy and uncomfortable, but he had slept on much worse. He reached one hand up beneath the pillow, the palm resting on the cold steel butt of the Sig Sauer. He calmed his thoughts and went to sleep.

16

John Milton had a strict morning regime, and he saw no reason to vary it. He pulled on a vest and a pair of shorts, slipped his feet into his running shoes, and went out for his usual run. It was just after seven but the sun was already warm. The sky was a perfect blue, deep and dark, and Milton could see that it was going to be another blazing day.

His head had been a little foggy but the exercise quickly woke him. He ran through the Estate and into Victoria Park, following the same route that he had taken before. The park was quiet now, and the undercurrent of incipient violence was missing. The baleful groups of boys had been replaced by people walking their dogs, joggers and cyclists passing through the park on their way to work. Milton did two laps around the perimeter, settling into his usual loping stride, and by the time he peeled back onto the road and headed back towards the house he was damp with sweat.

He followed a different route back through the Estate and came across an old chapel that had evidently found itself an alternative use. A sign above advertised it as Dalston Boxing Club, and posters encouraged local youngsters to join.

He ran back to the house, stripped off his sodden clothes, tentatively stepped into the grimy bath tub and turned the taps until enough warm water dribbled out of the showerhead to make for a serviceable shower. He let the water strike his broad shoulders and run down his back and chest, soothing the aches and pains that were always worse in the morning. He closed his eyes and focussed his attention on the tender spots on his body: the dull throb in his clavicle from a bullet’s entry wound five years ago; the ache in the leg he had broken; the shooting pain in his shoulder from an assassin’s knife. He was not as supple as he had once been, he thought ruefully. There were the undeniable signs of growing old. The toll exacted by his profession was visible, too, in the latticework of scar tissue that had been carved across his skin. The most recent damage had been caused by a kitchen knife that had scraped its point across his right bicep. It had been wielded by a bomb-maker in Helmand, a tailor who assembled suicide vests in a room at the back of his shop.

He stood beneath the water and composed his thoughts, spending ten minutes examining the details of the situation in which he had placed himself. He considered all the various circumstances that he would have to marshal in order to help Sharon and her son.

He dressed in casual clothes, left the house and made his way back to the boxing club. The door was open and the repeated, weighty impacts of someone working on a heavy bag were audible from inside. He went inside. The chapel’s pews had been removed and the interior was dominated by two empty boxing rings that were crammed up against each other, barely fitting in the space. They were old and tatty, the ropes sagging and the canvas torn and stained. Several heavy bags and speed bags had been suspended from the lower ceiling at the edge of the room. A large, black man was facing away from him, and hadn’t noticed his arrival. Milton watched quietly as the man delivered powerful hooks into the sand-filled canvas bag, propelling it left and right and rattling the chain from which it had been hung. The muscles of his shoulders and back bulged from beneath the sweat-drenched fabric of a plain t-shirt, his black skin glistening, contrasting with the icy white cotton.