He smiled without humour. That was the job description he had used when he recruited him all those years ago. All those neutral euphemisms, all designed to make the job easier to palate. “It takes a special kind of man to do that kind of work. There are so few of you — and, unfortunately, that makes you rather difficult to replace.” He paused. “Do you know how many people you’ve eliminated for me?”

Milton replied without even thinking. “One hundred and thirty-six.”

“You’re my best cleaner.”

“If you like.”

“Once, perhaps. Not any more. I can’t ignore it any longer. I can’t keep my mouth shut just to avoid being unprofessional. I’m lying to myself. We have to face facts, sir. Dress it up however you like — neutralisation, elimination — but those are just euphemisms for what it is I really do. I’m paid to murder people.”

Control was not getting through to him. “Murder?” he exclaimed. “What are you talking about, man? Don’t be so soft. You want to moralise? You know what would happen if the Iranians get the bomb. There’ll be a war. A proper war that will make Iraq look like a walk in the bloody park. Thousands of people will die. Hundreds of thousands. Removing those two made that prospect a little less likely. And they knew the risk they were taking. You can call it murder if you like but they were not innocents. They were combatants.”

“And the policeman? The boy?”

“Unfortunate, but necessary.”

“Collateral damage?”

Control felt he was being goaded. He took a breath and replied with a taut, “Indeed.”

Milton folded his arms. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m done with you. I’m finished.”

Control walked up to Milton, circled him close, noticed the tension in the shoulders and the clenched fists. “No-one is ever really finished with me. You can’t resign. You can’t retire. You’re a murderer, as you say. It’s all you know. After all, what can you chaps do after you leave me? Your talents are so specialised. You use a gun. You use your fists. You use a knife. What else could you do? Work with children? In an office? No. You’re unskilled labour, man. This is what you are.”

“Then find yourself another labourer.”

He banged a fist on the mantelpiece in frustration. “You work for me for as long as I bloody well want you to or I’ll have you destroyed.”

Milton rose to face him. His stature was imposing and his eyes were chilling. They had regained their clarity and icy focus. They were the eyes of a killer and he fixed him in a pitiless gaze. “I think we’re finished, sir, aren’t we? We’re not going to agree with each other.”

“Is that your final word?”

“It is.”

Control put his desk between them and sat down. “You’re making a terrible mistake. You’re on suspension. Unpaid. I’ll review your file but there will be discipline. Take the time to consider your position. It isn’t too late to repair the damage this foolish stand has caused you.”

“Very good, sir.” Milton straightened his tie.

“You’re dismissed.”

“Good day, sir.”

2

Milton found a bar. His anonymous, empty hotel room did not appeal to him. The confrontation with Control had unsettled him; his hands were shaking from anger and fear.

There was a place with a wide picture window that faced the river. He found a table that looked out onto the open water, the buildings on the opposite bank, the pleasure craft and barges churning through the surf and, above, the blazing sun in a perfectly clear sky. He wanted a large whiskey, to feel the alcohol, his head beginning to spin just a little. He knew one way to stop thinking — about everything — could be found in the bottom of his glass, but he managed to resist the urge. It was short-term relief with long-term consequences. He focussed on the number that he kept in his head — 691 — and ordered an orange juice instead. He sat brooding, turning the glass between his fingers, watching the boats.

There was a television above the bar. The volume was turned down with subtitles running along the bottom of the screen. The channel had been set to one of the twenty-four hour news programmes and an interview with a minister on Parliament Green was abruptly replaced by an overhead helicopter shot of a wooded mountain landscape. A caption flashed that it was near Lake Annecy, France. The camera jerked and zoomed until the screen was filled with a shot of a wine-coloured BMW. It was parked in small clearing. The camera zoomed out and a second car, blue with white-and-red chevrons, could be seen. Bloodstains were visible on the muddy ground around the cars. The captions along the bottom of the screen said “massacre,” and “outrage.”

The bartender shook his head. “Did you see that?”

Milton grunted.

“You know they found a boy in the car?”

Milton said nothing.

“I don’t know how someone could do that — murder a family on a holiday. How cold-blooded is that? You ask me, that little boy was lucky. If whoever it was had found him, I reckon he would’ve been shot, too.”

The news report switched to another story, but it was no good. Milton finished the juice and stood. He needed to leave.

3

The platform for the Underground was busy. A group of young foreign travellers who didn’t know any better had congregated near the slope that led up to the surface, blocking the way with their suitcases and chattering excitedly in Spanish. Their luggage was plastered with stickers that proclaimed their previous destinations. Brazilians, he guessed. Students. Milton picked his way through them so he could wait at the quieter, less populated end of the platform. There was a lone traveller there, standing right up at the edge. She was black, in her early thirties, and wearing the uniform of one of the fast-food chains that served the area around the station. She looked tired and Milton saw that she was crying, her bottom lip quivering and tears rolling down her cheeks. Milton was not good with empathy, and he would not have known where to start were he to try and comfort her, but he had no interest in that. Not today. He had too much on his mind. He moved along.

He felt awful again. His mood had worsened. He felt light-headed and slumped down onto an empty bench. He started to sweat, his hands first, then his back, salty beads rolling down from his scalp into his eyes and mouth. He recalled the overhead shot of the forest from the television helicopter. There had been three pegs on the ground, marking the spots where the bodies had been found. He knew he should stop, think of something else, but he couldn’t, and soon he recalled the nightmare again, the flashes from years before: the flattened village, the blood splashed over the arid ground, the body of the boy, the peppery smell of high explosives and cloying death. He floated away from that, running onto all the other things he had done and seen in the service of Queen and country: dingy rooms and darkened streets, one hundred and thirty-six victims laid out in evidence of the terrible things he had done. A shot to the head from a sniper rifle, a knife to the heart, a garrotte around the throat pulled tight until the hacking breaths became wheezes that became silent, a body desperately jerking, then falling still. One hundred and thirty-six men and women faced him, accused him, their blood on his hands.

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.