He turned and Callaghan was sitting on the stool. You think this is it? You think you can get out? They’ll just let you leave? Come on, Milton. Doesn’t work like that. You know it doesn’t. They’ll never let you go. You’re in this for life. You belong to them. You’re theirs.
Milton emptied the glass in one draught and poured again. The phantom disappeared, but Milton could still hear his voice, whispering in the spaces between his thoughts. The whispers were right, but Milton didn’t care. He was done. Finished. He would honour this file but no more.
He was going to get out.
AFTERWORD
It’s a standard question when I tell people that I make my living as an author: where do you get your ideas? I’ve never had a problem with finding something interesting for my characters to do. It’s often just a case of opening the newspaper or going to the cinema. The genesis of this book has been a little different, though. More immediate. Closer to home, and, once I started investigating and writing, much more difficult to stop.
I live and work in Salisbury. I had made good progress with my new novel when Sergei and Yulia Skripal were found on a bench in the Maltings, a shopping precinct in the centre of town. It’s a two minute walk from my office to that bench, and, as the story changed from a suspected drug overdose to an attempted assassination that then became an international story, it was something that I simply couldn’t ignore. More recent developments, in which Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley were also poisoned (with Sturgess tragically passing away) have added another, more frightening, dimension.
Life has imitated art. I was writing about a defecting spy who comes to the attention of his previous employer, and local events added relevance that would have been hard to credit if they were not true. My research has unfolded around me. I’ve watched the media helicopters hovering over the spire of the beautiful cathedral. I’ve seen forensics tents erected around suspected crime scenes. I’ve observed soldiers in Hazmat suits shutting down a homeless shelter. I’ve spoken to the police officers who have been guarding the cordons. I know the restaurant and pub that the Skripals visited before they became unwell. My daughter was playing in the park that was closed after the two subsequent victims were poisoned. And I live close to the hospital where all the victims were treated. As the story developed, so too did my compulsion to write about it.
If you ask around on the streets you will find plenty of people who don’t believe the official narrative. That’s not surprising. The authorities have revealed very little, for good reason. An official narrative that is so full of holes offers licence for conspiracy theories, and you’ll find no shortage of them if you ask around. It also makes it possible for an author to take the lines of a story that has been sketched out and then to colour in the blanks. Why was Skripal targeted? Who targeted him? Why was an exotic nerve agent used, rather than a more prosaic – but more effective – method? How did Sturgess and Rowley find the poison? Why – if reports are true – did the would be assassins ditch the bottle rather than dispose of it more carefully?
It’s been a challenge to take these starting points and turn them into a work of fiction while also remembering that this is an on-going story, with a human cost to those who have been unfortunate enough to have been affected by it. It has also been an interesting and exciting project, and one that I hope you’ve enjoyed.
Join the Readers’ Club
Building a relationship with my readers is the very best thing about writing. I occasionally send newsletters with details on new releases, special offers and other bits of news relating to the Milton, Beatrix and Isabella Rose and Soho Noir series.
If you join my Readers’ Club I’ll send you this free Milton content:
1. A free copy of Milton’s adventure in North Korea – ‘1000 Yards.’
2. A free copy of Milton’s tussle with a Mafia assassin in ‘Tarantula.’
3. An eyes-only profile of Milton from a Group Fifteen psychologist.
You can get your free content by visiting my website at markjdawson.com. I’ll look forward to seeing you there.
Also By Mark Dawson
In the John Milton Series
Sharon Warriner is a single mother in the East End of London, fearful that she’s lost her young son to a life in the gangs. After John Milton saves her life, he promises to help. But the gang, and the charismatic rapper who leads it, is not about to cooperate with him.
John Milton has been off the grid for six months. He surfaces in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, and immediately finds himself drawn into a vicious battle with the narco-gangs that control the borderlands.
When a girl he drives to a party goes missing, John Milton is worried. Especially when two dead bodies are discovered and the police start treating him as their prime suspect.
John Milton is blackmailed into finding his predecessor as Number One. But she’s a ghost, too, and just as dangerous as him. He finds himself in deep trouble, playing the Russians against the British in a desperate attempt to save the life of his oldest friend.
On the run from his own demons, John Milton treks through the Michigan wilderness into the town of Truth. He’s not looking for trouble, but trouble’s looking for him. He finds himself up against a small-town cop who has no idea with whom he is dealing, and no idea how dangerous he is.
Milton finds himself in New Orleans, returning a favour that saved his life during Katrina. When a lethal adversary from his past takes an interest in his business, there’s going to be hell to pay.
Milton barely escaped from Avi Bachman with his life. But when the Mossad’s most dangerous renegade agent breaks out of a maximum security prison, their second fight will be to the finish.
Milton’s attempted good deed becomes a quest to unveil corruption at the highest levels of government and murder at the dark heart of the criminal underworld. Milton is pulled back into the game, and that’s going to have serious consequences for everyone who crosses his path.