Cooper scanned the trees and open ground, searching for Walker.

  A man stepped out from behind a tree, arm cocked back as if to throw a grenade. Before Cooper could fire, a single shot punched into the man’s chest and hurled him backward.

  Clean. Efficient.

  “Walker?” Cooper called out. “It’s over.”

  Another shot cracked from the darkness, dropping a man who’d been trying to flatten himself against a tree trunk.

  “I know you’re still out there,” Cooper called. “You’re done.”

  Silence.

  Cooper advanced slowly, the Heckler & Koch tracking left to right in a steady arc. From the direction of Walker’s voice, he was fairly sure the man hadn’t made a break for it. If he had, whomever Control had sent would have seen him.

  Which meant Walker was still close.

  Probably near the line of thick bushes planted against the base of the perimeter wall.

  Cooper fired a single round into the centre of the greenery and waited.

  Branches rustled.

  Walker stepped out, hands raised, smiling.

  Cooper was used to seeing him in tweed. Tonight, he was dressed for work: black cargo trousers, black roll-neck sweater.

  “Where’s Timothy Powell?” asked Cooper.

  Walker laughed. “Timothy always makes sure he’s nowhere near scenes like this.”

  “We’ll find him.”

  Boots crunched softly on soil behind him. Someone approached from the darkness, stopped a few paces back.

  “That’s it,” a voice said quietly. Calm. Neutral. “He’s the last one.”

  Cooper didn’t turn around.

  Walker took a step closer.

  “I told Timothy he was making a mistake using you to deal with Vanessa. End one problem, make a bigger one. He should’ve listened.”

  Another step.

  “Close enough,” Cooper said.

  “One thing I never worked out,” Walker went on, ignoring the warning. “Who you work for now. We knew you wouldn’t go corporate. Too restless.”

  He stepped forward again. This time he dropped his hands.

  “I won’t warn you again,” said Cooper.

  “Whoever it is you work for, you and whoever helped you, why don’t you come and join us? Bring whoever it is who hacked into our servers too. Whatever it is you’re being paid, we’ll increase it tenfold.”

  He extended his right hand as though to conclude a deal and stepped forward again. His left hand strayed momentarily out of sight behind his waist. When it reappeared, it was gripping a small Browning pistol.

  Cooper raised the muzzle of his Heckler & Koch. “Drop it.”

  Walker only smiled.

  “I don’t want to shoot you,” said Cooper.

  He meant it. Watching Vanessa Clay fall to her death had done something to him, something he didn’t like. He could list plenty of justifications for taking out former colleagues who had crossed over to the other side, but that didn’t mean he would ever find it easy.

  Walker moved faster than Cooper anticipated. The Browning snapped up…

  …and a single shot cracked through the night.

  Walker was hit square in the forehead.

  He jerked backward and collapsed onto the soil without a sound.

  Cooper stood still for a moment, then lowered his weapon.

  Cooper turned to look at the agent standing beside the battered grey transit van. He was dressed in black and utterly unmemorable. The kind of man who would never attract attention: average height, average build, features that refused to settle in the mind for more than a second or two. He could have passed for a delivery driver, a night-shift security guard, or a man waiting for a late train. His posture was balanced. The rifle rested easily against his shoulder.

  “Thank you,” Cooper said. “Number?”

  “Seven,” the man said.

  “You’ll report to Control?”

  “I will. Do you need anything else?”

  “No,” Cooper said. “I’ve got it from here.”

  “Right you are.”

  The man was like Cooper: trained to operate alone, comfortable in the dark, and at ease with violence. A man who did his work thoroughly and without ego and then disappeared.

  EPILOGUE

  Control led Cooper through the corridors and passages of the National Archive at Kew, pausing finally to knock at a door marked M. Kosminsky.

  “Come in.”

  Margaret Kosminky sat behind a desk illuminated by a single lamp, working her way through a stack of files while annotating yellowing pages with a red pen. An old record player balanced on a cardboard box in the corner played a scratchy version of the Goldberg Variations. When she saw who was at her door, she bustled around for a few minutes, taking Control’s jacket and finding the two of them chairs.

  “I had an inkling you’d be back,” she said to Cooper.

  She turned down the music, closed the file she was working on and sat behind her desk.

  “We’ve got good news,” said Control. “Hemlock is being dismantled.”

  Her eyes dampened. She took a tissue from the sleeve of her frayed red cardigan and dabbed the tears away.

  “We wanted you to hear it from us first, Margaret. A lot of the work is being handled in-house. The organisation owned eight properties across the UK; all of them have been cleared and will be sold off in due course. We’ve identified fifty-seven hotel rooms and private flats fitted with Hemlock’s covert equipment—mostly audio bugs and cameras used for blackmail—and every one of them is being stripped and destroyed. We’re burning a vast quantity of compromising recordings and footage. Where we can, the police will bring charges against those connected to the group, though I won’t pretend it’s going to be simple. The data recovered from their servers tells us who they are, but in some cases it isn’t enough on its own to secure a charge. That isn’t true of the man at the top. Timothy Powell has been arrested on multiple counts: tax evasion, money laundering, blackmail, extortion, and corruption of a public official. If even half of that holds, he won’t see the outside of a prison again.”

  What Control had left out was that another type of justice was being meted out in parallel. The most dangerous among the Hemlock operatives were being added to a Group Fifteen kill list, and MI6 had already begun to dismantle Hemlock’s entire European network, torching office premises and destroying hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth of computers and electronic equipment. MI5, meanwhile, had adopted a scorched-earth approach towards Pip Walker’s betrayal, revisiting every case he’d worked on for the past twenty years and summarily dismissing his half dozen closest friends in the organisation.

  “There’s more,” Control said. “The surest way to stop something like Hemlock from reforming is to drag it into the light. I’ve passed a selection of the most damaging files to an investigative journalist I trust. You can expect stories to start appearing in the Sunday papers and to run for weeks. With any luck, that will be the end of it.”

  Kosminsky sat back in her chair, looked at the ceiling and exhaled deeply.

  “We knew it, didn’t we?” she said to Control finally, reaching forward to place her hand over his. “Nobody believed us, but we knew it.”

  She opened the drawer of her desk and took out a slim file. Cooper recognised it: the Hemlock dossier he’d read only days earlier. She paused, drew a breath, and opened it for the last time. The pages inside chronicled the downfall and death of her cousin, Christopher Wilmshurst, murdered by Hemlock operatives in 1994.

  Then she straightened, pushed back her chair and crossed to a crowded bookcase. After shifting a stack of files, she reached into the shadows and drew out a dusty bottle of whisky. She brushed away a cobweb and squinted at the label.

  “Christopher’s favourite. I’ve been saving it. He would’ve approved.”

  She set three glasses on the desk and poured.

  She held up her glass; Cooper and Control did the same.

  She looked to Control, then to Cooper. “Thank you,” she said.

  They touched glasses.

  Margaret drained her glass and set it down. “I’ve been waiting thirty years for this.”

  She reached back into the drawer and removed a small ink pad and a stamp. She pressed the stamp down, hard, driving it into the cover.

  CASE CLOSED.

  Somewhere beyond the door, a trolley rattled through the archive, carrying boxes destined for the furnace.

  The file would be burned, reduced to ash, and erased from the record.

  Just like Hemlock, forgotten by everyone except those who had paid the price.

  Building a relationship with my readers is the very best thing about writing. Join my Reader Club for information on new books and deals plus a free copy of Milton’s battle with the Mafia and an assassin called Tarantula.

  You can get your content for free, by signing up at my website.

  Just visit www.markjdawson.com.

  ALSO BY MARK DAWSON

  IN THE JOHN MILTON SERIES

  The Cleaner

  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.

  Buy The Cleaner

  Saint Death

  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.

  Buy Saint Death

  The Driver

  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.

  Buy The Driver

  Ghosts

  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.

  Buy Ghosts

  The Sword of God

  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.

  Buy The Sword of God

  Salvation Row

  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.

  Buy Salvation Row

  Headhunters

  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.

  Buy Headhunters

  The Ninth Step

  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.

  Buy The Ninth Step

  The Jungle

  John Milton is no stranger to the world’s seedy underbelly. But when the former British Secret Service agent comes up against a ruthless human trafficking ring, he’ll have to fight harder than ever to conquer the evil in his path.

  Buy The Jungle

  Blackout

  A message from Milton’s past leads him to Manila and a confrontation with an adversary he thought he would never meet again. Milton finds himself accused of murder and imprisoned inside a brutal Filipino jail can he escape, uncover the truth and gain vengeance for his friend?

  Buy Blackout

  The Alamo

  A young boy witnesses a murder in a New York subway restroom. Milton finds him, and protects him from corrupt cops and the ruthless boss of a local gang.

  Buy The Alamo

  Redeemer

  Milton is in Brazil, helping out an old friend with a close protection business. When a young girl is kidnapped, he finds himself battling a local crime lord to get her back.

  Buy Redeemer

  Sleepers

  A sleepy English town. A murdered Russian spy. Milton and Michael Pope find themselves chasing the assassins to Moscow.

  Buy Sleepers

  Twelve Days

  Milton checks back in with Elijah Warriner, but finds himself caught up in a fight to save him from a jealous and dangerous former friend.

  Buy Twelve Days

  Bright Lights

  All Milton wants to do is take his classic GTO on a coast-to-coast road trip. But he can’t ignore the woman on the side of the road in need of help. The decision to get involved leads to a tussle with a murderous cartel that he thought he had put behind him.

  Buy Bright Lights

  The Man Who Never Was

  John Milton is used to operating in the shadows, weaving his way through dangerous places behind a fake identity. Now, to avenge the death of a close friend, he must wear his mask of deception once more.

  Buy The Man Who Never Was

  Killa City

  John Milton has a nose for trouble. He can smell it a mile away. And when he witnesses a suspicious altercation between a young man and two thugs in a car auction parking lot, he can’t resist getting involved.

  Buy Killa City

  Ronin

  Milton travels to Bali in search of a new identity. He meets a young woman who has been forced to work for the Yakuza in Japan, and finds himself drawn into danger in an attempt to keep her safe.

  Buy Ronin

  Never Let Me Down Again

  A human rights activist has vanished without a trace and his dying mother is desperate to know the truth. When the mysterious disappearance leads Milton all the way to the Western Isles of Scotland, he sees an opportunity to find an old friend and finally make amends for a mistake that cost him dearly. Milton is determined to track both men down, wherever his search may lead.

  Buy Never Let Me Down Again

  Bulletproof

  Captured and imprisoned by the organisation he once worked for, Milton must do one last job in exchange for his freedom. Bullheaded billionaire fixer Tristan Huxley is brokering a weapons deal between Russia and India. He needs protection and he wants Milton by his side. Huxley has trusted Milton with his life before but these days his world is more decadent and his enemies more dangerous, in ways that nobody could ever have suspected.

  Buy Bulletproof

  Uppercut

  John Milton is on the run again. Chasing clues to help him understand the new risks he faces, he finds himself in Dublin. Before he knows it, he is involved with a woman who has fallen foul of a dangerous local family.

  Buy Uppercut

  Bloodlands

  John Milton is on a mission that will bring him face-to-face with enemies old and new. When his friend, Alex Hicks, finds himself pursued by mysterious adversaries, the two men are thrust back into the web of international espionage.

  Buy Bloodlands

  Vultures

  A global cryptocurrency scam has victims everywhere. Milton never wanted to get involved, but when he sees the damage that the scheme has caused and the lives that have been ruined, he finds himself pulled into a deadly game.

  Buy Vultures

  The Hanging Tree

  When a quiet town’s secrets lead John Milton to a noose in the Appalachian hills, he must fight to survive—and bring a ruthless criminal empire to justice.

  Buy The Hanging Tree

  IN THE BEATRIX ROSE SERIES

  In Cold Blood

  Beatrix Rose was the most dangerous assassin in an off-the-books government kill squad until her former boss betrayed her. A decade later, she emerges from the Hong Kong underworld with payback on her mind. They gunned down her husband and kidnapped her daughter, and now the debt needs to be repaid. It’s a blood feud she didn’t start but she is going to finish.

  Buy In Cold Blood

  Blood Moon Rising

  There were six names on Beatrix’s Death List and now there are four. She’s going to account for the others, one by one, even if it kills her. She has returned from Somalia with another target in her sights. Bryan Duffy is in Iraq, surrounded by mercenaries, with no easy way to get to him and no easy way to get out. And Beatrix has other issues that need to be addressed. Will Duffy prove to be one kill too far?

  Buy Blood Moon Rising

  Blood and Roses

  Beatrix Rose has worked her way through her Kill List. Four are dead, just two are left. But now her foes know she has them in her sights and the hunter has become the hunted.

  Buy Blood and Roses

  The Dragon and the Ghost

  Beatrix Rose flees to Hong Kong after the murder of her husband and the kidnapping of her child. She needs money. The local triads have it. What could possibly go wrong?

  Buy The Dragon and the Ghost

  Tempest

  Two people adrift in a foreign land, Beatrix Rose and Danny Nakamura need all the help they can get. A storm is coming. Can they help each other survive it and find their children before time runs out for both of them?

  Buy Tempest

  Phoenix

  She does Britain’s dirty work, but this time she needs help. Beatrix Rose, meet John Milton…

  Buy Phoenix

  IN THE ISABELLA ROSE SERIES

  The Angel

  Isabella Rose is recruited by British intelligence after a terrorist attack on Westminster.