The Cleaner

The man was on the bed, his hands clenched into claws over his heart and his teeth grinding, over and over again. His eyelids flickered and sometimes he moaned, strangled words that would have made no sense if anyone had been there to hear them. His body was rigid with tension, sweat drenching his body and the sheets. The dream came more often now, sometimes every night, always the same. He was laying prone, flat in the cushioned warmth of sand dunes. The sun was directly above him, a midday sun that pounded the desert with a brutal heat that made the air shimmer, the mountains in the distance swaying as if viewed through the water of a fish tank. The landscape was arid, long swathes of dead sand that stretched for as far as the eye could see. The only vegetation was close to the banks of the slow-moving river that eventually found its way into the Tigris. A single ribbon of asphalt was the only road for miles around, deep drifts of sand blown across it.

1

Control squinted through the windscreen of the XJS as he pulled into the empty fast lane and accelerated past a lumbering articulated lorry. The sky had been a bloody crimson last night and when the sun returned in the morning it had risen into a clear, untrammelled blue sky. There was heat and light in those early rays, and he angled the blind to shade his eyes. The radio was tuned to the Today programme and the forecaster predicted a week of searing heat. The seven o’clock news followed the weather — the lead item was the shooting of two tourists and a policeman in the French Alps. The victims had been identified but, as yet, a motive for the killing had not been found. It was “senseless,” a French policeman concluded.

That, Control thought, was not true. It was far from senseless. The operation had been the result of long and meticulous planning, six months spent cultivating the targets and gaining their trust and then weeks setting up the meeting. The objective had been successfully achieved but it had not been clean. There were two errors that would need careful handling; errors that raised doubts over the performance of the man who had carried out the operation.

The fact that it was Number One was troubling.

It had been Control’s operation. He knew the targets intimately. Yehya al Moussa had been an atomic research scientist. Sameera Najeeb was an expert in microwave technology. They were married and, until recently, both had been in the employ of the Iraq Atomic Energy Agency. Following the fall of Saddam, they had been recruited by the Iranians and, with their help, the Ahmandinejad regime had made progress towards its goal of becoming a nuclear power. A decision had been made, somewhere in MI5, that the couple was too dangerous to live. That decision had been rubber-stamped in another anonymous grey office in Whitehall and their files had been marked with red and passed to Group Fifteen to be actioned. It was important and, because of that, Control had selected Number One for the assignment.

As he turned the Jaguar off the motorway at the exit for Central London, Control reviewed his preparation. The two had come to France under the pretext of a long-deserved holiday. The real reason, however, and the reason for their diversion into the Alpine countryside, was to meet an employee of Cezus, a subsidiary of Areva, the global leader in the market for zirconium. That metal was used, among other things, for nuclear fuel cladding. Iran needed zirconium for its reactors and al Moussa and Najeeb had been led to believe that their contact could supply as much as they needed. But there had been no employee. There was no zirconium. There was to be no meeting, at least not the rendezvous that they had been expecting.

Control tapped out a rhythm on the steering wheel as he passed into London. No, he thought, the preparation had been faultless. The problems were all of Milton’s making. The dead gendarme would give the French police a strong personal motive to locate the killer; one of their own had been murdered. It would make them more tenacious and less likely to shelve the investigation when the trail went cold, as Control knew that it would. That was bad, but even worse was the boy. A child, orphaned by the killer, cowering in the car as he watched his parents’ murder. That was dynamite, the hook upon which the press would be able to hang all of their reporting. It ensured the story would run and run.

Control slowed and turned the Jaguar into the underground car park beneath a small building huddled on the north bank of the Thames. It was a sixties build, constructed from brick and concrete without style or grace. Five floors, anonymous. The car idled as the garage door rolled up with a tired metallic creak. The sign painted onto the door read GLOBAL LOGISTICS.

He drove inside, pulled up next to the secure elevator and got out of the car. The lift arrived and he embarked, pressing the button for the third floor. The lift eased to a halt, the doors sighed open and he stepped out into the bustling open-plan space beyond. Analysts stared at monitors and tapped at keyboards, printers chattered and telephones chimed incessantly. Control passed through the chaotic space to a corridor, lined with thick carpet, following it around to the right so that clamour behind him faded to a gentle hum of activity. A number of green baize doors faced the corridor and he picked the one at the end, pushing it open and walking through.

David Tanner, his private secretary, looked up from his computer. “Morning, sir,” he said. Tanner was ex-army, infantry, like Control and all of the other operatives who worked for him. Tanner’s career had been forestalled by an IED on the road outside Kabul. It had cost him his right leg below the knee, and the posting to the SAS that he had craved. He was a good man, easy-going and pleasant to share a drink with, and he guarded access to his commanding officer with fierce dedication.

“Morning, Captain,” he said. “What does the morning look like?”

“You’re speaking to the Director at midday. Wants an update on the French situation.”

“I’m sure she does. And Number One?”

“Waiting for you inside, sir.”

“Very good.”

He went through into the office. It was a large room that offered an expansive view of the River. It was a pleasant and light, close-carpeted in dove-grey Wilton. The military prints on the walls were expensively framed. A mantelpiece bore a number of silver trophies and two photographs in luxurious leather frames: one was of Control as a younger man, in full battle dress, and the other was of his wife and three children. There was a central table with a bowl of flowers, and two comfortable club chairs on either side of the fire. There were no filing cabinets, and nothing that looked official.

Milton was standing at the wide window at the other end of the room, smoking a cigarette and looking down on the broad sweep of the Thames. Control paused by the door and regarded him; he was dressed in a plain dark suit that looked rather cheap, a white shirt and a black tie.

“Good morning, Number One,” he said.

“Morning, sir.”

“Take a seat.”

He watched as Milton sat down. His eyes were implacable. He looked a little shabby, a little worn around the edges. Control recalled him when he joined the Service. He had sported Savile Row suits, shirts from Turnbull & Asser, and was perfectly groomed at all times. He did not seem to care for any of that any longer. Control did not care what his agents looked like, so long as they were good at their job, and Milton was his best; that was why this latest misadventure was so troubling.

There came a knock at the door. Tanner entered bearing a tray with a pot of tea and two bone china cups. He set the tray down on the sideboard and, after confirming that there was nothing else that Control needed, he left them alone.

Control got up and poured the tea, watching Milton as he did so. One did not apply for a job like his, one was chosen, and, as was his habit with all the operatives who worked for him, Control had selected him himself and then supervised the year of rigorous training that smoothed away his rough edges and prepared him for his new role. There had been moments when Milton had doubted his own suitability for the position and Control had not so much as assuaged the doubts as chided him for even entertaining the possibility that his judgment might have been awry. He prided himself on being an excellent judge of character and he had known that Milton would be the perfect field agent. He had been proved right. Milton had begun his career as Number Twelve, as was customary. And now, ten years later, all his predecessors were gone, and he was Number One.

Milton was tense. He gripped the armrest of the chair so tightly that his knuckles whitened. He had not shaved that morning, the strong line of his jaw darkly stubbled. “The boy?” he said.

“Traumatised but otherwise fine, from what we can gather. As you would expect. The French have him in care. We don’t think they’ve spoken to him yet. Did he see you?”

“Yes.”

“That could be awkward.”

Milton ignored him. “Did you know?”

“Know what?”

“That he’d be there.”

“We knew he was in France. We didn’t think they would bring him to the meeting.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me that they might?”

“Remember who you’re talking to,” Control said angrily. “Would it have made a difference?” Milton’s cold stare burned into him. “There’s no point in pretending otherwise — the boy is a problem. The damned policeman, too. It would’ve been tidy without them but now, well, they’re both loose ends. They make things more complicated. You’d better tell me what happened.”

“There’s not much to say. I followed the plan to the letter. The weapon was where it was supposed to be. I arrived before the targets. They were there on time. I eliminated both. As I was tidying up the gendarme arrived. So I shot him.”

“The rules of engagement were clear.”

“Indeed, sir. No witnesses. I don’t believe I had a choice.”

“You didn’t. I’m not questioning that.”

“But you’re questioning something?” Milton said.

Again, his tone was harsh. Control ignored it. “You said it yourself. No witnesses.”

“The boy? Why I didn’t shoot him?”

“It might be distasteful, but you know how clear we are about how we conduct ourselves on operations.” Control was tense. The conversation was not developing as he had anticipated, and he was not in the business of being surprised. There was a whiteness around the edges of Milton’s lips. The blue eyes still stared blankly, almost unseeingly.

“I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies since I’ve been working for you, sir.”

Control replied with as much patience as he could manage. “Of course you have, Milton. You’re an assassin. Dead bodies are your stock in trade.”

He might not even have heard him. “I can’t keep pretending to myself anymore. We make decisions about who lives and who dies but it’s not always black and white when you’re in the middle of it. As you say, the rules of engagement were clear. I should have shot him. Ten years ago, when I signed up for this” — the word carried a light dusting of contempt — “I probably would have shot him. Like a good soldier.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I couldn’t.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Ten years is a long time for this kind of work, sir. Longer than anyone else. And I haven’t been happy lately. I don’t think I’ve ever really been happy.”

“I don’t expect you to be happy.”

Milton had become agitated and pressed on. “I’ve got blood on my hands. I used to tell myself the same things to justify it but they don’t work any more. That policeman didn’t deserve to die. The boy didn’t deserve to lose his parents. We made a widow and an orphan because of a lie. And I’m not doing it any longer, sir. I’m finished.”

Control spoke carefully. “Are you trying to resign?”

“You can call it whatever you like. My mind is made up.”

Control rose. He needed a moment to tamp down his temper. This was perilously close to insubordination and, rather than lash out, he went across to the mantelpiece and adjusted the photograph of his family. He spoke carefully: “What’s the Group for, Milton?”

“Framing. Extortion. Elimination.”

“Jobs that are too dirty for Her Majesty’s security services to touch.”

“Quite so, sir.”

“And your job?”

“Cleaner.”

“Which means?”

“‘From time to time Her Majesty’s government needs to remove people whose continued existence poses a risk to the effective conduct of public order. The government requires particularly skilled professionals who are prepared to work on a non-attributable basis to deal with these problems.’ Cleaners.”

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.

He jumped down from the platform onto the sleepers.

He stepped over the live rail.

The train drew nearer, a blast of warm air pouring out of the mouth of the tunnel.

Milton knelt down by the woman.

“No,” she said. “Leave me alone.”

He slipped one hand beneath her back and the other beneath her knees. She was slight and he lifted her easily. The train turned the final bend, its headlights shining brightly. Its horn sounded, shrill and sudden, and Milton knew it was going to be touch and go. He stepped over the live rail again and threw the woman up onto the platform. The train’s brakes bit, the locked wheels sliding across the metal with a hideous shriek, as Milton planted his hands on the lip of the platform and vaulted up, rolling away just as the engine groaned by, missing him by fractions.

He rolled over, onto his back, and stared up at the curved ceiling. His breath rushed in and out.

The train had stopped halfway into the station. The driver opened the door and sprinted down the platform towards him. “Are you alright, mate?”

“Fine. Check her.”

He closed his eyes and forced his breathing to return to a regular pattern. In and out, in and out.

“I thought you was a goner,” the driver said. “I thought I was gonna hit you both. What happened?”

Milton didn’t answer. The students had made their way down the platform and the driver turned his attention to them. They reported what they had seen in singsong, broken English: how the woman had lowered herself from the platform and laid herself out across the rails, how Milton had gone down after and pulled her away from danger.

“You’re a bloody hero, mate,” the driver said.

Milton closed his eyes again.

A hero?

He would have laughed if that wasn’t so ridiculous. It was a bad joke.

4

An ambulance arrived soon afterwards. Milton sat next to the woman on the bench as she was attended to by the paramedics. She had cried hysterically for five minutes but she quickly stopped and by the time the paramedics had arrived she was silent and unmoving, staring fixedly at the large posters for exotic holidays and duty-free goods that were plastered across the curved wall on the other side of the tracks.

One of the paramedics had taken the woman’s purse from her bag. “Is your name Sharon, love?” he asked. She said nothing. “Come on, love, you have to talk to us.”

She remained silent.

“We’re going to have to take her in,” the paramedic said. “I think she’s in shock.”

“I’ll come, too,” Milton said.

“Are you a friend?”

Leaving her now would be abandoning her. He had started to help and he wanted to finish the job. He would leave once her family had arrived.

“Yes,” he said.

“Come on, sweetheart, let’s get you checked out properly.”

Milton followed behind the ambulance as they took the woman to the Royal Free hospital. They wheeled her into a quiet room and made her a cup of warm tea, full of sugar. “We’re just waiting for the doctor,” they said to her. “Get that down you, it’ll make all the difference.”

“Thank you,” she murmured.

The paramedic turned to Milton. “Are you alright to stay with her? He’s on his way, but it might be twenty minutes.”

“Yes,” Milton said. “Of course.”

He took the seat next to the bed and watched the girl. She had closed her eyes and, after a few minutes, Milton realised that she had drifted into a shallow sleep. Her chest rose and fell with each gentle breath. Milton regarded her. Her hair was of the deepest black, worn cut square and low on the nape of her neck, fanned out on the white hospital linen to frame a sweet almond-shaped face. Her eyes were wide under finely drawn eyebrows, slightly up tilted at the corners. Her skin was a perfect chocolate-brown and bore no trace of makeup save a light lipstick on her wide and sensual mouth. Her bare arms were slender and her hands, folded beneath her breasts, were small and delicate. Her fingernails were chewed down, the red varnish chipped. There was no ring on her finger. The restaurant uniform was a utilitarian grey, lasciviously tight across her breasts. The trousers flowed down from a narrow, but not thin, waist. Her shoes were square-toed and of plain black leather. She was very pretty.

Milton let her rest.

5

She awoke a full two hours later. At first her pretty face maintained the serenity of sleep, but that did not last for very long; confusion clouded across it and then, suddenly, came a terrible look of panic. She struggled upright and swung her feet off the bed and onto the floor.

“It’s alright,” Milton said. “You’re in hospital. You’ve been asleep.”

“What time is it?”

“Six.”

“Jesus,” she said. “I’m so late. My boys — I need to be home.” She looked around, panicked. “Where are we?”

“Hospital.”

“No,” she said, pushing herself onto her feet. “I have to be home, my boys will be there, they won’t know where I am, they won’t have had their tea. No-one’s looking after them.”

“The doctor’s been. He wanted to speak to you. He’s coming back when you’re awake.”

“I can’t. And I’m fine, besides. I know it was a stupid thing to do. I’m not about to do it again. I don’t want to die. I can’t. They need me.” She looked into his face. Her expression was earnest and honest. “They can’t keep me in here, can they?”

“I don’t think so.”

She collected her bag from the chair and started for the door.

“How are you going to get home?” Milton asked her.

“I don’t know. Where is this?”

“The Royal Free.”

“Hampstead? I’ll get the train.”

“Let me drive you.”

“You don’t have to do that. I live in Dalston. That must be miles out of your way.”

“No, that’s fine. I live just round the corner — Islington.” It was a lie. “It’s not a problem.”

The medical staff were uncomfortable about their patient discharging herself but there was nothing that they could do to stop her. She was not injured, she appeared to be rational and she was not alone. Milton answered their reflexive concern with a tone of quiet authority that was difficult to oppose. She signed her discharge papers, politely thanked the staff for their care, and followed Milton outside.

Milton had parked in the nearby NCP building. He swept the detritus from the passenger seat, opened the door, waited until she was comfortable and then set off, cutting onto the Embankment. He glanced at her through the corner of his eye; she was staring fixedly out of the window, watching the river. It didn’t look as if she wanted to talk. Fair enough. He switched on the CD player and skipped through the discs until he had found the one he wanted to listen to, a Bob Dylan compilation. Dylan’s reedy voice filled the car as Milton accelerated away from a set of traffic lights.

“Thanks for this,” Sharon said suddenly. “I’m very grateful.”

“It’s not a problem.”

“My boy should be home. He’ll be wanting his tea.”

“What’s his name?”

“Elijah.”

“That’s a nice name.”

“His father liked it. He was into his Bible.”

“How old is he?”

“Fifteen. What about you? Do you have any kids?”

“No,” Milton said. “It’s just me.”

He pulled out and overtook a slow-moving lorry and she was silent for a moment.

“It’s because of him,” she said suddenly. “This morning — all that. I know it’s stupid but I didn’t know what else to do. I still don’t, not really. I’m at the end of my tether.”

“What’s happened?”

She didn’t seem to hear that. “I don’t have anyone else. If I lose him, there’s no point in carrying on.”

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” She looked out of the window, biting her lip. “How have you lost him?”

She clenched her jaw. Milton shrugged and reached for the radio.

She spoke hurriedly. “There’s a gang on the Estate where we live, these young lads. Local boys. They terrify everyone. They do what they want — cause trouble, steal things, deal their drugs. No-one dares do anything against them.”

“The police?”

She laughed bitterly. “No use to no-one. They won’t even come onto the Estate unless there’s half a dozen of them. It’ll calm down a bit while they’re around but as soon as they go again, it’s as if they were never even there.”

“What do they have to do with Elijah?”

“He’s got in with them. He’s just a little boy, and I’m supposed to look after him, but there’s nothing I can do. They’ve taken him away from me. He stays out late, he doesn’t listen to me anymore, he won’t do as he’s told. I’ve always tried to give him a little freedom, not be one of those rowdy Jamaican mothers where the kids can’t ever do anything right, but maybe now I think I ought to have been stricter. Last night was as bad as it’s ever been. I know he’s been sneaking out late at night to be with them. Normally he goes out of his bedroom window so I put a lock on it. He comes into the front room and I tell him he needs to get back to bed. He just gives me this look and he says I can’t tell him what to do anymore. I tell him I’m his mother, and he has to listen to me for as long as he’s under my roof. That’s reasonable, isn’t it?”

“Very.”

“So he says that maybe he won’t be under my roof for much longer, that he’ll get his own money and find somewhere for himself. Where’s a fifteen-year old boy going to get the money for rent unless it’s from thieving or selling drugs? He goes for the door but he’s got to come by me first, so I get up and stop him. He tells me to get out of the way and when I won’t he says he hates me, says how it’s my fault his father isn’t around, and when I try and get him to calm down he just pushes me aside, opens the door and goes. He’s a big boy for his age, taller than I am already, and he’s strong. If he won’t do as he’s told, what can I do to stop him? He didn’t get back in until three in the morning and when I woke up to go to work he was still asleep. “

“Have you thought about moving away?”

She laughed humourlessly again. “Do you know how hard that is? We were in a hostel before. I used to live up in Manchester until my husband started knocking me about. There was this place, for battered women, we ended up there when we got into London. I’m not knocking it but it was full up. It was no place to bring up my boys. I was on at the social for months before they gave us our flat. You have no idea the trouble it’d be to get them to move us somewhere else. No. We’re stuck there.”

She paused, staring out at the cars again.

“Ever since we’ve been on the Estate we’ve had problems. I worry about Elijah every single day. Every single day I worry about him. Every day I worry.”

Milton had started to wonder whether there might be a way that he could help.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Here I am telling you all my troubles and I don’t even know your name.”

Milton almost reflexively retreated to his training, and to his long list of false identities, but he stopped himself. What was the point? He had no stomach for any of that any longer. A foundation of lies would not be a good place to start if he wanted to help this woman. “I’m John,” he said. “John Milton.”

He approached the junction for the Whitechapel Road and turned off.

“I’m sorry for going on. I’m sure you’ve got your own problems. You don’t need to hear mine.”

“I’d like to help.”

“That’s nice of you, but I don’t see how you could.”

“Perhaps I could talk to him?”

“You’re not police, are you?”

“No.”

“Or the Social?”

“No.”

“I don’t want to be rude, Mr. Milton, but you don’t know Elijah. He’s headstrong. Why would he care what you said?”

He slowed down as they approached a queue of slower-moving traffic. “I can be persuasive,” he said.

6

Control had requested Milton’s file from the archive and, after it had been delivered, he shut himself away in his office with a pot of tea and a cigar and spread the papers around him. It was late when he started, the sun long since set and the lights of the office blocks on the opposite side of the Thames glittering in the dark waters of the river. He lit the cigar and began his search through the documents for a clue that might explain his sudden, and uncharacteristic, decision. Their conversation had unsettled him. Milton had always been his best cleaner. His professionalism had always been complete. He maintained a vigorous regimen that meant that he was as fit as men half his age. His body was not the problem. If it was, he mused ruefully, this would have been easier to fix. The problem was with his mind and that presented a more particular issue. Control prided himself on knowing the men and women who worked for him and Milton’s attitude had taken him by surprise. It introduced an element of doubt into his thinking and doubt, to a man as ordered and logical as Control, was not tolerable.

He held the smoke in his mouth. Milton’s dedication and professionalism had never wavered, not for a moment, and he had completed an exemplary series of assignments that could have formed the basis for an instruction manual for the successful modern operative. He was the Group’s most ruthless and efficient assassin. He had always treated his vocation as something of an art form, drawing satisfaction from the knowledge of a job well done. Control knew from long and vexatious experience that such an attitude was a rarity these days. Real artisans — real craftsmen — were difficult to find and when you had one, you nurtured him. The other men and women at his disposal tended towards the blunt. They were automatons that he pointed at targets, then watched and waited as they did their job. Their methods were effective but crass: a shower of bullets from a slow-moving car, a landmine detonated by mobile phone, random expressions of uncontrolled violence. It was quick and dirty, flippant and trite, a summation of all that Control despised about modern intelligence. There was no artistry left, no pride taken in the job, no assiduity, no careful deliberation. No real nerve. Milton reminded Control of the men and women he had worked with when he was a field agent himself, posted at Station M in the middle of the Cold War. They had been exact and careful, their assignments comprising long periods of planning that ended with sudden, controlled, contained violence.

Control turned through the pages and found nothing. Perhaps the answer was to be found in his history. He took another report from its storage crate and dropped it on his desk. It was as thick as a telephone directory.

In order for a new agent to be admitted to the Group, a raft of assessments were required to be carried out. The slightest impropriety — financial, personal, virtually anything — would lead to a black mark and that would be that, the proposal would be quietly dropped and the prospective agent would never even know that they had been under consideration. Milton had been no different. MI5 were tasked with the compilation of the reports and they had done a particularly thorough job with him. They had investigated his childhood, his education, his career in the army and his personal life.

John Milton was born in 1968. He had no brothers or sisters. His father, James Milton, had worked as a petrochemical engineer and led his family on a peripatetic existence, moving every few years as he followed work around the world. Much of Milton’s early childhood was spent in the Gulf, with several years in Saudi Arabia, six months in Iraq during the fall of the Shah, then Egypt, Dubai and Oman. There had been a posting to the United States and then, finally, the directorship of a medium-sized gas exploration company in London. The young Milton picked up a smattering of Arabic and an ability to assimilate himself into different cultures; both talents had proven valuable in his later career.

His life had changed irrevocably in 1980. His mother and father were killed in a crash on a German autobahn and John had been sent to live with his Aunt and Uncle in Kent. A substantial amount of money was bequeathed to him in trust, and it was put to good use. He was provided with a first-class private education and, after passing the rigorous entrance examination, he was sent up to Eton for the Autumn term in 1981. His career there was not successful and, thanks to an incident that MI5 had not been able to confirm (although they suspected it involved gambling), Milton was expelled. There was a period of home tutoring before he was accepted at his father’s old school, Fettes. He stayed there until he was sixteen and then took a place at Cambridge to read law.

He was involved in the OTC and it had been no surprise to anyone when, in 1989, he ignored the offer of a pupilage at the Bar to enlist in the Royal Green Jackets. He was posted to the Rifle Depot, in Winchester, and then sent to Gibraltar as part of his first operational posting. He served in South Armagh, where, as a newly promoted Lance Corporal, he killed for the first time during a firefight with the Provisional Irish Republican Army. In 1997, after spending eight years with the Green Jackets, he decided to attempt SAS selection. The process was renowned for being brutally difficult but he passed, easily. While serving with Air Troop, B Squadron, 22 SAS for ten years, Milton worked on both covert and overt operations worldwide, including counter terrorism and drug operations in the Middle East and Far East, South and Central America and Northern Ireland. He trained as a specialist in counter terrorism, prime target elimination, demolitions, weapons, tactics, covert surveillance roles, information gathering in hostile environments and VIP protection. He worked on cooperative operations with police forces, prison services, anti-drug forces and Western backed guerrilla movements as well as on conventional special operations.

Control turned through to the pages dedicated to Milton’s service during the First Gulf War. He had been dropped behind Saddam’s lines to take out the Scuds he was using to launch rockets into Israel. His patrol had eventually been compromised, the men fleeing on foot towards Syria. Three were killed and the others were captured. Milton was held for six weeks and tortured throughout. By the time they forced their escape in a firefight during which three of the others were killed he was suffering from nerve damage to both hands, a dislocated shoulder, kidney and liver damage, and had contracted hepatitis B.

The Distinguished Conduct Medal he received on his return to London, together with the Military Medal that he won during a patrol in Northern Ireland, made Milton the British Army’s most highly decorated serving soldier when Control decided that he was the perfect replacement for Number Seven, who had been killed while on operations in China. He made the pitch himself. It was a persuasive offer, and Milton had accepted immediately.

Control put the history aside and turned back to contemporary papers. Milton’s recent yearly assessment had seen a significant dip in results and, as he turned back through the years, he noticed a trend that had remained hidden until then. The assessments were intense, and combined a rigorous physical examination, marksmanship tests and a psychological evaluation. Milton’s performance in all three elements had been in decline over the last three years. The drop was steepest this year, but it was not isolated. He chided himself for missing it. His continued success in the field had blinded him. He was so good at his job that the suggestion that he might not have been infallible was ridiculous. Now, as he examined his file with the benefit of hindsight, he saw that he had missed a series of indicators.

His physical examinations returned strong results. He was fit, with the cardiovascular profile of a man fifteen years younger. He made it his habit to run a marathon every year and the times had been noted and added to the file; he had never finished the course in more than three and a half hours. Nevertheless, he had suffered a series of injuries in the field that had exerted a toll on his body. The damage inflicted during his incarceration in Iraq had been severe, but there had been other incidents. Since joining Group Fifteen he had been shot twice, stabbed in the leg and shoulder and had broken more than a dozen bones. He reported the usual aches and pains but the physician suggested that he was being stoic for the benefit of the examination, and that it was likely that he was in mild to moderate pain most of the time. Blood tests detected the beginning of mild arthritis in his joints, a condition for which there was a familial history. He took a cocktail of drugs: gabapentin for his nerve damage and oxycodone for general pain relief.

Control relit his cigar and picked up his psychological assessment. He stood to stretch his legs and read the report next to the window. As he skimmed through the pages he realised that missing the warning signs contained within had been his most egregious error. The psychiatrist noted that Milton had complained of sleeplessness and that he had been prescribed promathazine to combat it. There had been a discussion about reasons behind the problem but Milton had become agitated and then angry, refusing to accept that it was anything other than an inability to quieten a busy mind. The psychiatrist suggested that Milton’s naturally melancholic temperament indicated mild depression and that he seemed to have become introspective and doubting. The report concluded with the recommendation that he be monitored on a more regular basis. Control had ignored it.

Damn it.

Milton was a valuable asset and he had wilfully ignored the warning signs. He did not want to admit that there might be a problem and his inaction had allowed it to metastasise.

He put the files back into the storage crate and lit a second cigar. There came a knock at the door.

“Come in,” he called.

Christopher Callan came into the office. He was Number Twelve: the most recent recruit to the Group. He had been transferred from the Special Boat Service after a career every bit as glittering as Milton’s had been. He was tall and slender and impeccably dressed. His jacket was two-buttoned, cut from nine-ounce cloth. The pockets were straight and the lining was simple and understated. There was a telltale faint bulge beneath his left armpit where he wore his shoulder holster. He did not wear a tie. The trousers were classically cut, falling down to the back of his shoe. He was strikingly handsome although his head was round and small, supported by a muscular neck. His scalp was covered with tight blond curls that were almost white, reminding Control of the classical hair of the statues of da Vinci. The curls were thickly pressed against each other and against the skull. His skin was a pristine white and his grooming immaculate. There was a cruelty to his thin-lipped mouth and the implacability that veiled those pale blue eyes seemed to infect the whole face. It was, Control reflected with a moment of mild revulsion, as if someone had taken a china doll and painted its face to frighten.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” he said.

“Yes, Callan. Take a seat.” He inhaled deeply, taking the smoke all the way back into his throat, then blowing it out. “We’ve got a bit of a problem. It’s one of the other agents — do you know Number One?”

“Only by reputation.”

“You’ve never worked with him, though?”

“No, sir. Why?”

“Afraid he’s started to behave a little erratically. I want you to find out everything you can about him — where he’s living, what he does with his time, who he’s seeing. Everything you can.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else?”

“No. Start immediately, please.”

“Of course.” Callan stood and straightened his jacket. “Number One was in France, sir? The Iranian scientists?”

“That’s right.”

Callan nodded thoughtfully. “That was unfortunate.”

Control looked at him and knew that he would have followed the rules of engagement to the letter. He would not left any witnesses. He had the same single-minded ruthlessness as Milton when he joined. He had made a reputation for it in the SBS, that was the characteristic that had appealed to Control when he had recruited him.

“Daily reports, please, Number Twelve. Get started at once. You’re dismissed.”

He turned to face the window again, the door closing softly behind him. He gazed through the cloud of cigar smoke, through his pensive reflection and out into the darkness beyond. Traffic streamed along Millbank on the other side of the river, tail-lights leaving a red smear across the tarmac.

He thought of Milton.

Control was a craftsman, too. His agents were his tools. Sometimes, when they got old and unreliable, when their edge grew rusty and could no longer be whetted, they had to be replaced.

Perhaps it was time.

He wondered if that was what he would have to do.

7

Elijah Warriner was frightened as he waited for the train to pull into the station. They were at Homerton, sitting on one of the metal benches, the red paint peeling away to reveal the scabrous rust beneath, the air heavy with the scent of stale urine and the sweet tang of the joint that was being passed around. Elijah stared across the track at the side of a warehouse marked with the tag that indicated that this was their territory: LFB, in ten-foot high neon yellow and green letters, the black outline running where rain had mixed with it before it had dried.

LFB.

The London Fields Boys.

They ran things around here.

There were eight of them on the platform. Pops, the oldest and the biggest, was in charge of the little crew. The other boys were arrayed around him on the platform: Little Mark was smoking a joint with his back to the wall; Pinky had his headphones pressed against his head, the low drone of the new Plan B record leaking out; Kidz and Chips were eyeing up the girls from the Gascoyne Estate who were also waiting for the train. They were all dressed in the same way: a baseball cap, a hooded top, low-slung jeans and brand new pairs of Nikes or Reeboks. Some of them had their hoods pulled up, resting against the brim of their caps and casting their faces in dark shadow. They all wore bandanas tied around their necks.

It was just before half past five and rush hour was just beginning.

Pops put his around Elijah’s shoulders and squeezed him hard, using his other hand to scrub at his head. “JaJa, chill,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”

Elijah managed to smile. Pops was wearing the same uniform as all the others, but he had a pair of diamond earrings, a chunky ring on each hand and a heavy golden chain around his neck. They denoted his position as an Elder, and, of course, the fact that he had more money than the rest of them. Elijah watched as Pops took out his bag of weed and his packet of papers. “My grandma taught me to build zoots, get me?” Pops spread a copy of the Metro across his lap and arranged his things: the bag of weed, his papers, his lighter. “This is penging high-grade,” he said, indicating the transparent bag and its green-brown contents. He unsealed it and tipped out a small pile. “You need to get yourself in the right state of mind before something like this. Can’t do no better than a good zoot, know what I’m saying?”

Elijah nodded.

“You blazed before?”

“Course,” Elijah said, trying to be disdainful. He had already been smoking for six months, ever since he had started hanging out with the young LFBs on the gangways and stairwells of Blissett House. That had frightened him, too, at first, and he had found that the first few drags made him retch, his eyes watering. But it was no big thing, though, and he had quickly got used to it. There was always a zoot being passed around, and he always made sure he had some.

Pops laughed at his indignant response. “Trust me, young ‘un, you ain’t blazed nothing like this.” He opened a paper and filled it with a thick line of weed. He inserted a roach, brought the packet to his lips, licked the gummed end and sealed it. He lit the end and took a long drag, smacking his lips in appreciation. He toked again and passed the joint to Elijah. “Go on, younger, get some.”

Elijah took the joint and, aware that Pops and the others were watching him, made sure that he didn’t show any nerves as he put it between his lips and sucked down deep. The smoke was acrid and strong and he spluttered helplessly. The other boys hooted at his discomfort.

“Look at the little joker,” Pinky exclaimed. “He’s gonna die from all that coughing.”

“Hush your gums,” Pops chided. “Let him enjoy himself. What you think, younger?”

“Buzzin’,” Elijah managed.

“Yeah, man — buzzin’. You know what makes it so fine?” Elijah shook his head, still dizzy. “Piss. The growers piss on the dirt. Makes it more potent, gives the skunk a kick.”

Elijah spluttered in disgust, and almost retched again.

Pops grinned at him as the train rolled towards them. “Get yourself together, younger, here it comes. This is it. You wanna be with us, you gotta do this. Everyone has to if they want to be man dem. You ready?”

“Yeah.”

Elijah felt a sudden blast of light-headedness. It added to his feeling of fright and he suddenly felt sick. He turned away from Pops, bent double and vomited the fried chicken he had eaten ten minutes early, half-digested slops splashing between his legs, splattering against the new trainers he had robbed from the shop in Mare Street the previous day.

The others hollered.

“He’s sicked up all over his creps!” Chips exclaimed.

“Come on,” Pops said. “Get yourself together. Train’s here.”

The line was one of the main routes into the Olympic Park and the trains had all been cleaned up for the Games. The doors opened and commuters working at the big new shopping centre, many still wearing their corporate uniforms, spilled out onto the platform. Pops pulled up his bandana and shrugged his hood up and over his cap until all of his face was obscured, save his eyes. The others did the same and, his hands shaking, so did Elijah. Pops was behind Elijah and he pushed him into the crowded carriage, the others following behind.

Elijah had seen a train get steamed before and he knew what to expect. Pushing him further into the carriage, Pops and the others started to hoot and holler, surging down the aisle between the seats. The noise was disorientating, and frightening, and none of the passengers seemed able to react. Pops barged into the space between two benches that faced each other and ripped the mobile phone from the hand of a man in a suit. The others did the same, taking phones and tablets, dipping purses from handbags, removing wallets from the inside pockets of jackets and coats, yanking necklaces until they snapped and came free. Elijah followed behind Pops and, as they went from passenger to passenger, he took the items that Pops handed back to him and dropped them into his rucksack. His fright melted away as the adrenaline burned through his body, the thrill of what they were doing; robbing and stealing and no-one was doing a damned thing to stop them.

A young man in a suit stared at them as they advanced along the carriage. He had a Blackberry in his hand.

“What you looking at?” Pops said. “You wanna get slapped up?”

The man didn’t reply.

“You wanna get shanked?” Chips reached out into his pocket and took out a knife with a six-inch blade.

Still the man was silent. Elijah looked at him and recognised the fear in his eyes. He wasn’t defying them, he was just too scared to do anything.

“Jack him, younger,” Pops said to Elijah, shoving him forwards.

Elijah stepped up to him. “Give me the phone,” he said. The man didn’t resist, and held it up for Elijah to take. He put it in his rucksack with all the rest. He looked down at the man, into his eyes, and made a quick, sudden movement towards him. The man flinched, expecting a blow that didn’t come. Elijah had never caused that kind of reaction before. He had always been the smallest, or the youngest, the butt of the joke. Just being with the LFB made all this difference. People took him seriously. He laughed, not out of malice, but out of disbelief.

Little Mark was standing in the doorway, wedging the door and preventing the train from departing. “Boi-dem!” he yelled.

It had only taken them a few seconds to work their way through the carriage although it had felt like much longer. Pops pushed Elijah ahead of him as the boys surged on, the commuters parting as they piled out of the carriage. Outside, on the platform, Elijah could hear the sound of sirens from the street below. Little Mark dropped down onto the tracks and crossed over the rails to the other side, the others following after him. Elijah clambered back onto the platform, vaulted the wooden fence and scrambled down the loosely-packed earth of the embankment, sprinting down Berger Road and turning onto Wick Road, then across that and into the Estate. They had grown up with the alleys and passageways and knew them all instinctively. The police would have no chance if they tried to follow them.

Elijah jogged in the middle of the group, his rucksack jangling and heavy with their loot. The trepidation had disappeared, its place taken by a pulsing excitement at the audacity of what they had done. They had stormed that train, and the people inside had been scared of them. They had sat there with their posh suits and expensive gadgets and no-one had done anything. Elijah was used to being told what to do — his parents, teachers, the police — and this had been a complete reversal. He remembered the look on the face of the man with the BlackBerry. He was a grown man, a professional man, with expensive clothes and things, the kind of man who probably had an expensive flat in Dalston or Hackney or Bethnal Green because those places were cool, and he had been frightened of him. Scared.

Elijah had never experienced what it was like to be feared before.

8

Milton drove them into Hackney. The road was lined on both sides by shops owned by Turks, Albanians and Asians, all trying to sell cheap goods to people who couldn’t afford them, past fried chicken shops, garages, past a tube station, across a bridge over the A12 with cars rushing by below, past pound shops and cafés, a branch of CashConverter, a scruffy pub. The faces of the people who walked the road bore the marks of failure.

Sharon directed him to take a left turn off the main road and they drove into an estate. They drove slowly past a single convenience store, the windows barred and a plexiglass screen protecting the owner from his patrons. Three huge tower blocks dominated the area, each of them named after local politicians from another time, an optimistic time when the buildings would have appeared bright, new and hopeful. That day had passed. They were monstrously big, almost too large to take in with a single glance. They drove around Carson House, the tower marked for demolition, its windows and doors sealed tight by bright orange metal covers. There was a playground in front of it, hooded kids sitting on the swings and slides, red-tipped cigarettes flaring in the hot dusky light.

Sharon directed Milton to Blissett House and, as he rolled the car into a forecourt occupied by battered wrecks and burnt-out hulks, the decay became too obvious to miss. Window frames were rotting, paint peeling like leprous scabs. Concrete had crumbled like meringue, the steel wires that leant support to the structure poking out like the ribs of a decaying carcass. Milton looked around. Blissett House looked like it had been built in the fifties. It would have seemed futuristic then, a brand new way of living that had risen from the grotty terraces that had been cleared away, the council finishing the job that the Germans had started. It was twenty storeys high, each floor accessed by way of an external balcony that looped around a central shaft. There was a pervading sense of menace, a heavy dread that settled over everything like smog. The doors and windows were all barred. Graffitti’d tags were everywhere. One of the garages on the first floor level had been burned out, the metal door half ripped off and hanging askance. An Audi with blacked out windows was parked in the middle of the wide forecourt, the door open and a man lounging in the driver’s seat, his legs extending out. The baleful rhythmic thump from a new dubstep track shuddered from the bass bins in the back of the car.

Milton pointed his key at his Volvo and thumbed the lock. It seemed a pointless affectation and the car looked vulnerable as they walked away from it. He was grateful, for once, for the state of it. With the exhaust lashed to the chassis with wire and the wing folded inwards from the last time he had pranged it, it was nothing to look at. It was, he hoped, hardly worth taking, or else he was going to have a long walk home.

He followed Sharon towards the building. The man in the Audi stared at him through a blue-tinged cloud of dope smoke, his eyes lazy but menacing. Milton held his stare as he crossed his line of vision. The man’s hair was arranged in long dreads and gold necklaces were festooned around his neck. As their eyes met, the man nonchalantly flicked away the joint he had finished and tugged up his t-shirt to show the butt of the revolver shoved into the waistband of his jeans. Milton looked away. He didn’t care that the man would consider that a small victory. There was nothing to be gained from causing trouble.

Sharon led the way to the lobby. “The lifts don’t work,” she apologised, gesturing to the signs pasted onto the closed doors. “Hope you don’t mind a little climb. We’re on the sixth floor.”

The stairwells were dank and dark and smelled of urine. Rubbish had been allowed to gather on the floor, and a pile of ashes marked the site of a recent fire. A youngster with his hood pulled up over his head shuffled over.

“You after something?”

Sharon stepped up to him. “Leave off, Dwayne,” she said.

“Where’s JaJa?” he asked her.

“Don’t you be worrying about him,” she said.

“You tell him I want to see him.”

“What for?”

“Just tell him, you dumb sket.”

Milton stepped between them.

The boy was big for his age, only a couple of inches shorter than he was, and his shoulders were heavy with muscle. He squared up and faced him. “Yeah? What you want, big man?”

“I want you to show a little respect.”

“Who are you? Her new boyfriend? She’s grimey, man. Grimey. I seen half a dozen brothers going in and out of her place last week. She’s easy, bro — don’t think you’re nothing special.”

The boy was making a point; he didn’t know what Milton’s relationship with Sharon was, and he didn’t care. He was daring Milton to do something. There didn’t seem to be any point in talking to him. Milton slapped him with the back of his hand, catching him by surprise and spinning him against the wall. He followed up quickly, taking the boy’s right arm and yanking it, hard, all the way up behind his back. The boy squealed in pain as Milton folded his fingers back, guiding him around so that he faced Sharon.

“Apologise,” he said.

“Mr Milton,” Sharon said hesitantly.

“Apologise,” Milton ordered again.

The boy gritted his teeth and Milton pulled his fingers back another inch. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. Please, mister — you’re breaking my fingers.”

Milton turned him around so that he was facing the open door and propelled him out of it. He landed on his stomach, scraping his face against the rough tarmac. The man in the tricked-out car looked over, lazy interest flickering across his face.

“You didn’t need to do that,” Sharon said. “It’s best just to ignore them.”

“Good manners don’t cost anything. Come on — let’s get inside. I bet you could do with a cup of tea.”

They climbed the stairs to the sixth floor and followed the open walkway to the end of the block. A couple of youngsters were leaning against the balcony, looking out over the Estate below and, beyond that, the streets and houses that made up this part of Hackney. Milton recognised from experience that they had been stationed as lookouts, and that, from their perch, they would be able to see the approach of rival gang-bangers or police. They would call down to the older boys selling their products on the walkways below. The dealers would vanish if it was the police or call for muscle if it was a rival crew. Milton said nothing. The boys glared at them as they approached.

Flat 609 was at the end of the block, where the walkway abutted the graffiti-marked wall. The door was protected by a metal gate and the windows were behind similar grilles. Sharon unlocked the gate, and then the heavy door, and went inside. Milton followed, instinctively assessing the interior. The front door opened into a tiny square hallway, one of the walls festooned with coats on a row of hooks and a dozen pairs of shoes stacked haphazardly beneath it. Post had been allowed to gather beneath the letter-box and Milton could see that most were bills, several of them showing the red ink that marked them as final demands. The hallway had three doors. Sharon opened the one to the lounge and Milton followed her inside.

It was a large room, furnished with an old sofa, a square table with four chairs and a large flatscreen television. Children’s toys were scattered on the floor.

“How many children do you have?” Milton asked.

“Two. My oldest, Chris, fell in with the wrong sort. He has a problem with drugs — we only ever see him when he wants money. It’s just me and Elijah most of the time.”

Milton was a good listener and Sharon started to feel better. Just talking to him helped. Perhaps he was right and there was something he could do. It wasn’t as if she had had any other offers of help. The Social was useless and the last thing she wanted to do was get the police involved. They wouldn’t be sympathetic, and Elijah would end up with a record or something and that would be the end of that as far as his future was concerned.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Milton suggested. “I’m guessing this is the kitchen?” She nodded. “So go on, sit down and relax. I’ll make you a cup of tea while we wait for your son.”

9

When Elijah opened the door to their flat there was a white man he had never seen before sitting in the front room. He was tall, with strong-looking shoulders and large hands, and plain to look at in a loose-fitting suit and scuffed leather shoes. The scar across his face was a little frightening. He was in the armchair Elijah used when he was on his PlayStation, drinking a cup of tea. Elijah’s first thought was that he was police, a detective, and he suddenly felt horribly exposed. Pops had told him to take the gear they had tiefed from the people on the train and keep it safe while he arranged for someone to buy it from them. It swung from his shoulder, clanking and clicking.

His mother was sitting opposite the man. She got up as he came in through the door.

“Where’ve you been?” she said. “You’re late.”

“Out,” he replied sullenly. The man put down his cup of tea and pulled himself out of the armchair. “Who are you?”

“This is Mr Milton.”

“I was talking to him.” Elijah looked up at the man. There was a flintiness in his icy blue eyes. Elijah tried to stare him out but although the man was smiling at him, his eyes were cold and hard and unnerving. He made Elijah anxious. He held out a hand. “You can call me John,” he said.

“Yeah, whatever.” The heavy rucksack slipped down his shoulder, rattling noisily. He shrugged it back into place and stepped around the room to go to his room.

Sharon got to her feet and stepped in between him and his door. “What’s in the bag, Elijah?”

“Nothing. Just my stuff.”

“Then you won’t mind me having a look, will you?”

She took the bag from him, unzipped it and, one by one, pulled out the mobile phones, watches, wallets and two tablet computers. Silently, she lined them up on the dining table, and then, when she was done, turned to face him with a frightened expression on her face. “How did you get this?”

“Looking after it for a friend.”

“Did you steal it?”

“Course not,” he said, but he knew he sounded unconvincing. He was aware of the big man in the room with them. “Who are you?” he asked again. “Police? Social?”

“I’m a friend of your mother. She’s worried about you.”

“She needn’t be. I’m fine.”

Sharon held up an expensive-looking watch. “This is all tiefed, isn’t it?”

“I told you, I’m just looking after it.”

“Then you can take it straight back to him. I don’t want it in the house.”

“Why don’t you just mind your business?”

He dropped everything back into the rucksack and slung it across his shoulder.

“Who is it?” she said as he turned for the door.

“You don’t know him.”

“Show your mother some respect,” Milton said. “She doesn’t deserve you speaking to her like that.”

“Who are you to go telling me what to do?” he exploded. “I ain’t never seen you before. Don’t think you’re anything special, neither. None of her boyfriends last long. They all get bored eventually and we don’t never see them no more. I don’t know who you are and I’m not going to bother to find out. I won’t ever see you again.”

“Elijah!”

Milton didn’t know how to respond to that, and he stepped aside as Elijah made for the door. Sharon looked on haplessly as her son opened it, stepped out onto the landing, and slammed it behind him.

10

Elijah passed through the straggled group of customers that had gathered outside the entrance to Blissett House. The boys called them “cats” and took them for all they were worth. They passed out their bags of weed and heroin, their rocks of crack, snatching their money and sending them on their way. They didn’t get very far. One of the empty flats had been turned into a crack house, and they scurried into it. When they shuffled out again, hours later, they were vacant and etiolated, halfway human, dead-eyed zombies, already desperately working out where they would find the money for their next fix.

Elijah made his way through the Estate to the abandoned flat that the LFB had claimed for themselves. A family had been evicted for non-payment of rent and now the older boys had taken it over, gathering there to drink, smoke and be with their girls. Elijah had never been inside the flat before but he didn’t know where else he could take the rucksack and the things that they had stolen.

He was furious. Who was that man to tell him what to do? He didn’t look like any of his mother’s boyfriends — he was white, for a start — but he had no reason to come and stick his nose into his business. He told himself that he wouldn’t see the man again, that he’d get bored, just like they always did, and it would be him who told his mother that it didn’t matter, that he would look after her. He had been the man in the house ever since his older brother had vanished. He had been grown up about it all. He’d had to; there wasn’t anyone else.

The flat was in the block opposite Blissett House. Elijah idled on the walkway, trying to muster the courage to turn the corner and approach the doorway. It was on the eleventh floor and offered a panoramic view of the area. He looked beyond the Estate, across the hotchpotch of neater housing that had replaced two other blocks that had been pulled down five years ago, past the busy ribbon of Mare Street and across East London to the glittering Olympic Park beyond. He rested his elbows on the balcony and gazed down at their flat. His bedroom had a window that looked out onto the walkway. He remembered laying in bed at night and listening as the older boys gathered outside, the lookouts that were posted to watch for the police or other boys. They would talk about money, about the things they would buy, about girls. They talked for hours until the sweet smell of weed wafted in through the open window and filled the room. Elijah’s mother would occasionally hustle outside, shooing them away, but they always came back and, over time, she gave up.

It was intoxicating. The boys seemed special to Elijah. They were cool. They were older, they had money, they weren’t afraid of girls. They talked about dealing drugs and tiefing, the kind of things that Elijah’s favourite rappers rapped about. It was a lifestyle that was glamorous beyond the day-to-day drudgery of school and then helping his mother with the flat. It didn’t seem wrong to want a little bit of it for himself.

The boys Elijah knew could hear them and, eventually, they started to include him in their conversations. It wasn’t long until he opened the window all the way and started talking to them. He asked how he could get his own money. They told him to stand watch for them and he did. When they came back, they gave him a brand new PSP. The week after that they gave him money. He had never seen a fifty-pound note before but they pressed one into his hand. They started to talk to him more often. They offered him his first joint. He spluttered helplessly as he tried to smoke it and they laughed at him as he desperately tried to look cool.

It wasn’t long before they gave him the chance to make more money. He was small, with tiny arms that could fit through car windows that had been left open. He would open the locks from the inside and the boys would tear out the car stereos and steal anything else that had been left behind: GPS devices, handbags. They would steal six or seven a night and Elijah would be given fifty pounds. He put the cash in a shoebox that he hid under his bed. His mother never asked where he got the money for his new clothes. Elijah knew that she wasn’t stupid. She just didn’t want to hear him say it.

He watched as the door opened and the white man stepped outside. Elijah watched him make his way along the walkway and, after descending the stairs, emerge out onto the forecourt. He walked towards a beaten-up old car, pausing at the door and then crouching down at the front wheel. Elijah could tell from the way the car slumped to the side that the tyre had been slashed. He grinned as the man took off his jacket, removed a spare from the boot and started to go about changing it.

A couple of the older boys were smoking joints on the walkway.

“Alright, younger?” The boy’s real name was Dylan, but they called him Fat Boy on account of how big he had been as a young teenager. He had grown out of that now; he was nineteen, six foot tall and full of muscle.

“Is Pops here?”

“He’s inside. What do you want?”

“I need to see him.”

“Alright, bruv. He’s in the back. Knock when you get in.”

The flat had been taken over by the LFB. They had sprayed their tags on every spare wall and a huge, colourful version filled the wall in the lounge. Boys from the Estate lounged around, some playing FIFA on a stolen flatscreen television. Others were listening to the new album from Wretch, arguing that it was better or worse than the new tracks from Newham Generals or Professor Green. Trash was shoved into the corners: empty paper bags from McDonalds, chicken bones that had been sucked clean, empty cigarette packets, cigarette papers. Everyone was toking and Elijah quickly felt dizzy from the dope smoke that rolled slowly through the room. A couple of the boys looked up, clocked him, ignored him again. No-one acknowledged him. The room was hectic and confusing with noise. Elijah felt young and vulnerable but dared not show it.

“Look who it is!” whooped Little Mark.

“Baby JaJa,” Pinky sneered. “It’s late, younger, shouldn’t you be tucked up in bed?”

“Leave him alone,” Kidz chided.

Elijah reluctantly made his way across the room to them. Little Mark’s real name was Edwin, and he lived in a flat on the seventh floor of Blissett House with his dad. Elijah did not know Kidz’s real name, only that he lived in Regis House and had a reputation as the most prolific mugger in the crew. Pinky’s real name was Shaquille, he was usually quiet and surly and had a nasty reputation. Elijah tried to keep his distance whenever he was around.

“What you doing here?” Kidz said as he came alongside them.

“Came to see Pops,” he said.

Pinky nodded to the rucksack across his shoulder. “Afraid your mum finds out what you’ve got in there?”

“I ain’t afraid,” Elijah said.

“That’s from earlier, right? The gear from the train?”

“Yes.”

“What you bring it with you for, then? You stupid or something?”

“I ain’t stupid, either.”

“Look pretty stupid from where I’m sitting.”

Kidz smiled at him indulgently. “How you going to explain it if you get pulled by the Feds?”

Elijah felt himself blush.

“Told you he was stupid,” Pinky said. “A stupid little kid. He ain’t right for LFB.”

“Lucky for him that’s not for you to decide, then, innit? Ignore him, young ‘un. Pops is in the back. Go on through.”

Elijah made his way through the room. The layout of the flat was identical to his own and he guessed that Pops was in the main bedroom. He knocked on the door. A voice called that he could come in.

The room was dark. Pops was standing next to the open window, blowing smoke into the dusky light beyond. He had removed his shirt and his muscular torso glistened with a light film of sweat. He had a tattoo of a dragon across his shoulders and, on his bicep, the letters L, F and B. His heavy gold chain glittered against the darkness of his skin. A white woman sat on the edge of the mattress they had put in the room. She straightened her skirt as she got to her feet. She was older than Pops, looked like she was in her thirties, and dressed like the office-workers from the city who had seeped into the smarter parts of the borough. Elijah had heard about her; the rumour was that she was something in the city and that she had a taste for the crack.

Pops crossed the room and kissed her gently on the cheek. “I’ll see you tonight,” he said. She ran her palm across his cheek, collected her jacket and left the room.

Pops found his t-shirt and pulled it over his head. Elijah caught himself wondering how old he was. His brown skin was unmarked, his eyes bright and intense. Elijah guessed he was eighteen or nineteen, but he had a hardness about him that made him seem older. It was a forced maturity, a product of the road, of the things he had seen and done. It had flayed the innocence out of him. “What’s the matter, younger?”

“My Mum caught me with this,” he said, shrugging the rucksack from his shoulder and letting it hang before him. “She’ll nick it off me if I have it in the house.”

Pops laughed. “Don’t fret about it, younger. We’ll look after it here.” He took the bag and tossed it onto the mattress. “Fucking day, I’m all done in.” He took a bag of weed from his pocket and found a packet of rolling papers on the windowsill. “You want a smoke?”

Elijah had never been alone with Pops before. He was talking to him, taking him seriously, and it made him feel special. “Go on, then,” he said, trying to sound older than he felt.

Pops busied himself with making the spliff. “You have fun this afternoon, blood?”

“Yeah.”

“You nervous?”

Elijah took the joint and put it to his lips as Pops sparked it for him. “A bit.”

“That’s OK,” he said. “S’alright to be nervous. Nerves mean adrenaline, and adrenaline is good. Keeps you sharp. You were quick when boi-dem came. Away on your toes.”

“I’ve always been good at running,” he said.

“That’s the thing, younger. That’s gonna be useful. You can’t never let the Feds get hold of you. The thing that keeps me running, even when my lungs are burning like someone’s sparked up a spliff in my chest, even when the stubborn side of me wants to turn around and get ignorant, face them like a man, that’s when I remember I’ve already spent way too many nights sitting on a blue rubber mattress in a cell, who knows how many times it’s been pissed on, that’s when I remember getting caught by boi-dem’s a no-no. You can’t come back to the manor and big up your chest about getting shift by boi-dem. Bad bwoys ain’t supposed to get caught, JaJa. Especially not black boys.” He grinned at him. “It’s all good. You did good.”

Elijah felt a blast of pride that made his heart skip. No-one had said anything like that to him before. His teachers thought he was a waste of space, he didn’t have a dad and his mum was always nagging. He drew in on the joint, coughing as the smoke hit his lungs.

“We ain’t really talked before, have we?”

Elijah shrugged. “Not much.”

“What you going to do with your life, little man?”

The question caught him off guard. “Dunno,” he said.

“You got no plans? No dreams?”

“Dunno. Maybe football. I’m not bad. Maybe that.”

“‘Maybe football,’” Pops repeated, smiling, taking the joint as Elijah passed it back to him.

“I’m OK at it,” Elijah said defensively, wondering if he was being gently mocked. “I’m pretty fast.”

“I’ll say you are,” Pops said, taking a long toke on the joint. “You like the Usain Bolt of Hackney.”

Pops dropped down on the mattress. He patted the space next to him and Elijah sat too. It might have been the weed but he felt himself start to relax.

“Listen, younger, I’m going to tell you something. You won’t think it’s cool, but I know what I’m talking about and you’d do yourself a favour to listen, alright?” He settled back so that he was leaning against the wall. “It’s good to have dreams but a man needs a plan, too. Maybe you are decent at football, maybe you are good enough to make it, but how many kids do you know from these ends who’ve done it? Maybe you can think of one but I don’t know any. Football is a dream, right, and, like I say, it’s good to have dreams, but a man’s got to have a plan, too. A realistic one, just in case his dreams don’t pay off. You know what I’m saying?”

“What about the street?”

“Seriously, younger? The street can be a laugh, you don’t get too deep into it, but the street ain’t no plan.”

“You’re doing it.”

“Only for now. It’s not a long term thing.”

“I know people who do alright.”

“The kids shotting drugs?”

“Nah, that’s just baby steps, I mean the ones above them.”

“Listen to me, Elijah — there ain’t no future on the street. Some brothers do make it through. I know some who started off as youngers, like you, younger than you, then they work their way up with shotting and tiefing until they become Elders, and then some of them keep out of trouble long enough and get made Faces. But, you look, every year, some of them get taken out. Some get lifted by the Feds, others ain’t so lucky and those ones get shot and end up in the ground. Like Darwin, innit? Survival of the fittest. You want, we could have a little experiment — we could start with a hundred young boys, kids your age, and I reckon if we came back five years later to see how they be getting on maybe one or two of them would still be making their way from the street. The others are out, one way or another. Banged up or brown bread. I don’t know what you’re like when it comes to numbers but me, it’s like how you are at football — I ain’t too bad at all. I’m telling you, younger, one hundred to one or two ain’t odds I’m that excited about.”

“What about today? You were out with us.”

“I know — you think I sound like a hypocrite and that’s fair enough. Maybe I am. But I ain’t saying stealing stuff is bad. It ain’t right that some people have everything they want and others — people like us — it ain’t right that we don’t have shit. That stuff we nicked today, them people was all insured. We gave them a scare but they didn’t actually lose nothing. They’ll get it all back, all shiny and new. We deserve a nice phone, a camera, an iPod, whatever, and we ain’t going to get it unless we take it. I reckon that’s fair enough. I reckon that makes it alright to do what we did. But it ain’t got a future. You do it ten times, twenty times maybe if you get lucky, eventually you’re going to get nicked. Someone gets pulled and grasses you up. Your face gets on CCTV. The Feds have got to do something about it in the end. See, what we did this afternoon is short-term. If you want to have those things properly, without fear that they’re going to get taken away from you and you’re going to get banged up, then there ain’t nothing else for it — you got to play the game by their rules.”

“How?”

“You got to study. You got to get your exams. You probably think I’m high saying that” — he nodded at the joint, smiled, and then handed it across — “but think about it a little and you know I’m talking sense. I didn’t pay no attention at school. I was a disaster, couldn’t stand it so I hardly went at all and I couldn’t wait until I was old enough so that I didn’t have to no more. I’m older now, I’ve got more experience, and I’m telling you that all that stuff they say about studying is true. If I’d paid attention more, did better, what I’m trying to do with myself now would’ve been a million times easier.”

Elijah was confused. “What are you doing?”

“So I said I was OK with numbers? Always have been, just something I’ve got a talent for. I’m going to night school to get my A-level. Maths. You know my woman? You know what she does?”

Elijah had heard. “Something in the city?”

He nodded. “Accountant. She says if I can get my exams she can get me a job with her firm. Nothing special, not to start with, post room or some shit like that, but it’s a foot in the door. A chance to show them what I can do. After that — who knows? But I’ll tell you this for nothing, younger, I ain’t going to be doing what we did this afternoon for much longer.”

Elijah sucked on the joint again, stifling the unavoidable cough. The conversation had taken him by surprise. He had always looked up to Pops, thought that he was cool, and he was the last person he would have expected to tell him to stay in school and work hard.

“You did good today. Like I said, you got potential. I saw it in you right away. That wasn’t easy, I remember my first time, I was sick as a dog, they had to push me onto the bus and then I was completely useless. None of that with you, was there? You got balls. That’s great. But just think about what I’ve said, alright? There’s no future there for you. For any of us.”

They smoked the rest of the joint together before Pops got up. “I got to breeze. Got school. My exams are in a month and we’re revising. Equations and all that shit. Don’t want to be late.”

The night was warm and close and the walkway was empty as they both stepped outside. Pops bumped fists with him and descended the stairs. Elijah rested his elbows on the balustrade, looking across to Blissett House and his mother’s flat, then down into the yard as Pops emerged, walking confidently and with purpose, acknowledging the monosyballic greetings from the strung-out cats and the boys from the gang who sold them their gear. Pops was liked. Respected. Elijah nodded to himself.

He fancied some of that himself.