The Cleaner

He wiped the sweat from his face and put the scope of his rifle to his eye, gazing down onto the plains below. The village was five hundred yards away, clustered around the river. Two dozen huts, the villagers making their living from the herd of goats that grazed on the scrappy pasture to the north and west. It was a small habitation, gathered around a madrasa; children played in the dusty yard outside, kicking a ball, a couple of them wearing the shirts of teams he recognised. He took a breath and held it, the rifle held steady, the stock pressed into the space between his shoulder and neck. He nudged the rifle left to right, examining each hut individually. Nothing was out of place: the women were working at home while the men tended the animals in the pasture. He moved the scope right to left until the missile launcher was centred in the crosshairs. A Scud launcher, an old R-11, Russian-made. He squinted down the sight, placing each member of the crew. Three men, Republican Guard. He centred each man in the crosshairs, his finger held loosely through the trigger guard, the tip trailing against the edge of the trigger. He nudged the scope away again so that he could focus on the madrasa: five children in the yard, their cheap plastic ball jerking in the wind as they kicked it against the wall of the hut. They were happy. The launcher meant nothing to them; nothing compared to their game, and the fun they could have together. He heard their laughter, delivered to him by a welcome breath of air.

11

John Milton awoke at six the next morning. He had slept badly, the damned nightmare waking him in the middle of his deepest sleep and never really leaving after that, the ghostly after-effects playing across his mind. He reached out to silence his alarm and allowed himself the rare luxury of coming around slowly. His thoughts turned to the previous evening, to Sharon and Elijah. He recognised elements of his own personality in the boy; the stubbornness, and the inclination to resist authority. If they lived under different circumstances, it would have done no harm for the boy to test her limits. It was natural, and he would have returned to her in time. Their circumstances did not allow him that freedom, though. Milton could see how the attraction of the gang would be difficult for him to resist. If he allowed himself to be drawn into their orbit, he risked terrible damage to his prospects: a criminal record, if he was lucky, or, if he wasn’t, something much worse.

Milton did not own or rent a property. It was unusual for him to be in the country for long periods and he did not see the point of it. He preferred to be unencumbered, flexible enough to be able to move quickly whenever required. His practice was to stay in hotels and so he had booked a room in an American chain, an anonymous space that could have been anywhere in the world. The hotel was on the South Bank of the Thames, next to Westminster Bridge, and when he pulled the curtains aside he was presented with a view of the pigeons and air-conditioning units on the roof of the adjacent building and, beyond that, the tower of the Houses of Parliament. The sky above was cerulean blue and, once again, the sun was already blazing. It was going to be another hot day.

He showered and shaved, standing before the mirror with a towel around his waist. He was six foot tall and around thirteen stone, with an almost wiry solidity about him. His eyes were on the grey side of blue, his mouth had a cruel twist to it, there was a long horizontal scar from his cheek to the start of his nose and his hair was long and a little unkempt, a frond falling over his forehead in a wandering comma. There was a large tattoo of angel wings spread across his shoulders, claws at the tips and rows of etched feathers descending down his back until they disappeared beneath the towel; it was the souvenir of a night in Guatemala, out of his mind on Quetzalteca Especial and mescaline.

Milton dressed and went down to the restaurant for breakfast. He found a table to himself and filled his plate with scrambled eggs from the buffet. He drank a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice, poured a cup of strong coffee and flicked through the pages of the Times. The front page was dominated by the news of the killing in France. The gendarmerie were waiting to speak to the boy. It was hoped that he would be able to tell them what had happened and, perhaps, identify the man who had killed his parents.

Milton folded the paper and put it to one side.

He returned to his room and packed. He had very little in the way of possessions, but what he did own was classic and timeless: a wide, flat gun-metal cigarette case; a black oxidized Ronson lighter; a Rolex Oyster Perpetual watch. There was little else. He smoked a cigarette out of the window as he transferred his clothes from the wardrobe to his suitcase, put on a pair of Levis and a shirt, slipped his wallet and phone into his pocket and took the lift down to reception.

“I’d like to check out, please,” he told the receptionist.

She keyed his details into her computer. “Certainly, Mr. Anderson. How was your stay with us?”

“Very pleasant.”

He settled the bill in cash, collected the Volvo from the underground car park and drove back to Hackney.

He drove through the Square Mile, its clean streets, well-shod denizens, steepling towers and minarets a gleaming testament to capitalism. He continued past Liverpool Street, through trendy Shoreditch and then passed into the hinterland beyond. Milton had noticed the arcade of shops as he had driven home last night. There was an estate agent’s between a fried chicken takeaway and a minicab office. He parked and walked along the arcade, pausing to look at the properties advertised in the window. He went inside and a man in a cheap, shiny suit asked him if he could be of help.

“I’m looking for a place to rent.”

“Furnished or unfurnished?”

“Furnished.”

“Anywhere in particular? We’ve got a nice place in a school conversion near to the station.”

“Somewhere close to Blissett House.”

The man looked at him as if he was mad. “That’s not the best area. It’s rough.”

“That’s alright.”

“Do you work in the city?”

“No, I’m a writer,” he said, using the cover story he had prepared as he had travelled across London. “I’m researching a book on police corruption. I need to be in the middle of things. I don’t care if it’s rough. It’s better if it’s authentic. Do you have anything?”

The man flicked through his folder of particulars, evidently keen not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “We just had a place come up on Grove Road. Terraced house, two bedrooms. I wouldn’t say it’s anything special, but it’s cheap and it’s on the edge of the Estate. Best I can do, I’m afraid. Most stock in the blocks themselves are kept back for council tenants.”

“Can you show me?”

“Of course.”

The maisonette was close to the office and, since it was a bright, warm day, they walked. The hulk of Blissett House loomed over them as they passed beneath the railway line and into an estate that had been cleared, the brutalist blocks replaced by neat and tidy semi-detached houses. They were painted a uniform pale orange, and each had its own little scrap of garden behind a metal fence. Some houses were occupied by their owners, and marked by careful maintenance. Others were rented, distinguished by overgrown lawns that stank of dog excrement, boarded windows and wheelie bins that overflowed with trash. They continued on, picking up Grove Road. The house that the agent led them to was the last in a terrace that was in a poor state of repair. It was a tiny sliver of a house, only as wide as a single window and the front door. Solid metal security gates had been fitted to the doors and windows, graffiti had been sprayed on the walls and the remains of a washing machine had been dumped and left to rust in the street right next to the kerb. The agent unlocked the security door and yanked it aside. The property was spartan, a small lounge, kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor and two bedrooms above. The furniture was cheap and insubstantial. The rooms smelt of fried food and stale urine.

“It’s a little basic,” the agent said, not even bothering to try and pretend otherwise. “I’m sorry. We have other places, though. I’ve got the key for another one, much nicer, ten minutes away.”

“This’ll do,” Milton said. “I’ll take it.”

12

It took half an hour back at the office for the formalities of the lease to be taken care of. Milton paid the deposit and the advance rent in cash. There were no references or credit checks required, which was just as well, since a search of Milton’s details would not have returned any results. The agent asked him whether he was sure that the house was what he wanted, and, again, offered a handful of alternatives that he thought would be more appropriate. Milton politely declined the offer, thanked him for his help, took the keys and left the office.

There was a small mini-market serving the area. It was sparsely stocked, a few bags of crisps and boxes of cereal displayed under harsh strip lights that spat and fizzed. Alcohol and cigarettes, however, were well provided for, secured behind the Perspex screen from behind which the owner surveyed his business with suspicious eyes. Milton nodded to the man as he made his way inside and received nothing but a wary tip of the head in return. He made his way through the shop, picking out cleaning products, a carton of orange juice and a bag of ice. He took his goods to the owner arranged them on the lip of counter ahead of the screen. As the man rang his purchases up, Milton looked behind him to shelves that were loaded with alcohol: gin, vodka, whiskey.

The owner caught his glance? “You want?”

He paused, and almost wavered. 692 days, he reminded himself. 692 going on 693.

He needed a meeting badly.

“No, just those, please.”

Milton paid and returned to the maisonette. He unlocked the doors and scraped the security door against the concrete lintel as he yanked it aside. It didn’t take long to establish himself. He unpacked in the larger of the two bedrooms, hanging the clothes in a wardrobe made of flimsy sheets of MDF. He spread his sleeping bag out across the lumpy mattress, went downstairs to the kitchen and took out the mop and bucket he found in a small cupboard. He filled the bucket with hot water, added detergent, and started to attack the layers of grease that had stratified across the cheap linoleum floor.

It took Milton six hours to clean the house and, even then, he had only really scratched the surface. The kitchen was presentable: the floor was clean, the fridge and oven had been scoured to remove the encrusted stains, the utensils, crockery and surfaces were scrubbed until the long-neglected dirt had been ameliorated. There were mouse droppings scattered all about but, save clearing them away, there was nothing that Milton could do about that. He moved onto the bathroom, spending an hour scrubbing the toilet, the sink and the bath and washing the floor. When he was finally finished he undressed and stood beneath the shower, washing in its meagre stream of warm water until he felt clean. He put on a fresh t-shirt and jeans, took his leather jacket from where he had hung it over the banister, went outside and locked the door behind him. He set off for the main road.

He took out his phone and opened the bookmarked page on his internet browser. He double-tapped an icon and his mapping application opened. His destination was a three-mile walk away. He had an hour before the meeting, and it was a hot evening. He decided that rather than take the bus, he would walk.

St Mary Magdalene church was on the left-hand side of the road, set back behind a low brick wall, well-trimmed topiary and a narrow fringe of grass studded with lichen-covered gravestones from a hundred years ago. A sign had been tied to the railings: two capital As, set inside a blue triangle that was itself set within a blue circle. An arrow pointed towards the church. Milton felt a disconcerting moment of doubt and paused by the gate to adjust the lace of his shoe. He looked up and down the street, satisfying himself that he was not observed. He knew the consequences for being seen in a place like this would be draconian and swift; suspension would be immediate, the termination of his employment would follow soon after, and there was the likelihood of prosecution. He was ready to leave the service, but on his own terms, and not like that.

He passed through the open gate and followed a gravel path around the side of the building, descended a flight of stairs and entered the basement through an open door. The room inside was busy with people and full of the noise of conversation. A folding table had been set up and arranged with a vat of hot water, two rows of mismatched mugs, a plastic cup full of plastic spoons, jars of coffee and an open box of tea bags, a large two-pint container of milk, a bowl of sugar and a plate of digestive biscuits. The man behind the table was black and heavy-set, with a well-trimmed salt-and-pepper beard and hair cropped close to his scalp. His arms bulged with muscle and his shirt was tight around his chest and shoulders.

Milton approached the table.

“Can I get you a drink?” the man said.

“Coffee, please.”

The man smiled, took one of the mugs and added two spoonfuls of coffee granules. “Haven’t seen you before,” he said.

“My first time.”

The man poured hot water into the mug. “Your first meeting here or your first ever?”

“First time here.”

“Alright then,” the man said. A silence extended but, before it could become uncomfortable, the man filled it. “I’m Rutherford,” he said. “Dennis Rutherford, but everyone just calls me Rutherford.”

“John.”

“Nice to meet you, John.” He handed him the mug. “Help yourself to biscuits. The meeting’s about to get started. It’s busy tonight — go in and get a seat it I were you.”

Milton did. The adjacent room was larger, with a low, sloping ceiling and small windows that were cut into the thick brick walls that served as foundations for the church above. A table had been arranged at one end with two chairs behind it, and the rest of the space was filled with folding chairs. A candle had been lit on the table, and tea-lights had been arranged on windowsills and against the wall. The effect was warm, intimate and atmospheric. Posters had been stuck to the walls. One was designed like a scroll, with twelve separate points set out along it. It was headed THE TWELVE STEPS TO RECOVERY.

Milton took a seat near the back and sipped the cheap coffee as the chairs around him started to fill.

A middle-aged man wearing a black polo neck top and jeans sat at one of the chairs behind the table at the front of the room. He banged a spoon against the rim of his mug and the quiet hush of conversation faded away. “Thank you,” the man said. “Good to see so many of you — I’m glad you could come. Let’s get started. My name is Alan, and I’m an alcoholic.”

Milton sat quietly at the back of the room. Alan was the chairman, and he had invited another speaker to address the group. The second man said that he was a lawyer, from the city, and he told his story. It was the usual thing: a man who appeared to be successful was hiding a barrage of insecurities behind addictions to work and drink, a tactic that had worked for years but now was coming at too high a price: family, relationships, his health. The message was clichéd — Milton had heard it all before, a thousand times before — and yet the passion with which the man spoke was infectious. Milton listened avidly, and, when he looked at his watch at the end of the man’s address, half an hour had passed. The floor was opened after that and the audience contributed with observations of their own. Milton felt the urge to raise his hand and speak but he had no idea how best to start his story. He never did. Even if had been able to tell it, he would not have known where to start. There was so much that he would not have been able to relate. He felt the usual relief to be there, the same sense of peace that he always felt, but it was something else entirely to put those thoughts into words. How would the others feel about his history? The things that he had done? It made him feel secretive, especially compared to the searing honesty of those around him. They talked openly and passionately, several of them struggling through tears of anger and sadness. Despite the sure knowledge that he belonged there with them, his inability to take part made him feel like a fraud.

13

At the end of the meeting a group gathered to talk and smoke cigarettes outside. They smiled at Milton as he climbed the steps from the basement. He knew that their smiles were meant as encouragement for him to stop and speak. They meant well, of course they did, but it was pointless; he couldn’t possibly. He smiled back at them but did not stop. He had no idea what he would say. Far better to make a quick exit.

“Hey, man — hey, hey, hold up.”

Milton was at the gate, ready to turn onto the street to start the walk home. He paused, and turned back. The man who had been serving the coffee, Rutherford, was jogging across in his direction. Milton took a moment to consider him again. He was big, over six foot tall, and solid with it, several stones heavier than he was. He loped across the churchyard, moving with an easy spring that suggested plenty of strength in his legs.

“You don’t hang about,” he said as he reached him. “There’s a café down the road. People stop for coffee or a bite to eat, have a chat. You should come.”

Milton smiled. “Not for me. But thanks.”

“You didn’t speak in the meeting. There’s no point just sitting there, man, you got to get stuck in.”

“Listening’s good enough.”

“Not if you want to really make a difference. I had that problem myself, back when I first started coming. Thought it was crazy, no-one was gonna want to listen to my shit. But I got over it in the end. Eventually, the way I saw it, coming along and not doing anything was a waste of my time. That’s why I do the coffees — start small, right, and take it from there? You got to get involved.” Rutherford spoke slowly and deliberately, as if measuring each word. The effect was to imbue each with a persuasive weight. He was an impressive man.

“I suppose so.”

“Which way you headed, man? Back to Hackney?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. Come on — you don’t mind, we can walk together.”

“You don’t want to go to the café?”

“Nah, won’t make no difference if I miss it tonight. I’m up at six tomorrow, I should probably get an early night.”

Milton would have preferred to walk alone but there was something infectious in Rutherford’s bearing that stalled his objections and, besides, it didn’t look like he was going to take no for an answer. They set off together, making their way along Holloway Road towards Highbury Corner.

He started speaking. “What’s your story, then?”

Milton took a breath. “The same as most people, I suppose. I was drinking too much and I needed help to stop. How about you?”

“Same deal, man. I was in the Forces. Fifteen years. Saw some stuff I never want to see again. I only stopped feeling guilty about it when I was drunk.” He turned to look at him. “Don’t mind me being presumptuous, John, but you’re a soldier too, right?”

“Is it that obvious?”

“You know what it’s like — we got that look. Where did you serve? The Sandpit?”

“For a while.”

“Ireland?”

“Yes.”

“I been all over the place too, man. ‘See the world’, that’s what they told me when they were trying to get me to sign up, like it’s some glamorous holiday. It was fun for a while but then I saw what it was really all about. By the time I got wise to it I was a raging drunk.”

“What happened?”

“Look, I ain’t saying I’m not grateful for what the Army did for me. When I was a younger man, ten years ago, I got into all sorts of mess that I didn’t want to be getting involved in. Trouble, man, all kinds of trouble. Got myself in with a bad crowd from around here. Ended up doing plenty of things I regret. Drink and drugs — you know what it’s like. I got friends from around that time, plenty of them got banged up and a couple of them are dead. Could’ve easily been me. The army was a way to get away from all that.” He spoke fluently, settling comfortably into a story that he had clearly told many times before, probably at the meetings. “And it worked, least for a time. Took me away from here, broadened my horizons, gave me structure and discipline in my life. And those things are good things, things I needed. But they come at a price, right? The things I saw while I was out there doing my thing—” He paused. “Well, shit, it got so bad by the end that I could only live with myself with a drink inside me. You know what I mean?”

He was full of heat and passion. Milton said that he understood.

“I don’t take this life lightly, John. The way I see it, the Fellowship has given me a blessing. The gift of knowledge. I can see what’s wrong with how things are. I know the things that work and the things that don’t. Drink and drugs — they don’t. Not many people get given a chance to make a difference, but I did. And, one day at a time, I ain’t going to throw it away.”

They passed into the busy confluence of traffic and pedestrians circulating around the roundabout at Highbury Corner and moved onto Dalston Lane. Youngsters gathered outside the tube, ready to filter towards the pubs and bars of Islington High Street. Touts offered cheap rides, immigrants pushed burgers and hot dogs, drunken lads spilled out of the pub next to the station.

“How?” Milton asked him.

“How what, man?”

“How are you going to make a difference?”

“Boxing. I used to be a tasty heavyweight when I was a lad. I got to be big early, big and strong, and I had a right hand you didn’t want to get hit by. If I’d stayed with it, who knows? I wouldn’t have got into the trouble I did, that’s for sure, I wouldn’t have gotten into the army, and I reckon I was probably good enough to make a decent career out of it. I’m too old and out of shape for that now, but I’ve still got it all up in here.” He tapped a finger to his temple. “So I’ve set up a club for youngsters, see? Amateurs, girls and boys, all ages. They ain’t got nothing to do around here, nothing except run with the gangs and get into mischief, and I know better than most where that road leads. You’re a younger born here, you run with one of them gangs, there are two places for you to go: prison or the crematorium. The military is one way out, but I can’t recommend that no more. So I try and give them another way. Something else to do, some structure, some discipline, and you hope that’s enough. It can be the difference. And, the way I see it, if I help a handful of them get away from temptation, that’s good enough. That’s my job done.”

“I used to box,” Milton said, smiling for the first time. “A long time ago.”

Rutherford looked him up and down: tall, lean and hard. “You’ve got the look for it,” he said. “Cruiserweight?”

“Maybe these days,” Milton smiled. “Middleweight back then. Where’s the club?”

“Church hall on Grove Road, near the park. Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights and all day Saturdays. Got about twenty regulars now.” His eyes flashed with passion. “Got some kids who are on the fringes of the gangs. Some of them have potential. This one girl, man, you wouldn’t believe how hard she can hit. Like a pile driver, knocked this lad who was giving her lip into the middle of next week. He never gave her lip after that.” He grinned at the memory of it.

They reached Milton’s turning. “This is me,” he said.

Rutherford cocked an eyebrow in surprise. “You living on the Estate?”

“Yes.”

Rutherford sucked his teeth.

“Not good?”

“You’re in the worst bit of Hackney and Hackney’s different. You talk about Waltham Forest, you talk about Camden, Southwark, Lambeth, all the rest — sure, they got bad people there. Plenty of serious players. But here? Man, Hackney’s different. You understand? The boys here are more serious than anywhere else. Everyone is banging. I mean, everyone. You can’t even compare what it’s like here with them other places. You best be careful, you hear? Don’t matter how big you are, they won’t care about that. They got a knife or a shooter and they think you’re worth rolling, I’m telling you, man, it don’t matter how mean you look, they’ll do it.”

“Nice to meet you, Rutherford.”

“You too, John. You take it easy. Maybe I’ll see you at the meeting next week?”

“Maybe.”

“And say something next time, alright? You look like you got plenty on your mind. You’ll be surprised the difference it makes.”

Milton watched as the big man walked away from him. He turned off the main road and headed into the Estate, stopping at the mini-market to buy a bag of ice. He ignored the sullen aggression of the teenagers who were gathered outside the shop, the silence as he passed through them and then the hoots of derision, the calls of “lighty!” and “batty boy”, as he set off again. Most of them were young, barely in their teens. Milton did not give them a second look.

It was half-ten by the time he returned to the maisonette. He took the carton of orange juice and poured into one of the newly cleaned glasses. He opened the bag of ice and dropped in three chunks, putting the rest in the freezer. He took off his clothes and put his gun and holster under a pillow. He swilled the juice around to cool. He pulled a chair up to the window, then went and sat down, letting the hot air, the compound smell of baked asphalt and fried food, breathe over his body. He sipped the cool drink, feeling the tang against the back of his throat, felt it slide cold down his throat and into his stomach.

He filled up his glass again, this time with more ice, and sat back down. The bedroom overlooked the front of the house. He looked out onto the street and, beyond that, the looming mass of Blissett House. A group of young boys had gathered at the junction of the road, the glowing red tips of their cigarettes and joints flaring as they inhaled.

Milton felt restless. He went over and took his gun from beneath the pillow, slipped out the magazine and pumped the single round onto the bed. He tested the spring of the magazine and of the breech and drew a quick bead on various objects round the room. His aim was off, just a little, but detectable nonetheless. It was the tiny tremor in his hand. He had noticed it in France and it seemed to be getting worse. He snapped the magazine back. He pumped a round into the breech, put up the safety, and replaced the gun under the pillow.

He watched the kids outside for another five minutes, the sound of their raucous laughter carrying all the way back to the open window. Then, tired, he closed the curtains, finished undressing, and went to bed.

14

Elijah watched the Vietnamese hassling the shoppers as they came out of Tesco. They were in the car park, far enough away from the entrance to go unnoticed by the security guards. They stepped up to the shoppers with their trolleys full of groceries and held open the satchels that they wore around their shoulders. There were four of them, two men and two women, all of them slim and dark-haired. The satchels were full of pirated DVDs. They were given the brush off most of the time but, occasionally, someone would stop, rifle through the bags and hand over a ten pound note in exchange for a couple of them.

“You ready, younger?” said Pops.

“Yeah,” Elijah said. “Ready.”

“Off you go, then.”

He did exactly as Pops had instructed him. One of the Vietnamese women was distracted by Little Mark, who pretended to be interested in her DVDs. She kept her money in a small shoulder bag that she allowed to hang loosely across her arm. Elijah ran up to her and, her attention diverted, he yanked on the bag as hard as he could. Her arm straightened as he tugged the bag down, her fingers catching it. A second, harder tug broke her grip and he was away. He sprinted back again, the other boys following after him in close formation. The two men started in pursuit, vaulting the wall that separated the car park from the pavement and the bus stop beyond, but it did not take long for them to abandon the chase. They were outnumbered and being led into unfriendly territory. They knew that the money was not worth the risk.

They boys ran down Morning Lane, whooping and hollering, eventually taking a sharp left along the cycle path that ran underneath the East London Line. They sprinted up the shallow incline on the other side of the tunnel and slowed to a jog. Once they were in the Estate they found a low wall and sat down along it.

Pops held up his fist and Elijah bumped it with his. He beamed with pride. He knew he ought to keep his cool, hide away the excitement and happiness that he felt, but he could not help it. He did not care how foolish it made him look.

“How much you get?”

Elijah took the notes from his pocket and fanned through them. “Two hundred,” he reported.

“Not bad.” Pops reached across and took the notes. He counted out fifty and gave it back to Elijah. “Go on, younger, put that towards some new Jordans. You done good.”

Little Mark went into the minimart nearby and returned with a large bottle of cider and a bagful of chocolate. The cider was passed around, each boy taking a long swig of it. Elijah joined in when the plastic bottle reached him, the sickly sweet liquid tasting good as he tipped it down his throat.

“What did you get?” Kidz asked.

Little Mark opened the bag and emptied out the contents. He laid the bars out on the wall. “Twix, KitKat, Mars, Yorkie.”

“Too pikey.”

“Maltesers. Milky Way.”

“Too gay.”

“Got them for you, innit? Galaxy, Caramel — that’s it. You want something else, go get it yourself.”

Pops tossed the chocolate around and they devoured it.

“I gotta jet,” Pops said eventually, folding the wad of notes and sliding them into his pocket. “My woman wants to see me. I’ll see you boys tomorrow, aight?”

“Hold up,” Little Mark said. “I’m going your way.”

“Me, too,” Kidz said.

Elijah was left with Pinky. He wanted to go with the others but Pinky got up and stretched. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk back with you.”

They set off together, making their way through the Estate and cutting across a scrubby patch of grass. Pinky was a little older, and a little taller, than Elijah. His face was sharply featured, with a hook nose and prominent cheekbones. He was normally boisterous and brash, full of spiteful remarks, yet now he was quiet and brooding. Elijah quickly felt uncomfortable and wondered if there was a way he could disentangle himself without causing offence. They made their way through the Estate to a children’s playground. The surface was soft and springy beneath their trainers but the equipment had all been vandalised. The swings had been looped over the frames so that they hung high up, uselessly, and the roundabout had been pulled from its fixings. Vials of crack were crushed underfoot, shards that glittered like diamonds amid the dog mess, discarded newspaper and fast food wrappers.

“Let’s sit down here for a minute,” Pinky said, pointing to a bench at the edge of the playground. “Something I want to talk to you about.”

Elijah’s nerves settled like a fist in his stomach. “I got to get back to my Mums,” he said.

“You don’t want a quick smoke?” Pinky reached into his jacket and grinned as he opened his hand; he had a small bag of weed and a packet of Rizlas. “Sit yourself down. I wanna get high. Won’t take long.”

Elijah did as he was told and sat.

Pinky was quiet as he held the cigarette paper open on his lap and tipped a line of marijuana along the fold. He rolled the joint with dexterous fingers, sealed it and put it to his lips. He put flame to the end and sucked down greedily. He did not give the joint to Elijah.

“You quietened down now, little man,” he said.

“Yeah?” Elijah said, uncertainly.

“You don’t get wanna too excited.”

“What do you mean?”

“That big smile you had on your face back then. Like you’d won the fucking lottery. Robbing those nips ain’t nothing. Rolling that train weren’t, either. You ain’t done shit yet.”

Elijah was ready to fire back some lip but he saw the look in the boy’s face and decided against it. He knew banter, and this was something different; hostility sparked in his dark eyes and he could see it would take very little for the sparks to catch and grow into something worse.

“You don’t know me, do you?”

“What you mean?”

“You don’t know who I am.”

“Course I do.”

“So?”

“You’re Pinky,” he said with sudden uncertainty.

“That’s right. But you don’t know me, do you? Not really know me.”

“I guess not.”

“You know my brother? Dwayne? You heard of him?”

“No.”

The joint had gone out. Pinky lit it again. “Let me tell you a story. Five years ago, my brother was in the LFB, like me. They called him High Top. Your brother, Jules, he was in, too. The two of them was close, close as you can be, looked out for each other, same way that we look out for each other, innit?” He put the joint to his lips and drew down on it hard. “There was this one time, right, there was a beef between this crew from Tottenham and the LFB. So they went over there, caused trouble, battered a couple of their boys. Tottenham came over these ends to retaliate, and they found your brother and my brother smoking in the park. Like we are, right now. They got the jump on them, they was all tooled up and our brothers didn’t have nothing. Rather than stay and get stuck in, your fassy brother breezed. Straight out of the park, didn’t look back, forgot all about my brother. And he wasn’t so lucky. The Tottenham boys had knives and cleavers and they wanted to make an example out of him. They cut my brother up, bruv. Sliced him — his face, across his back, his legs, all over. Ended up stabbed him in the gut. He was in hospital for two weeks while they stitched together again. His guts — they was all fucked up. He weren’t never the same again. He has to shit into a bag now and it ain’t never going to get better. Turned him into a shadow of himself.”

“Fuck that,” Elijah managed to say. “My brother would never have done that.”

“Yeah? Really? Your brother, what’s he doing now?”

“We don’t see him no more.”

“Don’t go on like you don’t know. I seen him — he’s a fuckin’ addict. He was a coward then and now he’s a fuckin’ junkie.”

Elijah got up from the bench.

“Give me that money,” Pinky said.

Elijah shook his head. “No. Pops gave it to me. I earned it. It’s mine.”

“You wanna fall out with me, little man?”

“No—”

Pinky grabbed him by the lapels of his coat and shoved him to the ground. He fell atop him, pressing his right arm across his throat, pinning him down, and reached into the inside of his jacket with his left hand. He found the notes and pocketed them.

“Remember your place,” he said. “You ain’t nothing to me. You think you a gangster, but you ain’t shit. Give me lip like that again and I’ll shank you.” He took out a butterfly knife, shook it open and held the blade against Elijah’s cheek. “One jerk of my hand now, bruv, and you marked for life. Know what it’ll say?”

“No,” Elijah said, his voice shaking.

“‘Pinky’s bitch.’”

Elijah lay still as Pinky drew the cold blade slowly down his face. Pinky took a bunched handful of his jacket and pulled his head up and then, with a pivot, slammed him down again. The surface was soft but, even so, the sudden impact was dizzying. Pinky got up and backed away. He pointed at Elijah’s head and laughed. Elijah felt a dampness against the back of his crown and in the nape of his neck. He reached around, gingerly, expecting to find his own blood. He did not. Pinky had pushed him back into dog mess. The shit was in his hair and against his skin, sliding down beneath the collar of his jacket.

“Later, little man,” Pinky laughed at him. He left Elijah on the floor.

He bit his lip until the older boy was out of sight and then, alone, he allowed himself to cry.

15

Milton waited until the sun had sunk below the adjacent houses before he went out to scout the area. It was a humid, close evening, the stifling heat of the day had soaked into the Estate and now it was slowly seeping out. Televisions flickered in the front rooms of the houses on his street, most of the neighbours leaving their windows uncovered. Arguments played out of open doors. The atmosphere sparked with the dull electric throb of tension, of barely suppressed aggression and incipient violence.

The area seemed to come alive at night. There were people everywhere. Youngsters gathered on street corners and on weed-strewn playgrounds. Others listlessly tossed basketballs across a pock-marked court while they were watched by girls who laced their painted nails through the wire mesh fence. A lithe youngster faked out his doughty guard and made a stylish lay-up, the move drawing whoops from the spectators. Music played from the open windows of cars and houses. Graffiti was everywhere, one crude mural showing groups of children with guns, killing one another. Milton carried on, further along the road. A railway bridge that bore the track into Liverpool Street cast the arcade of shops below into a pool of murky gloom. A man smoking Turkish cigarettes levered rolls of carpet back into his shop, drivers gathered around a minicab office, the sound of clashing metal from the open windows of a gym with a crude stencil of Charles Atlas on the glass. The arcade carried the sickly smell of kebab meat, fried chicken, and dope.

Milton took it all in, remembering the layout of the streets and the alleyways that linked them. Two streets to the east and he was in an area that bore the unmistakeable marks of gentrification: a gourmet restaurant, a chi-chi coffee shop that would be full of prams in the daytime, a happening pub full of hipsters in drainpipe jeans and fifties’ frocks, an elegant Victorian terrace in perfect repair, beautifully tended front gardens behind painted iron fences. Two streets west and he was back in the guts of the Estate, the ten-storey slabs of housing blocks with the nauseatingly bright orange balconies, festooned with satellite dishes.

Milton crossed into Victoria Park, a wide open space fringed by fume-choked fir trees. A series of paved paths cut through the park, intermittent and unreliable streetlamps providing discreet pools of light that made the darkness in between even deeper and more threatening. The area’s reputation kept it quiet at night save for drunken city boys who used it as a shortcut, easy pickings for the gangs that roamed across it looking for prey.

Milton passed through the gate and walked towards the centre. A group of youngsters had congregated around one of the park benches. One of their number was showing off on his BMX, bouncing off the front wheel as the others laughed at his skill. Milton assessed them coolly. There were eight of them, mid-teens, all dressed in the uniform: caps beneath hoodies, baggy jeans and bright white trainers.

He kept walking. As he drew closer he heard the sound of music being played through the reedy speaker of a mobile phone. It had a fast, thumping beat and aggressive lyrics. The rapper was talking about beefs, and pieces, and merking anyone who got in his way.

One of the group sauntered out from the pack and blocked his path.

“What you want, chi chi man?”

The boy showed no fear. His insolence was practiced, and drew hollers of pleasure from the audience. “I’m a journalist,” he said.

“You BBC? You on the television? Can you get me on the TV?”

“No, I’m working on a book.”

Laughter rang out. “No-one reads books, bro.”

“It’s about police corruption. You know anything about that?”

Milton watched the boy. He was a child, surely no older than fifteen. There was a disturbing aspect to his face, a lack of expression with his eyes constantly flickering to the left and right. Milton had seen that appearance before; soldiers from warzones looked that way, a pathological watchfulness to ward against the threat of sudden attack. Milton knew enough about psychology to know that kind of perpetual vigilance was unhealthy. He knew soldiers who had been constantly on the alert for danger, who equated any show of emotion with violence, and from whom all feeling had been smelted. They became machines.

“The pigs are all bent, man,” the boy told him. “You might as well write about the sky being blue, or water being wet. You ain’t teaching no-one nothing round these ends. No-one’s gonna read that.”

“Do you know Elijah Warriner?”

“What’s he got to do with the Feds?”

“I want to talk to him. I heard he’s around here sometimes. Is he a friend of yours?”

“That little mong ain’t my friend and there’s no point talking to him. He don’t know fuck all. You want, though, we could have a conversation? You and me?”

Milton noticed one of the boys in the group take his phone from his pocket and start to tap out a message. “Fine,” he said. “What would you like to talk about?”

“Wanna know about violence? I shanked a guy last week. Want to know about that?”

“Not really.”

“I could shank you, too. I got a knife, right here in my pocket.” He sauntered forwards, towards Milton, still showing no sign of how outsized he was. He patted the bulge in his hip pocket. “Six inch blade, lighty. I could walk up to you right now, like this, take the knife, shank you right in the guts.” He made a fist and jabbed it towards Milton’s stomach. “Bang, you’d be done for, blood. Finished. I could make you bleed, big man, right in the middle of the park. Ain’t no-one gonna come and help you out here, neither. What you think of that?”

Milton said nothing.

“Man got shook!” one of the others shouted out. “Pinky shook the big man.”

Milton looked down at the boy. He was tall and thin and wiry, couldn’t have been more than nine stone soaking weight. Calling his bluff would provoke the escalation he seemed to want, and there was no point in doing that. He wanted them to think he was a journalist, harmless, a little frightened and out of his depth. The hooting and hollering around them continued, but the atmosphere had become charged.

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

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

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

“Nah,” the boy said. “Ain’t no beef.”

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

“You could say that.”

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

“You know this man, Elijah?”

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

“And do you want to talk to him?”

Elijah shook his head.

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

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

“That right?”

“That’s right. A journalist.”

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

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

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

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

“You don’t need to know my name.”

“I don’t want any trouble.”

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

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

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

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

“Thank you,” Milton said.

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

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

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

What on earth was he doing here?

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

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

16

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

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

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

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

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

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

Milton waited for him to pause and took the opportunity to clear his throat. “Rutherford?”

He turned and his face broke into a wide, expressive smile. “Hey! It’s the quiet man.”

“How are you?”

“Very good. It’s John, right?”

“Yes, that’s right. Sorry to disturb you. Could I have a word?”

Rutherford nodded. He reached down for a towel and a plastic water bottle and went over to a pew that had been pushed against the wall at the side of the room. He scrubbed his face with the towel and then drank deeply from the bottle.

“This is impressive,” Milton said.

“Thanks. It’s hard work, but we’re doing good. Been here a year this weekend. Don’t know how much longer we’ll be around, though. Ain’t got much more money. The council do us a decent price on the rent, but they’re not giving it away, and I can’t charge the kids much more than I’m charging at the moment. Something has to happen or we won’t be here next time this year.”

“Can anyone join?”

“If they’re prepared to behave and work hard. You got someone in mind?”

“I might have.”

The man took another swig from his bottle. “Who is it?”

“He’s the son of a friend. He’s going off the rails a little. He needs some discipline.”

“He wouldn’t be the first boy like that I’ve had through those doors. We’ve got plenty of youngers who used to run in the gangs.” The man spoke simply, and inexpressively, but his words were freighted with quiet dignity and an unmistakeable authenticity. Milton couldn’t help but be impressed by him. “Which gang is it?”

“I’m not sure. I met some of them in the park last night.”

“That’ll be the LFB, then. London Fields Boys.”

“What are they like?”

“Been around for a long time — they were running around these ends before I went away, so plenty of years now. I remember we had a beef with them on more than one occasions — big fight in the park this one time, we uprooted all these fence posts and chased ‘em off. The members change all the time but they’ve always had a bad reputation. How deep’s your boy involved?”

“Not very, I think. He’s young.”

“If you’ve caught him early, we’ll have a better chance of straightening him out.”

“So you take new members?”

“Always looking for them. Bring your lad along. We’ll see what we can do.”

“Going to the meeting on Tuesday night?”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Might see you then.”

Milton made his way back to the main road.

He went into the café and took a seat.

“Scrambled eggs with cream, two rashers of bacon and a glass of orange juice,” he said when the girl came to take his order. He was hungry.

He checked his watch. It was a little after eight. The food arrived and he set about it. When he was finished it was a quarter past. He opened the newspaper on the table and read it. There was a short story about the killings in France, but no new details. He skipped ahead, turning the pages and reading until half past eight, and then nine. There was no sign of Elijah. Fair enough, he thought, as he went to settle his bill. He hadn’t expected it to be easy. Getting through to the boy was going to take some time.

17

Little Mark, Kidz and Elijah had met for lunch at the fast food place nearest to the gates of the school. Elijah had hurried out from double science when he received the text from Pops earlier that morning. He was wearing the white shirt, green blazer and black trousers that made up his uniform and he felt stupid as he jogged the last few yards down the road to the arcade. Little Mark was wearing his usual low-slung jeans and windcheater and Kidz was wearing cargo pants and a hoodie.

“You look nice,” they laughed at him as he drew alongside.

“I know,” Elijah said ruefully. “I look stupid.”

“You still going to school?”

“Yeah,” Elijah said. “So?”

“Not saying nothing,” Kidz said, stifling a laugh.

“I don’t go all the time,” he lied.

“What you doing out here anywhere? Thought you’d be in the canteen with all the other little squares?”

“Got a text from Pops. He told me to be here.”

Other kids from school started to arrive. The canteen was only ever half full; everyone preferred to come down here for fried chicken and pizza.

“Had an argument with my Mums this morning,” Little Mark said.

“Let me guess — you ate everything in the house?”

Little Mark grinned. “Nah, bro, I slept right through my alarm.”

“Probably ate that, too.”

“I’m in bed, right, and it’s eight or something and my Mums is shouting at me to get up, says I’m gonna miss school, and this is the first time I realise, right, she still thinks I go to school. I ain’t been for six months.”

“Shows how much she pays attention to you, bro. That’s child abuse, innit? That’s neglect. You ought give that Childline a call.”

The happy laughter paused as they heard the rumbling thump thump thump of the bass. It was audible long before they even saw the car but then the black BMW turned the corner, rolled up to the side of the road and parked.

“Shit, bruv,” Little Mark said. “You know who that is?”

“What’s he doing here?” Kidz said, unable to hide the quiver of nervousness in his voice.

“Who?” Elijah asked.

“You don’t know shit,” Kidz said, sarcastically. “That’s Bizness’s car. You never seen him before?”

Elijah did not answer. He hadn’t, but he didn’t want to admit that in front of the others. He had the new BRAPPPPP! record, and their poster was on the wall of his bedroom, but that all seemed childish now.

The BMW kept its engine running. It was fitted with a powerful sound system, and heavy bass throbbed from the bass bins that had been installed where the boot had been. Elijah looked at the car with wide eyes. He knew it would have cost fifty or sixty thousand, and that was without the cost of the custom paint job, the wheel trims, the sound system and all the other accessories.

The front door of the BMW opened and a man slid out from the driver’s seat. Elijah recognised him immediately. Risky Bizness was tall and slender, a good deal over six feet, his already impressive height accentuated by an unruly afro that added another three or four inches. His face was striking rather than handsome: his nose was crooked, his forehead a little too large, his skin marked with acne scars. His eyebrows, straight and manicured, sat above cold and impenetrable black eyes. He was wearing a thin designer windcheater, black fingerless gloves and his white Nike hi-tops were pristine. He wore two chunky gold rings on his fingers, diamond earrings through the lobes of both ears and a heavy gold chain swung low around his neck.

“Aight, youngers,” he said.

“Aight, Bizness?” Kidz said.

“Which one of you is JaJa?”

Elijah felt his stomach flip. “I am,” he said.

Bizness smiled at him, baring two gold teeth. “Don’t worry, younger, I ain’t gonna bite. I got something I want you to do for me. Get in the car. Won’t take a minute.”

Kidz and Little Mark gawped at that but Elijah did as he was told. The interior of the car was finished in leather and the bass was so loud it throbbed through his kidneys. Bizness got into the car next to him and closed the door. He leant forwards and counter-clockwised the volume so he could speak more easily.

“One of my boys has clocked you, younger. Says you got a lot of fight in you. That right?”

“I don’t know,” he said, trying to stop his voice from trembling.

“He says you do. You hang with Pops’s little crew, right?

“Yeah,” Elijah said, tripping over the word a little.

“Don’t be so nervous — there ain’t no need to be scared of me.”

“I ain’t scared.”

“That’s good,” Bizness grinned, gold teeth glinting in his mouth. “Good to see a younger with a bit about himself. Says to me that that younger could make something of himself, get a bit of a reputation. Reminds me what I used to be like when I was green, like you, before all this.” He brushed his fingers down his clothes and then extended them to encompass the car. “Get me?”

“Yes.”

“So a friend of a friend says to me he’s heard of a younger who’s just starting running with Pops’s crew, that he’s got some backbone. Sound like anyone you know?”

“I guess.”

Bizness snorted. “You guess.” He looked him up and down. “You’re big for your age.”

“Big enough,” he said defensively.

“That’s right, bruv. Big enough. I like it. It ain’t the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog, that right? You got some balls, younger. I like that. How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen. Just getting started in the world. Getting a name for yourself. Getting some respect. That’s what you want, right?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Yeah. You’re at what I’d call a crossroads, right — it’s like Star Wars. You watched that, right, that last film?”

“Course,” he replied indignantly.

“And it’s shit, right, for the most part, except there’s that one bit that makes sense, you know where Anakin has that choice where he can either go the good way or the bad way? The light or the dark? He thinks like he’s got a choice, but he ain’t got no choice at all, not really. It’s an illusion. The dark side has him by the balls and it ain’t never going to let him go. Destiny, all that shit, you know what I mean? That’s where you are, blood. Your teachers, the police, the social, your Mums — they’ll all say you got a choice, you can choose to try hard at school, get your exams, get a job, except that’s all bullshit. Bullshit. Brothers like us, we ain’t never going to get given nothing in this world. Trouble is, a black man loves his new trainers too much. Right? And if we want to get the stuff we like, we gonna have to take it. Right?”

“Yeah.” Elijah laughed, nervously. Bizness was charismatic and funny, but there was a tightness about him that made it impossible to relax. Elijah got the impression that everything would be fine as long as he agreed with him. He was sure that arguing would be a bad idea.

“So we agree that getting busy on the street is the only way for you to get along in this world. It ain’t easy, though, not on your own. Lots of brothers all got the same idea. You want to be successful, you want the kids you hang around with to take you seriously, you need to build up your rep. I can help you with that. You start hanging out with me, your little friends all find out you’re in my crew, how quickly do you think that’s going to happen?”

Elijah could hardly keep the smile from his face. “Quick,” he said.

“No, not quick, blood — instantaneously.” Bizness clicked his fingers. “Just like that. So when I heard that was this new younger on the street, already making a name for himself, getting some respect, I say to myself, that’s the kind of little brother I used to be like, maybe there’s something I can do to help get himself started in life. I’ll do it for you, I guarantee it, but first I need you to prove to me that you’re up to it.”

“I’m up to it,” Elijah insisted. “What is it? What do I have to do?”

“Nothing too bad, I just got something I need taking care of for a little while. You reckon that’s the sort of thing you could do for me?”

“Course,” Elijah said.

Bizness took a Tesco carrier bag and dropped it into Elijah’s lap. It was heavy, solid. It felt metallic.

“Take this home and keep it safe. Somewhere your Mums won’t find it. You got a place like that?”

Elijah thought of his comic box. “Yeah,” he said, “she don’t never come into my room anyway, I can keep it safe.”

“Nice.”

“What is it?”

Bizness grinned at him. “You know already, right?”

“No,” he said, although he thought that perhaps he did.

“There’s no point me telling you not to look, I know you will as soon as I’m gone. Go on, then — open it.”

Elijah opened the mouth of the bag and took out the newspaper package inside. He unfolded it carefully, gently, as if afraid that a clumsy move might cause an explosion. The gun sat in the middle of the splayed newspaper, nestling amongst the newsprint like a fat, malignant tumour. He tentatively stretched out his fingers and traced them down the barrel, the trigger-guard, and then down the butt with its stippled grip. His only knowledge of guns was from his PlayStation, and this looked nothing like the sleek modern weapons you got to use in Special Ops. This looked older, like it might be some sort of antique, something from that Call of Duty where you were in the war against the Nazis. The barrel was long and thin, with a raised sight at the end. The middle part was round and bulbous and, when Elijah pushed against it, he found that it was hinged, and snapped down to reveal six chambers honeycombed inside. A handful of loose bullets gathered in the creases of the newspaper.

“What is it, an antique or something?”

“Don’t matter how old it is, bruv. A gun’s a gun at the end of the day. You get shot, you still gonna die. Go on, it’s not loaded — cock it. You know how to do that?”

The hammer was stiff and he had to pull hard with both thumbs to bring it back. He pulled the trigger. The hammer struck down with a solid click and the barrel rotated. The gun suddenly seemed more than just an abstract idea; it seemed real, and dangerous, and Elijah was frightened.

“You keep that safe for me, bruv, and be ready — when I call you, you better be there, no hanging around, thirty minutes tops. Alright?”

“Alright,” he said.

“Aight. I was right about you — someone I can rely on. Yeah. Aight, out you get, younger. I got to get out of here. Supposed to be seeing my manager, you know what I mean? New record out tomorrow.”

He held out his closed fist for Elijah to bump. Elijah did, everything suddenly seeming surreal. He stepped outside, holding the carrier bag tightly; it was heavy, and the solid weight within bumped up against his thigh. The bass in the BMW cranked back up and the engine revved loudly.

Kidz and Little Mark were sitting on a wall waiting for him. They both wore envious expressions, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

“What did he want?” Kidz said.

Bizness sounded the horn twice, let off the handbrake and fish-tailed away from the kerb, wheelspinning until the rubber bit on the tarmac.

“Just a chat,” Elijah said.

“What’s that?” Little Mark said pointing at the bag.

He clasped the bag tightly. “Nothing.”

18

Milton was in the café again at nine o’clock. The proprietor recognised him. “Scrambled eggs with cream, two rashers of bacon and a glass of orange juice?” Milton nodded with a smile and took the same table as before. He unfolded his copy of the Times and turned the pages as he waited. He turned the page to an article on a shooting in Brixton. A young boy, reported to be sixteen years old, had been shot and killed by another boy. He had passed through the territory of a rival gang to see a girl. The story was backed with a comment, the reporter recouping the deaths in what they were calling the Postcode War. Thirty young boys, almost all of them black, killed this year and it was only halfway through August. Most of them shot or stabbed, one bludgeoned to death with a pipe.

The proprietor brought over his breakfast. “Terrible,” he said, nodding at the open newspaper. He was a Greek, his face grizzled with heavy stubble. He had sad eyes. “When I was growing up, you had an argument with someone you knew and the worse thing that’d happen is you end up having a punch-up, get a black eye or a bloody nose. These days, with them all tooled up like they are, all those guns and knives, you’re lucky if you just end up in hospital. And the only thing most of the victims had done wrong was going out of one area and into another.”

“How many of them were from around here?”

“Three. One of them was just down the road. They shot him. Tried to get into the hardware shop but they finished him off before he could.”

“The police?”

He laughed bitterly. “They ain’t got a clue half the time.” He sneered at the thought of it. “Don’t get me started on them, your breakfast will be cold by the time I’ve finished. You enjoy it, alright? There’s more tea if you want it.”

Milton saw Elijah Warriner standing in the doorway. He was unmistakeably nervous, and Milton thought he might be about to turn and leave. He smiled and waved at the boy, gesturing that he should come inside. Elijah took a look up and down the street and, satisfied, came inside. He was wearing brand new trainers. Despite the heat he was wearing a bright orange puffa jacket that was obviously expensive. He had a Dallas Cowboys shirt beneath the jacket and, beneath that, Milton could see a thick gold chain.

“Sit down,” Milton told him and, after another reluctant pause, he did. “I’m glad you came.”

“Yeah,” Elijah grunted.

“What do you fancy?”

The boy said nothing. His eyes darted around the café. A diamond stud shone against the dark skin of his ear. The jewellery looked obscene on such a young child. Milton noticed that he had chosen a chair that faced away from the window. He did not want to be seen.

“Breakfast?”

“Ain’t hungry.”

“Well, I am. I’ll get some extra chips in case you change your mind”

Elijah slouched back in the chair, trying hard to appear nonchalant. Milton loaded his fork with eggs and put it into his mouth, watching the boy. He made sure he appeared relaxed and said nothing, leaving it for Elijah to speak first. The boy turned the newspaper around and read the short article on the murdered boy. He finished it and shook his head derisively. “Them boys in Brixton ain’t shit. They come up these ends and we’d send ‘em back to their mammas.”

“What’s your gang?”

“LFB,” Elijah replied proudly.

“London Field Boys?”

“S’right.”

“I’ve seen the graffiti on the walls.”

“Yeah, all this round here, this is our ends.”

“Don’t think I’ve seen you in the papers.”

“We are — I mean, we have been.”

“Perhaps you’re not bad enough.”

“What you mean?”

“You need a reputation, don’t you?”

“We’re plenty bad enough.”

“But it looks like you have to kill someone to get into the papers.”

“You don’t think we’ve merked anyone?”

“I don’t know. Some of the boys you’ve been hanging out with — maybe they have. But I know you haven’t.”

“Fuck you know?”

Milton put his knife and fork down and carefully wiped his mouth. He pressed his finger against the photograph of the dead boy. “Do you really think you could do that? You think you could go up to another boy, take out a gun and pull the trigger?”

Elijah tried to hold his gaze but could not. He looked down at the table.

Milton shook his head. “You don’t have it in you. You don’t have it in you for your own conscience to haunt you for the rest of your whole life, telling you you’ve robbed a wife of her husband, children of their father, brothers, friends, everyone. Look at me — I know if a man has it in him. Do you have it in you?”

Elijah stood up. “I didn’t come here to get lectured.”

“I’m trying to put things into perspective.”

“Don’t need that,” he said, making a dismissive gesture with the back of his hand.

“It’s not a bad thing. Why would anyone choose to be like that?”

“You ain’t got any idea what you’re on about.”

“Sit down, Elijah.”

His words had no effect. “‘Sit down, Elijah?’ Who’d you think you are? You don’t know shit about me. You don’t know shit about anything — about these ends, what it’s like to be here, what we do. You obviously think you do, but you don’t.”

“I’m sorry. Sit down. Let’s talk.”

He was angry now and Milton could see he wouldn’t be able to calm him down. “I don’t know what I was thinking, coming here to see you. You can’t help me. You got no idea. I must have been out of my mind.”

He turned and left, the door clattering behind him. Milton rose and followed him into the street. Elijah was heading back towards the Estate, his hood pulled up and his shoulders hunched forwards. Milton was about to set off after him before he thought better of it. He went back inside and sat down again before what was left of his breakfast. He cursed himself. What had he been thinking? He had let his temper get the better of him and now he had lost his opportunity to get through to the boy. He was stubborn and headstrong and the direct approach was not going to be successful. He would have to try another way.

19

Pops and Laura had gone to the Nandos on Bethnal Green Road for dinner and then had taken the bus down towards the cinema in Shoreditch. It had been a good evening. Pops was off the Estate and there was no need for him to impress anyone, or uphold his rep, or put anyone else down. He had an act, and he played it well: hard, impassive, sarcastic. To reveal otherwise would be dangerous, a sign of weakness. He remembered, with vivid clarity, the documentaries his biology teacher had shown them in middle school when she wanted to go off and smoke a fag in the playground. There had been one about the lions in Africa, the Serengeti or whatever the fuck place it was, and it had stuck in his head ever since. Leadership was all about image. The top lion needed to show the others in the pride that he wasn’t to be messed with. If he showed weakness, they’d be on him. They’d fuck him up. Pops knew that there were other elders in the LFB who would fuck him up, too, if he gave them reason.

It was different with Laura. He could relax and be himself. It was always like that with her. She loved her crack, but Pops knew she was into him for much more than just getting lickey. She was older than him, ten years older, and she had that sense of confidence that older women had. She wasn’t like the skanky goonettes on the Estate, always mouthing off, screeching and pouting and giving attitude. They were just girls where Laura was a woman. She was cool. And, man, was she fine.

The film had been running for thirty minutes when the call came. Pops felt his phone vibrating in his pocket and he had taken it out to check the caller ID: it was Bizness. His stomach plummeted and his chest felt tight. He did not want to answer it but he knew that there was no choice, not where Bizness was concerned. He had stabbed a boy before who had ignored his calls. He said it was a mark of disrespect. Respect was the most important thing in Bizness’s life, or at least that was what he said.

He took the call, pressing the phone against his ear. “Bizness,” he said quietly.

He could hear the sound of loud music in the background. “Where are you, man?”

“Watching a movie.”

“Nah, bruv, don’t be chatting breeze — what, you forgot the party tonight?”

Pops gritted his teeth. He hadn’t forgotten, far from it. He knew about the new record, and the party to celebrate its launch, and he had decided to ignore it. He had been to the party that launched the collective’s first record, eighteen months ago, and he had not enjoyed himself. The atmosphere was aggressive, feral, and there had been several beefs that had the potential to turn even more unpleasant than they already were. The relationships within the group were built on uncertain foundations. All the talk of being brothers was fine, but talk was just talk, and there was a swirl of jealousy beneath the surface that was always ready to erupt. Pops knew all of the crew, some better than others, and juggling loyalties between them was more effort than it was worth. Bizness was currently at the top of the tree, and it had been that way for the last six months. He had replaced Lambie once he had been done for possession of a firearm and sent down for four years. There were always pretenders to his crown, and his treatment of them was always the same: constant dissing that turned violent when the dissing didn’t work. Beatings, then stabbings if the beatings didn’t work, and at least two shootings that he knew about. One of those shootings he knew about from close personal experience, close enough for the poor bastard’s blood to land all over his jacket.

Pops didn’t need that kind of aggravation in his life tonight.

“You coming, then?” Bizness pressed.

There were a couple in the seats in front of him and the man turned around and glared at him, trying to act big in front of his woman. Pops felt his anger flare; he jerked his head up, his eyebrows cocked, and the man turned away.

“Nah, I don’t know, man.”

“I ain’t asking,” Bizness said. “I’m telling.”

Pops sighed. There was no point in resisting. “Alright,” he said.

“You with your gash?”

Pops looked over at Laura. She was watching the film, the light from the screen flickering against her pale skin. “Yeah,” he said.

“Bring her with you, aight? And bring that younger. What’s his name, JaJa? Pick him up and tell him I need that package he’s holding for me. There’s gonna be hype tonight, I’m hearing things, I wanna make sure I don’t get caught with my dick out. Bring your piece, too.”

And, with that, Bizness ended the call.

Pops stared at screen as it slowly faded to black. The first act of the film came to a crashing conclusion and yet he did not really notice it. He was thinking of Bizness, and whether there was any way they could show their faces at the party and then leave. He was unable to think of anything. Bizness would just see that as a diss, probably worse than not going at all, and he’d be in the shit.

He tried to put it into perspective. Maybe he was being ungrateful. He felt the thick wad of ten pound notes in his pocket, the cold links of his gold chain resting against his skin, the heavy weight of the rings on his fingers. None of that came for free. You had to do things you would rather not do. That was how you got all the nice stuff you wanted. That was just the way it was.

“Come on,” he whispered over to Laura.

“What?”

“We gotta split. There’s a party, we got to go to it.”

“Can’t we got afterwards? This is good.”

“Gotta go now, baby,” he said, taking her by the arm and drawing her down into the aisle. He held his phone in his other hand and, using his thumb, he scrolled through his contacts until he found Elijah’s number.

20

The party was in Chimes nightclub on the Lower Clapton Road. Pops parked next to the beaten up Georgian houses on Clapton Square and they walked the rest of the way, past the discount stores and kaleidoscopic ethic restaurants, past the police posters pasted onto the lamp-posts exhorting locals to “Nail the Killers in Hackney.” The club was on the edge of the major roundabout that funnelled traffic between the City and the East End and marked the beginning of Murder Mile, the long stretch of road that had become inextricably linked with gun crime over the past few years.

The club was in a large and dilapidated old building, facing the minarets of an enormous mosque. It was a hot and enclosed series of rooms and condensation dripped from the patched and sagging ceilings overhead. The largest room had been equipped with a powerful sound system, and Elijah had been able to hear the rumble of the bass from where Pops parked his car. Lights rotated and spun, lasers streaked through the damp air, strobes flickered with skittish energy. The rooms were crammed with revellers: girls in tight-fitting tops and short skirts, men gathered in surly groups at the edges of the room, drinking and smoking and aiming murderous glances at rivals. A tight wire of aggression passed through the room, thrumming with tension, ready to snap. The bassline thumped out a four-four beat, repetitive and brutal, and the noise of a hundred shouted conversations filled the spaces between as an incomprehensible buzz.

Elijah caught himself gaping. He had never been to anything like this before and he could hardly believe he was here. All the members of BRAPPPP! were present, the whole collective, two dozen of them, each bringing their own entourage of friends and hangers-on. He recognised them from the poster in his room and the videos he had watched on YouTube. The new record had been played earlier and now the DJ was mixing old school Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. Pops was alongside him, his face bleak, his hand placed possessively against the small of his girl’s back.

Bizness appeared from out of the crowd, noticed them, and made his way across. He moved with exaggerated confidence, rolling his hips and shoulders, and his face was coldly impassive. He responded to the greetings from those he passed with small dips of his head or, for closer friends, a fist bump.

“Aight,” he said as he reached their group. He regarded them one at a time, his face unmoving until his gaze rested on Laura. The blank aggression lifted and he parted his wide lips, revealing his brilliantly white teeth with the three gold caps. “Alright, darling,” he said, ignoring Pops altogether. “Remember me?”

“Of course,” Laura said, her eyes glittering.

“You heard the new record yet?”

“Yeah.”

“You like it?”

“Course.”

“That’s what I like to hear. You looking fine tonight, darling. You totally bare choong.”

She did not reply, but her helpless smile said enough. Pops noticed it and a tremor of irritation quivered across his face.

Bizness ignored Pops and the others and turned to Elijah. “Come with me, younger,” he said, and, without waiting for a response, he led the way through the crowd. A tall, heavyset man wearing an earpiece was stationed at a door next to the bar and, as Bizness approached, he gave a stiff nod and stepped aside. The room beyond was small and dark, with sofas against the walls and drapes obscuring the light from the street outside. There were three others in the room, arching their backs over a long table that was festooned with two dozen lines of cocaine, arranged in parallel, each four inches long. Elijah recognised the others as members of BRAPPPP! — MC Mafia, the rapper who sounded a little like Snoop — Icarus and Bredren.

Bizness walked across to the table and took out a rolled up twenty pound note. He lowered his face to the nearest line and, with the note pressed tightly into his nostril, he snorted hard. Half of the line disappeared. He swapped the note into his other nostril and snorted again, finishing the line. He pressed his finger to one nostril and then the other, snorting hard again, and then rubbed a finger vigorously across his gums. With an appreciative smack of his lips, he offered the note to Elijah. “Want one?”

Elijah had never taken cocaine before and he was scared but he felt unable to refuse. Bizness and the others were watching them. Bizness’s face was inscrutable, and he did not want him to think he was a little boy. He shrugged, doing his best to feign nonchalance, dipped his head to the table and snorted the powder. He managed a quarter of the line, the powder tickling his nose and throat. The sneeze came before he had moved his head and it blew the rest of the line away, a little cloud of white that bloomed across the table, the powder getting into his eyes and his mouth.

Bizness laughed at his incompetence. “You ain’t done that before, have you, bruv?”

“Course I have,” he said, blushing hard.

“Sure.”

The word was drawn out, freighted with sarcasm, and Elijah cursed himself for being so green. They would think he was a baby, and that was no good. He would show them otherwise. He stood back from the table and shrugged his rucksack off his shoulder. He unzipped it, reached inside, and drew out the bundle wrapped with newspaper. “I brought it,” he said, holding it in both hands, offering it to Bizness.

“I don’t need it,” he said.

“What?”

“You do.”

“What?”

“Check me, younger,” he said. His voice was blank, emotionless. “You like what you see here out there tonight? You were having a good look around, weren’t you, I saw. You see what we got? I ain’t talking about the little things. Someone like Pops, he thinks it’s all about getting himself new clothes, new trainers, a good looking gyaldem, saving up for a nice car. I ain’t dissing him, each to his own and that, but he’s got a severe case of what I call limited horizons. He ain’t going nowhere. He’s at his peak right now, that’s it for him. You youngers look up to brothers like that, some of you might even get to his level, but others, the ones with ambition, that ain’t never going to be good enough. The ones who are going somewhere know they can do better. You get me, bruv?”

Elijah nodded. Bizness’s breath was heavy with the smell of booze and dope.

“I’m gonna give you a demonstration of what I mean later tonight. That bitch of his, the white girl, I know you saw the way she clocked me earlier. You see, younger — who you reckon she’s going home with later? That girl’s getting proper merked, and it won’t have nothing to do with him.”

The other men in the room laughed at that, a harsh and cruel sound. Elijah swallowed hard.

Bizness reached out a clammy hand and curled it around the back of Elijah’s head. He crouched down so that they were on the same level and drew Elijah’s face closer to his own. The smell of his aftershave was sickly, and, as he looked into the man’s face, he saw that his eyes were cold, the pupils shrunk down to pinpricks, the muscles in his cheeks and at the corners of his mouth jerking and twitching from the cocaine. “It’s about power, younger. Everything else follows after it. You get me?”

“Yes.”

“You want to be with us, don’t you? BRAPPPP! right, we’re like brothers. We’d do anything for each other. But you wanna get in with us, be one of us like that, you got to show us you got what it takes. And I ain’t talking about robbing no shop or turning over some sad mug for his iPhone. That shit’s for babies. You want to get in with the real gangsters, you got to do gangster shit.”

Bizness had not removed his hand from Elijah’s neck. Their faces were no more than six inches apart, and his eyes bore straight into Elijah’s like lasers. “Younger,” he said, “I got a problem and you’re gonna help me sort it. I heard a rumour that this joker I know is coming to the party tonight. You know Wiley T?”

Elijah did. He was a young rapper who was starting to build a reputation for himself. He came from Camden where he had shot videos of him rapping on the street. He had uploaded them to YouTube and they had gone viral. Elijah had heard that he had been offered a record contract because of those videos. Everyone was talking about it at school, discussing it jealously, coveting his good fortune, agreeing it was proof that it could be a way out of the ghetto. A long-shot, but a shot nonetheless.

“I invited him,” Bizness explained, “he thinks we’re gonna shake hands and make up but we ain’t. He’s been dropping bars on YouTube about me. You probably heard them?”

Elijah nodded and, without thinking what he was doing, he started to intone — “‘You walk around showing your body ‘cause it sells / plus to avoid the fact that you ain’t got skills / mad at me ‘cause I kick that shit real niggaz feel…’” He realised what he was saying before the pay-off and caught himself, saying that he didn’t know the rest.

‘“While 99 % of your fans wear high heels,’” Bizness finished with a dry laugh with no humour in it. “Ain’t a bad little diss, but bitch must’ve forgotten there’s got to be a comeback and when you drop words on me, and you better know it ain’t going to be in something I put up on fucking YouTube for a laugh with my mates. He thinks he’s a thug but he ain’t. He’s a little joker, a little pussy, and he needs to get dooked.”

Elijah’s hands had started to shake. The direction the conversation was taking was frightening him, and he knew he was about to be asked to do something that he really did not want to do. Bizness unwrapped the gun from its newspaper wrapper and checked that it was loaded. “You ever shot a gun before, bruv?”

“No,” Elijah managed to say.

Bizness extended his arm and pointed the gun at MC Mafia. He drew Elijah closer to him so that their heads touched. “It ain’t no thing. You take the piece and aim it. That’s right — look right down the sight.” He thumbed off the safety.

“Come on, Bizness,” Mafia said. “Aim that shit some other place. That ain’t cool.”

“Safety’s off, put your finger on the trigger and give it a squeeze. It’ll give you a little kick, so make sure you get in nice and close to the brother you want to shoot. You get in close, you won’t miss. Easy, bruv.”

He thumbed the safety back on. Mafia exhaled and cracked a joke, but he could not completely hide his fear. Bizness was mental, they all knew it. Unpredictable and dangerous.

Bizness placed the gun carefully in Elijah’s hands. “I want you to keep this. Keep your eyes on me tonight, aight? When he gets here, I’m gonna go up to him and give him a hug, like we’re best friends. That’s your signal. Soon as I do that, you gonna go up to him real close and put all six rounds into him. Pull the trigger until it don’t fire no more. Blam blam blam blam blam blam. You my little mash man, JaJa. We gonna make a little soldier out of you tonight, you see.”

21

Rutherford paid the barman, collected the two pints of orange juice and lemonade from the bar and headed back outside. It was a warm evening and he and Rutherford had found a table in the beer garden of the pub that faced onto Victoria Park. It was busy: Tuesday was quiz night and the pub was full with teams spread out around the tables. The garden was busy, too, most of the tables occupied and with a steady stream of passers-by making their way to and from the row of chi-chi boutiques that had gathered along the main road. Rutherford remembered when this area had been one of the worst parts of the East End, battered and drab and the kind of place where you could get rolled just as easily as crossing the road. Now, though? The money from the City had taken over: all the old warehouses had been turned into arty studios, the terraces had been turned into apartments and the shops were filled with butchers where you could pay a fiver for a burger made of buffalo, fancy restaurants and furniture shops. They said it was progress, and things were better now. Rutherford didn’t miss the aggravation but he did miss the soul of the place; it was as if its heart had been ripped out.

The meeting had been held in the Methodist Hall around the corner. Once again, Milton had sat quietly, keeping his own counsel. Rutherford was on the opposite side of the circle of chairs and had watched him. His face had been impassive throughout; if he had felt any response to the discussion then he had hidden it very well. When the meeting had finished Rutherford had suggested they go to the pub for a drink. He had not expected Milton to agree, but he had.

Rutherford set the pints down on the table and sat down. “Cheers,” he said as they touched glasses.

Milton took a long draught. “So how long were you in for?” he asked him.

“The Army? Sixteen years.”

He clucked his tongue. “That’s a long stint. Where?”

“All the usual places: Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan. Lots of fun.”

“I can imagine. Doing what?”

“Royal Engineers. Bomb Disposal. I’ve always been decent enough at breaking things down and putting them back together again, it was a pretty obvious move for me once I’d got my feet wet for a couple of years. I was one of the lads they sent to defuse them for the first five years and then when the brass thought I had enough common sense about me they bumped me up to major and put me onto investigations — we’d get sent in when one of them went off to try and work out what it was that had caused it: pressure plate, remote detonation or something new. By the time I’d had enough it was getting silly — the Muj started planting second and third devices in the same place to try and catch us out. A mate of mine I’d been with almost from the start lost both his legs like that. Stepped on a plate next to where they’d blown up another one fifteen minutes earlier. I was right behind him when it happened, first person there to help while they sent for the medics. I didn’t need much encouragement to get out after seeing that.” He looked over the rim of his pint at Milton. “What about you? What did you do? From the looks of it, I’m guessing ex-Special Forces.” When Milton said nothing, Rutherford shrugged. “Well, that’s your business.”

He noticed that Milton’s hand was shaking a little; drops fell over the lip of the glass and dribbled down the glass.

“SAS,” he said eventually. “Is it that obvious?”

“Oh, I don’t know — you stay in long enough and you get to know the signs.”

“I was hoping it’d wash off eventually.” He laughed mirthlessly. “I haven’t been a soldier for years.”

“Why’d you get out?”

“We’ve all got our own stories,” he said. A jet from City airport arced away to the south. A bloated pigeon alighted on the table opposite and was shooed off again. Rutherford could see that Milton had no interest in talking about whatever it was that had happened to him. “What have you been doing since?”

“Some things I can’t talk about,” he said with a shake of his head. They had both finished their drinks. Milton stood. “How about a coffee? We can work out how I can help you with the club.”

Rutherford watched him negotiate the crowd gathered at the door. He knew that there was a lot that Milton wasn’t telling him, and he guessed — well, it was pretty obvious, really — that he was still involved in soldiering in some capacity or another. The reticence was not what he would have expected of a grunt who was selling his experience as a mercenary; for his money, the discretion made it more likely that he was involved in something like intelligence. The conclusion led to more questions than it answered: what, for example, was an intelligence agent doing getting involved with a little hoodrat from Hackney? A spook? What sense did that make?

Rutherford had no idea how to even begin answering that one.

Milton returned with two cappuccinos.

“So,” he said. “The boxing club. You’re struggling. How can I help?”

“I can always do with more hands,” Rutherford said thoughtfully. “There’s a list of what’s wrong with that place that’s as long as my arm, man. The roof leaks, the wiring’s all over the place, the walls need painting, the canvasses are torn and stained with God only knows what — there’s only so much that I can do on my own, you know, with the club to run. If you’re serious —?”

“I am.”

“ — then I’d say thank you very much. That would make a big difference.”

“Fine. How about tomorrow morning? See what I can do?”

Rutherford raised his cup. “You bringing that younger you mentioned?”

“I’m working on that,” Milton said.

22

Christopher Callan, Number Twelve, drove across town to Hackney, following his satnav to Victoria Park. It was a hot, sticky night, and he drove with the windows open, the warm breeze blowing onto his face. He looked around distastefully. It was a mongrel area: million-pound houses cheek-by-jowl with slum-like high rises. He reversed into a parking space in one of the better streets, locked the car and set off the rest of the way on foot. His destination was marked on his phone’s map, and he followed it across the southern end of the park, alongside a wide boating lake with a fountain throwing water into the air and Polish immigrants fishing for their dinners from the banks. Finally, he turned onto Grove Road.

Milton had used his phone earlier and HQ had located the signal, triangulating it to the terrace that Callan was approaching. He picked his way along the untidy road until he reached the address, passing by on the other side before turning and passing back again. That side of the road was comprised of cheap terraced housing that might, once, have been pleasant. It was far from pleasant today, with the occasional property that had been well maintained standing out amidst the pitiful neglect of its neighbours.

Callan wondered what Milton was doing in a place like this. He slowed as came up beside number eleven, taking everything in: the rotting refrigerator in the gutter; the broken staves of the fencing across the road, lashed around with chicken wire; the bars on the doors and ground floor windows. The windows of the house were open and the curtains were drawn, the puce-coloured fabric puffing in and out of the opening, ruffled by the sweaty breeze. A lamp was on inside, the light flickering on and off as the curtains swayed. Callan couldn’t tell if anyone was home.

A Volvo was parked by the side of the road. Callan recognised it from Milton’s file. The car looked at home among the battered heaps that filled the parking spaces around it. He slowed as he passed the Volvo and, moving quickly and smoothly, dipped down to and slapped a magnetic transmitter inside the wheel arch.

Callan did not want to tarry. He had no desire to draw attention to himself. He did not think that he had ever met Milton before but he could not completely discount the possibility that he might somehow have known him. No point in taking chances.

He reached the end of the road, paused for a final look back again, and set off for the main road. He took out his phone and dialled.

“Callan,” said Control.

“Hello, sir. Can you talk?”

“Are you there?”

“I’m just leaving now. Awful place. Small house in a terrace. Looks like council housing. It’s a sink estate, not a good area, kids out on the street corners, pitbulls, messy, rubbish left out to rot in the gardens — you can picture the scene, I’m sure. God only knows what he’s doing here.”

“You’ve no idea?”

“None at all.”

“What about the house — did you look inside?”

“Couldn’t. I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t at home. I didn’t try and get any closer than the street. I can come back for that.”

As he walked back along the fringes of the Estate he noticed that he was being followed. Two older teenagers on BMXs were lazily trailing him, kicking the bikes along on the other side of the road.

“What about his car?”

“You can tell Tech that the tracker has been fixed.”

Callan took a right turn off the main road and watched as the two boys bounced down off the kerb and crossed against the flow of the traffic. The two started to close the distance between them.

“Sorry, sir. I’ll have to call you back.”

He pressed the toggle on the headphones to end the call. The road turned sharply to the left and Callan stopped to wait for the boys. They rolled up to him. They both wore baseball caps pulled down low with their hoods tugged up so that the fabric sat on the brim. The bottom half of their faces were covered with purple bandanas. Only their eyes were visible. It was impossible to guess their age but they were both large and rangy, their bikes almost comically small for them.

“Got the time, bruv?” the first boy said with insouciant aggression, putting his foot down and stopping. If he replied to the request, no doubt the next step would have been for him to have been relieved of his watch, together with his phone and wallet.

“Time you got off home, I reckon.”

The boy rolled a little closer. “You want to watch who you’re giving lip to, lighty. You could end up in a lot of mess.” The second boy got off his bike and walked forwards. He hawked up a ball of phlegm and spat it at Callan’s feet. “Give me your phone.”

Callan felt his skin prickle and his muscles tightening. The sensation was familiar to him. The surge of adrenaline. Fight or flight. It was rarely flight with him. “I don’t want any trouble,” he said, meekly.

The second boy took his hand out of the pocket of his jacket. He was holding a kitchen knife in his fist. “Give me your phone and your cash, aight, else you’re gonna get jooked.”

The boy came closer, and Callan let him. When he was within arm’s reach he lashed out suddenly with his right hand, the fingers held out straight, the thumb bracing them from beneath. The strike landed perfectly, and forcefully, Callan’s hard fingertips jabbing into the boy’s throat, right into the larynx. He dropped the knife and clutched his throat as he staggered back, choking, temporarily unable to draw breath. The first boy tried to hike up his jacket so that he could get to the knife he was carrying in his belt but he was impeded by his bike and was far too slow. Callan closed the distance between them with a quick hop and, bending his arm, struck the boy in the face with the point of his right elbow. The pedals tripped the boy as he staggered away and he fell onto his back, blood already running from his broken nose. The boy Callan had struck in the throat was still gasping for breath, and Callan almost lazily cast him to the floor, sweeping his legs out from beneath him. He crouched down and grabbed the boy by the scruff of his collar. He raised his head six inches from the pavement and then crashed it backwards, slamming his crown against the edge of the kerb, fracturing his skull and knocking him out.

Callan stood, brushed himself down and set off again.

23

Elijah returned to Pops and his woman after Bizness had finished talking to him. Pops looked surly, brooding over his JD and casting careful glances out across the room to where Bizness and MC Mafia were talking with two good-looking girls dressed in crop tops and obscenely short skirts. Elijah watched them too, unable to concentrate. He felt a dizzying mixture of emotions: fear, that he had been asked to do something that he did not want to do, but also pride. He knew it was foolish to feel that way, but he could not deny it. Where were his friends tonight? Where were Little Mark and Kidz, Pinky and the others? They weren’t here. Bizness had chosen him for the task. Surely that must mean something. He trusted him. He could not help visualising a future in which he was a member of BRAPPPP! too. The newest member. The youngest. The one with the reputation, the one no-one would doubt. He thought of the lifestyle, the money. He would drag his family up with him, away from the Estate. His mum would not need to work three jobs to make ends meet. They would buy a little house, with a little garden. Perhaps he could help Jules, too. Rehab, or something. Things would be better than they were now.

He knew the price for all of this, but he tried not to think about it.

If he did, he would run.

A stir of interest rippled through the crowd as a small group of boys passed in through the entrance to the club. There were four of them, and, at their head, Elijah recognised Wiley T. He knew that he was only two years older than him; he was a mixture of youth and experience. His face was fresh, and he still walked with a lazy adolescent lope, but his body language was confident. He punctuated his sentences with exaggerated gestures designed to draw attention to himself and he smiled widely at a nearby group of girls, a confidence that Elijah could not begin to hope to emulate. Elijah knew enough about him from his YouTube profile. He was a street boy, like him, and their education was the same. He recognised the flicker of furtive watchfulness in his eyes. Boy was older than his years.

Elijah felt a nugget of ice in his gullet as Bizness approached Wiley and offered his hand. The younger man sneered and did not take it. Bizness moved forwards in an attempt to draw Wiley into an embrace but he stepped away, a derisive expression on his face. He said something and then, as Bizness backed away, he threw a punch that rattled against his jaw. The fight that followed flared quickly and viciously, with members of both entourages folding into one another, fists flying.

Elijah watched from the other side of the room. His rucksack was at his feet, the zip half undone and as he looked down into it the dull metal of the gun sparkled in the light from a glitterball overhead. Bizness separated himself from the melee and glared at Elijah, his face twisted with fury. He mouthed one word: “Now.” Elijah felt his life folding down into that one small, awful point. It was over for him. He picked up his bag and lifted it to his waist, just high enough that he could reach his right hand inside for the gun. His fingers brushed the metal, encircled it so that the cold was pressed into his palm and his finger found the trigger guard and, within it, the subtle give of the trigger.

The noise of the party seemed to muffle and fade as Elijah started across the room.

Everything slowed to a crawl.

He glanced into the faces of the people around him but nothing registered.

He felt completely alone.

He closed the distance to the brawl. He squeezed the gun into his palm and started to bring it up to the open mouth of the bag.

Pops took him by the arm and pulled him aside. “Don’t be an idiot.”

Elijah looked up at him dumbly.

“Be clever, younger. Do that and your life is finished. You think the Feds won’t find out? You think he won’t rat you out to save his own skin?”

Elijah was unable to speak.

“Go home, JaJa. Go on, fuck off, fuck off now, take that bag with you, drop it in the canal and don’t ever tell no-one a word about it.”

On the other side of the club, the fight was getting worse. A dozen men were brawling now, and, as Elijah watched, one of them fell to the ground. Bizness was onto him quickly, kicking him again and again in the head. Pops gently turned him towards the exit and pushed him on his way.

Elijah kept going. He did not look back.

24

Pops sat in the front of his car, his forehead resting against the steering wheel. He had driven aimlessly for an hour, trying to arrange his thoughts into some sort of order, and had eventually found his way to Meynell Street, the sickle-shaped road that hugged the edge of Well Street Common. It was a middle-class area with big, wide houses that cost the better part of half a million pounds each. The boys rarely came up here. It wasn’t worth the risk. It was a good distance from the Estate and they knew that if they started causing trouble the police would respond quickly, and in numbers. Far better to stay in their ends, on the streets that they knew, and where their victims were not deemed important enough to demand the same protection.

He looked out over the small park, pools of lamplight cast down at the junctions of the pathways that cut across it. He had switched off the car’s engine but the dashboard was still lit, casting queasy green light up onto his face, illuminating his reflection on the inside of the windshield. He examined himself, and thought, again, that he looked older than he was. His skin looked almost grey in the artificial light and his eyes were black and empty, denuded of life, of their sparkle. Pops was nineteen but he felt older. He had seen things that he could not forget, no matter how hard he tried. He gave it big with the others because there was nothing else he could do. You showed weakness, you got eaten, that was the way it was. The rules of the jungle, he thought again. Just like the Serengeti.

But Pops was different. He was smart. He had a plan and he would leave on his terms, when he was ready. He was careful with his money, saving every month, and he wanted twenty grand in his account before he called it a day. He had been a decent student at school before he had been sucked down into the LFB, and he wanted to finish his education. And then, who knows, maybe he would go to college. You needed paper for that. Until then, until he had enough, there was no choice but to keep up his front. If he let down his guard, even for a minute, there were plenty of youngers who would seize their chance. There would be beef, there would be hype, and it would end up badly for all of them.

His mind flicked back to the end of the party. The fight had ended almost as quickly as it had begun and yet it had curdled the mood, like poison dripped into an open wound. Wiley and his boys had taken a terrible beating, with one young boy left unconscious on the floor, his face kicked into a mess of blood and mucus. Pops watched as his body jerked and twitched and knew that he needed a doctor, and quickly. He quietly went into the toilets and called 999, leaving an anonymous message that an ambulance was required. By the time he returned outside, the lights had been turned on and people were starting to go. He had heard police sirens in the near distance, too. Definitely time to leave.

He looked over at the passenger seat. Laura’s handbag was resting against the cushion. Pops had bought her the bag for Christmas after she mentioned that she liked the designer. It had cost plenty but she was worth it. He had searched the club for her but she had already gone. He did not know where she was now, but he knew she was with Bizness. He had known that he wanted her. He made no secret of it, joking with Pops about the fact that one day he’d just take her and that there was nothing he would be able to do about it. Pops would laugh it off most of the time, making sure that he kept his seething anger to himself. As long as he kept her away from him everything would be alright. But that had not been possible tonight. Bizness had suggested before the fight that the party would eventually relocate to his studio and that she should come. The invitation had not been extended to Pops. She had been drunk and high and she knew that Bizness was offering her more of the same. He had lost her. He had always known it would happen, eventually, and now it had. He had gone to his car and driven away.

He looked out into the darkness, staring through his own reflection as the light of a bicycle bounced up and down, a rider passing across the park. He thought of JaJa and how close the boy had come to ruining his life. The party had made his mind up for him. Bizness was a bad man, he was out of control, and Pops knew it was insanity to think otherwise. He did not care about anyone other than himself. JaJa, young and pliable and vulnerable, the boy was just a tool to him, a means to an end. He would have used him to dook Wiley and then, when the Feds came knocking, he would give him up.

Yes, Bizness was out of control, and he had to do something.

He reached into his pocket for his wallet. Inside, hidden beneath his credit cards, was the business card that the man in the park had given him. There was something about him that stuck in his head. Pops could not put his finger on it, but there was something that said he might be able to help. He had not been able to throw the card away and, while the others had sent him off with a barrage of abuse, he had quietly slipped it into his pocket.

He took out his phone and switched it on, the display coming to life. He carefully entered the man’s number. The call connected but, after ringing three times, went to voicemail. Pops listened to the bland message, then the beep, and ended the call without speaking. What was he doing? He knew nothing about this man. How could he trust him? What was he going to say?

He put the phone away, started the engine, reversed the car and rolled slowly back towards the Estate.

25

Milton was not alone in the waiting room. A portly middle-aged woman was slumped into one of the plastic seats, her expression bearing the marks of frustration, helplessness and anger. Her eyes followed Milton as he sat down on one of the chairs opposite her but she did not speak. The police station smelt the same as all the others he had visited, all around the world: the same mixture of scrubbing soap, disinfectant and body odour. It had the same weary atmosphere, the sense of a heavy relentlessness. He gazed at the posters tacked onto a corkboard that hung from the wall; young black men staring into police cameras with expressions of dull, lazy violence. The crimes they were alleged to have committed were depressingly similar: an assault with a knife; an armed robbery at a betting shop; a shooting. There were two murders with the same police task force — Trident — dealing with them both. Black on black. A poster showed a young boy staring out from behind a lattice of bars, the message warning that this was the inevitable destination for those who got caught up with gangs. The boy in the poster was young, in his middle teens. The same age as Elijah. He looked small, vulnerable and helpless.

Milton looked at the clock on the wall for the hundredth time: it was five minutes past three in the morning.

“Who you here for?” the woman said.

“The son of a friend,” Milton said.

“What’ve they got him in for?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Won’t matter,” she declaimed. “Won’t matter if he did it or not, neither. They need to get something cleared up, they’ll say he did it and that’ll be that. Look at my boy. He ain’t perfect, God knows he ain’t, but he didn’t do half the things they said he’s done. It’s because he’s black, from the wrong ends, in the wrong place at the wrong time. The police are racist pigs.”

Milton said nothing. He was not disposed to have a conversation with her and, after a long moment of silence, she realised that. She clucked her tongue against her teeth, shook her head, and went back to staring dully at the posters on the wall.

Sharon had called Milton just after midnight. She explained that the police had visited the flat and arrested Elijah. She had heard him coming back late. She only had vague details: the police had said something about a fight at a club, a man beaten halfway to death. Elijah was supposed to have been identified as a witness. Sharon didn’t know what to do and sounded at the end of her tether. Milton had said he would deal with it.

“Is anyone here for Elijah Warriner?”

The policeman was middle-aged, a little overweight, and with wispy fronds of white hair arranged around a bald crown. He looked tired.

“I am,” Milton said.

The officer opened the door and indicated inside. “Would you step in here for a moment, sir.”

“What about my boy?” the woman squawked. “You’ve had him in there for hours.”

The sergeant regarded her with a tired shrug. “They’re just finishing up with him, Brenda.”

“You charging him?”

“He’s said he did it.”

“Bail?”

“I expect so. Just wait there, we’ll get to you as soon as we can.” He turned back to Milton. “Sir?”

Milton did as he was asked. The room beyond was small, with a table and two plastic chairs. The surface of the table had been scarified with carved graffiti, the letters LFB repeated several times. The policeman shut the door and indicated that Milton should sit. He did, the policeman taking the other chair.

“Who are you?” the policeman asked him.

“I’m a friend of Elijah’s mother. And you?”

“Detective sergeant Shaw.”

“What are you holding him for?”

“There was a serious assault at a party yesterday evening. A lad from Camden was beaten. GBH, pretty serious. Elijah was there when it happened.”

“Is he a suspect?”

“I don’t know yet. Probably not. But he was definitely a witness. He’s admitted he was there. Save that, he won’t talk. Not that I’m surprised, they never do.” He sighed and took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. There were no smoking signs on the wall but he ignored them, taking a cigarette and lighting it. He offered one to Milton, who declined. Shaw drew deeply on the cigarette, taking the smoke into his lungs and then exhaling it in a second, longer sigh. “Look — Mr Milton — I’m not sure what’s going to happen to him, but let me make a prediction. Elijah’s in a dangerous position. Chances are, he’s going to get away with whatever happened this time. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to be alright. He’s not right in the gang yet but he’s on the edge. It won’t take much to tip him over, and if that happens, he’ll definitely be back here again and then he’ll get nicked. He might get community service for whatever he ends up doing, but that won’t straighten him out. The time after that he’ll get prison. And that’s if he’s lucky to live that long. Plenty of them don’t. I’ve seen it dozens of times.”

“These other lads he’s been messing around with — the gang? Who are they?”

“The London Field Boys?”

“I don’t know very much about them.”

“Let me give you a little history, Mr Milton. I’ve been a policeman around here for the best part of twenty years. That’s a long time to work in one place, but it means I’ve got a better idea of this borough than most. I’ll be honest with you — Hackney’s never been a particular nice manor. It’s always been poor, there’ve never been enough jobs to go around and there’s never been enough for kids to do. You take a situation like that, it’s normal that you’re going to get a problem with crime. It’s not the easiest place in the world to be a copper but, for most of those years, it’s been manageable. You’d get the odd blagging, drunken lads getting into scraps after too many bevvies on a Friday night, chaps going home after the pub and slapping their women around. You’d always have a GBH on the go and there’d be the odd murder now and again. Not the best place in the world, lots of problems, but by and large we kept a lid on it. Now, you look at the last five years and things have changed so much I hardly recognise it sometimes. We’ve always had gangs of young lads and they’ve always gotten into scrapes. Petty stuff — fights, nicking things, just making a nuisance of themselves. But then they all started getting tooled up. They’re all carrying knives. Some of them have guns. You add that to the mix, then you have a gang from another borough coming in here looking for trouble, things get serious very quickly. When I was a lad, we used to play at cops and robbers. These days, they’re not playing. They’re all tooled up, one way or another, and it’s not all for show. The guns are real, and they don’t care if they use them or not. I don’t know if he’ll listen to you more than he’s listened to me, but you’ve got to get some sense into him. If you don’t…” He let the words drift away before picking it up again. “If you don’t, Mr Milton, then he’s not going to have very much of a life.”

26

Milton walked out of the police station with Elijah behind him. He looked out into the street. It was a hot night, broiling, and even though it was coming around to four in the morning there were still people about. The atmosphere was drunken and aggressive. Men looked at them as they passed, assuming that a white man on the steps of a police station must be a detective. There was contempt in their faces, violence behind their sleepy, hooded eyes. Milton had called a taxi while he was waiting for Elijah to be processed and it was waiting for them by the kerb. He opened the rear door for Elijah and then slid in next to him. He gave the driver the address for Blissett House and settled back as they pulled into the traffic.

He looked across at the boy. He had the downy moustache and acne of a teenager, but there was a hardness in his face. His eyes were fixed straight ahead and his face was set, trying to appear impassive, but his hands betrayed him; they fluttered in his lap, picking at his nails and at swatches of dead skin.

“You know you’re in trouble, Elijah.”

He did not reply, but the fidgeting got worse.

“Let me help you.”

When he finally spoke, it was quiet and quick, as if he did not want the taxi driver to overhear him. “You ain’t police?”

“No.”

“You swear it?”

“I’m not the police. You can trust me, and I want to help. What’s the problem?”

Still he was not convinced. “Why you want to help us? What’s in it for you?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I ain’t saying nothing unless you tell me why.”

Milton thought for a moment about what to say. “I’ve done some things in my life that I’m not proud of,” he said carefully. “I’m trying to make up for them. That good enough for you?”

“What kind of things?”

“Bad things,” Milton said. “That’s enough for now. This is about you, not me.”

Elijah looked down at his lap. Eventually, the residual fear of his situation defeated his bravado, the reluctance to admit that he needed help, and the fear of what might happen to him if the others discovered that he had spoken out of turn. “Alright,” he said. “Last night. I was there. I saw what happened.”

Milton told him to explain. Elijah spoke quietly and quickly.

“Who had the gun?”

“Me. Bizness gave it to me last week, told me to keep it for him until he needed it. You need heat, right, with our rep? You get a beef, like we had with Wiley and his crew, you don’t have a blammer, you done for. Finished.”

“Who’s Wiley?”

“This rapper. He’s been dissing Bizness. He had to make an example, man. Can’t have that kind of nonsense going on, YouTube and everything. Bad for business. Bad for your rep.”

“You gave the gun to him?”

“Nah, man. I had it. He wanted me to do it myself.”

“And?”

“I didn’t know what to do. I started walking over towards where this fight had started, Bizness and Wiley were going at it, I put my hand in my bag, the gun was there, and then the next thing I know Pops has come over to me, grabbed my arm and told me to breeze. I did — went straight home.”

“Did you tell the police you had the gun?”

He looked indignant. “I didn’t tell them shit.”

That was good, Milton thought. The boy was hanging on by his fingertips, but he still had a future. “This Bizness. Who is he?”

Elijah looked at him with a moment’s incredulity before remembering that Milton was older, and naïve, and that there was no reason why he would have heard of him. “Risky Bizness. He runs things around here. He’s been in the LFB for years, since he was a younger, like me. He’s one of the real OGs.”

“One of the what?”

“Original Gangsters, man. He’s got himself involved with everything — the shotters sell the gear and pass the paper up to the Elders and the Elders pass it up to the Faces like Bizness. He makes mad Ps. He built himself a record studio out of it and now he’s got himself a record deal. He’s famous on top of everything. He’s a legend, innit?”

“What’s his real name?”

Elijah shrugged. “Dunno. I’ve never heard no-one call him anything but Bizness.”

The taxi turned into the road that led towards Blissett House. Milton told the driver to pull over. He guessed that Elijah would prefer not to be seen getting out of a cab with him and he saw, from the look of relief on his face, that he had been right.

“Alright, Elijah,” he said. “This is what I want you to do. Go home to your mother. She’s beside herself with worry. Get to bed. Don’t answer your phone, particularly if it’s Bizness or any of the other boys in the gang. You need a little space between you and them at the moment. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” he said. “What about the police?”

“I think that will be alright. I’ve given them my number. If anything comes up they’ll call me and we can take it from there. Now then — what did you do with the gun?”

“Dropped it in the canal.”

“Do you promise?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I don’t want nothing to do with it.”

“That’s good.” He reached over and opened the door. “Go on, then. We’ll let this blow over.”

“And then?”

“I’ve got something for you I think you might enjoy. Meet me in the café in the morning. Nine o’clock. Bring your sports kit from school.”

“Nine? That’s, like, just five hours. When am I gonna get some sleep?”

“You can sleep afterwards. Nine o’ clock, Elijah. I’ve got something for you to do that you’re going to be good at.”