The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (22 page)

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.

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, 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 didn’t 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 all right. 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.

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 didn’t 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 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 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 all right. 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 Fields 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 particularly 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.”

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 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?”