The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (28 page)

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You said you needed help, too.”

He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Bizness’s the same age as I am. We were at school together. We used to be tight, but we ain’t no more, and he’s finished with me. I dunno, the last few weeks it’s as if he’s been provoking me, starting hype like he wants to get a reaction. I seen it happen before. He don’t let anyone get too influential, start taking his thunder, see, and then when they do, when he thinks they might be getting to be a threat”—he clicked his fingers—“then he gets rid of them. One way or another.”

“And you’re a threat.”

“Nah, man. I ain’t like that. I want out, but he don’t know that.”

“So tell him.”

He laughed bitterly. “Don’t work that way, man. You get in, you’re all the way in. You ain’t done until he tells you you’re done. And there ain’t no talking with him.”

Milton reflected that he knew what that felt like. He said nothing.

“Look, it ain’t about me, not really. I
am
getting out, whether he likes it or not. It’s the younger who needs help.”

They reached the pond. A sign describing the nearby flora and fauna had been defaced with graffiti—Milton guessed that the 925 was a rival gang tag—and the bracket that should have held the buoyancy aid had been vandalised, snapped wood showing white through the creosote like splintered bone. Pops sat down on the bench and took a joint from his pocket. “I come down here now and again,” he said, lighting the joint with his lighter. “I know it sounds pathetic, but I used to be in the Scouts when I was younger. The fucking Scouts. We used to come down here once a year and dredge the whole lot. You wouldn’t believe the things people used to dump—washing machines, shopping trolleys, everything covered in sludge and weeds. We always joked we’d pull out a dead body one day. What I know now, I’m half surprised we never did. There are guns and shanks in there. I know
that
for a fact.”

The boy offered the joint to Milton. He shook his head. The boy shrugged and smoked hard on it instead.

“So tell me about Elijah.”

“You know about what happened at the party?”

“He told me.”

“There’s a man Bizness wants to have shot. JaJa mention Wiley?”

“A little.”

“Bizness’s got beef with him. Wants him gone. That was what the club was all about. He wants JaJa to do it. He had the gun that night. I thought I’d got through to him. I sent him home when I saw what was happening. I thought he’d listen to me. Something must’ve happened since.” His voice trailed off. Milton said nothing. “So then I got a call from Bizness yesterday to say I had to pick JaJa up and bring him to his studio. I never seen the younger like that before—he was angry, man, he had this proper screwface on like he was ready to fucking
explode
. Bizness loves that, course, and he asks him whether he’s ready to do what he wants him to do with Wiley.”

A dog walker skirted the far side of the pond. His dog, a pit bull heavy with a fat collar of muscle, chased the ducks into the water.

“And Elijah said he’d do it?”

Pops nodded.

Milton felt sick in the pit of his stomach. “When?”

“I don’t know the details. Bizness won’t tell me. I’m not that close to him, and I don’t think he trusts me no more, anyway.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Can’t think of nothing.” He paused. “Except—”

“Go on.”

The boy clenched his teeth so hard that the strong line of his jaw jutted from his face. “My girl’s got involved with him, too. She’s vulnerable. Got a weakness for drugs, and he won’t look out for her like I did. Last time I saw her, she was smoking crack with him. It’ll be skag next. She’ll end up on the streets for him, I seen that before, too. Or she’ll end up raped or dead.”

Milton sat quietly.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Milton said.

“You said you could help me, man.”

“I will. But you have to work with me.”

“How?”

“First things first: you have to speak to the police.”

Pops kissed his teeth. “Go to the feds? You know what would happen to me if Bizness found out I’d been grassing? I’d end up in that fucking pond with a bullet between my eyes.” Pops stood abruptly. “If that’s the best you can do, we’re finished. Police aren’t going to do nothing until JaJa’s got blood on his hands and my girl is fucking dead. I’m wasting my time with this bullshit.”

“Grow up, Aaron,” Milton said. His voice was emotionless, iron hard and utterly authoritative. “Sit down.”

He did as he was told, adding, self-pityingly, “What’s the point?”

“Because I’m going to take him out of the picture,” Milton said. “Tell them what happened at the club. The boy who got beaten, you saw all that?”

Pops looked down at his feet. “Yeah, man, I saw it.”

“That’s good,” Milton said. “They’ll have to take that seriously.”

“What you gonna do?”

“I’m going to have a word with Bizness.”

He laughed. “A word? No offence, man, but he ain’t gonna listen to you.”

“He’ll listen to me,” Milton said. “You’ll have to trust me about that.”

Milton stood, and they started back towards the main road. “This is what we’re going to do—you’re going to go to the police and tell them about what happened at the club. Leave Elijah out of it, but tell them everything else.”

“It won’t do nothing. It’ll be my word against theirs.”

“Maybe. But it will be a useful distraction.”

“And then what?”

“You’ll get your friend off balance just as I give him something else to think about. I want him to take me seriously when we speak. I’m going to need some information from you about how his operation is put together—who works for him, how he makes his money, where he keeps it. Can you help me with that?”

“Yeah.”

Milton asked a series of questions, and Pops provided awkward, but reasonably comprehensive, answers. Milton memorised the information, filtering it and arranging it as he built a picture of Bizness’s business. The man had numerous interests in the local underworld, his malign influence stretching from drugs to prostitution and robbery. His music was clearly lucrative, but it would be as nothing compared to the profit he was turning from his illegal businesses. It was good that he was spread among different businesses and areas. That would mean that there would be plenty of vulnerable spots that Milton would be able to exploit.

“How does he communicate with everyone?”

Pops looked at him derisively. “How’d you think, man? Smoke signals? Homing pigeons? Facebook, BBM, texts. Pay-As-You-Go phones. Nothing he could ever get nailed with by the feds if they got hold of it. If he needs to meet to talk business, he’ll get someone else to make the call to set it up and then arrange the meet somewhere, in the open, where it’s impossible for the boi-dem to bug him. He’s careful, man. Precise. Plans everything like he’s in the military or something. Police think their old ways still work, but people—the real players like him—man, they been around long enough to have seen brothers get nicked all sorts of different ways, and they remember all of them. You got to get up early to pull a fast one on him.”

They reached the fringe of trees that provided a canopy of leaves over the path at the outer edge of the park. The pub at the junction was growing busier, with loud customers spilling into a beer garden decorated with fairy lights.

“All right,” Milton said. “That’s enough for now. Go to the police tomorrow. All right?”

“Yeah,” Pops said sullenly.

“Don’t let me down. It’s important.”

“A’ight,” he conceded. “Tomorrow. When will I know you’ve done something.”

“You’ll know.”

MILTON TOOK the underground to Oxford Circus and emerged, blinking, into the hard bright light of another stifling summer’s day. The temperature had continued its inexorable uptick into the mid-thirties, but now it had become damply humid, a wetness that quickly gathered beneath Milton’s armpits and seeped down the middle of his back. The atmosphere lay heavy over the city, a woozy stupor that could only be alleviated with the inevitable thunderstorm that the forecast was predicting for later.

The Sig Sauer in its chamois holster was a heavy, warm lump beneath Milton’s shoulder. The air in the tube had been cloying and dense, and Milton was pleased to have left it behind him. The confluence of Regent Street and Oxford Street was a busy scrum of sluggish tourists and frustrated office workers on their lunch breaks. Traffic jammed at the lights, taxi drivers leaning on their horns to chivvy along the busses that tarried to embark passengers. Tempers were stretched as tight as piano wire, arguments flaring and confrontations held just beneath the surface.

Milton’s phone vibrated in his pocket.

“Hello?” he said.

“Is that John?”

“Who’s this?”

“Rutherford. Is everything all right?”

“I’m a little busy.”

“It’s Saturday afternoon, I’ve been expecting your boy to come for training, but there ain’t no sign of him. What’s happening?”

“There’s been a setback,” Milton said as he crossed the road at the lights. “I’m taking care of it. I have to go.”

Milton ended the call. He turned in the direction of the tall, crenulated finger of Centre Point. HMV was fifty yards along the road, the sound of heavy bass throbbing from the wide-open doorway into the cavernous space beyond. Milton surveyed the interior: racks of music and films; T-shirts; magazines; and, on a stage that had been erected in the middle of the shop, a table and a tall stack of CDs. A long queue of youngsters—mostly young boys, but also a handful of girls—snaked back from the table around the aisles and back almost to the entrance. Behind the table sat six members of BRAPPPP! The collection comprised the better known members of the collective: MC Mafia, Merlin, Icarus, Bredren. The female singer, Loletta, sat in the middle, haughty with her strikingly good looks, a highlight for the hormonal teenage boys who waited to be presented to her.

Milton recognised Bizness from the pictures on his Facebook and Twitter profiles. He was wearing a Chicago Bulls singlet, the top revealing an angular torso: long, skinny arms with the sharp points of his elbows and shoulders. His skin was extensively tattooed, and gold teeth glittered on the rare occasion when he disturbed the studied blankness of his expression to smile. He sat at the head of the table, the last member of the collective to receive the fans, like a king or a mafia don accepting the fealty of his subjects. They came to him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, their CDs passed along the table with him finally adding his mark and sending them on their way. He spoke with some, bumped fists with others, but all left elated by their encounter with their hero. Milton could see, quite clearly, the power that the man—and the lifestyle he typified—had on them. He was an aspirational figure, living proof that the success he rapped about was possible to have. Milton did not respect him for this, but he recognised it and its influence, and filed it away for future reference.

A large display had been erected at the front of the shop, loaded with the collective’s new album and an assortment of other merchandise. Milton took a copy of the record and a T-shirt and joined the end of the queue. It was moving slowly, and Milton guessed it would take half an hour to get to the front. He did not have the patience to wait for that, and taking advantage of the fact that it would have been difficult to imagine anyone less likely to jump the queue, he made his way to the front. “One minute,” he said to the two young boys who were about to go forwards. “I just need a quick word with him. Won’t hold you up long.”

The table was fenced in by crowd-control barriers, and two large bouncers stood guard at the entrance to the enclosure. They glared at him as he passed between them. Milton passed along the table, ignoring the others and making his way directly to Bizness.

He stopped in front of him. “Good afternoon.”

Bizness bared his teeth in a feral grin, the golden caps sparkling. “Look at this.” He laughed, jutting his chin towards Milton. The others laughed, too. “You in the wrong section, man. Old folks’ music is over there.”

“No, it’s you I want to see.”

Bizness threw up his hands and chuckled again. “Fine, bruv, where’s your record, then? Give it here. What you want me to say?”

“I’m not here about your music.”

“Come on, man, enough of this bullshit. If you ain’t got nothing to sign, get the fuck out the way. Lot of brothers and sisters here been queuing hours to see us, you gonna end up causing a motherfucking riot you don’t stop slowing the queue down.”

“I need to talk to you. And you’re going to listen to what I have to say.”

“The fuck—?”

Milton ignored him. He stared at Bizness, his eyes icy and unblinking, with no life or empathy in them, until the confusion on the younger man’s face faded and a cloud of anger replaced it. “I’m going to ask you nicely for two things,” Milton said. “First, a woman named Laura has been associating with you. You are going to stop seeing her. If she comes to visit you, you are going to send her away.”

“That’s your first thing? A’ight, go on, you’re an entertaining fucker. What’s the second thing?”

“I know what you’re planning for a young lad I know. Elijah Warriner. You call him JaJa. That is not going to happen. You are to stop seeing him, too. If I hear that you’ve been seen with him, there is going to be trouble. If just one hair on his head is hurt, we’re going to have another conversation. But it won’t be as civil as this one.”

“You hear this motherfucker?” Bizness hooted at the others. They were all watching the exchange. “You asking me nicely, right? You better tell me, old man, just so I know, what you gonna do if I tell you to take your requests and shove them right up your arse? Tell me not-so-nicely? Raise your voice? Get out of here before you make me lose my temper. I ain’t got time for this.”

The bouncers took a step towards Milton, but Bizness stayed them with an impatient wave of his hand.

Milton did not look at them. He did not move away from the table. “You won’t take me seriously now, but I’m going to give you a demonstration tonight of what will happen if you ignore my instructions. Something is going to happen to your interests, and I want you to think of me and what I’ve told you when you hear about it. Do you understand?”