The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (29 page)

Bizness surged up from his chair so quickly that it clattered behind him. “Do
I
understand?” Any vestige of his previous joviality was banished now, his eyes blazing with anger. “You come in here, with my bredderz around me, and you start making threats? Shit, man, you the dumbest motherfucker I ever met. I’m going to tell you one more time—get the fuck out of this shop before I throw you out my goddamn self. Do
you
understand?”

Bizness stepped around the table and took a step towards Milton. He did not flinch and, instead, fixed his pitiless stare on Bizness’s face. “I’ve said what I needed to say. I hope you understand. I hope you remember. Do what I’ve told you, or the next time won’t be so pleasant.”

Bizness drew his fist back. Milton caught it around his ear before he could throw a punch and dug his thumb and index finger into the pressure point. Bizness yelped at the abrupt stab of white-hot pain and stumbled backwards, bouncing against the trestle table. The pile of posters tipped over, a glossy tide of paper that fanned out across the floor.

“Tonight,” Milton said, smiling down at Bizness, a cold smile that was completely without humour. “Pay attention tonight. I want you to think of me.”

He made his way to the front of the shop.

MILTON PULLED OVER, extinguished the lights of the car, and switched off the engine. He left the radio on so that he could finish listening to the news. The bulletin reported that a protest outside a police station in Tottenham had deteriorated into a riot. Relatives of a man who had been shot by police two days earlier had gathered to protest his killing. Others had joined in, and the crowd had started to pelt the police with bottles and bricks. There were reports that cars and a double-decker bus had been set alight. Milton drew down on the cigarette he was smoking and blew the smoke out of the window. It was a hot night, close and humid. There was something in the air, a droning buzz of aggression. It wouldn’t take much to ignite it.

He switched off the radio, opened the glove compartment, took out his holstered knife, and pulled up the sleeve of his right trouser leg. He wrapped the holster around his calf and fastened the Velcro straps. He checked in his mirrors that the pavement outside was empty, and satisfied that he would not be observed, he took his Sig Sauer from its holster and checked the magazine. It was full. He pumped a bullet into the chamber so that the gun was ready to fire. He slid it back beneath his armpit.

He looked around again. This part of Dalston Lane comprised a Georgian terrace of tall, two-storey houses with Victorian shop fronts that had been built over their front gardens when the railways arrived a hundred years earlier. The houses behind the shops had recently been used for social housing, but as time passed and their tenants were moved into the high-rise blocks that dominated the nearby skyline, they had been allowed to begin their long slide into decrepitude. Those that were left vacant were boarded up. Damaged roofs were left unrepaired. Windows were shattered and left open to the rain. Four houses had been gutted by fire, the exposed bricks crusted black with soot and ash and the timbers exposed like cracked and broken bones. Those buildings had been condemned and demolished, tearing holes in the terrace like the teeth yanked from a cancerous mouth. Boards had been erected around the blackened remnants of the extension, and these had been scarified by graffiti and posters for illegal raves.

The Victorian extensions were occupied by local businesses. The entire house and extension at the corner of the road was a doctor’s surgery, with bars on the door and the windows plastered with posters about sexually transmitted diseases and nutrition. Next to that was an Indian restaurant, then a shop selling musical instruments, a Laundromat, a business selling second-hand kitchen equipment, then a newsagent. Adjacent to that a façade announced the Star Bakery, but the shutters had been in place for so long that the rust had fastened the padlocks to their tethers. The property alongside had seen its extension occupied by a squatter. It had been a bicycle shop years before, the block typography of its original frontage still visible despite the etiolation of the weather and the fumes from the busy road. The wide picture windows were obscured by sheets of newspaper and a printed notice that had been glued to the door declared that the squatters enjoyed rights of occupation and could not be evicted without a court order.

Milton scanned it all quickly. The terrace behind the squat was one of Bizness’s most profitable crack houses. Pops had told him everything. Heroin and crack were sold around the clock, rain or shine. Most of the customers were poor locals, drawn in from the surrounding Estates, but a significant minority of the customers were white, very often professional and middle class.

Milton got out of the car. He went around to the back, opened the boot, and took out a jerrycan that he had filled with petrol from the garage on Mare Street. There was no sense in making his entry through the front door. It looked as if it was locked, just enough of a delay to allow for escape should the police arrive for a clean-up. Milton had another idea. The terrace was listed, and the plans were available online. He had visited the library and downloaded them, reviewing them before he came out. He knew that there was another way in. He followed the road to the junction, taking a right turn and then, before he reached a tawdry pub, another sharp right. A narrow cul-de-sac led around the back of the terrace. Overflowing dustbins were stacked up against the wall, and detritus had been allowed to gather in the gutter. Each house had a rear entrance, and the one that served the crack house was wide open. Silly boys.

Milton took out his Sig and went inside. The first room used to be a kitchen. Old appliances had been left to rot, with anything that could be easily removed long since sold for scrap. The walls were partially stripped and scabbed with lead paint, and the remnants of a twee wallpaper that depicted an Alpine scene had been left to peel away like patches of dead, flaking skin. Empty cardboard boxes and fast-food wrappers were scattered on the floor. A single man, strung out and emaciated, was slumped against the wall. He was unconscious, and Milton would not have been able to say whether he was dead or alive. He heard low conversation from the front of the house and set off towards it. The junkie’s arm swept around sharply and his eyes swam with drunken stupor, but he paid Milton no heed as he passed through the room.

He moved through a hallway with a flight of stairs leading up to the first floor. Patterned linoleum was scattered with drug paraphernalia. A mattress rested upright against the wall. Another junkie was asleep on the floor. Milton tightened the grip on the butt of his pistol as he stepped carefully around him.

The noises were coming from the front extension. Milton paused in the shadows at the doorway to assess his surroundings. The only furniture was a sofa and a huge, monolithic television. It was a big unit with a cathode ray tube, and it had been left on, badly tuned, scenes from a soap occasionally resolving out of the distortion of static. The front door was ahead of him, barricaded with an old sideboard that had been propped against it. Vivid wallpaper with a woodland design had been hung on the wall, the paper stained yellow by months of smoke. There was no ventilation, and the atmosphere was thick and heavy, woozy, a sickly miasma.

There were a dozen people inside the room. Men and women, mostly supine, their heads lolling insensately, unfocussed eyes lazily flicking across the television screen. They were all black, dressed cheaply, feeble and thin. Plastic bottles were arranged in neat rows, each of them full of urine. A collection of shoes, random and unpaired, was pushed into one corner. Empty vials of crack had been ground underfoot, crunching like fresh snow as the addicts shuffled across the room to the two men who were sat on the sofa. They were clear-eyed and moved with crisp purpose as they exchanged vials of crack for their customers’ crumpled banknotes. They were younger than their patrons; Milton guessed in their late teens, not long out of school. They were dressed in low-slung jeans, the crotch hanging down between the knees, there were diamond ear studs and golden chains, and both wore the colourful purple bandana of the LFB around their necks. These were the dealers, one step up from the shotters, Bizness’s representatives on the street. They sold the drugs and then protected the house so that their customers had somewhere to get high and then buy from them again.

Milton shuddered in revulsion.

He assessed the situation. The junkies were too far gone to pose any kind of problem, and he discounted them. The two dealers looked fit and strong, and there was a kitchen knife resting on the arm of the sofa. That would be a problem if they could get to it before he had disabled them. He could not discount the possibility that they were armed, either.

Milton suddenly decided.

He sprang across the room and lashed out with the barrel of his pistol. He struck the bigger of the two men across the temple, a stunning blow that dropped him to his knees. The second man stretched across the sofa, but Milton had anticipated his move, firing out a kick that struck him in the side of the chest and brought a whistle of pain from him. The man’s hand fell short, the knife dislodged from its perch by the attempt. Milton’s hands grabbed the man in two places—bunching into his singlet and by waist of his trousers—and he heaved him off the sofa and onto the floor. The sharp edges of crushed vials and syringes bit into his face and throat as he tried to find his feet. Milton followed him to the floor, pinning the point of his knee between his shoulder blades and pressing down. He took the Sig and pressed the barrel into the cornrows on the top of the man’s head.

“Pay attention,” he said. “I want you to deliver a message to Bizness. Tell him that this is what I said would happen. If he doesn’t do what I told him to do, tell him that this will keep happening. One crack house at a time. Do you understand? Nod if you do.”

The man jerked his head awkwardly against the floor.

“All right. You’re going to get up now, and you are going to clear these people out. Then you grab your friend over there and get him out, too. If you do anything foolish, I’ll shoot you. Understand?”

Milton got up and backed away. He took the jerrycan and poured the petrol across the floor, on the sofa, sloshing it across the thick curtains. If the boy needed motivation, Milton’s self-evident plan was it. He did as he was told, ushering the crackheads out the back and then returning to collect his friend, propping him up and helping him away.

The room quickly stank of petrol. Milton took out his lighter and thumbed it to flame. He played the lighter over a rag, and blue-white flame consumed it hungrily. Milton dropped it onto the sofa, and with a quiet exhalation, the fabric caught fire. The flame spread quickly over the upholstery, stretching higher and higher until it started to scorch the ceiling. It raced across the floor to the walls, a quiet crackling that quickly became a hungry roar, with black smoke billowing up to the roof and then spewing back down again.

Milton went out into the alley gun-first, only holstering the Sig Sauer when he saw that both boys had fled. He walked briskly, making his way back onto the main road and to his car. He unlocked the door and slipped inside.

Across the street, the squat was burning fiercely.

CHRISTOPHER CALLAN paused outside Flat 609, and then, satisfied that it was the correct address, he knocked firmly, three times, on the door. He heard sounds of activity inside: the chink of pieces of crockery being knocked together, a door opening on a rusty hinge, and then footsteps approaching. A woman opened the door. Callan guessed that she was in her early thirties. Dark black hair, smooth skin, wide eyes, a slender build. She was wearing the uniform of a fast-food chain.

“Yes?”

Callan smiled. “Excuse me. Sorry for disturbing you. Are you Sharon Warriner?

Her eyes narrowed. “Who’s asking?”

“I’m Detective Constable Travis.”

Her face fell. “It’s Elijah, isn’t it?”

“Elijah?”

“My boy—what’s he done?”

“No, Mrs Warriner, it’s not that. Nothing to do with Elijah. Would it be all right if I came inside for a minute?”

“What’s it about?”

She had the usual suspicion of the police, Callan saw. It was to be expected in a place like this. He reached into his jacket pocket and took out the file picture of Milton. “Do you know this man?”

She became confused as she studied the picture. “That’s John.”

“John Milton?”

“Yes. I don’t understand. What’s he done?”

“Can I come in, please? Just five minutes.”

She reluctantly stood aside and let him through. They passed through the small hallway and into the lounge. It was a large room, the décor a little tatty and tired, an old sofa, a table with four chairs, a flat-screen television, PlayStation games scattered across the floor. Sharon stood stiffly; her suspicion had not been assuaged, Callan could see that, and he was not going to be invited to sit. Fair enough. He wouldn’t be long. In some ways, he had already seen enough.

“How do you know Mr Milton?”

“He’s a friend.”

“How did you meet him?”

She paused, her face washed by a moment of worried memory. “I just did,” she said. “What’s this about, please?”

“What’s he doing here?”

“I told you, he’s a friend. He’s helping me with my son.”

“How?”

“I’m sorry, Detective, but I don’t understand how any of that is relevant. What has he done wrong?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. Please—how is he helping you?”

She waved her hand agitatedly. “My boy, Elijah, he can be a bit of a handful. Headstrong, like they all are at his age. Mr Milton is”—she paused, searching for the right word, and then repeated the same one again—“helping me with him, like I said. I don’t understand why you’re asking me—has he done something wrong? Should I be worried?”

Should she be concerned? Callan suppressed the smirk. She had no idea. None at all. “No,” he said, “there’s no reason to be concerned. I’m sorry I can’t say any more than that.”