by Mark Dawson
“Nah,” he said, unable to stifle his grin. “I ain’t gonna change.”
“That’s what they all say.”
He took his drink and sipped it. He couldn’t believe how well this was going. Alesha had a way about her, a naturalness that lent him a sense of ease and confidence. He was enjoying himself in her company.
She put her glass down on the table, reached down into her bag, and took out a notepad and a pen. “Go on, then,” she said. “What’s your story?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Your background. You’re not from Sheffield, are you?”
“No,” he said. “I grew up in London—not far from here. Hackney.”
“So why’d you leave?”
“Lots of reasons,” he said.
He glanced down at Alesha’s notepad and remembered that he was on the record. He wondered how much he should say, and decided that he would prefer to keep things a little vague. He hadn’t anticipated being asked about his background, and hadn’t given thought to how much he would be comfortable having out there. He had nothing to hide about his upbringing. He had done some things that he wasn’t proud of, but that was a long time ago, and he had grown up a lot since then. But things had happened when he was sixteen that had frightened him, and he didn’t want to revisit them: the murders of Pops and Rutherford were uppermost in his mind, and the altercation with Pinky that had precipitated their move to Margate.
“You’re very mysterious,” she said.
“Not really.”
“What about Islam?” she said.
He shuffled a little in his seat. “What about it?”
“Did you convert?”
“Three years ago.”
“And you changed your name?”
He nodded, but she didn’t press, waiting for him to decide whether or not to elaborate. He looked across the table at her and felt bad for bringing her here and then telling her nothing.
“My name was Elijah,” he said. “It still is, really—that’s what my mum calls me. I’m not a very good Muslim.” He hesitated. “Don’t put that in the article.”
She made a gesture as if to zip her lips. “Not a word.”
“I had some troubles as a younger,” he said, treading carefully. “Religion seemed like a good way to deal with them, at least back then.”
“And now?”
“I got boxing,” he said, shrugging. “Boxing is everything—it made me what I am.”
“And it’s not finished with you yet,” she said.
Elijah noticed that she had finished her drink. He drained the rest of his vodka and orange and stood. “You want another?”
“Go on then.”
* * *
They didn’t go to the restaurant. They stayed in the pub until eleven, then took an Uber to get bagels from the twenty-four-hour deli on Brick Lane. Alesha had a flat ten minutes away, just outside Spitalfields, and Elijah offered to walk her home. They had just set off when she slipped her hand into his and squeezed it. Her skin was warm and smooth; it felt good. Elijah was happy. The night had gone better than he could have expected. He had been careful with the drink, ordering orange juices for himself and accepting her vodkas when she bought the rounds. He had paced his intake well, and now he had a mild buzz while remaining confident that he wouldn’t suffer from a hangover tomorrow.
They reached Alesha’s building and paused outside it.
She looked at him. “You want to come in?”
Elijah knew that he should say no. She was so beautiful: skin like silk, a body to die for, eyes that held him and wouldn’t let him go. But he knew that McCauley would disapprove, and it was late.
“I can’t,” he said. “I need to get back to the hotel.”
She took his hand and squeezed it. “That’s fine.”
“It’s not that I wouldn’t like to…”
“I know. You’ve got the fight. Really, Elijah—it’s fine.”
He felt the heat in his cheeks. “There’s a party after the fight,” he said. “They say it’s gonna be good. You want to come?”
“If you win.”
“I’m going to win,” he said, flashing her his teeth.
“Kidding,” she said. “I know you are. Where is it?”
“I can’t remember. I could text you? I think I can get you a VIP pass for the fight. That’ll get you into the party, too.”
“I’d love to,” she said and, before he could say anything else, she leaned closer and kissed him softly on the mouth. He could taste the wine on her lips.
He felt weak and was about to change his mind. “I—”
“Good luck,” she said, interrupting him. “I’ll see you at the fight.”
She crossed the pavement and went into the lobby, turning to give him a wave. He waited a moment, cursing himself for doing what he knew was the responsible thing, and then turned and made his way back to the main road. Big day tomorrow. He needed to get to his bed.
Part IX
The Fourth Day
24
M ilton found that he was nervous as he showered after his morning run. Elijah’s workout was today, and Milton had no idea how he would react. Sharon had warned him that this might not be the friendly reunion that Milton would have liked; Elijah was headstrong, he always had been, and Milton knew that there was a chance that he would react badly after the way he had left things before. There was no prospect of him not going, though. He wanted to see the boy, and he was concerned about the message that Ziggy had excavated from the phone Milton had taken from Little Mark. It seemed as if the other members of the gang were going to be there, too, and Milton knew that there would be the potential for trouble. Sharon was worried about it. Milton was worried, too.
He was determined to insulate Elijah from it.
He dressed in a clean pair of jeans, a black T-shirt and his leather jacket, then pulled on his boots and laced them up. He took the press pass that Sharon had given him and slipped it over his head, zipping up the jacket and making his way outside.
It was less than a five-minute walk from his hotel to the venue. He walked by the café where he had met Ziggy yesterday, continuing by the Museum of Childhood, a large brick building that was set back from the road behind a neatly painted iron fence. York Hall was a curious building located on an estate owned by the council. The building on the main road behind which it sheltered was an ugly seventies construction, with a laundromat on the ground floor and then five storeys of council flats above it, the windows covered by dirty net curtains. Milton turned left onto the Old Ford Road and saw the Hall. It was a large brick and concrete building with lettering spelling out TOWER HAMLETS and then YORK HALL. It had originally been a Turkish bath, but it had been a boxing venue since the twenties.
Milton had never visited it before, and he felt a buzz of anticipation as he approached the queue waiting to get inside. He hung back for a moment, scanning the crowd to see if he recognised anyone. The people in the queue ranged in age and ethnicity, but it was predominantly young and black. Kids and young men, wanting to see the fighters close up, hoping to catch a glimpse of future stars, perhaps hoping that the glamour would rub off onto them.
Ziggy had provided a folder of images that he thought corresponded with Pinky, Little Mark, Kidz and Chips, and Milton had studied them. He was confident that he would have recognised them. He looked for the four of them, but they weren’t there. He checked his watch: there was still twenty minutes to go before the proceedings would begin. Perhaps they wouldn’t come after all. Or perhaps they would wait until everyone was inside. Milton was not prepared to lower his guard.
He ignored the grumbles from the queue, made his way to the security on the door, and held out his pass. The man examined it, grunted something affirmative, and stepped aside so that Milton could go through.
* * *
Milton went inside and gaped. The interior was eye-opening. It was a grand neo-Georgian space, with a warm wooden floor and a balcony halfway
up the wall. His attention was immediately drawn upwards to the eight skylights that were fitted into the vaulted ceiling. The ring was in the centre of the space, lit by the shafts of light that fell down from above. Milton felt almost reverent: this was Mecca for British boxing. The greats had all fought here over the years—John Stracey, Charlie Magri, Maurice Hope, Nigel Benn—all young men with big dreams, willing to spill their blood on the canvas to make it big. Many of them had.
But, still, those had been fight nights, and this was just a public workout. The idea was a new one for Milton, but he realised that modern media was voracious for content and knew that this would sell a few more pay-per-views.
The doors were opened and the onlookers started to come inside, filling in the spaces around the ring, some of them taking seats in the balcony above. Milton worked his way through the crowd.
“Man’s gonna get sparked out in the third,” said one spectator. “Trust me.”
“Nah,” the man next to him disagreed. “Not gonna happen, blood. Mustafa’s the real deal.”
Milton eavesdropped on the conversations and gauged the mood. Elijah’s opponent was from Tottenham, and Milton guessed that most of the crowd were here because of him. Others—the ones who spoke more knowledgeably—had come to get a glimpse of the exciting prospect from Sheffield.
Music started to play from big bass bins, and Milton looked up to see a DJ on the balcony. He circulated, as inconspicuously as possible, but very aware that a middle-aged white man wouldn’t blend easily into this mostly black crowd. He found a spot at the back of the room where he could see the entrance and the ring. The fighters from lower down the card came out. Milton remembered them from the conference he had watched on his phone. They passed through the ropes one at a time, introduced by the brash young promoter who had chosen to dress as Santa in reference to the fast-approaching holiday that he had hijacked for his event. He was wearing a red suit and hat and an extravagantly long beard, and he stood back as they went through their routines. They worked out with their trainers, firing punches into pads, showing off their footwork. The sound of leather on leather echoed around the hall, a staccato accompaniment to music that Milton couldn’t identify and that made him feel old.
He changed position, looking for different perspectives, searching for faces that he might recognise. Still nothing. No one stood out. A fighter stepped out of the ring and was replaced by the next one up, a cruiserweight with tattoos all over his body.
Milton moved closer to the ring, using his pass to get closer to the fighters who had finished their workouts. They were being interviewed on small cameras and mobile phones; he guessed that the footage was being broadcast on Facebook or YouTube. Milton had trawled some of the accounts that had been established to show off this kind of coverage. He had learned about this new form of boxing—a lot different to how it had been at its height when Milton was a younger man. Back then, Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn had traded barbs on TV chat shows. Now it seemed every fighter was a minor star who had ‘beef’ with another fighter. It had led to a resurgence in interest in the sport, but it seemed everyone with a mobile phone could now have a channel on YouTube to report on it.
Milton didn’t understand that at all.
Maybe he was getting old.
25
T hey took an Uber from the estate to Bethnal Green. Pinky looked out of the window of the car and tried to ignore the uneasiness he felt as they passed out of their postcode and into enemy territory. The Bethnal Green Massive controlled this part of town, and Pinky knew that they would react badly if they knew that members of a rival gang were here. There had been beef between the LFB and the BGM before, and Pinky remembered a series of competing videos that had been uploaded to YouTube, each gang threatening the other in increasingly graphic terms. He wasn’t afraid of confrontation, but he didn’t need the distraction today. They had business to do.
“What you reckon it’s going to be like?” Chips said.
“Ain’t got no idea,” Pinky said. “Never been to anything like this before.”
“I can’t get my head around JaJa,” Kidz said. “Skinny little bredren; never would’ve said he would’ve come to anything.”
“He did always have a punch on him,” Little Mark offered, grinning. “You remember, Pinky?”
“Shut the fuck up,” Pinky said, the memory still fresh. “Little pussy ain’t gonna be so full of it when he sees us again. The youngers there okay?”
Chips looked at his phone. “They say they are. Inside. Ready to go.”
“How many?”
“I got ten of ’em.”
“Good.”
The driver pulled onto the Old Ford Road and parked outside a large brick and concrete building with a small queue of young men waiting outside it. Pinky looked at the time on his phone: the workout was scheduled to have begun twenty minutes earlier. Pinky opened the door and got out, waiting for the others to join him. He led the way across the pavement and up to the end of the queue.
“You remember what we’re gonna do?” he asked the others.
“Chill,” Kidz said. “It ain’t no thing.”
Pinky clenched his fists: open and closed, open and closed. He felt the prickle of anticipation. He had unfinished business with JaJa. The little bitch had got his mum to call the police on him; that was bad enough, but it wasn’t what stung the most. It was the moment in the ring when he had sparked him out. Pinky could close his eyes and still picture it, could still feel the jarring blow against his jaw, the taste of blood in his mouth. He remembered it and so did the others; Little Mark had just shown that. That was what bugged Pinky the most. The others were laughing at it, a joke at his expense, and if Little Mark was prepared to needle him in front of Kidz and Chips, what were the others saying when his back was turned?
Pinky clenched his fists again and kept them closed.
No way.
He had reached the top because people were frightened of him. He knew he wouldn’t last long if that fear went away. It might have been years ago, but that didn’t matter.
JaJa had a lot to lose.
Pinky had more.
26
M ilton filtered through the crowd, working his way from one side of the hall to the other. He was adjacent to the ring, next to one of the metal barriers that formed a pathway from the back of the house to the ring. Elijah’s opponent was working with his trainer, firing combinations into the pads that were held out in front of him. Milton was impressed: the boxer had good technique, and his punches had power, each one landing with a solid thud.
Connolly finished his workout, stepped through the ropes, and hopped down from the apron. He made his way back along the pathway, passing close enough to Milton that he could have reached out and touched him. His skin was slick with sweat as he touched his gloves to the outstretched fists of the fans outside the barriers.
Tommy Porter took his place in the ring. “Samuel Connolly, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “Our next fighter is Samuel’s opponent. With a record of nine fights and nine wins, all by knockout, ladies and gentlemen, let’s hear it for one of the hottest prospects in British boxing, the Sheffield Express, Mustafa ‘Boom Boom’ Muhammad.”
There was a loud roar from the crowd, the loudest response that Milton had heard so far. He knew it was just a precursor to what would happen on Saturday night, but even so, he was still surprised at the noise generated for what was, after all, just a workout. Music pounded out of the bass bins as the DJ played a track that Milton didn’t recognise, and a spotlight picked out a hooded figure as he made his way out of the doors at the back of the hall and approached the ring between the barriers.
It was Elijah. He wore leopard-skin shorts and pristine white boots. He looked cocky, dance-walking to the ring, glancing over at Milton as he passed and then flicking his eyes away again without acknowledgement. Milton wasn’t sure if he had missed him, or whether he had recognised him and ignored him. Elijah was by him in a second, jumping
up onto the apron and gripping the top rope with both hands. He leapt up, flipping head over heels as he somersaulted inside, sending the crowd’s fervour up a notch. He started to shadow-box, firing out lefts and rights, dancing across the canvas, switching from orthodox to southpaw and back again, completely natural. He jerked to the side and to the front and back like an air dancer, firing out a corkscrewing uppercut that would take off his opponent’s head should he land it.
The confidence dripped off him. It was almost tangible. Milton found himself dumbfounded at how much Elijah had changed: he was no longer the shy boy who had been reluctant to let down his guard. Milton had worked hard to win his trust and had been rewarded by a sensitivity that had seemingly been buried now.
Elijah’s fists moved with a fluidity that spoke of immense natural talent; his feet never stopped moving, opening up angles for combinations that would have been impossible to predict, let alone defend. Connolly had been decent enough—he had been solid—but Milton could see now that Elijah would put him to sleep.
Elijah’s trainer was a much older man in his late forties, and he came into the ring with the pads. Elijah started to work, firing a barrage of lightning-fast combinations, but Milton’s attention was distracted.
It was him.
He checked, trying to confirm his suspicion. A face in the crowd on the other side of the ring, disdainful, staring up at Elijah with a sneer.
Milton recognised him from the pictures.
It was the young man who called himself Pinky.
Close by him was the bigger one, Little Mark, the man from whom Milton had taken the phone.
Between Little Mark and Pinky were the two others whose faces Milton recognised from the pictures Ziggy had found: Chips and Kidz.
