by Mark Dawson
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’l
l 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.”
* * *
PART THREE
Strapped
* * *
* * *
Laughter, and then something else. A low drone. His stomach knotted.
No. The plane was still a dot on the horizon but it was closing quickly. Beneath the radar. A Warthog, onion-shaped bombs hanging beneath its wings. He threw his rifle aside and scrambled down the escarpment, the loose sand sliding down with him, his boots struggling for purchase, failing, and he was tumbling down the last few metres, landing at the bottom with a heavy thump that drove the air from his lungs. He got to his knees and then to his feet, his boots skidding off the dirt and scrub as he pushed off, his arm sinking down to the wrist as he tried to keep upright. He ran towards the village. Five hundred yards, four hundred. The sound of the Warthog’s engines was louder now; it was coming in low, a thousand feet up, not rushing, the pilot taking his time. Three hundred. He ran, boots sinking up to the laces with each step, thighs pumping until they burned. He gasped in and out, his lungs so full of the scorched air that he felt like they were alight. Two hundred. He was close enough to yell out now and he did, screaming that they had to take cover, that they had to get inside. One hundred, and he was close enough to see the faces of the children outside the madrasa. The cheap plastic ball had sailed in his direction and he could see the confusion and fear in the face of the boy who had been sent to fetch it. Five years old? Surely no older. He yelled at him to get down but it was too late, it had always been too late, it would not have mattered if he had been able to get to them sooner, the decision had already been taken. The Warthog’s engines boomed. The boy turned away from him to face it. The ball rolled away on the breeze. A blinding flash of white light. The deafening crack of a terrible explosion. He was picked up and thrown back twenty feet in the direction that he had come. He was slammed down onto the ground by a bolt of hot air which dented his cheeks and stomach as if they had been made of paper. A second and third explosion seemed to bend the world of its axis, the noise blending from a roar into a continuous, high-pitched whine. He lay, staring up into the sun, while the air around him seemed to vibrate as if someone had smashed a cello with a sledgehammer. He rolled over and pushed his head up, working his arm around until he could prop himself against his elbow. A ghastly rain of pieces of flesh and blood soaked clothing fell onto him and all around him. Then bits of rubble and metal. Above, slowly unfurling, was a dark cloud of black smoke that rose and shifted until it had obscured the sun. He smelt burning flesh and the unmistakeable acrid tang of high explosive. His hearing resolved as the Warthog swooped over and away. He pushed himself up until he was on his knees. A huge crater was in the centre of the village. The launcher was gone. The madrasa was gone. The children were gone, too, or so he would have thought until his eyes tracked around to the right and he saw red splashes of colour on the ground and glistening red ribbons of flesh suspended from the bare branches of a nearby tree.
