Текст книги "The Cleaner"

Автор книги: Mark Dawson

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

10

Elijah passed through the straggled group of customers that had gathered outside the entrance to Blissett House. The boys called them “cats” and took them for all they were worth. They passed out their bags of weed and heroin, their rocks of crack, snatching their money and sending them on their way. They didn’t get very far. One of the empty flats had been turned into a crack house, and they scurried into it. When they shuffled out again, hours later, they were vacant and etiolated, halfway human, dead-eyed zombies, already desperately working out where they would find the money for their next fix.

Elijah made his way through the Estate to the abandoned flat that the LFB had claimed for themselves. A family had been evicted for non-payment of rent and now the older boys had taken it over, gathering there to drink, smoke and be with their girls. Elijah had never been inside the flat before but he didn’t know where else he could take the rucksack and the things that they had stolen.

He was furious. Who was that man to tell him what to do? He didn’t look like any of his mother’s boyfriends – he was white, for a start – but he had no reason to come and stick his nose into his business. He told himself that he wouldn’t see the man again, that he’d get bored, just like they always did, and it would be him who told his mother that it didn’t matter, that he would look after her. He had been the man in the house ever since his older brother had vanished. He had been grown up about it all. He’d had to; there wasn’t anyone else.

The flat was in the block opposite Blissett House. Elijah idled on the walkway, trying to muster the courage to turn the corner and approach the doorway. It was on the eleventh floor and offered a panoramic view of the area. He looked beyond the Estate, across the hotchpotch of neater housing that had replaced two other blocks that had been pulled down five years ago, past the busy ribbon of Mare Street and across East London to the glittering Olympic Park beyond. He rested his elbows on the balcony and gazed down at their flat. His bedroom had a window that looked out onto the walkway. He remembered laying in bed at night and listening as the older boys gathered outside, the lookouts that were posted to watch for the police or other boys. They would talk about money, about the things they would buy, about girls. They talked for hours until the sweet smell of weed wafted in through the open window and filled the room. Elijah’s mother would occasionally hustle outside, shooing them away, but they always came back and, over time, she gave up.

It was intoxicating. The boys seemed special to Elijah. They were cool. They were older, they had money, they weren’t afraid of girls. They talked about dealing drugs and tiefing, the kind of things that Elijah’s favourite rappers rapped about. It was a lifestyle that was glamorous beyond the day-to-day drudgery of school and then helping his mother with the flat. It didn’t seem wrong to want a little bit of it for himself.

The boys Elijah knew could hear them and, eventually, they started to include him in their conversations. It wasn’t long until he opened the window all the way and started talking to them. He asked how he could get his own money. They told him to stand watch for them and he did. When they came back, they gave him a brand new PSP. The week after that they gave him money. He had never seen a fifty-pound note before but they pressed one into his hand. They started to talk to him more often. They offered him his first joint. He spluttered helplessly as he tried to smoke it and they laughed at him as he desperately tried to look cool.

It wasn’t long before they gave him the chance to make more money. He was small, with tiny arms that could fit through car windows that had been left open. He would open the locks from the inside and the boys would tear out the car stereos and steal anything else that had been left behind: GPS devices, handbags. They would steal six or seven a night and Elijah would be given fifty pounds. He put the cash in a shoebox that he hid under his bed. His mother never asked where he got the money for his new clothes. Elijah knew that she wasn’t stupid. She just didn’t want to hear him say it.

He watched as the door opened and the white man stepped outside. Elijah watched him make his way along the walkway and, after descending the stairs, emerge out onto the forecourt. He walked towards a beaten-up old car, pausing at the door and then crouching down at the front wheel. Elijah could tell from the way the car slumped to the side that the tyre had been slashed. He grinned as the man took off his jacket, removed a spare from the boot and started to go about changing it.

A couple of the older boys were smoking joints on the walkway.

“Alright, younger?” The boy’s real name was Dylan, but they called him Fat Boy on account of how big he had been as a young teenager. He had grown out of that now; he was nineteen, six foot tall and full of muscle.

“Is Pops here?”

“He’s inside. What do you want?”

“I need to see him.”

“Alright, bruv. He’s in the back. Knock when you get in.”

The flat had been taken over by the LFB. They had sprayed their tags on every spare wall and a huge, colourful version filled the wall in the lounge. Boys from the Estate lounged around, some playing FIFA on a stolen flatscreen television. Others were listening to the new album from Wretch, arguing that it was better or worse than the new tracks from Newham Generals or Professor Green. Trash was shoved into the corners: empty paper bags from McDonalds, chicken bones that had been sucked clean, empty cigarette packets, cigarette papers. Everyone was toking and Elijah quickly felt dizzy from the dope smoke that rolled slowly through the room. A couple of the boys looked up, clocked him, ignored him again. No-one acknowledged him. The room was hectic and confusing with noise. Elijah felt young and vulnerable but dared not show it.

“Look who it is!” whooped Little Mark.

“Baby JaJa,” Pinky sneered. “It’s late, younger, shouldn’t you be tucked up in bed?”

“Leave him alone,” Kidz chided.

Elijah reluctantly made his way across the room to them. Little Mark’s real name was Edwin, and he lived in a flat on the seventh floor of Blissett House with his dad. Elijah did not know Kidz’s real name, only that he lived in Regis House and had a reputation as the most prolific mugger in the crew. Pinky’s real name was Shaquille, he was usually quiet and surly and had a nasty reputation. Elijah tried to keep his distance whenever he was around.

“What you doing here?” Kidz said as he came alongside them.

“Came to see Pops,” he said.

Pinky nodded to the rucksack across his shoulder. “Afraid your mum finds out what you’ve got in there?”

“I ain’t afraid,” Elijah said.

“That’s from earlier, right? The gear from the train?”

“Yes.”

“What you bring it with you for, then? You stupid or something?”

“I ain’t stupid, either.”

“Look pretty stupid from where I’m sitting.”

Kidz smiled at him indulgently. “How you going to explain it if you get pulled by the Feds?”

Elijah felt himself blush.

“Told you he was stupid,” Pinky said. “A stupid little kid. He ain’t right for LFB.”

“Lucky for him that’s not for you to decide, then, innit? Ignore him, young ‘un. Pops is in the back. Go on through.”

Elijah made his way through the room. The layout of the flat was identical to his own and he guessed that Pops was in the main bedroom. He knocked on the door. A voice called that he could come in.

The room was dark. Pops was standing next to the open window, blowing smoke into the dusky light beyond. He had removed his shirt and his muscular torso glistened with a light film of sweat. He had a tattoo of a dragon across his shoulders and, on his bicep, the letters L, F and B. His heavy gold chain glittered against the darkness of his skin. A white woman sat on the edge of the mattress they had put in the room. She straightened her skirt as she got to her feet. She was older than Pops, looked like she was in her thirties, and dressed like the office-workers from the city who had seeped into the smarter parts of the borough. Elijah had heard about her; the rumour was that she was something in the city and that she had a taste for the crack.

Pops crossed the room and kissed her gently on the cheek. “I’ll see you tonight,” he said. She ran her palm across his cheek, collected her jacket and left the room.

Pops found his t-shirt and pulled it over his head. Elijah caught himself wondering how old he was. His brown skin was unmarked, his eyes bright and intense. Elijah guessed he was eighteen or nineteen, but he had a hardness about him that made him seem older. It was a forced maturity, a product of the road, of the things he had seen and done. It had flayed the innocence out of him. “What’s the matter, younger?”

“My Mum caught me with this,” he said, shrugging the rucksack from his shoulder and letting it hang before him. “She’ll nick it off me if I have it in the house.”

Pops laughed. “Don’t fret about it, younger. We’ll look after it here.” He took the bag and tossed it onto the mattress. “Fucking day, I’m all done in.” He took a bag of weed from his pocket and found a packet of rolling papers on the windowsill. “You want a smoke?”

Elijah had never been alone with Pops before. He was talking to him, taking him seriously, and it made him feel special. “Go on, then,” he said, trying to sound older than he felt.

Pops busied himself with making the spliff. “You have fun this afternoon, blood?”

“Yeah.”

“You nervous?”

Elijah took the joint and put it to his lips as Pops sparked it for him. “A bit.”

“That’s OK,” he said. “S’alright to be nervous. Nerves mean adrenaline, and adrenaline is good. Keeps you sharp. You were quick when boi-dem came. Away on your toes.”

“I’ve always been good at running,” he said.

“That’s the thing, younger. That’s gonna be useful. You can’t never let the Feds get hold of you. The thing that keeps me running, even when my lungs are burning like someone’s sparked up a spliff in my chest, even when the stubborn side of me wants to turn around and get ignorant, face them like a man, that’s when I remember I’ve already spent way too many nights sitting on a blue rubber mattress in a cell, who knows how many times it’s been pissed on, that’s when I remember getting caught by boi-dem’s a no-no. You can’t come back to the manor and big up your chest about getting shift by boi-dem. Bad bwoys ain’t supposed to get caught, JaJa. Especially not black boys.” He grinned at him. “It’s all good. You did good.”

Elijah felt a blast of pride that made his heart skip. No-one had said anything like that to him before. His teachers thought he was a waste of space, he didn’t have a dad and his mum was always nagging. He drew in on the joint, coughing as the smoke hit his lungs.

“We ain’t really talked before, have we?”

Elijah shrugged. “Not much.”

“What you going to do with your life, little man?”

The question caught him off guard. “Dunno,” he said.

“You got no plans? No dreams?”

“Dunno. Maybe football. I’m not bad. Maybe that.”

“‘Maybe football,’” Pops repeated, smiling, taking the joint as Elijah passed it back to him.

“I’m OK at it,” Elijah said defensively, wondering if he was being gently mocked. “I’m pretty fast.”

“I’ll say you are,” Pops said, taking a long toke on the joint. “You like the Usain Bolt of Hackney.”

Pops dropped down on the mattress. He patted the space next to him and Elijah sat too. It might have been the weed but he felt himself start to relax.

“Listen, younger, I’m going to tell you something. You won’t think it’s cool, but I know what I’m talking about and you’d do yourself a favour to listen, alright?” He settled back so that he was leaning against the wall. “It’s good to have dreams but a man needs a plan, too. Maybe you are decent at football, maybe you are good enough to make it, but how many kids do you know from these ends who’ve done it? Maybe you can think of one but I don’t know any. Football is a dream, right, and, like I say, it’s good to have dreams, but a man’s got to have a plan, too. A realistic one, just in case his dreams don’t pay off. You know what I’m saying?”

“What about the street?”

“Seriously, younger? The street can be a laugh, you don’t get too deep into it, but the street ain’t no plan.”

“You’re doing it.”

“Only for now. It’s not a long term thing.”

“I know people who do alright.”

“The kids shotting drugs?”

“Nah, that’s just baby steps, I mean the ones above them.”

“Listen to me, Elijah – there ain’t no future on the street. Some brothers do make it through. I know some who started off as youngers, like you, younger than you, then they work their way up with shotting and tiefing until they become Elders, and then some of them keep out of trouble long enough and get made Faces. But, you look, every year, some of them get taken out. Some get lifted by the Feds, others ain’t so lucky and those ones get shot and end up in the ground. Like Darwin, innit? Survival of the fittest. You want, we could have a little experiment – we could start with a hundred young boys, kids your age, and I reckon if we came back five years later to see how they be getting on maybe one or two of them would still be making their way from the street. The others are out, one way or another. Banged up or brown bread. I don’t know what you’re like when it comes to numbers but me, it’s like how you are at football – I ain’t too bad at all. I’m telling you, younger, one hundred to one or two ain’t odds I’m that excited about.”

“What about today? You were out with us.”

“I know – you think I sound like a hypocrite and that’s fair enough. Maybe I am. But I ain’t saying stealing stuff is bad. It ain’t right that some people have everything they want and others – people like us – it ain’t right that we don’t have shit. That stuff we nicked today, them people was all insured. We gave them a scare but they didn’t actually lose nothing. They’ll get it all back, all shiny and new. We deserve a nice phone, a camera, an iPod, whatever, and we ain’t going to get it unless we take it. I reckon that’s fair enough. I reckon that makes it alright to do what we did. But it ain’t got a future. You do it ten times, twenty times maybe if you get lucky, eventually you’re going to get nicked. Someone gets pulled and grasses you up. Your face gets on CCTV. The Feds have got to do something about it in the end. See, what we did this afternoon is short-term. If you want to have those things properly, without fear that they’re going to get taken away from you and you’re going to get banged up, then there ain’t nothing else for it – you got to play the game by their rules.”

“How?”

“You got to study. You got to get your exams. You probably think I’m high saying that” – he nodded at the joint, smiled, and then handed it across – “but think about it a little and you know I’m talking sense. I didn’t pay no attention at school. I was a disaster, couldn’t stand it so I hardly went at all and I couldn’t wait until I was old enough so that I didn’t have to no more. I’m older now, I’ve got more experience, and I’m telling you that all that stuff they say about studying is true. If I’d paid attention more, did better, what I’m trying to do with myself now would’ve been a million times easier.”

Elijah was confused. “What are you doing?”

“So I said I was OK with numbers? Always have been, just something I’ve got a talent for. I’m going to night school to get my A-level. Maths. You know my woman? You know what she does?”

Elijah had heard. “Something in the city?”

He nodded. “Accountant. She says if I can get my exams she can get me a job with her firm. Nothing special, not to start with, post room or some shit like that, but it’s a foot in the door. A chance to show them what I can do. After that – who knows? But I’ll tell you this for nothing, younger, I ain’t going to be doing what we did this afternoon for much longer.”

Elijah sucked on the joint again, stifling the unavoidable cough. The conversation had taken him by surprise. He had always looked up to Pops, thought that he was cool, and he was the last person he would have expected to tell him to stay in school and work hard.

“You did good today. Like I said, you got potential. I saw it in you right away. That wasn’t easy, I remember my first time, I was sick as a dog, they had to push me onto the bus and then I was completely useless. None of that with you, was there? You got balls. That’s great. But just think about what I’ve said, alright? There’s no future there for you. For any of us.”

They smoked the rest of the joint together before Pops got up. “I got to breeze. Got school. My exams are in a month and we’re revising. Equations and all that shit. Don’t want to be late.”

The night was warm and close and the walkway was empty as they both stepped outside. Pops bumped fists with him and descended the stairs. Elijah rested his elbows on the balustrade, looking across to Blissett House and his mother’s flat, then down into the yard as Pops emerged, walking confidently and with purpose, acknowledging the monosyballic greetings from the strung-out cats and the boys from the gang who sold them their gear. Pops was liked. Respected. Elijah nodded to himself.

He fancied some of that himself.

PART TWO

Murder Mile

He wiped the sweat from his face and put the scope of his rifle to his eye, gazing down onto the plains below. The village was five hundred yards away, clustered around the river. Two dozen huts, the villagers making their living from the herd of goats that grazed on the scrappy pasture to the north and west. It was a small habitation, gathered around a madrasa; children played in the dusty yard outside, kicking a ball, a couple of them wearing the shirts of teams he recognised. He took a breath and held it, the rifle held steady, the stock pressed into the space between his shoulder and neck. He nudged the rifle left to right, examining each hut individually. Nothing was out of place: the women were working at home while the men tended the animals in the pasture. He moved the scope right to left until the missile launcher was centred in the crosshairs. A Scud launcher, an old R-11, Russian-made. He squinted down the sight, placing each member of the crew. Three men, Republican Guard. He centred each man in the crosshairs, his finger held loosely through the trigger guard, the tip trailing against the edge of the trigger. He nudged the scope away again so that he could focus on the madrasa: five children in the yard, their cheap plastic ball jerking in the wind as they kicked it against the wall of the hut. They were happy. The launcher meant nothing to them; nothing compared to their game, and the fun they could have together. He heard their laughter, delivered to him by a welcome breath of air.

11

John Milton awoke at six the next morning. He had slept badly, the damned nightmare waking him in the middle of his deepest sleep and never really leaving after that, the ghostly after-effects playing across his mind. He reached out to silence his alarm and allowed himself the rare luxury of coming around slowly. His thoughts turned to the previous evening, to Sharon and Elijah. He recognised elements of his own personality in the boy; the stubbornness, and the inclination to resist authority. If they lived under different circumstances, it would have done no harm for the boy to test her limits. It was natural, and he would have returned to her in time. Their circumstances did not allow him that freedom, though. Milton could see how the attraction of the gang would be difficult for him to resist. If he allowed himself to be drawn into their orbit, he risked terrible damage to his prospects: a criminal record, if he was lucky, or, if he wasn’t, something much worse.

Milton did not own or rent a property. It was unusual for him to be in the country for long periods and he did not see the point of it. He preferred to be unencumbered, flexible enough to be able to move quickly whenever required. His practice was to stay in hotels and so he had booked a room in an American chain, an anonymous space that could have been anywhere in the world. The hotel was on the South Bank of the Thames, next to Westminster Bridge, and when he pulled the curtains aside he was presented with a view of the pigeons and air-conditioning units on the roof of the adjacent building and, beyond that, the tower of the Houses of Parliament. The sky above was cerulean blue and, once again, the sun was already blazing. It was going to be another hot day.

He showered and shaved, standing before the mirror with a towel around his waist. He was six foot tall and around thirteen stone, with an almost wiry solidity about him. His eyes were on the grey side of blue, his mouth had a cruel twist to it, there was a long horizontal scar from his cheek to the start of his nose and his hair was long and a little unkempt, a frond falling over his forehead in a wandering comma. There was a large tattoo of angel wings spread across his shoulders, claws at the tips and rows of etched feathers descending down his back until they disappeared beneath the towel; it was the souvenir of a night in Guatemala, out of his mind on Quetzalteca Especial and mescaline.

Milton dressed and went down to the restaurant for breakfast. He found a table to himself and filled his plate with scrambled eggs from the buffet. He drank a glass of freshly-squeezed orange juice, poured a cup of strong coffee and flicked through the pages of the Times. The front page was dominated by the news of the killing in France. The gendarmerie were waiting to speak to the boy. It was hoped that he would be able to tell them what had happened and, perhaps, identify the man who had killed his parents.

Milton folded the paper and put it to one side.

He returned to his room and packed. He had very little in the way of possessions, but what he did own was classic and timeless: a wide, flat gun-metal cigarette case; a black oxidized Ronson lighter; a Rolex Oyster Perpetual watch. There was little else. He smoked a cigarette out of the window as he transferred his clothes from the wardrobe to his suitcase, put on a pair of Levis and a shirt, slipped his wallet and phone into his pocket and took the lift down to reception.

“I’d like to check out, please,” he told the receptionist.

She keyed his details into her computer. “Certainly, Mr. Anderson. How was your stay with us?”

“Very pleasant.”

He settled the bill in cash, collected the Volvo from the underground car park and drove back to Hackney.

He drove through the Square Mile, its clean streets, well-shod denizens, steepling towers and minarets a gleaming testament to capitalism. He continued past Liverpool Street, through trendy Shoreditch and then passed into the hinterland beyond. Milton had noticed the arcade of shops as he had driven home last night. There was an estate agent’s between a fried chicken takeaway and a minicab office. He parked and walked along the arcade, pausing to look at the properties advertised in the window. He went inside and a man in a cheap, shiny suit asked him if he could be of help.

“I’m looking for a place to rent.”

“Furnished or unfurnished?”

“Furnished.”

“Anywhere in particular? We’ve got a nice place in a school conversion near to the station.”

“Somewhere close to Blissett House.”

The man looked at him as if he was mad. “That’s not the best area. It’s rough.”

“That’s alright.”

“Do you work in the city?”

“No, I’m a writer,” he said, using the cover story he had prepared as he had travelled across London. “I’m researching a book on police corruption. I need to be in the middle of things. I don’t care if it’s rough. It’s better if it’s authentic. Do you have anything?”

The man flicked through his folder of particulars, evidently keen not to look a gift horse in the mouth. “We just had a place come up on Grove Road. Terraced house, two bedrooms. I wouldn’t say it’s anything special, but it’s cheap and it’s on the edge of the Estate. Best I can do, I’m afraid. Most stock in the blocks themselves are kept back for council tenants.”

“Can you show me?”

“Of course.”

The maisonette was close to the office and, since it was a bright, warm day, they walked. The hulk of Blissett House loomed over them as they passed beneath the railway line and into an estate that had been cleared, the brutalist blocks replaced by neat and tidy semi-detached houses. They were painted a uniform pale orange, and each had its own little scrap of garden behind a metal fence. Some houses were occupied by their owners, and marked by careful maintenance. Others were rented, distinguished by overgrown lawns that stank of dog excrement, boarded windows and wheelie bins that overflowed with trash. They continued on, picking up Grove Road. The house that the agent led them to was the last in a terrace that was in a poor state of repair. It was a tiny sliver of a house, only as wide as a single window and the front door. Solid metal security gates had been fitted to the doors and windows, graffiti had been sprayed on the walls and the remains of a washing machine had been dumped and left to rust in the street right next to the kerb. The agent unlocked the security door and yanked it aside. The property was spartan, a small lounge, kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor and two bedrooms above. The furniture was cheap and insubstantial. The rooms smelt of fried food and stale urine.

“It’s a little basic,” the agent said, not even bothering to try and pretend otherwise. “I’m sorry. We have other places, though. I’ve got the key for another one, much nicer, ten minutes away.”

“This’ll do,” Milton said. “I’ll take it.”