The Cleaner (12 page)

“Sit down,” Milton told him and, after another reluctant pause, he did. “I’m glad you came.”

“Yeah,” Elijah grunted.

“What do you fancy?”

The boy said nothing. His eyes darted around the café. A diamond stud shone against the dark skin of his ear. The jewellery looked obscene on such a young child. Milton noticed that he had chosen a chair that faced away from the window. He did not want to be seen.

“Breakfast?”

“Ain’t hungry.”

“Well, I am. I’ll get some extra chips in case you change your mind”

Elijah slouched back in the chair, trying hard to appear nonchalant. Milton loaded his fork with eggs and put it into his mouth, watching the boy. He made sure he appeared relaxed and said nothing, leaving it for Elijah to speak first. The boy turned the newspaper around and read the short article on the murdered boy. He finished it and shook his head derisively. “Them boys in Brixton ain’t shit. They come up these ends and we’d send ‘em back to their mammas.”

“What’s your gang?”

“LFB,” Elijah replied proudly.

“London Field Boys?”

“S’right.”

“I’ve seen the graffiti on the walls.”

“Yeah, all this round here, this is our ends.”

“Don’t think I’ve seen you in the papers.”

“We are––I mean, we have been.”

“Perhaps you’re not bad enough.”

“What you mean?”

“You need a reputation, don’t you?”

“We’re plenty bad enough.”

“But it looks like you have to kill someone to get into the papers.”

“You don’t think we’ve merked anyone?”

“I don’t know. Some of the boys you’ve been hanging out with––maybe they have. But I know you haven’t.”

“Fuck you know?”

Milton put his knife and fork down and carefully wiped his mouth. He pressed his finger against the photograph of the dead boy. “Do you really think you could do that? You think you could go up to another boy, take out a gun and pull the trigger?”

Elijah tried to hold his gaze but could not. He looked down at the table.

Milton shook his head. “You don’t have it in you. You don’t have it in you for your own conscience to haunt you for the rest of your whole life, telling you you’ve robbed a wife of her husband, children of their father, brothers, friends, everyone. Look at me––I know if a man has it in him. Do you have it in you?”

Elijah stood up. “I didn’t come here to get lectured.”

“I’m trying to put things into perspective.”

“Don’t need that,” he said, making a dismissive gesture with the back of his hand.

“It’s not a bad thing. Why would anyone choose to be like that?”

“You ain’t got any idea what you’re on about.”

“Sit down, Elijah.”

His words had no effect. “‘Sit down, Elijah?’ Who’d you think you are? You don’t know shit about me. You don’t know shit about anything––about these ends, what it’s like to be here, what we do. You obviously think you do, but you don’t.”

“I’m sorry. Sit down. Let’s talk.”

He was angry now and Milton could see he wouldn’t be able to calm him down. “I don’t know what I was thinking, coming here to see you. You can’t help me. You got no idea. I must have been out of my mind.”

He turned and left, the door clattering behind him. Milton rose and followed him into the street. Elijah was heading back towards the Estate, his hood pulled up and his shoulders hunched forwards. Milton was about to set off after him before he thought better of it. He went back inside and sat down again before what was left of his breakfast. He cursed himself. What had he been thinking? He had let his temper get the better of him and now he had lost his opportunity to get through to the boy. He was stubborn and headstrong and the direct approach was not going to be successful. He would have to try another way.

19.

POPS AND LAURA had gone to the Nandos on Bethnal Green Road for dinner and then had taken the bus down towards the cinema in Shoreditch. It had been a good evening. Pops was off the Estate and there was no need for him to impress anyone, or uphold his rep, or put anyone else down. He had an act, and he played it well: hard, impassive, sarcastic. To reveal otherwise would be dangerous, a sign of weakness. He remembered, with vivid clarity, the documentaries his biology teacher had shown them in middle school when she wanted to go off and smoke a fag in the playground. There had been one about the lions in Africa, the Serengeti or whatever the fuck place it was, and it had stuck in his head ever since. Leadership was all about image. The top lion needed to show the others in the pride that he wasn’t to be messed with. If he showed weakness, they’d be on him. They’d fuck him up. Pops knew that there were other elders in the LFB who would fuck him up, too, if he gave them reason.

It was different with Laura. He could relax and be himself. It was always like that with her. She loved her crack, but Pops knew she was into him for much more than just getting lickey. She was older than him, ten years older, and she had that sense of confidence that older women had. She wasn’t like the skanky goonettes on the Estate, always mouthing off, screeching and pouting and giving attitude. They were just girls where Laura was a woman. She was cool. And, man, was she fine.

The film had been running for thirty minutes when the call came. Pops felt his phone vibrating in his pocket and he had taken it out to check the caller ID: it was Bizness. His stomach plummeted and his chest felt tight. He did not want to answer it but he knew that there was no choice, not where Bizness was concerned. He had stabbed a boy before who had ignored his calls. He said it was a mark of disrespect. Respect was the most important thing in Bizness’s life, or at least that was what he said.

He took the call, pressing the phone against his ear. “Bizness,” he said quietly.

He could hear the sound of loud music in the background. “Where are you, man?”

“Watching a movie.”

“Nah, bruv, don’t be chatting breeze––what, you forgot the party tonight?”

Pops gritted his teeth. He hadn’t forgotten, far from it. He knew about the new record, and the party to celebrate its launch, and he had decided to ignore it. He had been to the party that launched the collective’s first record, eighteen months ago, and he had not enjoyed himself. The atmosphere was aggressive, feral, and there had been several beefs that had the potential to turn even more unpleasant than they already were. The relationships within the group were built on uncertain foundations. All the talk of being brothers was fine, but talk was just talk, and there was a swirl of jealousy beneath the surface that was always ready to erupt. Pops knew all of the crew, some better than others, and juggling loyalties between them was more effort than it was worth. Bizness was currently at the top of the tree, and it had been that way for the last six months. He had replaced Lambie once he had been done for possession of a firearm and sent down for four years. There were always pretenders to his crown, and his treatment of them was always the same: constant dissing that turned violent when the dissing didn’t work. Beatings, then stabbings if the beatings didn’t work, and at least two shootings that he knew about. One of those shootings he knew about from close personal experience, close enough for the poor bastard’s blood to land all over his jacket.

Pops didn’t need that kind of aggravation in his life tonight.

“You coming, then?” Bizness pressed.

There were a couple in the seats in front of him and the man turned around and glared at him, trying to act big in front of his woman. Pops felt his anger flare; he jerked his head up, his eyebrows cocked, and the man turned away.

“Nah, I don’t know, man.”

“I ain’t asking,” Bizness said. “I’m telling.”

Pops sighed. There was no point in resisting. “Alright,” he said.

“You with your gash?”

Pops looked over at Laura. She was watching the film, the light from the screen flickering against her pale skin. “Yeah,” he said.

“Bring her with you, aight? And bring that younger. What’s his name, JaJa? Pick him up and tell him I need that package he’s holding for me. There’s gonna be hype tonight, I’m hearing things, I wanna make sure I don’t get caught with my dick out. Bring your piece, too.”

And, with that, Bizness ended the call.

Pops stared at screen as it slowly faded to black. The first act of the film came to a crashing conclusion and yet he did not really notice it. He was thinking of Bizness, and whether there was any way they could show their faces at the party and then leave. He was unable to think of anything. Bizness would just see that as a diss, probably worse than not going at all, and he’d be in the shit.

He tried to put it into perspective. Maybe he was being ungrateful. He felt the thick wad of ten pound notes in his pocket, the cold links of his gold chain resting against his skin, the heavy weight of the rings on his fingers. None of that came for free. You had to do things you would rather not do. That was how you got all the nice stuff you wanted. That was just the way it was.

“Come on,” he whispered over to Laura.

“What?”

“We gotta split. There’s a party, we got to go to it.”

“Can’t we got afterwards? This is good.”

“Gotta go now, baby,” he said, taking her by the arm and drawing her down into the aisle. He held his phone in his other hand and, using his thumb, he scrolled through his contacts until he found Elijah’s number.

20.

THE PARTY was in Chimes nightclub on the Lower Clapton Road. Pops parked next to the beaten up Georgian houses on Clapton Square and they walked the rest of the way, past the discount stores and kaleidoscopic ethic restaurants, past the police posters pasted onto the lamp-posts exhorting locals to “Nail the Killers in Hackney.” The club was on the edge of the major roundabout that funnelled traffic between the City and the East End and marked the beginning of Murder Mile, the long stretch of road that had become inextricably linked with gun crime over the past few years.

The club was in a large and dilapidated old building, facing the minarets of an enormous mosque. It was a hot and enclosed series of rooms and condensation dripped from the patched and sagging ceilings overhead. The largest room had been equipped with a powerful sound system, and Elijah had been able to hear the rumble of the bass from where Pops parked his car. Lights rotated and spun, lasers streaked through the damp air, strobes flickered with skittish energy. The rooms were crammed with revellers: girls in tight-fitting tops and short skirts, men gathered in surly groups at the edges of the room, drinking and smoking and aiming murderous glances at rivals. A tight wire of aggression passed through the room, thrumming with tension, ready to snap. The bassline thumped out a four-four beat, repetitive and brutal, and the noise of a hundred shouted conversations filled the spaces between as an incomprehensible buzz.

Elijah caught himself gaping. He had never been to anything like this before and he could hardly believe he was here. All the members of BRAPPPP! were present, the whole collective, two dozen of them, each bringing their own entourage of friends and hangers-on. He recognised them from the poster in his room and the videos he had watched on YouTube. The new record had been played earlier and now the DJ was mixing old school Dr Dre and Snoop Dogg. Pops was alongside him, his face bleak, his hand placed possessively against the small of his girl’s back.

Bizness appeared from out of the crowd, noticed them, and made his way across. He moved with exaggerated confidence, rolling his hips and shoulders, and his face was coldly impassive. He responded to the greetings from those he passed with small dips of his head or, for closer friends, a fist bump.

“Aight,” he said as he reached their group. He regarded them one at a time, his face unmoving until his gaze rested on Laura. The blank aggression lifted and he parted his wide lips, revealing his brilliantly white teeth with the three gold caps. “Alright, darling,” he said, ignoring Pops altogether. “Remember me?”

“Of course,” Laura said, her eyes glittering.

“You heard the new record yet?”

“Yeah.”

“You like it?”

“Course.”

“That’s what I like to hear. You looking
fine
tonight, darling. You totally bare choong.”

She did not reply, but her helpless smile said enough. Pops noticed it and a tremor of irritation quivered across his face.

Bizness ignored Pops and the others and turned to Elijah. “Come with me, younger,” he said, and, without waiting for a response, he led the way through the crowd. A tall, heavyset man wearing an earpiece was stationed at a door next to the bar and, as Bizness approached, he gave a stiff nod and stepped aside. The room beyond was small and dark, with sofas against the walls and drapes obscuring the light from the street outside. There were three others in the room, arching their backs over a long table that was festooned with two dozen lines of cocaine, arranged in parallel, each four inches long. Elijah recognised the others as members of BRAPPPP!––MC Mafia, the rapper who sounded a little like Snoop––Icarus and Bredren.

Bizness walked across to the table and took out a rolled up twenty pound note. He lowered his face to the nearest line and, with the note pressed tightly into his nostril, he snorted hard. Half of the line disappeared. He swapped the note into his other nostril and snorted again, finishing the line. He pressed his finger to one nostril and then the other, snorting hard again, and then rubbed a finger vigorously across his gums. With an appreciative smack of his lips, he offered the note to Elijah. “Want one?”

Elijah had never taken cocaine before and he was scared but he felt unable to refuse. Bizness and the others were watching them. Bizness’s face was inscrutable, and he did not want him to think he was a little boy. He shrugged, doing his best to feign nonchalance, dipped his head to the table and snorted the powder. He managed a quarter of the line, the powder tickling his nose and throat. The sneeze came before he had moved his head and it blew the rest of the line away, a little cloud of white that bloomed across the table, the powder getting into his eyes and his mouth.