The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (13 page)

Sharon directed him to take a left turn off the main road, and they drove into an Estate. They drove slowly past a single convenience store, the windows barred and a Plexiglas screen protecting the owner from his patrons. Three huge tower blocks dominated the area, each of them named after local politicians from another time, an optimistic time when the buildings would have appeared bright, new and hopeful. That day had passed. They were monstrously big, almost too large to take in with a single glance. They drove around Carson House, the tower marked for demolition, its windows and doors sealed tight by bright orange metal covers. There was a playground in front of it, hooded kids sitting on the swings and slides, red-tipped cigarettes flaring in the hot dusky light.

Sharon directed Milton to Blissett House, and as he rolled the car into a forecourt occupied by battered wrecks and burnt-out hulks, the decay became too obvious to miss. Window frames were rotting, paint peeling like leprous scabs. Concrete had crumbled like meringue, the steel wires that lent support to the structure poking out like the ribs of a decaying carcass. Milton looked around. Blissett House looked like it had been built in the fifties. It would have seemed futuristic then, a brand-new way of living that had risen from the grotty terraces that had been cleared away, the council finishing the job that the Germans had started. It was twenty storeys high, each floor accessed by way of an external balcony that looped around a central shaft. There was a pervading sense of menace, a heavy dread that settled over everything like smog. The doors and windows were all barred. Graffitti’d tags were everywhere. One of the garages on the first-floor level had been burned out, the metal door half ripped off and hanging askance. An Audi with blacked-out windows was parked in the middle of the wide forecourt, the door open and a man lounging in the driver’s seat, his legs extending out. The baleful rhythmic thump from a new dubstep track shuddered from the bass bins in the back of the car.

Milton pointed his key at his Volvo and thumbed the lock. It seemed a pointless affectation, and the car looked vulnerable as they walked away from it. He was grateful, for once, for the state of it. With the exhaust lashed to the chassis with wire and the wing folded inwards from the last time he had pranged it, it was nothing to look at. It was, he hoped, hardly worth taking, or else he was going to have a long walk home.

He followed Sharon towards the building. The man in the Audi stared at him through a blue-tinged cloud of dope smoke, his eyes lazy but menacing. Milton held his stare as he crossed his line of vision. The man’s hair was arranged in long dreads, and gold necklaces were festooned around his neck. As their eyes met, the man nonchalantly flicked away the joint he had finished and tugged up his T-shirt to show the butt of the revolver shoved into the waistband of his jeans. Milton looked away. He didn’t care that the man would consider that a small victory. There was nothing to be gained from causing trouble.

Sharon led the way to the lobby. “The lifts don’t work,” she apologised, gesturing to the signs pasted onto the closed doors. “Hope you don’t mind a little climb. We’re on the sixth floor.”

The stairwells were dank and dark and smelled of urine. Rubbish had been allowed to gather on the floor, and a pile of ashes marked the site of a recent fire. A youngster with his hood pulled up over his head shuffled over.

“You after something?”

Sharon stepped up to him. “Leave off, Dwayne.”

“Where’s JaJa?” he asked her.

“Don’t you be worrying about him,” she said.

“You tell him I want to see him.”

“What for?”

“Just tell him, you dumb sket.”

Milton stepped between them.

The boy was big for his age, only a couple of inches shorter than he was, and his shoulders were heavy with muscle. He squared up and faced him. “Yeah? What you want, big man?”

“I want you to show a little respect.”

“Who are you? Her new boyfriend? She’s grimey, man. Grimey. I seen half a dozen brothers going in and out of her place last week. She’s easy, bro—don’t think you’re nothing special.”

The boy was making a point; he didn’t know what Milton’s relationship with Sharon was, and he didn’t care. He was daring Milton to do something. There didn’t seem to be any point in talking to him. Milton slapped him with the back of his hand, catching him by surprise and spinning him against the wall. He followed up quickly, taking the boy’s right arm and yanking it, hard, all the way up behind his back. The boy squealed in pain as Milton folded his fingers back, guiding him around so that he faced Sharon.

“Apologise,” he said.

“Mr Milton,” Sharon said hesitantly.

“Apologise,” Milton ordered again.

The boy gritted his teeth, and Milton pulled his fingers back another inch. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. Please, mister—you’re breaking my fingers.”

Milton turned him around so that he was facing the open door and propelled him out of it. He landed on his stomach, scraping his face against the rough tarmac. The man in the tricked-out car looked over, lazy interest flickering across his face.

“You didn’t need to do that,” Sharon said. “It’s best just to ignore them.”

“Good manners don’t cost anything. Come on—let’s get inside. I bet you could do with a cup of tea.”

They climbed the stairs to the sixth floor and followed the open walkway to the end of the block. A couple of youngsters were leaning against the balcony, looking out over the Estate below and, beyond that, the streets and houses that made up this part of Hackney. Milton recognised from experience that they had been stationed as lookouts, and that, from their perch, they would be able to see the approach of rival gang bangers or police. They would call down to the older boys selling their products on the walkways below. The dealers would vanish if it was the police or call for muscle if it was a rival crew. Milton said nothing. The boys glared at them as they approached.

Flat 609 was at the end of the block, where the walkway abutted the graffiti-marked wall. The door was protected by a metal gate and the windows were behind similar grilles. Sharon unlocked the gate and then the heavy door and went inside. Milton followed, instinctively assessing the interior. The front door opened into a tiny square hallway, one of the walls festooned with coats on a row of hooks and a dozen pairs of shoes stacked haphazardly beneath it. Post had been allowed to gather beneath the letter box, and Milton could see that most were bills, several of them showing the red ink that marked them as final demands. The hallway had three doors. Sharon opened the one to the lounge, and Milton followed her inside.

It was a large room furnished with an old sofa, a square table with four chairs and a large flat-screen television. Videogames were scattered on the floor.

“How many children do you have?” Milton asked.

“Two. My oldest, Jules, fell in with the wrong sort. He has a problem with drugs—we only ever see him when he wants money. It’s just me and Elijah most of the time.”

Milton was a good listener, and Sharon started to feel better. Just talking to him helped. Perhaps he was right and there was something he could do. It wasn’t as if she had had any other offers of help. The Social was useless, and the last thing she wanted to do was get the police involved. They wouldn’t be sympathetic, and Elijah would end up with a record or something, and that would be the end of that as far as his future was concerned.

“Why don’t you sit down?” Milton suggested. “I’m guessing this is the kitchen?”

She nodded.

“So go on, sit down and relax. I’ll make you a cup of tea while we wait for your son.”

WHEN ELIJAH opened the door to their flat, there was a white man he had never seen before sitting in the front room. He was tall, with strong-looking shoulders and large hands, and plain to look at in a loose-fitting suit and scuffed leather shoes. The scar across his face was a little frightening. He was in the armchair Elijah used when he was on his PlayStation, drinking a cup of tea. Elijah’s first thought was that he was police, a detective, and he suddenly felt horribly exposed. Pops had told him to take the gear they had tiefed from the people on the train and keep it safe while he arranged for someone to buy it from them. It swung from his shoulder, clanking and clicking.

His mother was sitting opposite the man. She got up as he came in through the door.

“Where’ve you been?” she said. “You’re late.”

“Out,” he replied sullenly. The man put down his cup of tea and pulled himself out of the armchair. “Who are you?”

“This is Mr Milton.”

“I was talking to him.” Elijah looked up at the man. There was a flintiness in his icy blue eyes. Elijah tried to stare him out, but although the man was smiling at him, his eyes were cold and hard and unnerving. He made Elijah anxious.

He held out a hand. “You can call me John,” he said.

“Yeah, whatever.” The heavy rucksack slipped down his shoulder, rattling noisily. He shrugged it back into place and stepped around the man to go to his room.

Sharon got to her feet and stepped in between him and his door. “What’s in the bag, Elijah?”

“Nothing. Just my stuff.”

“Then you won’t mind me having a look, will you?”

She took the bag from him, unzipped it and, one by one, pulled out the mobile phones, watches, wallets and two tablet computers. Silently, she lined them up on the dining table and then, when she was done, turned to face him with a frightened expression on her face. “How did you get this?”

“Looking after it for a friend.”

“Did you steal it?”

“Course not,” he said, but he knew he sounded unconvincing. He was aware of the big man in the room with them. “Who are you?” he asked again. “Police? Social?”

“I’m a friend of your mother. She’s worried about you.”

“She needn’t be. I’m fine.”

Sharon held up an expensive-looking watch. “This is all tiefed, isn’t it?”

“I told you, I’m just looking after it.”

“Then you can take it straight back to him. I don’t want it in the house.”

“Why don’t you just mind your business?” He dropped everything back into the rucksack and slung it across his shoulder.

“Who is it?” she said as he turned for the door.

“You don’t know him.”

“Show your mother some respect,” Milton said. “She doesn’t deserve you speaking to her like that.”

“Who are you to go telling me what to do?” he exploded. “I ain’t never seen you before. Don’t think you’re anything special, neither. None of her boyfriends last long. They all get bored eventually, and we don’t never see them no more. I don’t know who you are, and I’m not going to bother to find out. I won’t ever see you again.”

“Elijah!”

Milton didn’t know how to respond to that, and he stepped aside as Elijah made for the door. Sharon looked on haplessly as her son opened it, stepped out onto the landing, and slammed it behind him.

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 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 lying 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 knew Elijah 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.