The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (34 page)

Rutherford stopped at the reception and asked, quietly, for directions to the Burns Unit. The hospital was sprawling and badly organised, and it took them ten minutes to trace a route through the warren of corridors until they found the correct department. A long passageway gave access onto a dozen separate rooms. A nurse was sat behind a counter at the start of the corridor.

“Sharon Warriner?”

“Are you related to her?”

“This is her boy.”

The nurse looked at Elijah, a small smile of sympathy breaking across her face. “Room eight.”

They walked quickly and in silence, the soles of their shoes squeaking against the linoleum floor. The door was closed, with a sign indicating that visitors should use the intercom to announce themselves.

Rutherford paused. “Are you all right?” he asked Elijah.

The boy’s throat bulged as he swallowed. “Yeah,” he said, his voice wobbling.

“It might not look good now, but your mum is going to be all right. You hear me? She’ll be fine.”

“Yeah.”

“And I’m here if you need me.”

Rutherford buzzed the intercom and opened the door. He stepped inside, leaving his hand on Elijah’s shoulder as they made their way into the ward. A series of private rooms were accessed from a central corridor. Milton was standing outside a room at the end. They walked up to him, and he stepped aside.

It was a small space, barely enough room for a bed and the cheap and flimsy furniture arranged around it. A window looked out onto a patch of garden, the ornamental tree in the centre of the space overgrown with weeds and bits of litter that had snared in its lifeless branches. A woman was lying in the bed, most of her body wrapped in bandages. The skin on her face was puckered across one side; angry blisters and weals started at her scalp and disfigured her all the way down to her throat. Her head had been shaved to a stubbled furze, and the eyebrow to the right had been singed away. An oxygen masked was fitted to her mouth, and her breathing in and out was shallow, a delicate and pathetic sound. Her eyes were closed.

Rutherford felt a catch in his throat. He squeezed Elijah’s shoulder.

The boy’s hard face seemed to break apart in slow motion. The hostility melted and the premature years fell away until he looked like what he really was: a fifteen-year-old child, confused, helpless and desperate for his mother. Rutherford’s hand fell away as the boy ran across the room to the bed.

Rutherford stepped back from the bed to give the boy some space. He turned. Milton was standing at the back of the room, his arms folded across his chest. His face relayed a mixture of emotions: concern for the woman, sympathy for the boy, and beneath everything else, the unmistakeable fire of black anger. Rutherford knew all about that, it had landed him in trouble as a young man, and he had learnt to douse it down whenever it started to flicker and flame. He could see it smouldering behind Milton’s eyes now. His fists clenched and unclenched, and his jaw was set into an iron-hard line. He was struggling to keep it under control. It didn’t look as if he wanted to. As he looked at the darkness that flickered in those flinty, emotionless eyes, he was afraid.

“What happened?”

“Arson.”

“Do you know—”

“I know.”

Rutherford lowered his voice even lower and flicked his eyes towards Elijah. “You said he was in trouble—is it because of something he was mixed up in?”

Milton nodded.

“Have you told the police?”

His voice was flat. “It’s gone beyond that.”

“So?”

Milton put his hand on Rutherford’s arm. “You need to do me a favour. Look after the boy. Keep an eye on him, keep on at him to train, he needs something like that in his life, and we both know he’s got talent.”

“What about you?”

Milton ignored the question. “He needs a strong figure in his life. Someone to look up to. It’s not me—it was never going to be me. I’m the last sort of example that he needs.”

“What you talking about, man?”

“It doesn’t matter. Just say you’ll look out for him.”

“Of course I will.”

“Thank you.”

Rutherford pressed. “What about you?”

The feeling was suddenly bleached from Milton’s expression again. It became cold and impassive and frightening. “There’s something I have to do.”

“Let me help.”

“Not for this.”

“Come on, man. I don’t know what you’re thinking about, but whatever it is, it’ll go better if you’ve got someone to watch your back.”

“Look after the boy.”

“You’re going after them, aren’t you?”

“Look after the boy. That’s more than enough.”

JOHN MILTON set off for Dalston. The radio said that the rioting was getting worse, and the evidence bore that out: the streets were choked with people, groups of youngsters making their way into the centre of Hackney. A girl was standing on a corner wearing her shorts and bra, her T-shirt wrapped around her face, both middle fingers extended towards a police car as it sped by. Shop windows were smashed: broken TVs were left on the street, unwanted T-shirts were scattered about, empty trainer and mobile phone boxes and security tags lying where they had been thrown. Milton watched as a young boy cradling a PlayStation box was punched by two older boys and the box stolen, in turn, from him. The occasional police van went past, lights flashing, but not as many as Milton would have expected.

He passed a police station. It was surrounded by a large crowd, and as he watched, he saw the thick line of looters bulge and surge and then pour inside through a smashed door. Lights were turned on, and within moments, thick smoke started to pour through the windows. Rioters emerged again, some of them wearing police stab vests and helmets. They launched the helmets at the police and turned over the cars parked in the yard. Surely the authorities had not been caught out? he thought as he carefully skirted the crowd. Milton didn’t mind. This would serve as a valuable distraction for what he was intending to do.

The main road was eventually blocked by the sheer number of people in the street, so he picked a way to Bizness’s studio around the back streets, driving slowly and taking a wide path around clutches of rioters, their faces obscured by scarves and hoods, hauling away the goods they had looted from wrecked shops. He was stared down by huddled groups of people on the corner. They had boxes at their feet: consoles, stereos, flat-screen TVs.

He parked the car two hundred yards away and went around to the back. The light inside the boot cast a sickly light on the interior, a travel blanket lay across a collection of items that revealed themselves as bumps through the fabric. He looked around cautiously. There was no one close enough to see what he was doing.

He took a pair of latex gloves from a cardboard dispenser and fitted them carefully onto his hands. He checked the street again and, satisfied, pulled the blanket aside. A sawn-off shotgun was laid across the floor of the boot and, next to it, his Sig 9mm automatic. He took a rag and wiped both guns carefully. He checked the Sig was fully loaded and holstered it under his shirt, inside the waistband of his jeans, the metal pressed into the small of his back. There was a box of shells next to the shotgun, and he stuffed a handful into his pocket. He wiped the gun with the rag, carefully removing any prints, and wrapped it in the travel blanket. It was eighteen inches from tip to stock, and he slipped the bundle underneath his jacket, barrel pointing downwards. He had a dozen shells for the shotgun and seventeen rounds in the Sig. Twenty-nine in total. He hoped it would be enough. He dropped a pair of flashbangs into his pocket and closed the boot.

The sound of alarms filled the air, loud and declamatory, and beneath their sharp screech came the occasional noise of windows shattering and the hubbub of shouts and shrieks from the rioters on the street. Police riot vans raced down the street towards Hackney Central, and at the same time tens of kids with scarves over their faces came running in the other direction, laughing and screaming.

Milton made his way towards the main road.

“SHIT’S GOING
ON
OUT THERE,” Mouse whooped. “You see that brother? He just put a dustbin through the window of the Poundland.”

“Brother needs his head examined, looting a motherfucking Poundland.”

Pinky was speaking on the phone. “It’s going down at the shopping centre, too,” he reported. “They’ve bust in through the front doors, and there ain’t no security or police nowhere doing anything about it. There’s a Foot Locker in there. What we doing here, anyway? It can wait. I want me some new Jordans, man. Come on, bruv. Let’s get involved. We can be there in five minutes.”

Bizness looked at Pinky. The boy was immature. He was enthusiastic and full of energy, but he was going to get on his nerves if he didn’t take it easy.

“It’s hot in here, man. Don’t you ever open no windows?”

“Have a beer. Smoke something. Just stop fucking getting in my face, a’ight?”

They had been in the room for two hours, and it smelled of dope, sweat and cigarettes. Mouse had been out to find out the news and had returned to report that Pops’s body had been found in the park and that Elijah’s mother’s flat had been razed to the ground. Bizness was not worried. He had been careful, and there was nothing to connect him to either crime. The best policy, in a situation like this, was to sit tight for a few hours until the initial fuss had blown over. If the police wanted to talk to him, they knew where he was. They would say that they had been in the studio all day.

He had told himself he wouldn’t do any of the blow, but it had been a long wait. They had a lot of it, and there wasn’t anything else to do. He felt twitchy, and a vein in his temple jumped now and again, a nervous tic that was beginning to irritate him.

Mouse took out his phone. “I’m gonna go call my woman.”

“Do it in here,” Bizness said.

“Place smells rank, man,” Mouse countered. “If I don’t get some fresh air, I swear I’m gonna faint. I’ll speak to her for a bit, have a look on the street, see what’s happening, then get back inside. Won’t be long.”

MILTON WALKED briskly to the entrance to the studio. Bass was thumping through the walls of the building, rattling the door in its frame. He scouted it quickly. If there had been time, he would have prepared a careful plan for getting inside and taking Bizness out. He would have found a distraction, perhaps disabled the electricity to put them on the back foot. Or he could have broken into the building opposite and sniped them from the second floor. The road was only twenty metres wide, and he could have managed that in his sleep. He dismissed both ideas. There wasn’t time for either of them, and anyway, he wasn’t inclined to be subtle.

He tried the handle: it was locked. Milton took a step back and was preparing to kick it in when the lock clicked, the handle turned, and the door was pulled open. A man was standing there, shock on his face, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lip. Milton released his grip so that the blanket fell away from the sawn-off and shoved the stock into the man’s face. His nose crumpled, and blood burst across his face. He lost his legs and began to fall. Milton followed him as he staggered back inside, swiping the stock like a club, the end catching the man on the chin as he went down. He was unconscious before he fell back and bounced off the stairs.

The light over the stairs was on. Milton flicked it off.

“Mouse?” came a voice from upstairs. “You alright?”

Milton turned the sawn-off in his hands, holding it loosely and aiming it diagonally upwards. He stepped over Mouse and started up the stairs, slowly, one at a time.

“Mouse?”

Milton climbed.

“You hear something?” came an angry voice from upstairs.

“Nah.”

“Go and check.”

“He’s outside on the phone. It’s nothing, Bizness.”

“Then there’s nothing to worry about going and making sure, is there?”

“Fuck it, man, all I want is a smoke and a relax.”

“Get down there.”

Milton kept climbing the stairs.

He thought of Aaron: shot dead in the park like an animal.

He thought of Sharon: breathing through a tube in a hospital bed, bandages wrapped around her face.

He thought of Elijah and his brutally short future if he let Bizness live.

No, he could not go back. Too much blood had been spilt. Milton had offered Bizness a way out, but he had decided not to take it. That was his choice. Ignoring his offer came with consequences, and those had been explained to him, too. There was nothing else to do; he had to finish it, tonight.

A second man appeared at the top of the stairs. Milton recognised him from the crack house. He squeezed the trigger and shot him in the chest, the impact peppering him from his navel to his throat. He staggered, his hand pointlessly reaching for the knife in his pocket. Milton fired a second spread. Spit and blood foamed at the man’s lips as he pirouetted back into the room above, dropping to the floor.

The music suddenly cut out.

Milton paused, crouching low.

“A’ight,” Bizness called down to him. “That you, Milton?”

He gripped the barrel in his left hand, the index finger of his right hand tight against the trigger.

“I know it’s you. I don’t know what your beef is with me, but I ain’t armed. Come up. Let’s sort this out.”

Milton took another step, then another.

“We can settle this thing. It’s about JaJa, right? That’s what you said. You want the younger, man, you can have him. Little shit ain’t worth all this aggravation. Come up. We’ll shake like men.”

Milton was at the top of the stairs.

He took a quick step and flung himself into the room.

Two Mac-10s spat out.

Tck-tck-tck-tck-tck.

The bullets thudded into the sofa, spraying out fragments of leather and gouts of yellowed upholstery. Milton landed next to the table and scrambled into the studio beyond, more spray from the automatics studding into the floor and wall as he swung his legs inside and out of the line of fire.

Tck-tck-tck-tck-tck.