The Cleaner (21 page)

They reached the fringe of trees that provided a canopy of leaves over the path at the outer edge of the park. The pub at the junction was growing busier, with loud customers spilling into a beer garden decorated with fairy lights.

“Alright,” Milton said. “That’s enough for now. Go to the police tomorrow. Alright?”

“Yeah,” Pops said sullenly.

“Don’t let me down. It’s important.”

“Aight,” he conceded. “Tomorrow. When will I know you’ve done something.”

“You’ll know.”

35.

MILTON TOOK the underground to Oxford Circus and emerged, blinking, into the hard bright light of another stifling summer’s day. The temperature had continued its inexorable uptick into the mid-thirties but now it had become damply humid, a wetness that quickly gathered beneath Milton’s armpits and seeped down the middle of his back. The atmosphere lay heavy over the city, a woozy stupor that could only be alleviated with the inevitable thunderstorm that the forecast was predicting for later.

The Sig Sauer in its chamois holster was a heavy, warm lump beneath Milton’s shoulder. The air in the tube had been cloying and dense and Milton was pleased to have left it behind him. The confluence of Regent Street and Oxford Street was a busy scrum of sluggish tourists and frustrated office workers on their lunch breaks. Traffic jammed at the lights, taxi-drivers leaning on their horns to chivvy along the busses that tarried to embark passengers. Tempers were stretched as tight as piano wire, arguments flaring and confrontations held just beneath the surface.

Milton’s phone vibrated in his pocket.

“Hello?” he said.

“Is that John?”

“Who’s this?”

“Rutherford. Is everything alright?”

“I’m a little busy.”

“It’s Saturday afternoon, I’ve been expecting your boy to come for training but there ain’t no sign of him. What’s happening?”

“There’s been a setback,” Milton said as he crossed the road at the lights. “I’m taking care of it. I have to go.”

Milton ended the call. He turned in the direction of the tall, crenulated finger of Centre Point. HMV was fifty yards along the road, the sound of heavy bass throbbing from the wide open doorway into the cavernous space beyond. Milton surveyed the interior: racks of music and films; t-shirts; magazines; and, on a stage that had been erected in middle of the shop, a table and a tall stack of CDs. A long queue of youngsters––mostly young boys, but also a handful of girls––snaked back from the table around the aisles and back almost to the entrance. Behind the table sat six members of BRAPPPP! The collection comprised the better known members of the collective: MC Mafia, Merlin, Icarus, Bredren. The female singer, Loletta, sat in the middle, haughty with her strikingly good looks, a highlight for the hormonal teenage boys who waited to be presented to her.

Milton recognised Bizness from the pictures on his Facebook and Twitter profiles. He was wearing a Chicago Bulls singlet, the top revealing an angular torso: long, skinny arms with the sharp points of his elbows and shoulders. His skin was extensively tattooed, and gold teeth glittered on the rare occasion when he disturbed the studied blankness of his expression to smile. He sat at the head of the table, the last member of the collective to receive the fans, like a king or a mafia don accepting the fealty of his subjects. They came to him, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, their CDs passed along the table with him finally adding his mark and sending them on their way. He spoke with some, bumped fists with others, but all left elated by their encounter with their hero. Milton could see, quite clearly, the power that the man––and the lifestyle he typified––had on them. He was an aspirational figure, living proof that the success he rapped about was possible to have. Milton did not respect him for this, but he recognised it, and its influence, and filed it away for future reference.

A large display had been erected at the front of the shop, loaded with the collective’s new album and an assortment of other merchandise. Milton took a copy of the record and a t-shirt and joined the end of the queue. It was moving slowly, and Milton guessed it would take half an hour to get to the front. He did not have the patience to wait for that and, taking advantage of the fact that it would have been difficult to imagine anyone less likely to jump the queue, he made his way to the front. “One minute,” he said to the two young boys who were about to go forwards. “I just need a quick word with him. Won’t hold you up long.”

The table was fenced in by crowd control barriers and two large bouncers stood guard at the entrance to the enclosure. They glared at him as he passed between them. Milton passed along the table, ignoring the others and making his way directly to Bizness.

He stopped in front of him. “Good afternoon,” he said.

Bizness bared his teeth in feral grin, the golden caps sparkling. “Look at this,” he laughed, jutting his chin towards Milton. The others laughed, too. “You in the wrong section, man. Old folks’ music is over there.”

“No, it’s you I want to see.”

Bizness threw up his hands and chuckled again. “Fine, bruv, where’s your record, then? Give it here. What you want me to say?”

“I’m not here about your music.”

“Come on, man, enough of this bullshit. If you ain’t got nothing to sign, get the fuck out the way. Lot of brothers and sisters here been queuing hours see us, you gonna end up causing a motherfucking riot you don’t stop slowing the queue down.”

“I need to talk to you. And you’re going to listen to what I have to say.”

“The fuck––?”

Milton ignored him. He stared at Bizness, his eyes icy and unblinking, with no life or empathy in them, until the confusion on the younger man’s face faded and a cloud of anger replaced it. “I’m going to ask you nicely for two things,” Milton said. “First, a woman named Laura has been associating with you. You are going to stop seeing her. If she comes to visit you, you are going to send her away.”

“That’s your first thing? Aight, go on, you’re an entertaining fucker. What’s the second thing?”

“I know what you’re planning for a young lad I know. Elijah Warriner. You call him JaJa. That is not going to happen. You are to stop seeing him, too. If I hear that you’ve been seen with him there is going to be trouble. If just one hair on his head is hurt, we’re going to have another conversation. But it won’t be as civil as this one.”

“You hear this motherfucker?” Bizness hooted at the others. They were all watching the exchange. “You asking me nicely, right? You better tell me, old man, just so I know, what you gonna do if I tell you to take your requests and shove them right up your arse? Tell me not-so-nicely? Raise your voice? Get out of here, before you make me lose my temper. I ain’t got time for this.”

The bouncers took a step towards Milton but Bizness stayed them with an impatient wave of his hand.

Milton did not look at them. He did not move away from the table. “You won’t take me seriously now, but I’m going to give you a demonstration tonight of what will happen if you ignore my instructions. Something is going to happen to your interests and I want you to think of me and what I’ve told you when you hear about it. Do you understand?”

Bizness surged up from his chair so quickly that it clattered behind him. “Do
I
understand?” Any vestige of his previous joviality was banished now, his eyes blazing with anger. “You come in here, with my bredderz around me, and you start making threats? Shit, man, you the dumbest motherfucker I ever met. I’m going to tell you one more time––get the fuck out of this shop before I throw you out my goddamn self. Do
you
understand?”

Bizness stepped around the table and took a step towards Milton. He did not flinch and, instead, fixed his pitiless stare on Bizness’s face. “I’ve said what I needed to say. I hope you understand. I hope you remember. Do what I’ve told you or the next time won’t be so pleasant.”

Bizness drew his fist back. Milton caught it around his ear before he could throw a punch and dug his thumb and index finger into the pressure point. Bizness yelped at the abrupt stab of white-hot pain and stumbled backwards, bouncing against the trestle table. The pile of posters tipped over, a glossy tide of paper that fanned out across the floor.

“Tonight,” Milton said, smiling down at Bizness, a cold smile that was completely without humour. “Pay attention tonight. I want you to think of me.”

He made his way to the front of the shop.

PART FOUR

Risky Bizness

36.

MILTON PULLED OVER, extinguished the lights of the car and switched off the engine. He left the radio on so that he could finish listening to the news. The bulletin reported that a protest outside a police station in Tottenham had deteriorated into a riot. Relatives of a man who had been shot by police two days earlier had gathered to protest at his killing. Others had joined in and the crowd had started to pelt the police with bottles and bricks. There were reports that cars and a double-decker bus had been set alight. Milton drew down on the cigarette he was smoking and blew the smoke out of the window. It was a hot night, close and humid. There was something in the air, a droning buzz of aggression. It wouldn’t take much to ignite it.

He switched off the radio, opened the glove compartment, took out his holstered knife and pulled up the sleeve of his right trouser leg. He wrapped the holster around his calf and fastened the Velcro straps. He checked in his mirrors that the pavement outside was empty and, satisfied that he would not be observed, he took his Sig Sauer from its holster and checked the magazine. It was full. He pumped a bullet into the chamber and flicked the safety so that the gun was ready to fire. He slid it back beneath his armpit.

He looked around again. This part of Dalston Lane comprised a Georgian terrace of tall, two-storey houses with Victorian shop fronts that had been built over their front gardens when the railways arrived a hundred years earlier. The houses behind the shops had recently been used for social housing, but, as time passed and their tenants were moved into the high-rise blocks that dominated the nearby skyline, they had been allowed to begin their long slide into decrepitude. Those that were left vacant were boarded up. Damaged roofs were left unrepaired. Windows were shattered and left open to the rain. Four houses had been gutted by fire, the exposed bricks crusted black with soot and ash and the timbers exposed like cracked and broken bones. Those buildings had been condemned and demolished, tearing holes in the terrace like the teeth yanked from a cancerous mouth. Boards had been erected around the blackened remnants of the extension, and these had been scarified by graffiti and posters for illegal raves.

The Victorian extensions were occupied by local businesses. The entire house and extension at the corner of the road was a doctor’s surgery, with bars on the door and the windows plastered with posters about sexually transmitted diseases and nutrition. Next to that was an Indian restaurant, then a shop selling musical instruments, a Laundromat, a business selling second hand kitchen equipment, then a newsagent. Adjacent to that a façade announced the Star Bakery, but the shutters had been in place for so long that the rust had fastened the padlocks to their tethers. The property alongside had seen its extension occupied by a squat. It had been a bicycle shop years before, the block typography of its original frontage still visible despite the etoliation of the weather and the fumes from the busy road. The wide picture windows were obscured by sheets of newspaper and a printed notice that had been glued to the door declared that the squatters enjoyed rights of occupation, and could not be evicted without a court order.

Milton scanned it all quickly. The terrace behind the squat was one of Bizness’s most profitable crack houses. Pops had told him everything. Heroin and crack were sold around the clock, rain or shine. Most of the customers were poor locals, drawn in from the surrounding estates, but a significant minority of the customers were white, very often professional and middle-class.

Milton got out of the car. He went around to the back, opened the boot and took out a jerrycan that he had filled with petrol from the garage on Mare Street. There was no sense in making his entry through the front door. It looked as if it was locked, just enough of a delay to allow for escape should the police arrive for a clean up. Milton had another idea. The terrace was listed, and the plans were available online. He had visited the library and downloaded them, reviewing them before he came out. He knew that there was another way in. He followed the road to the junction, taking a right turn and then, before he reached a tawdry pub, another sharp right. A narrow cul-de-sac led around the back of the terrace. Overflowing dustbins were stacked up against the wall and detritus had been allowed to gather in the gutter. Each house had a rear entrance and the one that served the crack house was wide open. Silly boys. Milton took out his Sig and went inside. The first room used to be a kitchen. Old appliances had been left to rot, with anything that could be easily removed long since sold for scrap. The walls were partially stripped and scabbed with lead paint and the remnants of a twee wallpaper that depicted an Alpine scene had been left to peel away like patches of dead, flaking skin. Empty cardboard boxes and fast food wrappers were scattered on the floor. A single man, strung out and emaciated, was slumped against the wall. He was unconscious, and Milton would not have been able to say whether he was dead or alive. He heard low conversation from the front of the house and set off towards it. The junkie’s arm swept around sharply and his eyes swam with drunken stupor, but he paid Milton no heed as he passed through the room.

He moved through a hallway with a flight of stairs leading up to the first floor. Patterned linoleum was scattered with drug paraphernalia. A mattress rested upright against the wall. Another junkie was asleep on the floor. Milton tightened the grip on the butt of his pistol as he stepped carefully around him.