The Cleaner (7 page)

“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.”

12.

IT TOOK HALF AN HOUR back at the office for the formalities of the lease to be taken care of. Milton paid the deposit and the advance rent in cash. There were no references or credit checks required, which was just as well, since a search of Milton’s details would not have returned any results. The agent asked him whether he was sure that the house was what he wanted, and, again, offered a handful of alternatives that he thought would be more appropriate. Milton politely declined the offer, thanked him for his help, took the keys and left the office.

There was a small mini-market serving the area. It was sparsely stocked, a few bags of crisps and boxes of cereal displayed under harsh strip lights that spat and fizzed. Alcohol and cigarettes, however, were well provided for, secured behind the Perspex screen from behind which the owner surveyed his business with suspicious eyes. Milton nodded to the man as he made his way inside and received nothing but a wary tip of the head in return. He made his way through the shop, picking out cleaning products, a carton of orange juice and a bag of ice. He took his goods to the owner arranged them on the lip of counter ahead of the screen. As the man rang his purchases up, Milton looked behind him to shelves that were loaded with alcohol: gin, vodka, whiskey.