The Cleaner (5 page)

Elijah spluttered in disgust, and almost retched again.

Pops grinned at him as the train rolled towards them. “Get yourself together, younger, here it comes. This is it. You wanna be with us, you gotta do this. Everyone has to if they want to be man dem. You ready?”

“Yeah.”

Elijah felt a sudden blast of light-headedness. It added to his feeling of fright and he suddenly felt sick. He turned away from Pops, bent double and vomited the fried chicken he had eaten ten minutes early, half-digested slops splashing between his legs, splattering against the new trainers he had robbed from the shop in Mare Street the previous day.

The others hollered.

“He’s sicked up all over his creps!” Chips exclaimed.

“Come on,” Pops said. “Get yourself together. Train’s here.”

The line was one of the main routes into the Olympic Park and the trains had all been cleaned up for the Games. The doors opened and commuters working at the big new shopping centre, many still wearing their corporate uniforms, spilled out onto the platform. Pops pulled up his bandana and shrugged his hood up and over his cap until all of his face was obscured, save his eyes. The others did the same and, his hands shaking, so did Elijah. Pops was behind Elijah and he pushed him into the crowded carriage, the others following behind.

Elijah had seen a train get steamed before and he knew what to expect. Pushing him further into the carriage, Pops and the others started to hoot and holler, surging down the aisle between the seats. The noise was disorientating, and frightening, and none of the passengers seemed able to react. Pops barged into the space between two benches that faced each other and ripped the mobile phone from the hand of a man in a suit. The others did the same, taking phones and tablets, dipping purses from handbags, removing wallets from the inside pockets of jackets and coats, yanking necklaces until they snapped and came free. Elijah followed behind Pops and, as they went from passenger to passenger, he took the items that Pops handed back to him and dropped them into his rucksack. His fright melted away as the adrenaline burned through his body, the thrill of what they were doing; robbing and stealing and no-one was doing a damned thing to stop them.

A young man in a suit stared at them as they advanced along the carriage. He had a Blackberry in his hand.

“What you looking at?” Pops said. “You wanna get slapped up?”

The man didn’t reply.

“You wanna get shanked?” Chips reached out into his pocket and took out a knife with a six-inch blade.

Still the man was silent. Elijah looked at him and recognised the fear in his eyes. He wasn’t defying them, he was just too scared to do anything.

“Jack him, younger,” Pops said to Elijah, shoving him forwards.

Elijah stepped up to him. “Give me the phone,” he said. The man didn’t resist, and held it up for Elijah to take. He put it in his rucksack with all the rest. He looked down at the man, into his eyes, and made a quick, sudden movement towards him. The man flinched, expecting a blow that didn’t come. Elijah had never caused that kind of reaction before. He had always been the smallest, or the youngest, the butt of the joke. Just being with the LFB made all this difference. People took him seriously. He laughed, not out of malice, but out of disbelief.

Little Mark was standing in the doorway, wedging the door and preventing the train from departing. “Boi-dem!” he yelled.

It had only taken them a few seconds to work their way through the carriage although it had felt like much longer. Pops pushed Elijah ahead of him as the boys surged on, the commuters parting as they piled out of the carriage. Outside, on the platform, Elijah could hear the sound of sirens from the street below. Little Mark dropped down onto the tracks and crossed over the rails to the other side, the others following after him. Elijah clambered back onto the platform, vaulted the wooden fence and scrambled down the loosely-packed earth of the embankment, sprinting down Berger Road and turning onto Wick Road, then across that and into the Estate. They had grown up with the alleys and passageways and knew them all instinctively. The police would have no chance if they tried to follow them.

Elijah jogged in the middle of the group, his rucksack jangling and heavy with their loot. The trepidation had disappeared, its place taken by a pulsing excitement at the audacity of what they had done. They had stormed that train, and the people inside had been scared of them. They had sat there with their posh suits and expensive gadgets and no-one had done anything. Elijah was used to being told what to do––his parents, teachers, the police––and this had been a complete reversal. He remembered the look on the face of the man with the BlackBerry. He was a grown man, a professional man, with expensive clothes and things, the kind of man who probably had an expensive flat in Dalston or Hackney or Bethnal Green because those places were cool, and he had been frightened of him. Scared.

Elijah had never experienced what it was like to be feared before.

8.

MILTON DROVE THEM into Hackney. The road was lined on both sides by shops owned by Turks, Albanians and Asians, all trying to sell cheap goods to people who couldn’t afford them, past fried chicken shops, garages, past a tube station, across a bridge over the A12 with cars rushing by below, past pound shops and cafés, a branch of CashConverter, a scruffy pub. The faces of the people who walked the road bore the marks of failure.

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 plexiglass 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 leant 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,” she said.

“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 flatscreen television. Children’s toys were scattered on the floor.

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

“Two. My oldest, Chris, 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.”

9.

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.”