The Cleaner

“Fuck that,” Elijah managed to say. “My brother would never have done that.”

“Yeah? Really? Your brother, what’s he doing now?”

“We don’t see him no more.”

“Don’t go on like you don’t know. I seen him — he’s a fuckin’ addict. He was a coward then and now he’s a fuckin’ junkie.”

Elijah got up from the bench.

“Give me that money,” Pinky said.

Elijah shook his head. “No. Pops gave it to me. I earned it. It’s mine.”

“You wa

“No—”

Pinky grabbed him by the lapels of his coat and shoved him to the ground. He fell atop him, pressing his right arm across his throat, pi

“Remember your place,” he said. “You ain’t nothing to me. You think you a gangster, but you ain’t shit. Give me lip like that again and I’ll shank you.” He took out a butterfly knife, shook it open and held the blade against Elijah’s cheek. “One jerk of my hand now, bruv, and you marked for life. Know what it’ll say?”

“No,” Elijah said, his voice shaking.

“‘Pinky’s bitch.’”

Elijah lay still as Pinky drew the cold blade slowly down his face. Pinky took a bunched handful of his jacket and pulled his head up and then, with a pivot, slammed him down again. The surface was soft but, even so, the sudden impact was dizzying. Pinky got up and backed away. He pointed at Elijah’s head and laughed. Elijah felt a dampness against the back of his crown and in the nape of his neck. He reached around, gingerly, expecting to find his own blood. He did not. Pinky had pushed him back into dog mess. The shit was in his hair and against his skin, sliding down beneath the collar of his jacket.

“Later, little man,” Pinky laughed at him. He left Elijah on the floor.

He bit his lip until the older boy was out of sight and then, alone, he allowed himself to cry.

15

Milton waited until the sun had sunk below the adjacent houses before he went out to scout the area. It was a humid, close evening, the stifling heat of the day had soaked into the Estate and now it was slowly seeping out. Televisions flickered in the front rooms of the houses on his street, most of the neighbours leaving their windows uncovered. Arguments played out of open doors. The atmosphere sparked with the dull electric throb of tension, of barely suppressed aggression and incipient violence.

The area seemed to come alive at night. There were people everywhere. Youngsters gathered on street corners and on weed-strewn playgrounds. Others listlessly tossed basketballs across a pock-marked court while they were watched by girls who laced their painted nails through the wire mesh fence. A lithe youngster faked out his doughty guard and made a stylish lay-up, the move drawing whoops from the spectators. Music played from the open windows of cars and houses. Graffiti was everywhere, one crude mural showing groups of children with guns, killing one another. Milton carried on, further along the road. A railway bridge that bore the track into Liverpool Street cast the arcade of shops below into a pool of murky gloom. A man smoking Turkish cigarettes levered rolls of carpet back into his shop, drivers gathered around a minicab office, the sound of clashing metal from the open windows of a gym with a crude stencil of Charles Atlas on the glass. The arcade carried the sickly smell of kebab meat, fried chicken, and dope.

Milton took it all in, remembering the layout of the streets and the alleyways that linked them. Two streets to the east and he was in an area that bore the unmistakeable marks of gentrification: a gourmet restaurant, a chi-chi coffee shop that would be full of prams in the daytime, a happening pub full of hipsters in drainpipe jeans and fifties’ frocks, an elegant Victorian terrace in perfect repair, beautifully tended front gardens behind painted iron fences. Two streets west and he was back in the guts of the Estate, the ten-storey slabs of housing blocks with the nauseatingly bright orange balconies, festooned with satellite dishes.

Milton crossed into Victoria Park, a wide open space fringed by fume-choked fir trees. A series of paved paths cut through the park, intermittent and unreliable streetlamps providing discreet pools of light that made the darkness in between even deeper and more threatening. The area’s reputation kept it quiet at night save for drunken city boys who used it as a shortcut, easy pickings for the gangs that roamed across it looking for prey.

Milton passed through the gate and walked towards the centre. A group of youngsters had congregated around one of the park benches. One of their number was showing off on his BMX, bouncing off the front wheel as the others laughed at his skill. Milton assessed them coolly. There were eight of them, mid-teens, all dressed in the uniform: caps beneath hoodies, baggy jeans and bright white trainers.

He kept walking. As he drew closer he heard the sound of music being played through the reedy speaker of a mobile phone. It had a fast, thumping beat and aggressive lyrics. The rapper was talking about beefs, and pieces, and merking anyone who got in his way.

One of the group sauntered out from the pack and blocked his path.

“What you want, chi chi man?”

The boy showed no fear. His insolence was practiced, and drew hollers of pleasure from the audience. “I’m a journalist,” he said.

“You BBC? You on the television? Can you get me on the TV?”

“No, I’m working on a book.”

Laughter rang out. “No-one reads books, bro.”

“It’s about police corruption. You know anything about that?”

Milton watched the boy. He was a child, surely no older than fifteen. There was a disturbing aspect to his face, a lack of expression with his eyes constantly flickering to the left and right. Milton had seen that appearance before; soldiers from warzones looked that way, a pathological watchfulness to ward against the threat of sudden attack. Milton knew enough about psychology to know that kind of perpetual vigilance was unhealthy. He knew soldiers who had been constantly on the alert for danger, who equated any show of emotion with violence, and from whom all feeling had been smelted. They became machines.

“The pigs are all bent, man,” the boy told him. “You might as well write about the sky being blue, or water being wet. You ain’t teaching no-one nothing round these ends. No-one’s go

“Do you know Elijah Warriner?”

“What’s he got to do with the Feds?”

“I want to talk to him. I heard he’s around here sometimes. Is he a friend of yours?”

“That little mong ain’t my friend and there’s no point talking to him. He don’t know fuck all. You want, though, we could have a conversation? You and me?”

Milton noticed one of the boys in the group take his phone from his pocket and start to tap out a message. “Fine,” he said. “What would you like to talk about?”

“Wa

“Not really.”

“I could shank you, too. I got a knife, right here in my pocket.” He sauntered forwards, towards Milton, still showing no sign of how outsized he was. He patted the bulge in his hip pocket. “Six inch blade, lighty. I could walk up to you right now, like this, take the knife, shank you right in the guts.” He made a fist and jabbed it towards Milton’s stomach. “Bang, you’d be done for, blood. Finished. I could make you bleed, big man, right in the middle of the park. Ain’t no-one go

Milton said nothing.

“Man got shook!” one of the others shouted out. “Pinky shook the big man.”

Milton looked down at the boy. He was tall and thin and wiry, couldn’t have been more than nine stone soaking weight. Calling his bluff would provoke the escalation he seemed to want, and there was no point in doing that. He wanted them to think he was a journalist, harmless, a little frightened and out of his depth. The hooting and hollering around them continued, but the atmosphere had become charged.