The Cleaner

Rutherford had seen shit like this before in Baghdad, but this was London.

He found a side road and reversed the car into an open parking space. He set off, walking briskly. He didn’t know where Elijah was, but he did know what youngers would be like with something like this happening on their doorstep. They would be drawn to it like cats to free crack. His best chance was just to follow the mayhem.

Shop owners were closing their businesses early, yanking down the metal shutters to cover the doors and windows. People looked up and down the street anxiously.

Rutherford stopped at the stall where he liked to get his coffee in the morning. “You know what’s going on?” he asked the owner.

“Trouble,” he said. “It’s already crazy and they say it’s going to get worse. I’m closing up.”

Rutherford and the man turned and watched as a young boy, no older than twelve, sprinted down the pavement towards them. He was struggling with a large box pressed against his chest. The youngster ran past, screaming “I got an Xbox, bruv, believe it! There’s bare free stuff down there.”

Rutherford made his way further up the road. The shops were all shut now.

A large crowd had gathered in the high street. Forty or fifty of them, their faces covered with bandanas or hoods, were attacking the shuttered windows of the shops. Another two or three hundred were watching, laughing and pointing at the what they were seeing, on the cusp of getting involved themselves. A large industrial bin had been wheeled into the centre of the street, next to the bus stop, and set alight. Thick black smoke gushed out of it as the rubbish inside caught fire. The crowd whooped and hollered as young men took it in turns to launch kicks into the window of a Dixons. The glass was tough and resistant, but kick after kick thudded into it and it gradually started to weaken. A spider web of cracks appeared and spread, the glass slowly buckling inwards. “Out of the way!” yelled one of the crowd, a fire extinguisher held above his head. He ran at the window and threw the extinguisher into the middle of it. The glass crunched as it finally cracked open, the fire extinguisher tumbling into the space beyond. The crowd set on the wrecked display like jackals, kicking at it and clearing away the shards with hands wrapped in the sleeves of their coats. The televisions inside were ferried out, some of them put into the back of waiting cars, others wheeled away in shopping trolleys. The looters climbed into the window and disappeared into the shop beyond. Others moved onto the next one along.

Rutherford’s attention was drawn to a scuffle at the mouth of an alley fifty yards ahead of him. Four larger boys were surrounding a fifth person; his face was obscured by the t-shirt that had been put over it like a hood and he was identifiable as a police officer only by his uniform. The boys were dragging him into the alley, occasionally pausing to kick or punch him. Another one was tearing a fence down for the planks of wood it would yield; Rutherford knew what they would be used for. He changed course to head in their direction, shouldering people out of the way as he picked up speed.

“Oi!” he shouted to them. “That’s enough. Let him go.”

One of the boys turned, an insolent retort on his lips, but his expression changed as he saw what he was facing. Rutherford was big, and there was fire in his eyes. He called out to the others and they all faded back into the crowd.

Rutherford pulled the t-shirt from the officer’s head. He could only have been in his early twenties: a new recruit, tossed into the middle of the worst disturbances London had seen for years. His nose was streaming with blood, and Rutherford used the shirt to mop away the worst of it. “You alright, son?”

The man wore an expression of terror. “There’s nothing we can do,” he said, his voice taut with hysteria. “They’re like animals.”

Rutherford took him by the shoulders and looked right into his face. “You don’t want to be here,” he said, loosening the straps that secured his stab vest. “Ditch your gear and get back. It’s not going to take much more for it to get worse. Lynching, you know what I mean? Go on — breeze, man.”

People buffeted Rutherford as he was swept further up the street. He had never seen anything like it. There were no police anywhere and the crowd continued to grow and swell. The atmosphere was manic and the riot seemed to be gathering momentum, a life all of its own. Glass smashed and shattered, shards tumbling into the street to be trodden underfoot. Alarms clamoured helplessly, the sirens swallowed by the deafening noise of the mob. At the far end of the High Street someone had set fire to another bin and plumes of dark smoke billowed upwards into the dusk. A police helicopter swooped overhead, hovering impotently, its spotlight reaching down like a finger to stroke over the mob.

He was tall enough to look out over the top of the crowd but there was no sign of him. A teenage girl slammed into him and turned him to the left and there he was: with a group of boys, each of them taking turns to shoulder-barge the door to a newsagent’s.

“Elijah!”

He turned. His face was full of exhilaration but it softened with shame as he recognised him. “What you want, man?” he said, the false bravado for the benefit of his friends.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Nah. Don’t think so.”

Rutherford reached out and snagged the edge of his jacket. “You need to come with me.”

“Get off me!” He saw Rutherford’s face and the sudden anger paled. “What is it?” he said.

“It’s your mum.”

“What about her?”

“Better come with me, younger.”

Elijah’s face blanched. Rutherford made his the way back through the angry crowd, holding the edge of Elijah’s jacket in a tight grip. The boy did not resist.

47

Rutherford parked his car in the car park and led the way to the entrance of the hospital. Elijah had asked what was the matter as they made their way to the car. Rutherford had explained that he didn’t know, that he had received a message from Milton and that was it. The boy had been quiet during the ride and he remained silent now. Rutherford reached down and folded one large hand around the boy’s arm, just above the bicep, his fingers gripping it loosely. Elijah did not resist.

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 a

Rutherford paused. “Are you alright?” 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 alright. You hear me? She’ll be fine.”

“Yeah.”

“And I’m hear 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 that 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.