The Cleaner

“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 spi

“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.”