The Cleaner (27 page)

He parked the car two hundred yards away and went around to the back. The light inside the boot cast a sickly light on the interior, a travel blanket laid across a collection of items that revealed themselves as bumps through the fabric. He looked around cautiously. There was no-one close enough to see what he was doing.

He took a pair of latex gloves from a cardboard dispenser and fitted them carefully onto his hands. He checked the street again and, satisfied, pulled the blanket aside. A sawn-off shotgun was laid across the floor of the boot and, next to it, his Sig 9mm automatic. He took a rag and wiped both guns carefully. He checked the Sig was fully loaded and holstered it under his shirt, inside the waistband of his jeans, the metal pressed into the small of his back. There was a box of shells next to the shotgun, and he stuffed a handful into his pocket. He cracked the breach and fitted two shells into the chamber. He wiped the gun with the rag, carefully removing any prints, and wrapped it in the travel blanket. It was eighteen inches from tip to stock and he slipped the bundle underneath his jacket, barrel pointing downwards. He had a dozen shells for the shotgun and seventeen rounds in the Sig. Twenty nine in total. He hoped it would be enough. He dropped a pair of flashbangs into his pocket and closed the boot.

The sound of alarms filled the air, loud and declamatory, and beneath their sharp screech came the occasional noise of windows shattering and the hubbub of shouts and shrieks from the rioters on the street. Police riot vans raced down the street towards Hackney Central and at the same time tens of kids with scarves over their faces came running in the other direction, laughing and screaming.

Milton made his way towards the main road.

49.

“SHIT’S GOING
ON
OUT THERE,” Mouse whooped. “You see that brother? He just put a dustbin through the window of the Poundland.”

“Brother needs his head examining, looting a motherfucking Poundland.”

Pinky was speaking on the phone. “It’s going down at the shopping centre, too,” he reported. “They’ve bust in through the front doors and there ain’t no security or police nowhere doing anything about it. There’s a Foot Locker in there. What we doing here, anyway? It can wait. I want me some new Jordans, man. Come on, bruv, let’s get involved. We can be there in five minutes.”

Bizness looked at Pinky. The boy was immature. He was enthusiastic and full of energy but he was going to get on his nerves if he didn’t take it easy.

“It’s hot in here, man. Don’t you ever open no windows?”

“Have a beer. Smoke something. Just stop fucking getting in my face, aight?”

They had been in the room for two hours and it smelled of dope, sweat and cigarettes. Mouse had been out to find out the news and had returned to report that Pops’ body had been found in the park and that Elijah’s mother’s flat had been razed to the ground. Bizness was not worried. He had been careful, and there was nothing to connect him to either crime. The best policy, in a situation like this, was to sit tight for a few hours until the initial fuss had blown over. If the police wanted to talk to him, they knew where he was. They would say that they had been in the studio all day.

He had told himself he wouldn’t do any of the blow but it had been a long wait, they had a lot of it, and there wasn’t anything else to do. He felt twitchy and a vein in his temple jumped now and again, a nervous tic that was beginning to irritate him.

Mouse took out his phone. “I’m gonna go call my woman,” he said.

“Do it in here,” Bizness said.

“Place smells rank, man,” Mouse countered. “If I don’t get some fresh air I swear I’m gonna faint. I’ll speak to her for a bit, have a look on the street, see what’s happening, then get back inside. Won’t be long.”

50.

MILTON WALKED briskly to the entrance to the studio. Bass was thumping through the walls of the building, rattling the door in its frame. He scouted it quickly. If there had been time, he would have prepared a careful plan for getting inside and taking Bizness out. He would have found a distraction, perhaps disabled the electricity to put them on the back foot. Or he could have broken into the building opposite and sniped them from the second floor. The road was only twenty metres wide and he could have managed that in his sleep. He dismissed both ideas. There wasn’t time for either of them and, anyway, he wasn’t inclined to be subtle.

He tried the handle: it was locked. Milton took a step back and was preparing to kick it in when the locked clicked, the handle turned and the door was pulled open. A man was standing there, shock on his face, a unlit cigarette dangling from his lip. Milton released his grip so that the blanket fell away from the sawn-off and shoved the stock into the man’s face. His nose was crumpled and blood burst across his face. He lost his legs and began to fall. Milton followed him as he staggered back inside, swiping the stock like a club, the end catching the man on the chin as he went down. He was unconscious before he fell back and bounced off the stairs.

The light over the stairs was on. Milton flicked it off.

“Mouse?” came a voice from upstairs. “You alright?”

Milton turned the sawn-off in his hands, holding it loosely and aiming it diagonally upwards. He stepped over Mouse and started up the stairs, slowly, one at a time.

“Mouse?”

Milton climbed.

“You hear something?” came an angry voice from upstairs.

“Nah.”

“Go and check.”

“He’s outside on the phone. It’s nothing, Bizness.”

“Then there’s nothing to worry about going and making sure, is there?”

“Fuck it, man, all I want is a smoke and a relax.”

“Get down there.”

Milton kept climbing the stairs.

He thought of Aaron: shot dead in the park like an animal.

He thought of Sharon: breathing through a tube in a hospital bed, bandages wrapped around her face.

He thought of Elijah and his brutally short future if he let Bizness live.

No, he could not go back. Too much blood had been spilt. Milton had offered Bizness a way out, but he had decided not to take it. That was his choice. Ignoring his offer came with consequences, and those had been explained to him, too. There was nothing else to do; he had to finish it, tonight.

A second man appeared at the top of the stairs. Milton recognised him from the crack house. He squeezed the trigger and shot him in the chest, the impact peppering him from his navel to his throat. He staggered, his hand pointlessly reaching for the knife in his pocket. Milton cranked the pump and fired a second spread. Spit and blood foamed at the man’s lips as he pirouetted back into the room above, dropping to the floor.

The music suddenly cut out.

Milton paused, crouching low.

“Aight,” Bizness called down to him. “That you, Milton?”

He gripped the barrel in his left hand, the index finger of his right hand tight against the trigger.

“I know it’s you. I don’t know what your beef is with me but I ain’t armed. Come up, let’s sort this out.”

Milton took another step, then another.

“We can settle this thing. It’s about JaJa, right? That’s what you said. You want the younger, man, you can have him. Little shit ain’t worth all this aggravation. Come up, we’ll shake like men.”

Milton was at the top of the stairs.

He took a quick step and flung himself into the room.

Two Mac-10s spat out.

Tck-tck-tck-tck-tck.

The bullets thudded into the sofa, spraying out fragments of leather and gouts of yellowed upholstery. Milton landed next to the table and scrambled into the studio beyond, more automatic spray from the automatics studding into the floor and wall as he swung his legs inside and out of the line of fire.

Tck-tck-tck-tck-tck.

Chunks of wood sprayed out as bullets bit into the frame. The wide glass panel spiderwebbed and then fell inwards in a hundred razored fragments as bullets cracked into it. Milton crabbed backwards so that the solidness of the mixing desk was between him and Bizness’s dual autos.

He had dropped the shotgun. He fumbled for the Sig, pulled out the magazine and checked it, slapping the seventeen-shot load back into the butt. He clicked off the safety, cranked a bullet into the chamber, and held the weapon in front of his face.

“What––you thought you could embarrass me in front of my friends and my fans with no consequences? You could burn down my place and that would be that, no hard feelings, let bygones by fucking bygones? You must be out of your mind, man, coming here. You’re a dead man,”

There was a moment of peace. It was not silence––bits of debris still spattered down and the crowd was loud outside the window––but the firing had ceased.

“You dropped your shotgun,” he called. “Got anything else?”

Milton gritted his teeth.

“You ain’t got nothing like what I got here.”

“I gave you a choice,” Milton called out. “You just needed to leave Elijah alone.”

“See––there it is again,
arrogance
. What makes you think you can tell me what to do? You don’t tell me nothing, bruv.”

Tck-tck-tck-tck-tck.

The Mac-10s fired again and the room flashed, bullets spraying into the recording booth opposite Milton. He glanced up and saw the twin muzzle-flash reflected in the jagged remains of the booth window before bullets stitched across it and sent the shards crashing down on top of him. Bizness was behind the sofa. The bullets thudded softly into the upholstered sound insulation and the studio was filled with a fine shower of powder and dust.

“Come on. Come out and let’s get it over with. You know there’s no way out for you. What you got––a nine? You just pissing in the wind, bruv. I got two Mac-10s and enough ammo for a month. Stop hiding like a bitch. I ain’t gonna lie, you ain’t getting out of here alive. Come on. But you come out now, I promise I’ll do you quick.”

Milton straightened his back against the mixing desk and reached inside his jacket. His fingers touched a smooth, rounded cylinder. The flashbang fitted snugly into his palm.

“Funny thing is, even this won’t stick on me. You and my two boys had a gunfight and you all got done. There won’t be no sign of me. I’ve got a woman in Camden, she’ll alibi me up for now and earlier. All this––you gonna get dooked for nothing, bruv.”

Milton pulled the pin, reached up and tossed the grenade through the broken window and into the room beyond.

There was a fizz and a burst of the brightest white light as the phosphorous ignited.

Milton rolled out of the door, bringing the Sig up, and fired. The first shot missed but there was enough light from the flashbang for Milton to see Bizness, just as he popped up from behind the sofa to return fire. He brought the Sig around and aimed quickly, squeezing the trigger twice. Bizness staggered backwards through a sudden pink mist, the Mac-10s firing wildly into the ceiling. The boy toppled into the sofa. It tipped over so that he lay across it on his back, his legs splayed out over the now vertical seats. He was pressing his hand against his chest. A bullet had hit him there and blood was pulsing out between his fingers.

Milton had seen plenty of gutshots before. The boy was finished. No treatment could save him now.

He advanced on him, the Sig aimed at his head.

“You think you’re better than me, don’t you?” Bizness gasped out, the words forming between bloody gurgles. Milton kicked away the machine-guns. He crouched down at Bizness’s side. The boy took a ragged, wheezing breath. “You know what you are?” he said. “You people? You’re a bunch of fuckin’ hypocrites.”

A ringing sound danced in Milton’s ears and his eyes stung with sweat. The smell of cordite was acrid and he gagged a little. A trickle of blood, specked with bubbles of breath, dribbled from Bizness’s mouth.

“You sit in your cosy homes… with your soft, comfy lives… nothing bad ever happens…” He coughed, a tearing cough that brought blood to his lips. “You look at us and… you shake your head. You
need
people like me so you can shake your fuckin’ heads and say, ‘see that guy, he’s bad’, just so you can feel better about yourselves.”

Milton reached down and collected one of the cushions that had scattered away from the sofa.

“And you know why you… people are scared of a proud black man? I’m a threat to the way you see the world to be. The black kid in school… his Mums can’t put food on the table. The black kid who’s got no future… no prospects ‘cept slaving for some fucked-up… system that sees him as a second-class citizen.” He gasped. “You should be scared, bruv… Those kids running around outside tonight… I give them a purpose. I’m proof, man, living proof… that there ain’t no need to bow down to fuckers like you and those fuckers you represent. You want something, it’s aight, you go on and take it. JaJa, you can tell him what you want… but see how he feels this time next year when you’ve fucked off and he’s doing twelve hour shifts in Maccy D’s because that’s the only place that’ll give him a job.” He gasped again; the words were harder and harder to form. “He’ll think about me… the taste I gave him of the life… and he’ll ask himself, ‘why not me? Why can’t I have me some of that good stuff?’ You know I’m right. You’ve seen it in his eyes… same as I have.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe he will. Maybe he won’t. But he’ll see he’s got choices. You can take the short cut or do things properly. You chose the short cut. The easy choice. It hasn’t worked out so well for you.”

“Fuck you, bruv. You don’t know shit.”

“I know he wouldn’t think your life looked so appealing now.”

Bizness tried to retort but he coughed on a mouthful of blood.

Milton took the pillow and placed it over his head, one hand on each side, pressing down. The boy struggled, but Milton had his knees pressed down so that his arms were pinned to his side. His legs thrashed impotently, the kicks becoming less frequent until they subsided to spasms.

The spasms stopped.

Milton gently released the pressure and the cushion, covered in blood, fell aside. Milton had it smeared across his trousers and on the latex gloves, too. He looked up and was suddenly aware that there was another person in the room. He stared into the eyes of a teenage boy, the same age as Elijah. He was tall and skinny, his chin pressed down hard into his chest, just his eyes showing. It took a moment but then he recognised him: it was the boy from the park, the one who had threatened him on his first night in Hackney. He was in the corner of the room, pressed tight against the wall. He had a Makarov revolver in a trembling hand. The gun hung loosely from his fingers, pointed down at the floor. The boy looked young and frightened.