by Mark Dawson
That was convenient. Milton wasn’t sure how Elijah would react to seeing him again. He would test the ground with his mother first.
* * *
It was a mile to London Fields. Milton grabbed a bagel from the breakfast bar and ate it on the way, heading north along Mare Street. Tired Christmas decorations were hanging from lampposts, and a few of the shops had made the effort to brighten up their displays for the festive season.
Milton checked Ziggy’s map; Sharon was near the lido on the northwest side of the park. He set out, sharing the path with mothers pushing their babies in prams, joggers pounding the pavement, and dog owners exercising their pets. No one paid him any mind; everyone else was busy with their own lives, and he looked like just another pedestrian out for a morning walk.
He saw her sitting on a bench inside the railings that marked the boundary of the lido. She had a Styrofoam cup of coffee on the table in front of her and was warming her hands around it. She was wearing a headscarf that obscured most of her head and face, a thick coat and jeans, but her hands were unclothed; he was still a distance away, but he thought he could see white streaks across the black skin.
Milton took a deep breath. Sharon had been badly burned after her flat had been torched. Milton had gone in to get her out, and remembered it as if it were yesterday: how he had wrapped his coat around his hand so that he could touch the red-hot handle, the hungry roar of the fire as it consumed everything, the panic on the faces of the neighbours, the screams that he had heard from inside. He had gone into the blaze and brought her out. He remembered the aftermath too well: her body wrapped in bandages, the stubble on her head from where her hair had been burned off, the puckered skin on her face and body, and the wheeze of her breathing through the tube that had been fitted into her mouth. Rutherford had brought Elijah to the hospital; Milton had made him promise to look after the boy as he had left to exact vengeance for the unforgivable escalation of the violence by Bizness and his crew.
He had done that, but his anger had blinded him to the threat that Control still posed. Twelve had found him, and Rutherford had died because Milton had allowed himself to be distracted.
He took a breath, trying to put the memory aside. He went through the gates and stopped next to the table.
“Hello, Sharon.”
She looked up at him and, for a moment, he thought that she wouldn’t recognise him.
“John?” she said.
She got up from the table, knocking over the cup of coffee in her haste. She ignored it, stepping closer and throwing her arms around him. Milton held her tight, and they stayed like that for a long moment.
Milton gently disengaged himself from her embrace. “It’s been a long time.”
“I thought…” she began, then stopped. The joy in her face flickered a little and then was occluded by doubt. “Where did you go? You just disappeared.”
Milton looked down at the pool of coffee that had spilled over the table. “Do you want another one?” he said. “There’s quite a lot to tell you.”
20
S haron had mopped up the spilt coffee with a hunk of napkins. Milton put the two fresh coffees on the table and sat down opposite her. He sipped one, taking the opportunity to look at her more carefully. Her hair had grown back and she wore it long, no doubt to obscure the burns to her neck and shoulders. The doctors had told him that they would be able to graft skin onto her face and it looked as if they had done just that; it looked different, lighter than perhaps it should have, but it was an improvement on what he remembered. Some areas had been repaired better than others. The skin on her throat looked rougher than it should, a slightly different shade to the skin that he could see in the space above her loosely knotted scarf.
“How have you been?” he asked her, delaying the more difficult conversation that he knew he would have to initiate.
“I’m good,” she said.
“You look good.”
“You don’t need to say that.”
“I’m serious.”
She pointed to her face. “Six different grafts,” she said. “But there’s only so much they can do.” She held out her hands; they were scarred, with raised lesions that looked as if they were still healing, even all this time later. “The rest of my body still looks like that. It won’t get much better.”
He started to speak, then stopped; he didn’t know what to say.
“I’m fine, John,” she said. “And if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be here at all.”
Milton returned her smile. She was absolving him, but he found it hard to agree. Grandiosity was one of the things that they warned you to look out for in Alcoholics Anonymous. He had heard it in one of the first meetings he had attended: drunks were apt to look down on everyone else even when they were lying in the gutter. He had assumed that he could insert himself into the lives of Sharon and Elijah, saving the boy from a wasted life on the streets. It had been arrogance on his part, and it hadn’t turned out like that, at least not at first; Sharon had nearly been killed, and the boy’s life had been turned upside down.
“Where have you been?” she asked him.
“Here and there.”
“Where are you living?”
“I don’t really have a place I’d say was home. I’ve been in Tenerife.”
“You’re travelling?”
“You could call it that.”
“And now?”
“I saw Elijah on TV—one of his fights. It was amazing. I couldn’t believe how far he’d come, and then I saw he had the fight on Christmas Eve. It’s safe for me to be here now—I thought I’d get a ticket and come to watch.”
“Safe? What do you mean?”
“That’s a long story.”
“You’ve had three years to tell it.”
Milton paused, still not quite sure how he would broach the matter of his history. “Did the police speak to you?”
“Of course,” she said. “You know Elijah found Rutherford’s body?”
“Oh, shit.” Milton groaned. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not me you want to say sorry to,” she said. “It’s him. He blamed you. I think he still does.”
“I’d blame me, too.”
“They think you shot him.”
“I didn’t.”
“I believe you,” she replied, immediately and with conviction. “I told the police that, too. Have you ever spoken to them about it?”
“No,” he said. “And I’d rather not.”
She let that go. “So what happened?”
“There’s a lot about me that I didn’t tell you,” he said.
“I guessed that.”
“And there’s a lot I still can’t say.” He paused and looked out over the park. “I used to work for the government. I can’t say what I did, but it wasn’t pleasant. I decided that I’d had enough, and I wanted to leave. The problem I had was that my job wasn’t one that was easy to walk away from. You can’t just resign. The man I worked for was unhappy with my decision—let’s leave it at that.”
He stopped again, allowing himself to remember. He had been living with Rutherford while Sharon had recovered in the hospital. Elijah was staying in a room next to his mother, and, as she improved and moved from the burns unit to a general ward, he had been about to move in with Rutherford, too. Milton would have moved on at that point, but events had intervened.
“It was a week after the fire. You were in the hospital. Rutherford had arranged a fight night with another gym in Tottenham.”
“Elijah told me,” she said. “He won.”
“He did,” Milton said. “I was there. He looked good. Rutherford said that we should all go back to his house for a takeaway. I was fixing the wiring at the gym and I wanted to get it done. I said I’d come over later.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. The man I used to work for sent another man to kill me. He had a gun on me when Rutherford came back. Rutherford wasn’t supposed to be there. The man shot
Rutherford. The distraction was enough to give me a chance. He shot me in the shoulder, but I managed to get the gun from him.”
“The police didn’t say there was anyone else there—just Rutherford’s body.”
“He wouldn’t have waited for the police.”
Milton thought of Twelve. Milton had put a bullet in his knee so that he could get away, but the man had kept on coming. He had reappeared in Juárez and then in Russia, Control’s faithful bloodhound to the end.
“And you?”
“I was hurt,” Milton said. “I knew that they would send others after me, so I did the only thing that I could. I left the country.”
“You could’ve gone to the police.”
Milton shook his head. “They wouldn’t have believed me, and it wouldn’t have mattered. The people I worked for would have known where I was, and they would have been able to get to me. But that wasn’t what I was worried about. They would have been able to get to you, too—you and Elijah. Bad things happen to people who get too close to me. Rutherford was shot. You were hurt. I couldn’t bear the thought of anything else happening, so I ran.”
She looked at him silently and then reached a hand across the table and covered his with it. “That explains a lot.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “A man and a woman came to talk to Elijah afterwards. Not police—this was after they had finished. They were asking about you. They told him that you were dangerous and that they needed to find you. They talked to me, too, said the same things. I told them I didn’t know where you were. I didn’t know—it wasn’t a lie. I told Elijah not to believe the things that they said.”
“And?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know what he thinks.”
They watched as a class of young schoolchildren passed into the lido, chattering happily among themselves.
“What happened afterwards?” Milton asked.
“I was in the hospital for two months,” she said. “Elijah was with me some of the time, but he had to go to school, too. I couldn’t keep an eye on him. I know how close Elijah was to falling in with the wrong crowd. You got him out of it, but I knew it wouldn’t matter if we stayed where we were. You know another boy was shot that week—in Victoria Park?”
Milton nodded. The boy—Pops—had been murdered for disobeying Bizness.
“Elijah said he knew him. And then he said one of the boys who he used to hang around with—Shaquille, his name is, but they all call him Pinky—Elijah said that he threatened him, said he had a gun and he was going to shoot him. I called the police, and the boy was arrested. Elijah said I shouldn’t have done it, and maybe I shouldn’t have. The boy got out, and Elijah said he was scared. There was no way we could stay. My cousin lives in Margate. I sent Elijah to stay with her, and then I went too when I was well enough to come out again. He started boxing properly; it went well, and we moved to Sheffield when they said he should train with the national team. I found a place for us up there, near the gym where Elijah works out. It’s nothing like it is down here. No one knows us. Even now that Elijah is doing well, no one knows who we are. It’s nice.”
“So why are you back?”
“The fight,” she said. “He’s training today, and I had some time to kill. I thought I’d come over and see the old place. I haven’t been back since we left.”
“You think it’s changed?”
“Some of it has,” she said. She gestured to the lido and then the well-heeled mothers who were pushing expensive prams around the park. “There’s more money here than there was. Houses are more expensive. But some of it—not so much.”
She frowned, her expression darkening with worry. Milton could see that Sharon still had concerns; he was about to ask her what was the matter when she checked her watch, swore under her breath, and got up.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. “I’m seeing Elijah.”
Milton stood, too. “It’s good to see you.”
She hugged him again. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
“Nothing planned.”
“Do you want to have lunch with me?”
“I’d like that very much.”
“Do you know Victoria Park? There’s a café near the boating lake—do you want to meet there?”
He said that he knew it, and they settled on a time. They walked to the gate; Sharon was going to get a bus on Richmond Road, and Milton decided that he would walk back to the hotel.
“Good seeing you, John,” she said.
“And you.” He paused. “Do you think he’d see me? Elijah?”
She sighed. “I don’t know,” she said. “He’s been angry about what happened for years, and I’m not sure that I want to distract him with it now, before the fight.”
“No,” Milton said. “You’re right. That’s the last thing we want to do. Forget I said it.”
“He was very fond of you, John. That’s why he took it so badly. Let me have a think about it.”
Part VIII
The Fifth Day
21
M ilton got up at five again, went out running for an hour, and then exercised in the hotel gym. He went back to his room to see a missed call from Ziggy. He called him back.
“What are you doing?” Ziggy said without preamble.
“Good morning to you, too.”
“I’m outside.”
Milton frowned. “I didn’t tell you where I was staying.”
“Come on, Milton,” Ziggy said, sighing theatrically. “You used your credit card to check in.”
“You know my credit card?”
“You’d be surprised what I know.”
“Actually,” Milton countered, “I wouldn’t. But I’m not going to ask. Where are you?”
“There’s a café across the road. I’ve gone through the phone you gave me. I thought you might want me to take you through it. You can buy me breakfast to say thanks.”
* * *
Ziggy was waiting for him in Hulya’s Café Restaurant, a greasy spoon a little way down the road from the hotel. Milton crossed and went inside, taking off his coat. Ziggy had a table in the front of the room and was nursing a coffee in a chipped mug. The proprietor had made an effort to decorate the café for Christmas, with an artificial tree on the counter and threadbare tinsel strung out over the illuminated board that displayed the menu.
“What do you want?” Milton said, nodding back to the counter.
“Full English,” he said, grinning. He finished his coffee. “And another one, please.”
“You’d better have something good for me,” Milton said, playing along.
“You won’t be disappointed.”
Milton went to the counter and ordered two full English breakfasts with two coffees. The proprietor took his money, scooped instant coffee into two mugs, and then filled them with hot water from an urn that leaked a cloud of steam. He handed over the mugs and said that he would bring over the two breakfasts.
Milton took the coffees to the table and sat down.
“So,” Ziggy said. “Have you met your friend?”
“His mother,” Milton said.
“I did a little more research on the two of them,” Ziggy said. “They used to live near here, didn’t they?”
Milton nodded as he sipped at his coffee.
“I found some old newspaper stories about the boy. He found the body of a local man in a gym three years ago. Your name was mentioned—said the police wanted to speak to you.”
“I was in the process of trying to leave the Group,” Milton said, speaking quietly so that the man at the only other occupied table wouldn’t be able to overhear him. “Control sent Twelve to take me out.”
“The local man?”
“Wrong place, wrong time.”
The proprietor delivered their breakfasts: sausages, eggs, bacon, cooked tomatoes, beans and fried bread. Milton thanked him and waited until he went back to the counter before speaking again.
“There’
s no point talking about that now. What did you get?”
Ziggy sliced one of the sausages into three and slotted a segment into his mouth. “I downloaded everything off the phone and everything he was storing in the cloud,” he said as he chewed. “I’ve got an algorithm running through his photos and videos now, sorting them so I can filter through them more efficiently. I’ll tell you if anything pops out at me.”
“Email?”
“Kids don’t email, grandad. It’s mostly social media and messaging apps.”
“Go on, then.”
“I got quite a bit. Basics first. The phone is registered to an Edwin Ogunsola. He bought it from the Carphone Warehouse in Kingsland Shopping Centre. The contract is registered to 15 Greenwood Road in Dalston, and he’s paying for it with a Lloyds debit card. I looked at his account—frequent cash deposits, balance of a touch over £6000. Not bad for a nineteen-year-old who doesn’t appear to have a job.”
Milton stabbed his fork into a piece of the fried bread, dipped it in the beans and ate it.
“I looked through the call history, and there are four numbers he calls more than any others. His mother, first of all. After that, he calls numbers registered to Rowmando Silcott, Tyrone Godwin and Shaquille Abora. They’re listed in his phonebook as Kidz, Chips and Pinky. You know any of them?”