by Mark Dawson
“And?”
“And JaJa wasn’t here no more. One day him and his mum were here; the next day they wasn’t. No one knows where they went.”
Milton pulled down on Edwin’s index finger, almost to the breaking point. “What about now? Where are they now?”
“Sheffield,” he grunted through the pain. “He’s a boxer. He changed his name—Mustafa Muhammad. He’s been up there. He’s got a fight down here on Christmas Eve.”
“Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
“Sure?”
“I swear it.”
Milton quickly reached around with his spare hand and frisked the man. He felt the point of a blade in his pocket and pulled it out, glancing down to see a kitchen knife with a serrated edge.
“You should be careful,” he said. “Carrying a knife around like that, you could easily get cut.”
Milton held the edge of the blade against Edwin’s throat and pulled him back to the railing, using him as a barrier as he negotiated the space between the edge of the walkway and the three young men, who were now clearly considering going for their own knives. Milton backed up all the way to the entrance to the stairwell.
“Who’s Pinky?” Milton asked.
“He runs these ends.”
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know,” Edwin said. “Around.”
“Tell him to stay away from Elijah. I’ve been nice to you. Friendly. I won’t be friendly if I have to come around and tell him myself. Or if we have to speak again.”
Milton took the knife away from Edwin’s throat and slid it into his back pocket in the event that he might need it on the way out of the block. He held onto the man’s wrist and grabbed the back of his jacket with his left hand, pulling him back half a step, and then drove him forward so that his head crashed into the concrete door frame. Edwin grunted and Milton felt his knees loosen; he pivoted, shoving him into the other boys, who were still watching, their mouths agape.
Milton turned into the stairwell and started down, moving quickly but not too quickly. There was no sound of pursuit; Milton took the knife, wiped his prints from the handle, and tossed it into the open bin as he made his way past it and back out into the courtyard. He looked back up to the sixth floor and saw four faces looking down at him: three were confused, and the fourth was twisted in pain.
Milton headed back to the main road. He reached into his pocket, leaving Edwin’s phone and taking out his own. He opened his texts and sent a message. He was going to need a little help.
12
Pinky waited in the car for the signal. He had parked outside the gym and was scowling at it through the film of rainwater that sluiced down the windshield. It was a foul evening, and Pinky would have much rather stayed in his flat than drive all the way across town to Tottenham. Apart from the inconvenience, it was dangerous. If the Tottenham Mandem or the Northumberland Park Killers knew he was here, in their postcode, there was a good chance they would come after him.
The last thing he needed was beef. It made him anxious, and it irritated him that Sol had insisted that he drive him. Pops had used to be the same, talking down to him, telling him what to do, and look what had happened there. Pinky looked in the mirror and watched Sol in the back seat of the Range Rover. Pinky closed his focus and looked at his own reflection. That’s right, he thought. Didn’t go well for Pops at all.
“Boy’s still inside,” Sol said.
Pinky looked across the pavement to the gym. Sol had two youngers standing near the entrance. Good boys who did as they were told. Little Mark was in a BMW parked around the corner, waiting to move. Seeing Little Mark reminded him of what he had told him earlier: that an older white man had caused trouble at Blissett House. Mark hadn’t told him anything other than that, and now Pinky was worried about the police or the Albanian gangs who were starting to look at pushing their gear into territories that had previously been off limits to them. He would have to tell Sol, but he wanted to find out more before he did that.
Pinky tapped a hand on the steering wheel in time with the beat of the new Stormzy track and kept the beat as it switched to Skepta. The bass throbbed. The cabin smelled of weed; Sol had been smoking all the while as they had headed northwest.
“There,” Sol said. “There he is.”
The door opened and a young guy with a sports holdall slung over one shoulder emerged onto the street. The two youngers fell into step behind him. Pinky saw the door to Little Mark’s BMW open.
“What are you waiting for?” Sol said.
“What?”
“Go get him!”
“That wasn’t what we said—”
“Just go get him, a’ight?”
Pinky got out of the car, the rain slamming into his face. Sol didn’t want to treat him like this, like he was some sort of nobody, like one of the police who dribbled down their chins after one too many idiot pills. He knew he wasn’t an equal, not yet, but he was different to the youngers, different to Little Mark, and being treated like this wasn’t what he had in mind. He bit down his frustration, wiped the rain from his eyes, and started towards the gym. Little Mark was closing in. The youngers—seventeen years old, big for their age and with bad attitudes—shouted something, causing Connolly to look over his shoulder. He stopped and turned around to face them as they closed in.
Pinky watched and waited.
Connolly dropped the holdall and moved quickly, knowing what was coming before any words were exchanged. He closed the space to the taller of the two youngers quickly and grabbed his left arm, smashing his forearm into the side of the kid’s head. The younger dropped like a stone, leaving the other kid backing away.
Fucking amateurs.
Pinky shouted Little Mark’s name.
Connolly moved towards the second younger, his fist cocked, shouting something that was lost in the rush of the rain. Little Mark moved quickly. He was onto Connolly before he had even realised that he was there. Mark was a good six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier; he hooked one burly arm under Connolly’s armpit and the other across his throat.
Pinky reached into his pocket and took out his butterfly knife. He reached Connolly, still wrestling with Little Mark, and flicked his wrist so that the blade snicked out. He grabbed Connolly by the scruff of the neck and held out the blade so that he could see it.
“Get in the car,” he said, nodding to the Range Rover.
Pinky held the knife inches from Connolly’s nose. The boxer eyed it. “Who the fuck are you?” he grunted.
“We just want to talk, that’s all. Get in.”
Pinky led the way back to the Range Rover and opened the rear door. Connolly must have realised that he was outnumbered, and he calmed down enough for Little Mark to shepherd him to the back of the car. Mark put his hand on Connolly’s head and pushed him down, then shoved him into the cabin. Pinky got in next to him, pressing Connolly up against Sol. Mark shut the door.
“Hello, Samuel,” Sol said.
Pinky turned his head and looked at Connolly. He was smaller than he’d expected, about the same height as him; he might not have been all that tall, but his chest and arms were thick with muscle. His nose was squashed and bent to one side and his tight black braids were wet from the rain.
“Who the fuck are you?” said Connolly.
“Solomon Brown. You can call me Sol.”
Connolly’s face flickered with recognition. He had run with the Tottenham Mandem as a younger, although he had made a big song and dance about how he was “out of all that” and “saved by his boxing,” chatting the shit that the white guys in suits probably told him he had to say if he was going to have a chance to make it out in the mainstream. He knew enough about the life that Solomon Brown’s name would have meant something to him.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“You got a fight coming up,” he said. “Christmas Eve, right?”
“Yeah—so?”
“I need you to d
o me a favour, Samuel.”
Connolly shook his head. “No,” he said. “No fucking way.”
“You don’t know what I’m going to ask you yet.”
“You’re gonna ask me to throw the fight. No way, man. I ain’t doing that. You don’t know what I had to do to get to where I am.”
Sol shuffled around in the seat so that he could put his hand on Connolly’s shoulder. “Samuel—”
“I’m not throwing no fight, man,” Connolly said quickly, his voice thick with anger. “I beat Muhammad, I get a shot at a belt. You know how much that’s worth? You couldn’t pay me enough to give that up.”
“Everything has its price.”
“Not this. It’s not money. It’s status.”
“Who said I was talking about money?” Sol glanced over at Pinky. “Show him.”
Pinky kept his knife in his left hand, making sure that Connolly could see it, and took out his phone. He used his thumb to open his photos and videos, selected one that he had shot earlier, and hit play. Pinky had shot the footage through the window of his car. He had parked on Bounds Green Road, riding the car up the kerb so that the wheels were half on the pavement and half in the road. The Co-Operative Childcare Nursery was on the corner of the road, and Pinky had filmed the little kids in their fluorescent tabards as they were led back inside from a trip to the park. He didn’t know which kid was Connolly’s, but he could tell from the boxer’s reaction when the girl or the boy was in shot.
“Come on,” Connolly said. His voice was tight, a little hoarse, and his fists were clenched in his lap.
“Like I said, it don’t have to be about money, but there’s no need for it to be unpleasant, neither.” Sol patted Connolly on the knee. “This is how it’s gonna be. You’re gonna let yourself get hit in the third round, and you’re gonna go down, and you’re not gonna get up until they count ten. You get me? The third round. Down you go.”
Connolly didn’t answer.
“I’m going to put some money on you, Samuel, mad money, and if I lose that money because you don’t do what you’ve been told to do, I’m gonna send my friend here to the nursery, or maybe to your house. We know where you live, Samuel. We know about Ayana, too—where she works, where she gets her nails done. And your folks. We know it all.”
Connolly stiffened but didn’t say anything; Pinky could see that Sol had scared him. There was something about the way he spoke—the contradiction of his calm, measured tone and the threats he was making—that gave him that edge that was so frightening.
“Like I said,” Sol went on, “it don’t need to be unpleasant between us. You go down in the third round and I’m gonna get paid. When I do, I’m going to make sure you get a little taste of that, too. My friend here, he’s gonna bring you ten grand for your troubles.”
“Ten?” Connolly said before laughing bitterly. “When I beat Muhammad, I’ll make a million.”
“But that’s not going to happen, Samuel. You don’t have to take it. That’s up to you. But I need to make something really clear—you’re not going to beat him. You go down when I tell you to go down. I need you to tell me you understand.”
Connolly’s fists clenched and unclenched, but he didn’t speak. Pinky flicked his wrist again and the blade sprang out of the knife. He rested the point of the blade against Connolly’s leg, at the side of the knee. He kept the blade sharp and he knew from experience that it wouldn’t take much to slide it through the thin fabric and into the skin, and not much more than that to slice into the fat and the muscle beneath. He swallowed in anticipation, knowing that they couldn’t mark Connolly now, not before the fight: everything would go to shit if they hurt him so badly that it was all called off. He slowly withdrew the blade and flicked it shut again, hoping that Sol would give him licence to come back and see Connolly again.
Sol spoke slowly and clearly. “Samuel—tell me. You do understand, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Good. Now fuck off.”
He nodded and Pinky opened the car and stepped outside into the rain again. He motioned for Connolly to get out, and the man slid across the seat and stepped onto the pavement, his face a mask of hatred. Little Mark was standing with his back to the wall of a nearby building, rain dripping off the brim of his Raiders cap, his hoodie pulled up over his head. Pinky nodded to him, sending him on his way, and got back into the driver’s seat of the Range Rover.
He pulled out, leaving Connolly to stare at them from the side of the road.
“Boy knows who we are and what we do,” Sol said. “He’s gonna do what he needs to do. Our boy gets the win he needs and we make some cash. Just a little taste of what we will make, though. JaJa’s gonna make sure of that.”
Part VI
The Seventh Day
13
Milton sat down at the bench table in the window of the Starbucks outside Liverpool Street station. He had two cappuccinos and a croissant laid out in front of him. He sipped his coffee, removed the plastic lid, and then dunked the pastry into it. He had been for a run around Victoria Park that morning and hadn’t had time for breakfast after his shower. He had an appointment to keep, and the value of the information that he was expecting to receive meant that he didn’t want to be late.
He had finished the croissant by the time he saw the man making his way across the concourse towards the coffee shop. He was short, with a nest of untidy ginger hair that spilled out from beneath a faded denim cap. His eyes were a little bulbous, bulging out above sallow cheeks that rarely saw the sun. His complexion was pale. He was wearing a surplus military coat, drab olive with a dirty fur collar, a pair of ripped jeans with a keychain that dangled all the way down to his knee, and a pair of scuffed Dr Martens boots. He had a rucksack slung over his shoulder.
His name was Ziggy Penn, and Milton hadn’t seen him since he had helped him rectify the unpleasantness that Milton had found in Manila. Ziggy had once been employed by the Firm, just as Milton had, and had been seconded to Group Fifteen to act as an analyst and to provide technical backup on operations. He had worked with Milton on several occasions: a job against terrorist fundraisers in New Orleans, the situation with the Russian sleepers in Winchester and, after Milton had left the Group, the freelance jobs in Manila and Tel Aviv.
Ziggy came inside and walked over to the window.
“Milton,” he said.
Milton gave Ziggy the spare cappuccino and indicated that he should sit down. He had left a message for Ziggy on a forum that was dedicated to the music of Morrissey and the Smiths. Ziggy was paranoid about security and had never given Milton any other way to contact him. He monitored the board, or had some algorithm that monitored it for him, and whenever he saw the trigger message, he would initiate proper contact.
“Thanks for coming,” Milton said.
“Yes, well, you owe me. Things have been a little—” he paused “—hairy lately. I haven’t been outside the hotel for a week. Keeping a low profile.”
“What have you been doing?”
He winked. “Never you mind. I think the moment has passed, though. And I haven’t seen you for ages. Much better to catch up in person.”
Ziggy never really explained what he spent his time doing, although Milton’s experience of him suggested that his near-constant paranoia might be justified. Ziggy was a skilled hacker, operating in the margins of the legitimate internet and the dark web, and Milton had no doubt that his ethical flexibility when it came to his work would have left victims all around the world. There had been several times when Ziggy had found himself in hot water and in need of Milton’s assistance: the time, for example, when Milton had been required to extricate him from the clutches of a Japanese Yakuza after he had been persuaded to help him find and steal quarter-million-dollar supercars in Tokyo. Ziggy had a lot of expensive kit and no obvious means of paying for any of it; Milton didn’t have to be a genius to conclude that he funded his lifestyle by illicit means.
“What do you have for me?”
Milton said.
Ziggy sipped the coffee and then looked down at the pastry crumbs on the table. “You didn’t get me one?”
“I’ll get you a croissant when you tell me what you’ve got.”
“No gratitude,” he grumbled, opening his rucksack and taking out a MacBook. The lid was embossed with colourful decals: WikiLeaks, FSociety, the Guy Fawkes logo of Anonymous, an ersatz Intel logo that said, instead, ‘Hacker Inside.’ He opened the lid and tapped a key to wake up the computer.
“All right,” he said. “You want to tell me why you’re suddenly so interested in a boxer?”
“I knew him once,” Milton said. “He’s done well for himself—I’d like to see him and shake his hand.”
“And?”
“And I want to make sure he’s all right. I tried to help him out. He was in a difficult situation—him and his mother. I went to their old flat and they’re not there. Apparently, they just disappeared.”
“Yes,” Ziggy said. “It looks like they did. Three years ago. I found all his old social media accounts—Snapchat, Facebook, even his YouTube credentials—he killed them all the same evening. His mother, too. Looks like they tried to wipe their history.”
“But not so that you couldn’t find it?”
“That would be impossible,” Ziggy said, snorting at the preposterousness of Milton’s suggestion. “There are always traces. Little threads that you can find—pull on them until you find another, pull on that until you track them down. They moved to a hostel in south London first of all. The place has its records online, and I found details for both Elijah and Sharon Warriner. They stayed there for a week; then they went to Margate. Stayed there for two years. They changed their names: Sharon and Elijah became Adara and Mustafa Muhammad. It would appear that they converted to Islam—I found evidence that they both attended the Al-Birr mosque. And Elijah—Mustafa—started working out at the Isle of Thanet Amateur Boxing Club.”