by Mark Dawson
That chimed with what Milton had been able to find out. The reports that he had read from the start of Elijah’s amateur career said that he fought out of that club. He had risen through the amateur rankings quickly, fighting regularly in the years since he’d left London.
“And then they went to Sheffield,” Milton said.
“A year ago. Turns out he won a place at the national performance centre. I don’t know a lot about boxing, but this place is for the best, when they think someone’s going to be good enough to fight at the Olympics, that sort of level. Anthony Joshua trained there.”
Milton nodded. He knew: you didn’t get an invitation to train there unless you had the potential to be seriously good. The thought of the progress Elijah had made filled Milton with pride, even if his involvement had been limited to introducing Elijah to the sport.
“The centre took his profile down after he went pro, but it was easy to find. Here.”
He turned the laptop around so that Milton could read it:
Mustafa first became interested in boxing after a friend suggested he had potential. He quickly showed a natural ability for boxing and at age seventeen he won the England Boxing National Junior title, which he followed up a year later by winning the England Boxing Junior and Youth National Championships. His success in the junior and youth ranks translated to the seniors, and he won the first of his two England Boxing Elite National Championship titles a year later.
“The friend who thought he had potential?” Ziggy said. “Is that you?”
Milton thought of Rutherford. “Probably someone else.”
Milton read on. Elijah had turned professional soon after his eighteenth birthday and was now nineteen years old and about to have the biggest fight of his career.
“Anything else?”
“I found their financial details,” he said. “Useful?”
“Shit, Ziggy,” Milton said, momentarily annoyed at Ziggy’s intrusiveness, and then, deciding that it was relevant, he changed his mind. “Go on, then.”
“Sharon has been working three jobs, from the looks of things. She’s been receiving wages from Sheffield High School for Girls and Blades Domestic Cleaning Agency. She also works in a call centre in the evenings. She has £653 in a Halifax current account, but she does have another £14,832 in an ISA with Lloyds. Her credit rating is poor, and she’s been turned down for loans on three separate occasions.” He tapped the mouse and brought up another screen. “Elijah has made around £25,000 as a boxer. I’ve been able to trace payments into his account a day or two after each fight that he’s had. But he doesn’t have much to show for it.”
“Not many get rich with boxing,” Milton said. “The money’s poor unless you’re really good, and it’s expensive. He’ll need to pay his trainer, gym time, sparring partners, travel.”
“Lots of outgoings. Looks like he’s been helping his mum with the rent and food, too, and that fourteen thousand she’s saved has been topped up every time he fights. He’s giving what little he has left to her.”
“You got their address?” he asked.
“Of course. They’re renting a two-bedroom flat on White Thorns Close in Batemoor.”
“Well done,” Milton said.
“Anything else?”
Milton took out the phone that he had taken from the young man in Blissett House. “Could you analyse this for me?”
“Sure. Passcode?”
“3926,” Milton said.
“How’d you get that? Ask nicely?”
“Something like that,” he said.
“I don’t want to know. What am I looking for?”
“I was jumped by four young men in Hackney. I took this from one of them. They belong to a gang—the London Fields Boys. Get me whatever you can. Phone numbers for the rest of the gang. Photos. Where they hang out. Anything that might be helpful.”
“Leave it with me,” Ziggy said, putting the phone into his bag. “What’s next?”
Milton got up. “Sheffield,” he said. “Can you look up the station I need for the train?”
“What am I? Your travel agent?”
Milton gestured down at the open laptop. “I’m sorry. It was just—”
“You’d be wasting your time,” he said.
“But you said—”
“I know what I said. They live there, but they’re not there now.”
“So?”
“They’re on the A1(M), just north of Luton.”
“How do you…” He let the sentence drift. “Right. You got into their phones.”
“First thing I did. But that’s not how I found out. You know your friend has a website?”
“Of course,” Milton said. “I looked at it yesterday.”
“You don’t know he updated it late last night?”
Ziggy pointed to the screen, which showed Mustafa Muhammad’s website. There was an image on the front page that hadn’t been there when Milton had checked before: Elijah and his opponent were in profile, glaring at each other. A line of logos below identified some of the companies who were involved in the fight: StubHub, William Hill, Sky Sports, Showtime, Matchroom Boxing. In the middle of the screen, between the two expressionless faces, was a banner that announced a public workout in three days at 6 p.m. at York Hall in Bethnal Green.
Ziggy tapped a finger against the screen. “You can go and say hello yourself.”
14
York Hall was empty. Elijah had fought here four times before and he loved it. It was a medium-sized space with a vaulted barrel roof that had a series of skylights right down the middle. The ring had been set up in the middle of the floor, with temporary plastic seating installed around it. There were eight rows of seating in the circle above, and a large overhead light was suspended from the ceiling.
This was the last spar before the public workout, but it was no less difficult than the first. There had been long weeks of training in the lead-up to the fight, but, in reality, Elijah had never stopped working since the first moment he’d put on gloves in the Margate gym.
Elijah waited as his trainer, McCauley, adjusted his headgear and then slapped him on the shoulder. The sparring partner in the opposite corner was waiting. His name was Miroslav and he had been picked to mimic Samuel Connolly’s style. Miroslav was shorter and stockier than Elijah, an inside fighter who would target his body, softening him up for hooks to the head in later rounds. That was what McCauley was expecting Connolly to do. The only difference was that it would be in front of eight thousand people rather than in a cold gym with just a handful of onlookers.
Elijah knew. This would be his moment.
York Hall was a long way from the spit and sawdust of the East London gym where he had started out. McCauley was more modern in his methods than Rutherford, the man who had taken him in under his wing first of all. He had been a scared fifteen-year-old then, with no idea that he would be able to box. The prospect of hurting people had made him uncomfortable, just as that hot summer as an awkward member of the LFB had made him uncomfortable, too. He didn’t have to think too long to take himself back there again: Pops, shot in the park; Milton, the man who had saved him and his mother and then abandoned him; Rutherford, the first person to really invest in him. His memories always followed the same course, like a river running to its inevitable conclusion: he always ended up in the gym, going back because Rutherford had never turned up with the takeaway curry that he’d said he was going to bring for them to eat. He remembered seeing Rutherford on the floor, his arms and legs spread wide, a gunshot wound to the head, and Milton nowhere to be found.
The buzzer sounded and Elijah went to work.
Miroslav was from Eastern Europe, didn’t speak a word of English, but knew what he was being paid to do and did it well. They met in the centre of the ring, Elijah throwing out a jab, landing on the cheek piece of the older man’s headgear. He threw another jab, then slipped to the side, using his footwork to create distance between them. He fired out another straight jab
that was caught on Miroslav’s glove, and then fired a hook into his other arm.
“Double up on the jab,” McCauley shouted from the corner. “Keep working.”
Elijah heard his voice, registered it, but kept his concentration on the bigger man in front of him. He watched the way he was moving and began to see someone other than the pale Hungarian or Pole or whatever he was; instead, he saw a black man, black braids, a squashed nose. He saw someone who had grown up in similar streets to him, someone who had known the life that Elijah had known as a younger, someone who had lived through the same shit day after day, someone who was good with his fists and was going to use them to get out, to make something of his life, just like him.
He saw someone who wanted to escape the past as much as Elijah did.
There was no let-up. Elijah continued to work, using his longer arms to try to keep Miroslav from getting too close to him, picking him off at range the way a matador taunts a bull, ducking out of the way when he came in swinging. He pivoted left and right, ducked, arched backwards so the crosses and hooks missed by inches, making Miroslav miss and miss and miss.
The buzzer sounded.
Elijah went back to his corner. McCauley sat him down on the stool and splashed water in his face.
“Let him in now. One round—let him get inside. Cover up and look for counters. Let him work for a little, then use your footwork to move off the ropes. Don’t look for bombs. That comes later, when he’s tired himself out.”
Elijah nodded, opening his mouth so that McCauley could spray a jet inside, then spitting it out over the ropes.
The buzzer sounded again and he beckoned Miroslav towards him once more.
He tucked his elbows into his sides, put his chin down against his sternum, and took the shots that Miroslav was trying to land on his arms. He didn’t feel the pain; the adrenaline was buzzing through him now. He knew that Connolly’s punches would be harder, more brutal, the gloves smaller and more impactful.
He saw an opening and took it. There was a moment’s pause, and Miroslav’s left hand dropped down from covering his chin for a split second. It was as if time slowed down: Elijah saw the move and made the decision without even thinking about it. Elijah knew that Miroslav was hard as nails. He weighed a stone more than Elijah, and now he felt the weight of him leaning against his body. Tough to shift, tough to slip away from when they were that close, wearing him down with his weight.
None of that mattered: Elijah landed an uppercut to his chin and the world stopped. He felt the impact through his arm. Even wearing sixteen-ounce gloves, the force Elijah had been able to generate was enough to make Miroslav wilt.
Elijah moved away as Miroslav went down on one knee. He could hear McCauley saying something from the corner, but he paid no attention to it. It was drowned out by the noise in his head, the thousands of people chanting his name. He looked down, and the stocky white man at his feet was young and black. He looked out and saw the flashes from cameras, the MC stepping through the ropes, a microphone in his hand.
Elijah knew it. He was certain of it.
He was going to win.
15
McCauley unlaced Elijah’s gloves and took them off, then checked his hands for injuries. Elijah wiped sweat from his brow and waited. McCauley had been his trainer since he’d been an amateur, following him when he turned pro, and he knew him better than anyone else. His face was unreadable. McCauley was twenty-five years older than Elijah, but he seemed even older.
“See that uppercut?” Elijah said, grinning as he remembered the impact. “That’s gonna get Connolly out of there.”
McCauley nodded but didn’t reply, concentrating on checking Elijah’s face for marks or cuts. A nick would have ended it all for now, but McCauley didn’t say anything, so Elijah concluded that he must be fine.
“I brought him in, like you said, let him wear himself out, then I let go with it. Right? Tagged him on the chin. I hit him with that when I’m wearing the eight-ounce gloves and he’ll be out cold before he hits the floor.”
McCauley started to unwrap the tape from around Elijah’s hands. There would be more work later, but, for that moment, Elijah could only think of that impact. Of the power he could generate and of the knockout that was going to follow. The statement he would make.
“What you think?” Elijah said. “You ain’t said nothing.”
“I think you’re getting too cocky,” McCauley said, his voice low and flat. “We can’t have that for this one. He’s no chump.”
“I just know what I can do,” Elijah replied, standing up and flicking his arms out, lightly shadow-boxing. “Ain’t nothing but confidence. You told me that was important.”
“Confidence is good, Mustafa. Arrogance gets you knocked out.”
“It ain’t arrogant when you can back it up.”
“You’ve had nine fights. Connolly’s a boxer you should be facing in ten fights’ time, not now. You can beat him, but you’ve got to remember to be humble. Win this and win it well, and we don’t look back. Lose it and all our hard work is wasted. Understand?”
McCauley was serious; Elijah knew not to mess with him when he was in this kind of mood. “I understand.”
McCauley grabbed his face with both hands and stared into his eyes. “You’re not going to lose as long as you stay focused. Right?”
“Right,” Elijah said.
McCauley patted him on the cheek. “Good boy. Now—what about tonight?”
“What about it?”
“You forgot?”
Elijah remembered. “The press conference. Shit.”
The night’s action was going to be broadcast on Sky, and they wanted their pound of flesh; that meant that all the fighters on the bill were contractually obliged to appear at a televised conference at the Courthouse Hotel in Soho. Elijah would have preferred to spend the night in his room, but McCauley had made it plain that there was no avoiding it.
“I know it’s a pain,” he said now, “but it’s part of the business. Get used to it. Just for an hour, that’s it. Answer the questions, be respectful; then we can go and get something to eat. All right?”
Elijah said that he would be there. McCauley started to clean up and left Elijah to work out for another hour, shadow-boxing around the ring until the overhead lights were switched off. He went through to the back and showered. He wrapped a towel around his waist and looked in the mirror of the ancient changing room. He looked good: one hundred and thirty pounds of muscle, lithe and toned, with lightning-fast reflexes and power. He flashed out a combination, right-left-right-left, ending with a right hook that would lift Connolly out of his boots when he landed it at the fight.
16
Milton went to the Rio cinema in Dalston that afternoon. They were showing It’s A Wonderful Life, and he took his place in an audience of pensioners and students and allowed himself to be drawn away. But afterward, he left the auditorium with a wistfulness that he would, as usual, be spending Christmas on his own. That had been the way of it for most of his adult life. He remembered his time in the army fondly and remembered one particular Christmas more clearly than the others. He had been in the SAS, sent out to Belize for jungle-warfare training. They had come out of the jungle to visit the nearest town, and had watched the local Garifuna community take to the street to enjoy the Jankunu dancers. He remembered the masked and costumed dancers parading the main street, roaming from house to house and accompanied by the rhythmic beat of traditional drummers.
His time in the Group had not afforded him similar experiences, and, especially towards the end of his career, he had been drinking so much as to have obliterated the memories. Since he had withdrawn from government service, he had always spent the holidays alone. His long sojourn had included festive stops in the Americas and Eastern Europe, and several in London. Alex Hicks had invited him last year; Milton had declined and had, instead, worked at the taximen’s shelter where he had been employed on and off whenever he found himself in the cit
y. He had decided to stay in Tenerife this year, and had a return flight booked immediately after the conclusion of the fights on Christmas Eve.
He didn’t mind. He had long since decided that he was best alone, that the occasional stab of loneliness was a useful reminder of what he had done, the reason why he didn’t deserve anything else.
This year would be no different.
Milton returned to the hotel and settled down in his room. He checked his watch: it was just before eight. The press conference was being broadcast via the promoter’s account on YouTube. Milton took out his phone and stood it against the vase on the table. He poured boiling water into a Pot Noodle that he had bought at the convenience store on his way back from the cinema and then sat down to watch. The conference was being held at a hotel in central London. A large canvas backdrop had been erected with pictures of all of the fighters set out across it. The headline bout was between James Cullum and Vasily Yankovich, and those fighters were arranged on either side of the young promoter. There were eight other fighters, arranged across two desks, one raised up higher than the other one. A small crowd of onlookers were visible at the bottom of the shot, some of them holding their phones aloft so that they could record the proceedings.
Milton saw Elijah straight away. He was sitting on the left-hand side of the lower desk, wearing a grey hoodie and a black cap with a logo that Milton was unable to read. His name—Mustafa Muhammad—was displayed on a nameplate that had been positioned on the desk in front of his microphone. His opponent was sitting on the other side of the desk, separated by two middleweights and a bantamweight. The nameplate said Samuel Connolly; the young boxer was wearing a bright yellow hoodie, his skin a little lighter than Elijah’s, his hair cropped tight against his scalp.