Elijah felt a blast of pride that made his heart skip. No-one had said anything like that to him before. His teachers thought he was a waste of space, he didn’t have a dad and his mum was always nagging. He drew in on the joint, coughing as the smoke hit his lungs.

“We ain’t really talked before, have we?”

Elijah shrugged. “Not much.”

“What you going to do with your life, little man?”

The question caught him off guard. “Dunno,” he said.

“You got no plans? No dreams?”

“Dunno. Maybe football. I’m not bad. Maybe that.”

“‘Maybe football,’” Pops repeated, smiling, taking the joint as Elijah passed it back to him.

“I’m OK at it,” Elijah said defensively, wondering if he was being gently mocked. “I’m pretty fast.”

“I’ll say you are,” Pops said, taking a long toke on the joint. “You like the Usain Bolt of Hackney.”

Pops dropped down on the mattress. He patted the space next to him and Elijah sat too. It might have been the weed but he felt himself start to relax.

“Listen, younger, I’m going to tell you something. You won’t think it’s cool, but I know what I’m talking about and you’d do yourself a favour to listen, alright?” He settled back so that he was leaning against the wall. “It’s good to have dreams but a man needs a plan, too. Maybe you are decent at football, maybe you are good enough to make it, but how many kids do you know from these ends who’ve done it? Maybe you can think of one but I don’t know any. Football is a dream, right, and, like I say, it’s good to have dreams, but a man’s got to have a plan, too. A realistic one, just in case his dreams don’t pay off. You know what I’m saying?”

“What about the street?”

“Seriously, younger? The street can be a laugh, you don’t get too deep into it, but the street ain’t no plan.”

“You’re doing it.”

“Only for now. It’s not a long term thing.”

“I know people who do alright.”

“The kids shotting drugs?”

“Nah, that’s just baby steps, I mean the ones above them.”

“Listen to me, Elijah — there ain’t no future on the street. Some brothers do make it through. I know some who started off as youngers, like you, younger than you, then they work their way up with shotting and tiefing until they become Elders, and then some of them keep out of trouble long enough and get made Faces. But, you look, every year, some of them get taken out. Some get lifted by the Feds, others ain’t so lucky and those ones get shot and end up in the ground. Like Darwin, innit? Survival of the fittest. You want, we could have a little experiment — we could start with a hundred young boys, kids your age, and I reckon if we came back five years later to see how they be getting on maybe one or two of them would still be making their way from the street. The others are out, one way or another. Banged up or brown bread. I don’t know what you’re like when it comes to numbers but me, it’s like how you are at football — I ain’t too bad at all. I’m telling you, younger, one hundred to one or two ain’t odds I’m that excited about.”

“What about today? You were out with us.”

“I know — you think I sound like a hypocrite and that’s fair enough. Maybe I am. But I ain’t saying stealing stuff is bad. It ain’t right that some people have everything they want and others — people like us — it ain’t right that we don’t have shit. That stuff we nicked today, them people was all insured. We gave them a scare but they didn’t actually lose nothing. They’ll get it all back, all shiny and new. We deserve a nice phone, a camera, an iPod, whatever, and we ain’t going to get it unless we take it. I reckon that’s fair enough. I reckon that makes it alright to do what we did. But it ain’t got a future. You do it ten times, twenty times maybe if you get lucky, eventually you’re going to get nicked. Someone gets pulled and grasses you up. Your face gets on CCTV. The Feds have got to do something about it in the end. See, what we did this afternoon is short-term. If you want to have those things properly, without fear that they’re going to get taken away from you and you’re going to get banged up, then there ain’t nothing else for it — you got to play the game by their rules.”

“How?”

“You got to study. You got to get your exams. You probably think I’m high saying that” — he nodded at the joint, smiled, and then handed it across — “but think about it a little and you know I’m talking sense. I didn’t pay no attention at school. I was a disaster, couldn’t stand it so I hardly went at all and I couldn’t wait until I was old enough so that I didn’t have to no more. I’m older now, I’ve got more experience, and I’m telling you that all that stuff they say about studying is true. If I’d paid attention more, did better, what I’m trying to do with myself now would’ve been a million times easier.”

Elijah was confused. “What are you doing?”

“So I said I was OK with numbers? Always have been, just something I’ve got a talent for. I’m going to night school to get my A-level. Maths. You know my woman? You know what she does?”

Elijah had heard. “Something in the city?”

He nodded. “Accountant. She says if I can get my exams she can get me a job with her firm. Nothing special, not to start with, post room or some shit like that, but it’s a foot in the door. A chance to show them what I can do. After that — who knows? But I’ll tell you this for nothing, younger, I ain’t going to be doing what we did this afternoon for much longer.”

Elijah sucked on the joint again, stifling the unavoidable cough. The conversation had taken him by surprise. He had always looked up to Pops, thought that he was cool, and he was the last person he would have expected to tell him to stay in school and work hard.

“You did good today. Like I said, you got potential. I saw it in you right away. That wasn’t easy, I remember my first time, I was sick as a dog, they had to push me onto the bus and then I was completely useless. None of that with you, was there? You got balls. That’s great. But just think about what I’ve said, alright? There’s no future there for you. For any of us.”

They smoked the rest of the joint together before Pops got up. “I got to breeze. Got school. My exams are in a month and we’re revising. Equations and all that shit. Don’t want to be late.”

The night was warm and close and the walkway was empty as they both stepped outside. Pops bumped fists with him and descended the stairs. Elijah rested his elbows on the balustrade, looking across to Blissett House and his mother’s flat, then down into the yard as Pops emerged, walking confidently and with purpose, acknowledging the monosyballic greetings from the strung-out cats and the boys from the gang who sold them their gear. Pops was liked. Respected. Elijah nodded to himself.

He fancied some of that himself.

PART TWO

Murder Mile

He wiped the sweat from his face and put the scope of his rifle to his eye, gazing down onto the plains below. The village was five hundred yards away, clustered around the river. Two dozen huts, the villagers making their living from the herd of goats that grazed on the scrappy pasture to the north and west. It was a small habitation, gathered around a madrasa; children played in the dusty yard outside, kicking a ball, a couple of them wearing the shirts of teams he recognised. He took a breath and held it, the rifle held steady, the stock pressed into the space between his shoulder and neck. He nudged the rifle left to right, examining each hut individually. Nothing was out of place: the women were working at home while the men tended the animals in the pasture. He moved the scope right to left until the missile launcher was centred in the crosshairs. A Scud launcher, an old R-11, Russian-made. He squinted down the sight, placing each member of the crew. Three men, Republican Guard. He centred each man in the crosshairs, his finger held loosely through the trigger guard, the tip trailing against the edge of the trigger. He nudged the scope away again so that he could focus on the madrasa: five children in the yard, their cheap plastic ball jerking in the wind as they kicked it against the wall of the hut. They were happy. The launcher meant nothing to them; nothing compared to their game, and the fun they could have together. He heard their laughter, delivered to him by a welcome breath of air.