Elijah nodded. Bizness’s breath was heavy with the smell of booze and dope.

“I’m gonna give you a demonstration of what I mean later tonight. That bitch of his, the white girl, I know you saw the way she clocked me earlier. You see, younger — who you reckon she’s going home with later? That girl’s getting proper merked, and it won’t have nothing to do with him.”

The other men in the room laughed at that, a harsh and cruel sound. Elijah swallowed hard.

Bizness reached out a clammy hand and curled it around the back of Elijah’s head. He crouched down so that they were on the same level and drew Elijah’s face closer to his own. The smell of his aftershave was sickly, and, as he looked into the man’s face, he saw that his eyes were cold, the pupils shrunk down to pinpricks, the muscles in his cheeks and at the corners of his mouth jerking and twitching from the cocaine. “It’s about power, younger. Everything else follows after it. You get me?”

“Yes.”

“You want to be with us, don’t you? BRAPPPP! right, we’re like brothers. We’d do anything for each other. But you wanna get in with us, be one of us like that, you got to show us you got what it takes. And I ain’t talking about robbing no shop or turning over some sad mug for his iPhone. That shit’s for babies. You want to get in with the real gangsters, you got to do gangster shit.”

Bizness had not removed his hand from Elijah’s neck. Their faces were no more than six inches apart, and his eyes bore straight into Elijah’s like lasers. “Younger,” he said, “I got a problem and you’re gonna help me sort it. I heard a rumour that this joker I know is coming to the party tonight. You know Wiley T?”

Elijah did. He was a young rapper who was starting to build a reputation for himself. He came from Camden where he had shot videos of him rapping on the street. He had uploaded them to YouTube and they had gone viral. Elijah had heard that he had been offered a record contract because of those videos. Everyone was talking about it at school, discussing it jealously, coveting his good fortune, agreeing it was proof that it could be a way out of the ghetto. A long-shot, but a shot nonetheless.

“I invited him,” Bizness explained, “he thinks we’re gonna shake hands and make up but we ain’t. He’s been dropping bars on YouTube about me. You probably heard them?”

Elijah nodded and, without thinking what he was doing, he started to intone — “‘You walk around showing your body ‘cause it sells / plus to avoid the fact that you ain’t got skills / mad at me ‘cause I kick that shit real niggaz feel…’” He realised what he was saying before the pay-off and caught himself, saying that he didn’t know the rest.

‘“While 99 % of your fans wear high heels,’” Bizness finished with a dry laugh with no humour in it. “Ain’t a bad little diss, but bitch must’ve forgotten there’s got to be a comeback and when you drop words on me, and you better know it ain’t going to be in something I put up on fucking YouTube for a laugh with my mates. He thinks he’s a thug but he ain’t. He’s a little joker, a little pussy, and he needs to get dooked.”

Elijah’s hands had started to shake. The direction the conversation was taking was frightening him, and he knew he was about to be asked to do something that he really did not want to do. Bizness unwrapped the gun from its newspaper wrapper and checked that it was loaded. “You ever shot a gun before, bruv?”

“No,” Elijah managed to say.

Bizness extended his arm and pointed the gun at MC Mafia. He drew Elijah closer to him so that their heads touched. “It ain’t no thing. You take the piece and aim it. That’s right — look right down the sight.” He thumbed off the safety.

“Come on, Bizness,” Mafia said. “Aim that shit some other place. That ain’t cool.”

“Safety’s off, put your finger on the trigger and give it a squeeze. It’ll give you a little kick, so make sure you get in nice and close to the brother you want to shoot. You get in close, you won’t miss. Easy, bruv.”

He thumbed the safety back on. Mafia exhaled and cracked a joke, but he could not completely hide his fear. Bizness was mental, they all knew it. Unpredictable and dangerous.

Bizness placed the gun carefully in Elijah’s hands. “I want you to keep this. Keep your eyes on me tonight, aight? When he gets here, I’m gonna go up to him and give him a hug, like we’re best friends. That’s your signal. Soon as I do that, you gonna go up to him real close and put all six rounds into him. Pull the trigger until it don’t fire no more. Blam blam blam blam blam blam. You my little mash man, JaJa. We gonna make a little soldier out of you tonight, you see.”

21

Rutherford paid the barman, collected the two pints of orange juice and lemonade from the bar and headed back outside. It was a warm evening and he and Rutherford had found a table in the beer garden of the pub that faced onto Victoria Park. It was busy: Tuesday was quiz night and the pub was full with teams spread out around the tables. The garden was busy, too, most of the tables occupied and with a steady stream of passers-by making their way to and from the row of chi-chi boutiques that had gathered along the main road. Rutherford remembered when this area had been one of the worst parts of the East End, battered and drab and the kind of place where you could get rolled just as easily as crossing the road. Now, though? The money from the City had taken over: all the old warehouses had been turned into arty studios, the terraces had been turned into apartments and the shops were filled with butchers where you could pay a fiver for a burger made of buffalo, fancy restaurants and furniture shops. They said it was progress, and things were better now. Rutherford didn’t miss the aggravation but he did miss the soul of the place; it was as if its heart had been ripped out.

The meeting had been held in the Methodist Hall around the corner. Once again, Milton had sat quietly, keeping his own counsel. Rutherford was on the opposite side of the circle of chairs and had watched him. His face had been impassive throughout; if he had felt any response to the discussion then he had hidden it very well. When the meeting had finished Rutherford had suggested they go to the pub for a drink. He had not expected Milton to agree, but he had.

Rutherford set the pints down on the table and sat down. “Cheers,” he said as they touched glasses.

Milton took a long draught. “So how long were you in for?” he asked him.

“The Army? Sixteen years.”

He clucked his tongue. “That’s a long stint. Where?”

“All the usual places: Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan. Lots of fun.”

“I can imagine. Doing what?”

“Royal Engineers. Bomb Disposal. I’ve always been decent enough at breaking things down and putting them back together again, it was a pretty obvious move for me once I’d got my feet wet for a couple of years. I was one of the lads they sent to defuse them for the first five years and then when the brass thought I had enough common sense about me they bumped me up to major and put me onto investigations — we’d get sent in when one of them went off to try and work out what it was that had caused it: pressure plate, remote detonation or something new. By the time I’d had enough it was getting silly — the Muj started planting second and third devices in the same place to try and catch us out. A mate of mine I’d been with almost from the start lost both his legs like that. Stepped on a plate next to where they’d blown up another one fifteen minutes earlier. I was right behind him when it happened, first person there to help while they sent for the medics. I didn’t need much encouragement to get out after seeing that.” He looked over the rim of his pint at Milton. “What about you? What did you do? From the looks of it, I’m guessing ex-Special Forces.” When Milton said nothing, Rutherford shrugged. “Well, that’s your business.”