He looked out into the darkness, staring through his own reflection as the light of a bicycle bounced up and down, a rider passing across the park. He thought of JaJa and how close the boy had come to ruining his life. The party had made his mind up for him. Bizness was a bad man, he was out of control, and Pops knew it was insanity to think otherwise. He did not care about anyone other than himself. JaJa, young and pliable and vulnerable, the boy was just a tool to him, a means to an end. He would have used him to dook Wiley and then, when the Feds came knocking, he would give him up.

Yes, Bizness was out of control, and he had to do something.

He reached into his pocket for his wallet. Inside, hidden beneath his credit cards, was the business card that the man in the park had given him. There was something about him that stuck in his head. Pops could not put his finger on it, but there was something that said he might be able to help. He had not been able to throw the card away and, while the others had sent him off with a barrage of abuse, he had quietly slipped it into his pocket.

He took out his phone and switched it on, the display coming to life. He carefully entered the man’s number. The call connected but, after ringing three times, went to voicemail. Pops listened to the bland message, then the beep, and ended the call without speaking. What was he doing? He knew nothing about this man. How could he trust him? What was he going to say?

He put the phone away, started the engine, reversed the car and rolled slowly back towards the Estate.

25

Milton was not alone in the waiting room. A portly middle-aged woman was slumped into one of the plastic seats, her expression bearing the marks of frustration, helplessness and anger. Her eyes followed Milton as he sat down on one of the chairs opposite her but she did not speak. The police station smelt the same as all the others he had visited, all around the world: the same mixture of scrubbing soap, disinfectant and body odour. It had the same weary atmosphere, the sense of a heavy relentlessness. He gazed at the posters tacked onto a corkboard that hung from the wall; young black men staring into police cameras with expressions of dull, lazy violence. The crimes they were alleged to have committed were depressingly similar: an assault with a knife; an armed robbery at a betting shop; a shooting. There were two murders with the same police task force — Trident — dealing with them both. Black on black. A poster showed a young boy staring out from behind a lattice of bars, the message warning that this was the inevitable destination for those who got caught up with gangs. The boy in the poster was young, in his middle teens. The same age as Elijah. He looked small, vulnerable and helpless.

Milton looked at the clock on the wall for the hundredth time: it was five minutes past three in the morning.

“Who you here for?” the woman said.

“The son of a friend,” Milton said.

“What’ve they got him in for?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Won’t matter,” she declaimed. “Won’t matter if he did it or not, neither. They need to get something cleared up, they’ll say he did it and that’ll be that. Look at my boy. He ain’t perfect, God knows he ain’t, but he didn’t do half the things they said he’s done. It’s because he’s black, from the wrong ends, in the wrong place at the wrong time. The police are racist pigs.”

Milton said nothing. He was not disposed to have a conversation with her and, after a long moment of silence, she realised that. She clucked her tongue against her teeth, shook her head, and went back to staring dully at the posters on the wall.

Sharon had called Milton just after midnight. She explained that the police had visited the flat and arrested Elijah. She had heard him coming back late. She only had vague details: the police had said something about a fight at a club, a man beaten halfway to death. Elijah was supposed to have been identified as a witness. Sharon didn’t know what to do and sounded at the end of her tether. Milton had said he would deal with it.

“Is anyone here for Elijah Warriner?”

The policeman was middle-aged, a little overweight, and with wispy fronds of white hair arranged around a bald crown. He looked tired.

“I am,” Milton said.

The officer opened the door and indicated inside. “Would you step in here for a moment, sir.”

“What about my boy?” the woman squawked. “You’ve had him in there for hours.”

The sergeant regarded her with a tired shrug. “They’re just finishing up with him, Brenda.”

“You charging him?”

“He’s said he did it.”

“Bail?”

“I expect so. Just wait there, we’ll get to you as soon as we can.” He turned back to Milton. “Sir?”

Milton did as he was asked. The room beyond was small, with a table and two plastic chairs. The surface of the table had been scarified with carved graffiti, the letters LFB repeated several times. The policeman shut the door and indicated that Milton should sit. He did, the policeman taking the other chair.

“Who are you?” the policeman asked him.

“I’m a friend of Elijah’s mother. And you?”

“Detective sergeant Shaw.”

“What are you holding him for?”

“There was a serious assault at a party yesterday evening. A lad from Camden was beaten. GBH, pretty serious. Elijah was there when it happened.”

“Is he a suspect?”

“I don’t know yet. Probably not. But he was definitely a witness. He’s admitted he was there. Save that, he won’t talk. Not that I’m surprised, they never do.” He sighed and took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. There were no smoking signs on the wall but he ignored them, taking a cigarette and lighting it. He offered one to Milton, who declined. Shaw drew deeply on the cigarette, taking the smoke into his lungs and then exhaling it in a second, longer sigh. “Look — Mr Milton — I’m not sure what’s going to happen to him, but let me make a prediction. Elijah’s in a dangerous position. Chances are, he’s going to get away with whatever happened this time. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to be alright. He’s not right in the gang yet but he’s on the edge. It won’t take much to tip him over, and if that happens, he’ll definitely be back here again and then he’ll get nicked. He might get community service for whatever he ends up doing, but that won’t straighten him out. The time after that he’ll get prison. And that’s if he’s lucky to live that long. Plenty of them don’t. I’ve seen it dozens of times.”

“These other lads he’s been messing around with — the gang? Who are they?”

“The London Field Boys?”

“I don’t know very much about them.”

“Let me give you a little history, Mr Milton. I’ve been a policeman around here for the best part of twenty years. That’s a long time to work in one place, but it means I’ve got a better idea of this borough than most. I’ll be honest with you — Hackney’s never been a particular nice manor. It’s always been poor, there’ve never been enough jobs to go around and there’s never been enough for kids to do. You take a situation like that, it’s normal that you’re going to get a problem with crime. It’s not the easiest place in the world to be a copper but, for most of those years, it’s been manageable. You’d get the odd blagging, drunken lads getting into scraps after too many bevvies on a Friday night, chaps going home after the pub and slapping their women around. You’d always have a GBH on the go and there’d be the odd murder now and again. Not the best place in the world, lots of problems, but by and large we kept a lid on it. Now, you look at the last five years and things have changed so much I hardly recognise it sometimes. We’ve always had gangs of young lads and they’ve always gotten into scrapes. Petty stuff — fights, nicking things, just making a nuisance of themselves. But then they all started getting tooled up. They’re all carrying knives. Some of them have guns. You add that to the mix, then you have a gang from another borough coming in here looking for trouble, things get serious very quickly. When I was a lad, we used to play at cops and robbers. These days, they’re not playing. They’re all tooled up, one way or another, and it’s not all for show. The guns are real, and they don’t care if they use them or not. I don’t know if he’ll listen to you more than he’s listened to me, but you’ve got to get some sense into him. If you don’t…” He let the words drift away before picking it up again. “If you don’t, Mr Milton, then he’s not going to have very much of a life.”