Fifty feet away, in the open desert, the plastic ball rolled with the wind.

27

The nightmare was as bad as Milton could remember it. When he awoke, the sheets were a bunched-up pile on the floor, soaked through with sweat. His brain was fogged and unclear. He rose and went for his usual run, the best thing he knew to chase it away. The streets were quiet and the park was empty. He ran two laps, following the line of trees, pushing himself harder on the second so that by the time he returned to the road he was sweating and breathing heavily. He chose a return route that took him past the boxing club. The door was open, the slapping of a skipping rope audible from inside. He didn’t stop, and returned to the house where he showered and dressed. He stood before the mirror again and checked that the outline of his pistol was not obvious against the cut of his jacket. He locked the door and went to the café for his breakfast. Elijah was already waiting for him. The boy was sitting in a booth.

“This better be good,” he said, a little surly.

“Get any sleep?”

“Nah, not much. I’m knackered.”

“Where’s your kit?”

Elijah nodded at the black Nike sports bag resting on the chair next to him.

“Good lad. You hungry?”

“A bit,” he conceded.

“Alright, then. You’ll need to eat. You’re going to be working hard this morning.”

“What are we doing?”

“You’ll see,” Milton said. The proprietor came over to take their order. Milton ordered two plates of scrambled eggs and bacon, a portion of chips and a two glasses of orange juice.

“Is your mother alright?”

“What you mean — about me getting nicked? Yeah, she’s alright.”

“She worries about you, you know.”

“I know,” Elijah said. “I don’t mean to upset her.”

“I know you don’t.” The boy seemed more disposed to speak this morning, and Milton decided to take advantage of the boy’s mood. “How are things at home?”

“How you mean?”

“How does your mum manage?”

“What you think it’s like? We got no Dad, Mum works three jobs and there’s still hardly enough money coming in to feed us, buy clothes. Me and my brother — you get into a situation like that and you do what you got to do, innit? My mum knows what I’ve been doing — she just don’t wanna ask.”

“Would you have listened to her?”

The food arrived before he could answer. The proprietor handed them each a plate of eggs and bacon and left the chips in the middle of the table. “You know about Jules?” Elijah said when he had left them. “My brother?”

“Not really.”

“He’s five years older than me. Me and him, we grew up with nothing. You go to school and you’re the ones with the uniform with the holes in it. I never got no new shirts or trousers or nothing like that — all I got was his hand-me-downs, mum would find the holes and just keep patching them up. There were patches on the patches eventually. You know how that makes you feel?”

Again, Milton shook his head.

“Makes you feel like a tramp, bruv. The other kids laugh at you like you’re some kind of special case.” Elijah took a chip, smeared it with ketchup and put it into his mouth. He chewed, a little nervously, still unsure whether he was doing the right thing in talking to Milton. “Then you see the brothers with their new clothes, parking their flash cars outside their mommas’ flats, you see them things and you know what’s possible. They ain’t got no patched-up uniforms. Their shoes don’t have holes in them. Jules saw it. He was in the LFB before me. He came back with new trainers one day and I knew. Then he bought himself new clothes for school, more trainers, a phone, nice jewellery. He started to make a name for himself. Kids at school who used to take the piss out of him didn’t do that no more. He got some respect. One day, he comes back and he tells me that I have to come down to the road with him. I do like he says and there it is, he shows me this car he’s bought. It ain’t nothing special, just this second-hand Nissan, beaten up to shit, but he’s bought it with his own money and it’s his. The way I see it, there ain’t nothing wrong with that. It don’t matter where he’s got it from, he’s entitled.”

“There are other ways to get the things you want,” Milton said.

“What? School?” He laughed at that. “You think I can get out of here by getting an education? How many kids in my ends you think get through school with an education?” He spat out the word disdainfully. Just for a moment, his eyes stopped flicking back and forth and he stared straight at Milton. “I ain’t gonna get the kind of education that can help me by sitting in the classroom listening to some teacher going on about history or geography. Teachers don’t give a shit about me. Let’s say I did pay attention, and I get good grades so I could can go to university. You have to pay thousands for that these days — so how do we afford that?” He shook his head with an expression of clear and total certainty. “Education ain’t for people like me, not round here. Let me make this simple for you: my … brother … was … my … education. All I saw was guys with their cars and their clothes. His Nissan taught me more than anything I ever learned in school. Exam grades ain’t gonna get me any of that. All they’ll get me is a job flipping burgers in Maccy D’s and that ain’t never going to happen. I know what you can get if you play the game.”

Milton detected a weak spot, and pressed. “Where’s Jules now?”

A flicker of discomfort passed across his face. “He was shotting drugs, right — the crack, selling it to the cats — then he started doing it himself. Couldn’t deal with it. He got into trouble, didn’t kick up the paper like he was supposed to do, he had some beef with the Elders and he ended up getting a proper beating. Nothing he didn’t deserve, mind — there are rules you got to follow, and if you don’t you get what you get. Anyway, one day he never came back home. My mums spoke to him on the phone and he said he had to get away. I’ve seen him a few times since — this one time, I was in town, going to buy some new trainers from JJB, and I see him there on Oxford Street, sitting against a shop with a cap on the floor in front of him begging for change. He’s an addict now. It’s disgusting. I just kept walking. Didn’t say nothing to him. We don’t see him no more.”

“And you look up to him?”

“Not any more, man, not how he is now. But before that? Yeah — course, he’s my brother, course I looked up to him. I seen how he got what he wanted and I seen how it works better than your schools and books. I just ain’t gonna make the same mistakes he did.”

Milton paid after they had finished their food and they set off. The club was a fifteen minute walk from the main road and Milton took the opportunity to continue the conversation. Milton sketched in the lines of a meagre, uninspiring life, and quickly came to understand how the excitement and the camaraderie of the street had proven to be so attractive to the boy. He inevitably thought of his own peripatetic childhood, dragged around the Embassies and Consulates of Europe and the Middle East as his father followed a string of different postings. Money had never been a problem for the Miltons, but there were still comparisons to be drawn between Elijah’s early years and his own. Loneliness, a lack of roots, no foundations to build on. The army had become Milton’s family, and then the Group. But even that had come to an end. Now, he thought, he was on his own again. Perhaps that was for the best. Some people, people like him; perhaps that was the natural way of things.

The doors of the church hall were thrown wide and the sound of activity was loud, spilling out into the tree-lined street. Milton led the way inside, Elijah trailing a little cautiously behind. There were two dozen boys at the club this morning, spread between the ring and the exercise equipment. Two pairs were squeezed into the ring together, sparring with one another. The heavy bag resounded with the pummelling blows of a big, muscled elder boy and the speed bag spat out a rat-tat-tat as a wiry, sharp-elbowed girl hit it, her gloved fists rolling with the fast, repetitive rhythm. Others jumped rope or shadow-boxed, and two older boys were busy with rollers on the far side of the room, whitewashing the wall.