They were approaching the pond when he finally spoke. “JaJa needs help,” he said. “He’s got in with a bad man. I tried to keep him out of it but he ain’t listening to me any more. Ain’t nothing else I can do for him.”

“Is it Bizness?”

“You know him?”

“Elijah spoke to me after he was arrested. I know a little about him. Is he dangerous?”

“What, man, are you fucking high? Is he dangerous? Seriously? Bizness’s a psycho, innit? He was always bad, but since his ego got to be like it is now, he’s turned into a monster.”

“What about you?”

“What about me?”

“You said you needed help, too.”

He cleared his throat awkwardly. “Bizness’s the same age as I am. We were at school together. We used to be tight but we ain’t no more and he’s finished with me. I dunno, the last few weeks it’s as if he’s been provoking me, starting hype like he wants to get a reaction. I seen it happen before. He don’t let anyone get too influential, start taking his thunder, see, and then when they do, when he thinks they might be getting to be a threat” — he clicked his fingers — “then he gets rid of them. One way or another.”

“And you’re a threat.”

“Nah, man. I ain’t like that. I want out, but he don’t know that.”

“So tell him.”

He laughed bitterly. “Don’t work that way, man. You get in, you’re all the way in. You ain’t done until he tells you you’re done. And there ain’t no talking with him.”

Milton reflected that he knew what that felt like. He said nothing.

“Look, it ain’t about me, not really. I am getting out, whether he likes it or not. It’s the younger who needs help.”

They reached the pond. A sign describing the nearby flora and fauna had been defaced with graffiti — Milton guessed that the 925 was a rival gang tag — and the bracket that should have held the buoyancy aid had been vandalised, snapped wood showing white through the creosote like splintered bone. Pops sat down on the bench and took a joint from his pocket. “I come down here now and again,” he said, lighting the joint with his lighter. “I know it sounds pathetic, but I used to be in the Scouts, when I was younger. The fucking Scouts. We used to come down here once a year and dredge the whole lot. You wouldn’t believe the things people used to dump — washing machines, shopping trolleys, every thing covered in sludge and weeds. We always joked we’d pull out a dead body one day. What I know now, I’m half surprised we never did. There are guns and shanks in there, I know that for a fact.”

The boy offered the joint to Milton. He shook his head. The boy shrugged and smoked hard on it instead.

“So tell me about Elijah.”

“You know about what happened at the party?”

“He told me.”

“There’s a man Bizness wants to have shot. JaJa mention Wiley?

“A little.”

“Bizness’s got beef with him. Wants him gone. That was what the club was all about. He wants JaJa to do it. He had the gun that night. I thought I’d got through to him. I sent him home when I saw what was happening. I thought he’d listen to me. Something must’ve happened since.” His voice trailed off. Milton said nothing. “So then I got a call from Bizness yesterday to say I had to pick JaJa up and bring him to his studio. I never seen the younger like that before — he was angry, man, he had this proper screwface on like he was ready to fucking explode. Bizness loves that, course, and he asks him whether he’s ready to do what he wants him to do with Wiley.”

A dog walker skirted the far side of the pond. His dog, a pitbull heavy with a fat collar of muscle, chased the ducks into the water.

“And Elijah said he’d do it?”

Pops nodded.

Milton felt sick to the pit of his stomach.

“When?”

“I don’t know the details. Bizness won’t tell me. I’m not that close to him and I don’t think he trusts me no more, anyway.”

“Is there anything else?”

“Can’t think of nothing.” He paused. “Except—”

“Go on.”

The boy clenched his teeth so hard that the strong line of his jaw jutted from his face. “My girl’s got involved with him, too. She’s vulnerable. Got a weakness for drugs and he won’t look out for her like I did. Last time I saw her, she was smoking crack with him. It’ll be skag next. She’ll end up on the streets for him, I seen that before, too. Or she’ll end up raped, or dead.”

Milton sat quietly.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Milton said.

“You said you could help me, man.”

“I will. But you have to work with me.”

“How?”

“First things first: you have to speak to the police.”

Pops kissed his teeth. “Go to the Feds? You know what would happen to me if Bizness found out I’d been grassing? I’d end up in that fucking pond with a bullet between my eyes.” Pops stood abruptly. “If that’s the best you can do, we’re finished. Police aren’t going to do nothing until JaJa’s got blood on his hands and my girl is fucking dead. I’m wasting my time with this bullshit.”

“Grow up, Aaron,” Milton said. His voice was emotionless, iron-hard and utterly authoritative. “Sit down.”

He did as he was told, adding, self-pityingly, “What’s the point?”

“Because I’m going to take him out of the picture,” Milton said. “Tell them what happened at the club. The boy who got beaten, you saw all that.”

Pops looked down at his feet. “Yeah, man, I saw it.”

“That’s good,” Milton said. “They’ll have to take that seriously.”

“What you gonna to do?”

“I’m going to have a word with Bizness.”

He laughed. “A word? No offence, man, but he ain’t gonna listen to you.”

“He’ll listen to me,” Milton said. “You’ll have to trust me about that.”

Milton stood and they started back towards the main road. “This is what we’re going to do — you’re going to go to the police and tell them about what happened at the club. Leave Elijah out of it, but tell them everything else.”

“It won’t do nothing. It’ll my word against theirs.”

“Maybe. But it will be a useful distraction.”

“And then what?”

“You’ll get your friend off balance just as I give him something else to think about. I want him to take me seriously when we speak. I’m going to need some information from you about how his operation is put together — who works for him, how he makes his money, where he keeps it. Can you help me with that?”

“Yeah.”

Milton asked a series of questions and Pops provided awkward, but reasonably comprehensive, answers. Milton memorised the information, filtering it and arranging it as he built a picture of Bizness’s business. The man had numerous interests in the local underworld, his malign influence stretching from drugs to prostitution and robbery. His music was clearly lucrative but it would be as nothing compared to the profit he was turning from his illegal businesses. It was good that he was spread among different businesses, and areas. That would mean that there would be plenty of vulnerable spots that Milton would be able to exploit.

“How does he communicate with everyone?”

Pops looked at him derisively. “How’d you think, man? Smoke signals? Homing pigeons? Facebook, BBM, texts. Pay-As-You-Go phones. Nothing he could ever get nailed with by the Feds if they got hold of it. If he needs to meet to talk business, he’ll get someone else to make the call to set it up and then arrange the meet somewhere, in the open, where it’s impossible for the boydem to bug him. He’s careful, man. Precise. Plans everything like he’s in the military or something. Police think their old ways still work, but people — the real players like him — man, they been around long enough to have seen brothers get nicked all sorts of different ways and they remember all of them. You got to get up early to pull a fast one on him.”

They reached the fringe of trees that provided a canopy of leaves over the path at the outer edge of the park. The pub at the junction was growing busier, with loud customers spilling into a beer garden decorated with fairy lights.