The Cleaner (6 page)

“I was talking to him.” Elijah looked up at the man. There was a flintiness in his icy blue eyes. Elijah tried to stare him out but although the man was smiling at him, his eyes were cold and hard and unnerving. He made Elijah anxious. He held out a hand. “You can call me John,” he said.

“Yeah, whatever.” The heavy rucksack slipped down his shoulder, rattling noisily. He shrugged it back into place and stepped around the room to go to his room.

Sharon got to her feet and stepped in between him and his door. “What’s in the bag, Elijah?”

“Nothing. Just my stuff.”

“Then you won’t mind me having a look, will you?”

She took the bag from him, unzipped it and, one by one, pulled out the mobile phones, watches, wallets and two tablet computers. Silently, she lined them up on the dining table, and then, when she was done, turned to face him with a frightened expression on her face. “How did you get this?”

“Looking after it for a friend.”

“Did you steal it?”

“Course not,” he said, but he knew he sounded unconvincing. He was aware of the big man in the room with them. “Who are you?” he asked again. “Police? Social?”

“I’m a friend of your mother. She’s worried about you.”

“She needn’t be. I’m fine.”

Sharon held up an expensive-looking watch. “This is all tiefed, isn’t it?”

“I told you, I’m just looking after it.”

“Then you can take it straight back to him. I don’t want it in the house.”

“Why don’t you just mind your business?”

He dropped everything back into the rucksack and slung it across his shoulder.

“Who is it?” she said as he turned for the door.

“You don’t know him.”

“Show your mother some respect,” Milton said. “She doesn’t deserve you speaking to her like that.”

“Who are you to go telling me what to do?” he exploded. “I ain’t never seen you before. Don’t think you’re anything special, neither. None of her boyfriends last long. They all get bored eventually and we don’t never see them no more. I don’t know who you are and I’m not going to bother to find out. I won’t ever see you again.”

“Elijah!”

Milton didn’t know how to respond to that, and he stepped aside as Elijah made for the door. Sharon looked on haplessly as her son opened it, stepped out onto the landing, and slammed it behind him.

10.

ELIJAH PASSED through the straggled group of customers that had gathered outside the entrance to Blissett House. The boys called them “cats” and took them for all they were worth. They passed out their bags of weed and heroin, their rocks of crack, snatching their money and sending them on their way. They didn’t get very far. One of the empty flats had been turned into a crack house, and they scurried into it. When they shuffled out again, hours later, they were vacant and etiolated, halfway human, dead-eyed zombies, already desperately working out where they would find the money for their next fix.

Elijah made his way through the Estate to the abandoned flat that the LFB had claimed for themselves. A family had been evicted for non-payment of rent and now the older boys had taken it over, gathering there to drink, smoke and be with their girls. Elijah had never been inside the flat before but he didn’t know where else he could take the rucksack and the things that they had stolen.

He was furious. Who was that man to tell him what to do? He didn’t look like any of his mother’s boyfriends––he was white, for a start––but he had no reason to come and stick his nose into his business. He told himself that he wouldn’t see the man again, that he’d get bored, just like they always did, and it would be him who told his mother that it didn’t matter, that he would look after her. He had been the man in the house ever since his older brother had vanished. He had been grown up about it all. He’d had to; there wasn’t anyone else.

The flat was in the block opposite Blissett House. Elijah idled on the walkway, trying to muster the courage to turn the corner and approach the doorway. It was on the eleventh floor and offered a panoramic view of the area. He looked beyond the Estate, across the hotchpotch of neater housing that had replaced two other blocks that had been pulled down five years ago, past the busy ribbon of Mare Street and across East London to the glittering Olympic Park beyond. He rested his elbows on the balcony and gazed down at their flat. His bedroom had a window that looked out onto the walkway. He remembered laying in bed at night and listening as the older boys gathered outside, the lookouts that were posted to watch for the police or other boys. They would talk about money, about the things they would buy, about girls. They talked for hours until the sweet smell of weed wafted in through the open window and filled the room. Elijah’s mother would occasionally hustle outside, shooing them away, but they always came back and, over time, she gave up.

It was intoxicating. The boys seemed special to Elijah. They were cool. They were older, they had money, they weren’t afraid of girls. They talked about dealing drugs and tiefing, the kind of things that Elijah’s favourite rappers rapped about. It was a lifestyle that was glamorous beyond the day-to-day drudgery of school and then helping his mother with the flat. It didn’t seem wrong to want a little bit of it for himself.

The boys Elijah knew could hear them and, eventually, they started to include him in their conversations. It wasn’t long until he opened the window all the way and started talking to them. He asked how he could get his own money. They told him to stand watch for them and he did. When they came back, they gave him a brand new PSP. The week after that they gave him money. He had never seen a fifty-pound note before but they pressed one into his hand. They started to talk to him more often. They offered him his first joint. He spluttered helplessly as he tried to smoke it and they laughed at him as he desperately tried to look cool.

It wasn’t long before they gave him the chance to make more money. He was small, with tiny arms that could fit through car windows that had been left open. He would open the locks from the inside and the boys would tear out the car stereos and steal anything else that had been left behind: GPS devices, handbags. They would steal six or seven a night and Elijah would be given fifty pounds. He put the cash in a shoebox that he hid under his bed. His mother never asked where he got the money for his new clothes. Elijah knew that she wasn’t stupid. She just didn’t want to hear him say it.

He watched as the door opened and the white man stepped outside. Elijah watched him make his way along the walkway and, after descending the stairs, emerge out onto the forecourt. He walked towards a beaten-up old car, pausing at the door and then crouching down at the front wheel. Elijah could tell from the way the car slumped to the side that the tyre had been slashed. He grinned as the man took off his jacket, removed a spare from the boot and started to go about changing it.

A couple of the older boys were smoking joints on the walkway.

“Alright, younger?” The boy’s real name was Dylan, but they called him Fat Boy on account of how big he had been as a young teenager. He had grown out of that now; he was nineteen, six foot tall and full of muscle.

“Is Pops here?”

“He’s inside. What do you want?”

“I need to see him.”

“Alright, bruv. He’s in the back. Knock when you get in.”

The flat had been taken over by the LFB. They had sprayed their tags on every spare wall and a huge, colourful version filled the wall in the lounge. Boys from the Estate lounged around, some playing FIFA on a stolen flatscreen television. Others were listening to the new album from Wretch, arguing that it was better or worse than the new tracks from Newham Generals or Professor Green. Trash was shoved into the corners: empty paper bags from McDonalds, chicken bones that had been sucked clean, empty cigarette packets, cigarette papers. Everyone was toking and Elijah quickly felt dizzy from the dope smoke that rolled slowly through the room. A couple of the boys looked up, clocked him, ignored him again. No-one acknowledged him. The room was hectic and confusing with noise. Elijah felt young and vulnerable but dared not show it.

“Look who it is!” whooped Little Mark.

“Baby JaJa,” Pinky sneered. “It’s late, younger, shouldn’t you be tucked up in bed?”

“Leave him alone,” Kidz chided.

Elijah reluctantly made his way across the room to them. Little Mark’s real name was Edwin, and he lived in a flat on the seventh floor of Blissett House with his dad. Elijah did not know Kidz’s real name, only that he lived in Regis House and had a reputation as the most prolific mugger in the crew. Pinky’s real name was Shaquille, he was usually quiet and surly and had a nasty reputation. Elijah tried to keep his distance whenever he was around.

“What you doing here?” Kidz said as he came alongside them.

“Came to see Pops,” he said.

Pinky nodded to the rucksack across his shoulder. “Afraid your mum finds out what you’ve got in there?”

“I ain’t afraid,” Elijah said.

“That’s from earlier, right? The gear from the train?”

“Yes.”

“What you bring it with you for, then? You stupid or something?”

“I ain’t stupid, either.”

“Look pretty stupid from where I’m sitting.”

Kidz smiled at him indulgently. “How you going to explain it if you get pulled by the Feds?”

Elijah felt himself blush.

“Told you he was stupid,” Pinky said. “A stupid little kid. He ain’t right for LFB.”

“Lucky for him that’s not for you to decide, then, innit? Ignore him, young ‘un. Pops is in the back. Go on through.”

Elijah made his way through the room. The layout of the flat was identical to his own and he guessed that Pops was in the main bedroom. He knocked on the door. A voice called that he could come in.

The room was dark. Pops was standing next to the open window, blowing smoke into the dusky light beyond. He had removed his shirt and his muscular torso glistened with a light film of sweat. He had a tattoo of a dragon across his shoulders and, on his bicep, the letters L, F and B. His heavy gold chain glittered against the darkness of his skin. A white woman sat on the edge of the mattress they had put in the room. She straightened her skirt as she got to her feet. She was older than Pops, looked like she was in her thirties, and dressed like the office-workers from the city who had seeped into the smarter parts of the borough. Elijah had heard about her; the rumour was that she was something in the city and that she had a taste for the crack.

Pops crossed the room and kissed her gently on the cheek. “I’ll see you tonight,” he said. She ran her palm across his cheek, collected her jacket and left the room.

Pops found his t-shirt and pulled it over his head. Elijah caught himself wondering how old he was. His brown skin was unmarked, his eyes bright and intense. Elijah guessed he was eighteen or nineteen, but he had a hardness about him that made him seem older. It was a forced maturity, a product of the road, of the things he had seen and done. It had flayed the innocence out of him. “What’s the matter, younger?”

“My Mum caught me with this,” he said, shrugging the rucksack from his shoulder and letting it hang before him. “She’ll nick it off me if I have it in the house.”

Pops laughed. “Don’t fret about it, younger. We’ll look after it here.” He took the bag and tossed it onto the mattress. “Fucking day, I’m all done in.” He took a bag of weed from his pocket and found a packet of rolling papers on the windowsill. “You want a smoke?”

Elijah had never been alone with Pops before. He was talking to him, taking him seriously, and it made him feel special. “Go on, then,” he said, trying to sound older than he felt.

Pops busied himself with making the spliff. “You have fun this afternoon, blood?”

“Yeah.”

“You nervous?”

Elijah took the joint and put it to his lips as Pops sparked it for him. “A bit.”

“That’s OK,” he said. “S’alright to be nervous. Nerves mean adrenaline, and adrenaline is good. Keeps you sharp. You were quick when boi-dem came. Away on your toes.”

“I’ve always been good at running,” he said.

“That’s the thing, younger. That’s gonna be useful. You can’t never let the Feds get hold of you. The thing that keeps me running, even when my lungs are burning like someone’s sparked up a spliff in my chest, even when the stubborn side of me wants to turn around and get ignorant, face them like a man, that’s when I remember I’ve already spent way too many nights sitting on a blue rubber mattress in a cell, who knows how many times it’s been pissed on, that’s when I remember getting caught by boi-dem’s a no-no. You can’t come back to the manor and big up your chest about getting shift by boi-dem. Bad bwoys ain’t supposed to get caught, JaJa. Especially not black boys.” He grinned at him. “It’s all good. You did good.”

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?”