Twelve Days Read online

  Finally, Milton saw him. He was dressed in a black tracksuit with a hood over his head. He was drinking from a water bottle and had headphones draped around his neck. He wore black sunglasses even though the clouds were iron grey overhead and there was the promise of snow in the air.

  Milton stepped away from the wall.

  Elijah came up to him.

  “You going to hit me again?” Milton said.

  “I should do more than that,” Elijah replied. His jaw was set and a tic pulsed in his cheek. “You deserved it.”

  “I didn’t do what you think I did,” Milton said, looking into the black lenses that hid Elijah’s eyes.

  “Not what the papers said.”

  “I know,” Milton said.

  “The police, too. They know you’re here?”

  “No,” Milton said. “They don’t.”

  “So?”

  “I told your mum what happened.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “She told me.” He dismissed that, and anything that Sharon might have said to him, with a wave of his hand. “You remember when we had dinner in Nando’s?”

  “Yes,” Milton said.

  “You remember what I asked you?”

  “You asked me what I did for a job.”

  “That’s right. And you remember what you said?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “I do,” he said. “I remember it like yesterday. You said you were a problem solver. Except that’s not what you were, was it? You caused more problems than you solved. My mum got burned. Rutherford got it worse—he got shot. Even if you didn’t do it, he’s still dead and it’s still your fault.”

  Milton remembered that conversation. It had been three years ago, and Elijah had changed so much in that time. He had been a boy then, reticent, suspicious, and difficult to reach. Milton had worked so hard to earn his trust, and that was the moment when he had felt that he had finally been successful. But he knew there was no point in pretending otherwise: he hadn’t done what he had promised, and he had probably caused problems that could otherwise have been avoided. Elijah had a point.

  “It wasn’t supposed to happen like that. I wanted to help you. I wanted to help your mother.”

  “So she said.”

  “She tell you everything?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She tell you where she and I were the first time we met?”

  Elijah paused. “No,” he said. “What difference does that make?”

  “She jumped onto the tracks in front of a train,” Milton said. “I pulled her out of the way before it could hit her. I took her to the hospital, and then, when they let her out, I brought her home.”

  Elijah’s jaw slackened as the anger and tension dripped away to be replaced by something else. Milton couldn’t see his eyes behind the shades, and he couldn’t gauge his reaction. “What?” he said quietly, the hardness gone.

  “I didn’t tell you before,” Milton said. “I didn’t see what good it would do. But maybe you need to know. Do you know why she did it?”

  Elijah looked down at his feet.

  “You and your brother,” Milton said. “She was at the end of her rope. I know what it’s like to feel desperate—I felt the same way then. You still want to know what I used to do? The truth this time?”

  Elijah nodded.

  “I used to work for the government. There would occasionally be situations when a problem would arise that couldn’t be solved in the usual way. I’ll give you an example: a British agent looking into the mafia is murdered in Italy. The authorities over there can’t or won’t do anything about it. I was the person who was sent to find out what happened and to make sure it never happened again.”

  “‘Make sure it never happened again’? What does that mean?”

  “I’m sure you can join the dots, Elijah.”

  “You killed people?”

  Milton still didn’t want to say it. “I did things that I thought were right at the time, but now I’m not so sure. I left that job just before I met you. I was in a mess. I was sick with guilt. I saw your mum and I wanted to help her.”

  “Thought it would make you feel better?”

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “But I thought it was the right thing to do. I’m trying to do the right thing with my life, with however long I have left. Did I fuck it up with you? Probably. But I did what I did for the right reasons.”

  Milton still couldn’t see whether he was getting through to him.

  “You still haven’t told me what happened to Rutherford.”

  “Like I said—I quit my job. Unfortunately, the agency I used to work for wasn’t happy about that. They decided that this time I was the problem, and they sent a man to sort it out. He found me in the gym the night you had that bout. I stayed late to work on the electrics. Rutherford came back. He wasn’t supposed to be there.”

  “He forgot to set the alarm,” Elijah mumbled. “Said you’d set it off.”

  “The man shot him, but Rutherford gave me the distraction I needed to save myself.”

  “And then you just ran?”

  “I know what that looks like.”

  “Like you’re guilty,” Elijah said. “Or a coward .”

  “I had no choice. He shot me, too, and I knew that they would just send others to finish the job. So I ran.”

  Elijah didn’t speak.

  “Listen to me, Elijah,” he said. “I took you to Rutherford for a reason. Look at where that’s taken you. I respected him. I was trying to help him. I didn’t kill him.”

  Elijah took a step towards Milton. He took off his sunglasses and hooked them in the neckline of his jacket. “Look at you,” he said. “You claiming credit for what Rutherford did? You introduced me to him. Fair enough. But that’s it. He recognised what was inside me. He was in my life for a few weeks, but he changed me forever. Set me on the right path. And now, because of what you did or didn’t do, he ain’t here to see where that got me. You haven’t even said why you’re here.”

  “Because you’re in trouble.”

  “The kids from the estate? Yeah, I saw them at the workout. I ain’t worried about them. What they gonna do?”

  Milton felt the anger steaming from the young man. That’s what he was. A young man who had had no choice but to grow up too quickly, and now he was filled with nothing but hurt and pain.

  “I think they’re dangerous,” Milton said. “At least one of them has a gun. I’m worried about you. And I’d like to help.”

  “Like last time?” He shook his head emphatically. “I don’t want it.” He stepped up until he was just a few inches from Milton. “You owe me, you owe us all, but we don’t want it. You stay away from us. Don’t talk to my mum; don’t try to help me.”

  “Elijah—”

  “Nah, man. It’s all about you, trying to make yourself feel good, but you don’t deserve it. All you did last time was mess up our lives. You might not have pulled the trigger, but a good man is dead because of you. What’s next? You gonna fuck up the good thing I’ve got going? Thanks, but no thanks. Those boys got something coming for me, I’ll deal with it. I don’t need you.”

  A young woman came out of the door. She was pretty: black skin, long black hair, large black glasses over her eyes. She stood at the end of the alley and then started towards the two of them.

  “Elijah—” Milton said.

  “I ain’t asking, I’m telling. Stay the fuck away. You don’t, you keep putting your nose in my business, next time I’ll make sure you don’t get back up again.”

  The woman reached them. She smiled at Milton, but before she could speak, Elijah took her by the hand and led her away. He whistled and a black cab pulled up at the side of the road. Elijah opened the door for the woman and then followed her inside.

  Milton walked up to the kerb as the cab drove away. He took out his phone and called the number that he had saved.

  “You got the car?”

  “I got it,” Hicks said. “Leave it to m
e.”

  36

  P inky looked at his watch. He had been inside the flat for twenty minutes and he was still waiting for Sol. He knew what was happening: Sol was making him wait to let him know who was in charge, that Pinky might have been an elder but he was still nothing, no one, a nobody. He clenched his teeth and looked around the room, wondering what Sol would do if he put his fist through that sixty-inch TV on the wall, how long it would take him to get his arse in here if he did something like that.

  The door opened and Sol came inside.

  “Sorry, man,” he said, grinning, obviously not sorry at all. “Busy with my girl—know what I’m saying?”

  He grinned again, revealing a flash of gold inside his mouth, and Pinky was reminded of Bizness. He had treated Pinky the same—dismissed him, talked down to him—and look what had happened to him. Pinky was still here, though. He was a survivor.

  “You see what happened yesterday?” Pinky said.

  “Nah,” Sol said, dropping down onto the sofa. “What happened yesterday?”

  Pinky took out his phone, opened YouTube, and handed it to the older man. “At the workout they had,” he said, explaining. “Me and some of the others took a bunch of youngers down, smashed the place up.”

  Sol frowned as he looked at the screen in his hand.

  Pinky paused, then said, “You see?”

  “What the fuck? ”

  “What do you mean?” Pinky said, confused.

  Sol surged out of the sofa and flung Pinky’s phone against the wall.

  “What—”

  Pinky didn’t get the chance to finish the sentence. Sol grabbed his shirt in both fists and hauled him up, pushing him all the way across the room until he crashed against the window. Sol leaned in, pressing hard, then raised his arm like a bar and pressed it against Pinky’s throat.

  “Who told you to do that?”

  Pinky struggled to draw breath. “No one…” he started.

  “Did I tell you to do something so fucking stupid?”

  “I thought—”

  “You thought? You don’t do the thinking, you little prick.” He pushed harder. “What? You think you’re a badman now? You think you’re gangster? You ain’t gangster. You ain’t nothing. You a little bitch who got ideas above his station.”

  Sol pressed harder and, for a moment, Pinky wondered whether it was possible that the glass would shatter and he would be shoved outside to his death. But then Sol leaned away from the glass, pivoted on one leg, and sent Pinky flying back across the room.

  Pinky got to his feet. “I don’t get it. What did we do wrong?”

  “You think that’s enough?” Sol said. “Just a bit of a scuffle and that’s it? You think that’s good enough for what I want?”

  “I never said that—”

  “What did you think it’d do for us? Tell me.”

  Pinky blinked at him. “They know who Elijah is now. Where he’s from. All those things he’s been chatting—everyone will see they’re just lies. They’ll find out he’s from these ends, that he ain’t nothing but a nasty little hood rat. How’s it gonna look to all those white boys in suits on the telly? The money men? They know what he is now.”

  Sol listened quietly, but Pinky could see that he was moments away from another explosion of rage.

  “Do I have to spell it out for you? We want him to win. We want him to make money. We’re going to make money off him, you little idiot. If he’s as good as they say he is, he’s the golden goose. We get into him like I know we can get into him, we could make millions .”

  Pinky reached for the one thing that he knew would calm Sol down.

  “There’s something else,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The guy who killed Bizness.”

  Sol took a beat. “What about him?”

  “You know I saw him. Before. When it happened.”

  “So you say.”

  “He was there.”

  Sol was on him again, one hand pressing him down to the sofa. “What you say?”

  Pinky could feel his warm spittle on his face. “Get the fuck off me, Sol.”

  Sol leaned back, letting him go.

  “He was at the workout. I saw him. I took his picture. It’s him.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Pinky nodded. “I ain’t never going to forget that man’s face.”

  “He’s back and you didn’t tell me?”

  “I’m telling you now.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. But he has a thing for JaJa. Looks out for him. He saw what happened. He warned me off.”

  “You spoke to him?”

  “He took Little Mark’s phone. Mark didn’t tell me until yesterday. I called him up. He’ll be there for the fight. You want him, that’s where he’ll be.”

  Sol rubbed his head. “We can’t do nothing at the fight. Too many people.” He closed his eyes and breathed out. “He’s tight with Elijah?”

  “Used to be,” Pinky said. “He sounded like he was looking out for him.”

  “So Elijah knows how to find him.”

  Sol dropped down onto the sofa, leaned forward, and began rolling a joint on the coffee table as if nothing had happened. There was silence apart from the flick of a lighter, a long slow drawing of breath, then the exhalation of smoke into the air. Pinky went to collect his phone; it wasn’t broken. He scrolled back through the YouTube footage until he found the frame he wanted: the older white man making his way through the crowd towards the back. Whoever had shot and uploaded the video had been near him, close enough that there could be no doubt it was him.

  Pinky handed the phone to Sol.

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Sol handed the phone back and sat back on the sofa, a smile playing across his lips. He handed Pinky the joint and encouraged him to finish it off.

  “Maybe this works after all. Two birds, one stone.”

  The violence of just moments earlier was gone; Sol was like a different man now. Pinky dragged on the joint, holding it in his lungs, letting the fumes take him out of himself. It was black gold, high-potency weed, but it didn’t relax him; it helped him focus.

  Part XI

  The Second Day

  37

  I t was the day before Christmas, but that hadn’t stopped the crowds coming out. Eight thousand men and women made their way through the Olympic Park, all of them looking forward to the five bouts that made up the evening’s card. Milton watched them file into the Copper Box Arena. It wasn’t particularly festive—twelve young men seeking to knock seven bells out of their opponents—but it did promise to be exciting. He listened to the comments of the spectators in the queue around him; the two main topics of conversation were the disturbance at the workout and whether Mustafa Muhammad really was as good as advertised.

  Boxing had changed in the years since Milton had last witnessed a live fight night. It had been a working-class sport when he’d been a younger man. Now, though, it was attended by men in suits and women in dresses, as if it were a night out on the town rather than a sporting event. Milton found it incongruous and not entirely to his liking.

  He was wearing his AirPods and opened a conference call to Hicks and Ziggy.

  “Where are you both?” he said quietly, his head angled away from the others in the crowd.

  “Inside,” Hicks said. “I can’t see anything unusual.”

  “I’m in the car,” Ziggy reported. “I’m online, good connection. I should be able to back you up from here.”

  “Stay sharp,” Milton said.

  Music was booming from inside the arena. Milton reached the head of the queue and held up his press pass. The guard glanced at it, giving it the most cursory scrutiny, and waved him inside. The crowd was required to pass through scanners, a measure that would at least make it more difficult to bring a weapon inside. There would be other ways into the building that a clever antagonist could exploit, but there was litt
le that could be done about that. Milton and Hicks would just have to stay alert.

  The spectators were making their way into the arena through a line of doors on the right-hand side of the corridor that led away from the central area. Milton looked left and found another corridor that was guarded by a yellow-shirted security guard. Milton went up to the man, showed him his pass, and stepped around him. The corridor was full of people moving back and forward, some with cameras filming interviews with various attendees. Milton could feel the tension in the air. The undercard was under way, and the noise was growing by the second.

  “Anything?” he said.

  “Nothing,” Hicks said. He had bought a front-row seat from a tout, and Milton could hear the thud of punches and the cheers of the crowd.

  Milton moved around the building, familiarising himself with the entrances and exits, looking for weaknesses. Nothing was obvious and there was a lot of security, no doubt as a result of the fracas earlier in the week. He reached the dressing rooms; pieces of A4 paper with the names of the fighters printed on them had been stuck to the doors.

  Milton looked at his watch. Elijah would be fighting in a couple of hours. He slipped past the dressing room with Samuel Connolly’s name on the door, then continued onwards until he found Elijah’s. He found a space behind a row of metal equipment cases where he could observe without easily being seen. He waited as the doors for both fighters opened and closed. The usual complement of people passed into and out of the dressing rooms: the trainers, the cut-men, the hangers-on. More time passed and the referee came to talk to Connolly and then Elijah.

  “Hicks,” Milton said, “how’s it going?”

  “Won’t be long,” Hicks reported. “This one is about to end. It’s a mismatch. One of them…” He stopped, and Milton heard a roar from the crowd. “There you go,” Hicks continued. “Knockout. It’s over.”

  Milton looked up and noticed a woman making her way to Elijah’s door. He recognised her: she was the woman he had seen after the weigh-in, the woman who had got into the car with Elijah. Hicks had said that she had gone into the hotel with Elijah, but that he hadn’t been able to get close enough to take a decent photo. Milton raised his phone and, as surreptitiously as he could, snapped off a burst.