iBoy

life ...

Frederic Thrasher The Gang (1927)

It was 03:15:52 when we left the flat and walked down the corridor to the lift. There was no one around. The tower felt cold and empty. An early-morning silence pervaded the air, adding to the sense of emptiness, and the sound of our footsteps echoed dully in the stillness. As we approached the lift — which had been jammed open with an iron bar — I wondered if this was going to be my final journey ...

My final time in this corridor.

My final time in the lift.

My final time in the concrete splendour of good old Compton House.

I smiled to myself, thinking — well, it could have been a lot worse, couldn't it? Of course, it could have been a whole lot better too ...

As we got into the lift and the doors closed, I glanced at Lucy. The picnic we'd had just a few hours earlier seemed to belong to a different world now, a world that existed a thousand years ago. And while, at the time, it had felt like the beginning of something between me and Lucy, it was now starting to feel like it was all there was ever going to be: the beginning, the middle, the end. But even so, if this was to be my final journey — our final journey — that brief time we'd shared on the roof together would still be the best time of my life.

Yeah, I thought, smiling at Lucy, it could have been a whole lot worse.

'What are you smiling about?' Hashim sneered at me.

I looked at him. 'Not much. Just thinking how lucky I am, that's all.'

'Lucky?' he said, shaking his head. 'You fucking freak.'

As the lift reached the ground floor, I said to Ellman, 'What have you done with Lucy's mum and her brother?'

He didn't say anything, he didn't even bother looking at me. He just waited, his eyes taking in everything, as Tweet checked out the ground floor, making sure there was no one around. Then, after a signal from Tweet, Ellman gave Hashim the nod, and Hashim moved out of the lift with Lucy. O'Neil followed them. Ellman looked at me, jerking his head, and I followed O'Neil, with Ellman close behind me.

Outside the tower, two black Range Rovers with tinted windows were waiting by the doors.

Now that I was sure we were leaving the tower, I sent the text that I'd already written in my head to the local police and ambulance services. The text read:

URGENT!!! PLEASE HELP!!! MS CONNIE HARVEY, AGED 54, HAS BEEN ATTACKED AND HAS SUFFERED A SERIOUS HEAD INJURY. SHE NEEDS IMME­DIATE MEDICAL ATTENTION. SHE HAS BEEN TIED UP AND LEFT IN HER ROOM BY UN­KNOWN ASSAILANTS AT FLAT 4, 23RD FLOOR, COMPTON HOUSE, CROW LANE ESTATE, CROW LANE, LONDON SE15 6CG. MRS MICHELLE WALKER AND HER SON BEN MAY ALSO NEED ASSISTANCE AT FLAT 6 ON 3oTH FLOOR. THIS IS NOT A HOAX. PLEASE HURRY.

The two Range Rovers both had their engines running. While Tweet and Hashim and Lucy headed for the one in front, Ellman told me to follow O'Neil to the other one. I watched over my shoulder as Hashim and Lucy got awkwardly into the back of the first one, with Tweet getting into the front passenger's seat, then Ellman opened the back door of our Range Rover and told me to get in.

I got in.

He got in beside me.

O'Neil sat in the front passenger seat.

The guy in the driver's seat had his hood up, and all I could see of his face in the rear-view mirror was a pair of dark glasses and a raggedy twist of beard on his chin. From his phone records, I knew that he was Gunner.

'All right?' he grunted at Ellman.

Ellman ignored him, watching the car in front pull away. Then he just said, 'Go.'

We turned right out of Compton and headed south along Crow Lane, both cars cruising along at a steady 4omph — not fast enough to get stopped, not too slow to attract attention. Ellman lit a cigarette and leaned back in his seat, looking totally relaxed and at ease. I gazed out through the window for a while, watching the estate pass by — the kids' playground, the low-rises, the towers ... Fitzroy House, Gladstone, Heath. There were a few people around — some gang kids hanging around the towers, one or two passing cars — but they might as well have been on another planet for all the good they were to me. I didn't need telling again that Hashim would shoot Lucy if I tried anything. So I gave up thinking about it.

'Where are we going?' I asked Ellman as we passed Heath House and carried on heading south.

'You'll find out when we get there,' Ellman said.

I looked at him. 'How did you know it was me?'

'Eh?'

'iBoy ... how did you know it was me?'

He shrugged. 'Does it matter?'

'Not really ...' I grinned at him. 'But if this was a James Bond movie, this would be the perfect moment for the mad super-villain to show Bond how clever he is by unnecessarily explaining everything to him.'

Ellman smiled. 'Yeah, just before he tries to kill the fucker.'

'And Bond escapes.'

He looked at me. 'Real life ain't the movies.'

'True.'

He smiled. 'I mean, you think I'm going to hang you from a rope over a pool of fucking sharks or something?'

'Probably not.'

He laughed. 'And you're not exactly James fucking Bond, are you?'

'I suppose not... what about you?'

'What about me?'

I smiled at him. 'Are you the mad super-villain?'

'Yeah, fucking right. I'm Hell-Man ... I'm the Devil —'

'And I'm iBoy.'

He looked at me, genuinely amused.

I said, 'So, how did you find out?'

He laughed. 'It was the kid, the bitch's brother ... what's his name?'

'Ben?'

'Yeah. He told Troy and Jermaine that when you were trying to throw Yo out the window, and his sister was watching, he heard her whispering something to herself.'

Ellman shook his head. 'The little shit thought she said eBay, but then Yo here remembered one of his crew call­ing you iBoy a couple of weeks ago ... you know, like he was just fucking around with you at the time. So then we started thinking about it, looking into it, you know ... and here we are.' He looked at me. 'Satisfied?'

'Yeah.'

'You ready to be strung up over the sharks now?'

'No problem.'

He grinned at me for a moment, then he turned away and spent some time looking out of the car window, check­ing all around, making sure that everything was OK.

'You see anything?' he said to Gunner.

'No, it's cool,' Gunner said.

'OK, take the right by the bridge and head back north. Yo, call Marek and let him know.'