Mouse took out his phone. “I’m gonna go call my woman,” he said.

“Do it in here,” Bizness said.

“Place smells rank, man,” Mouse countered. “If I don’t get some fresh air I swear I’m gonna faint. I’ll speak to her for a bit, have a look on the street, see what’s happening, then get back inside. Won’t be long.”

50

Milton walked briskly to the entrance to the studio. Bass was thumping through the walls of the building, rattling the door in its frame. He scouted it quickly. If there had been time, he would have prepared a careful plan for getting inside and taking Bizness out. He would have found a distraction, perhaps disabled the electricity to put them on the back foot. Or he could have broken into the building opposite and sniped them from the second floor. The road was only twenty metres wide and he could have managed that in his sleep. He dismissed both ideas. There wasn’t time for either of them and, anyway, he wasn’t inclined to be subtle.

He tried the handle: it was locked. Milton took a step back and was preparing to kick it in when the locked clicked, the handle turned and the door was pulled open. A man was standing there, shock on his face, a unlit cigarette dangling from his lip. Milton released his grip so that the blanket fell away from the sawn-off and shoved the stock into the man’s face. His nose was crumpled and blood burst across his face. He lost his legs and began to fall. Milton followed him as he staggered back inside, swiping the stock like a club, the end catching the man on the chin as he went down. He was unconscious before he fell back and bounced off the stairs.

The light over the stairs was on. Milton flicked it off.

“Mouse?” came a voice from upstairs. “You alright?”

Milton turned the sawn-off in his hands, holding it loosely and aiming it diagonally upwards. He stepped over Mouse and started up the stairs, slowly, one at a time.

“Mouse?”

Milton climbed.

“You hear something?” came an angry voice from upstairs.

“Nah.”

“Go and check.”

“He’s outside on the phone. It’s nothing, Bizness.”

“Then there’s nothing to worry about going and making sure, is there?”

“Fuck it, man, all I want is a smoke and a relax.”

“Get down there.”

Milton kept climbing the stairs.

He thought of Aaron: shot dead in the park like an animal.

He thought of Sharon: breathing through a tube in a hospital bed, bandages wrapped around her face.

He thought of Elijah and his brutally short future if he let Bizness live.

No, he could not go back. Too much blood had been spilt. Milton had offered Bizness a way out, but he had decided not to take it. That was his choice. Ignoring his offer came with consequences, and those had been explained to him, too. There was nothing else to do; he had to finish it, tonight.

A second man appeared at the top of the stairs. Milton recognised him from the crack house. He squeezed the trigger and shot him in the chest, the impact peppering him from his navel to his throat. He staggered, his hand pointlessly reaching for the knife in his pocket. Milton cranked the pump and fired a second spread. Spit and blood foamed at the man’s lips as he pirouetted back into the room above, dropping to the floor.

The music suddenly cut out.

Milton paused, crouching low.

“Aight,” Bizness called down to him. “That you, Milton?”

He gripped the barrel in his left hand, the index finger of his right hand tight against the trigger.

“I know it’s you. I don’t know what your beef is with me but I ain’t armed. Come up, let’s sort this out.”

Milton took another step, then another.

“We can settle this thing. It’s about JaJa, right? That’s what you said. You want the younger, man, you can have him. Little shit ain’t worth all this aggravation. Come up, we’ll shake like men.”

Milton was at the top of the stairs.

He took a quick step and flung himself into the room.

Two Mac-10s spat out.

Tck-tck-tck-tck-tck.

The bullets thudded into the sofa, spraying out fragments of leather and gouts of yellowed upholstery. Milton landed next to the table and scrambled into the studio beyond, more automatic spray from the automatics studding into the floor and wall as he swung his legs inside and out of the line of fire.

Tck-tck-tck-tck-tck.

Chunks of wood sprayed out as bullets bit into the frame. The wide glass panel spiderwebbed and then fell inwards in a hundred razored fragments as bullets cracked into it. Milton crabbed backwards so that the solidness of the mixing desk was between him and Bizness’s dual autos.

He had dropped the shotgun. He fumbled for the Sig, pulled out the magazine and checked it, slapping the seventeen-shot load back into the butt. He clicked off the safety, cranked a bullet into the chamber, and held the weapon in front of his face.

“What — you thought you could embarrass me in front of my friends and my fans with no consequences? You could burn down my place and that would be that, no hard feelings, let bygones by fucking bygones? You must be out of your mind, man, coming here. You’re a dead man,”

There was a moment of peace. It was not silence — bits of debris still spattered down and the crowd was loud outside the window — but the firing had ceased.

“You dropped your shotgun,” he called. “Got anything else?”

Milton gritted his teeth.

“You ain’t got nothing like what I got here.”

“I gave you a choice,” Milton called out. “You just needed to leave Elijah alone.”

“See — there it is again, arrogance. What makes you think you can tell me what to do? You don’t tell me nothing, bruv.”

Tck-tck-tck-tck-tck.

The Mac-10s fired again and the room flashed, bullets spraying into the recording booth opposite Milton. He glanced up and saw the twin muzzle-flash reflected in the jagged remains of the booth window before bullets stitched across it and sent the shards crashing down on top of him. Bizness was behind the sofa. The bullets thudded softly into the upholstered sound insulation and the studio was filled with a fine shower of powder and dust.

“Come on. Come out and let’s get it over with. You know there’s no way out for you. What you got — a nine? You just pissing in the wind, bruv. I got two Mac-10s and enough ammo for a month. Stop hiding like a bitch. I ain’t gonna lie, you ain’t getting out of here alive. Come on. But you come out now, I promise I’ll do you quick.”

Milton straightened his back against the mixing desk and reached inside his jacket. His fingers touched a smooth, rounded cylinder. The flashbang fitted snugly into his palm.

“Funny thing is, even this won’t stick on me. You and my two boys had a gunfight and you all got done. There won’t be no sign of me. I’ve got a woman in Camden, she’ll alibi me up for now and earlier. All this — you gonna get dooked for nothing, bruv.”

Milton pulled the pin, reached up and tossed the grenade through the broken window and into the room beyond.

There was a fizz and a burst of the brightest white light as the phosphorous ignited.

Milton rolled out of the door, bringing the Sig up, and fired. The first shot missed but there was enough light from the flashbang for Milton to see Bizness, just as he popped up from behind the sofa to return fire. He brought the Sig around and aimed quickly, squeezing the trigger twice. Bizness staggered backwards through a sudden pink mist, the Mac-10s firing wildly into the ceiling. The boy toppled into the sofa. It tipped over so that he lay across it on his back, his legs splayed out over the now vertical seats. He was pressing his hand against his chest. A bullet had hit him there and blood was pulsing out between his fingers.

Milton had seen plenty of gutshots before. The boy was finished. No treatment could save him now.