He ran a hand along the spines of Lucas’s books, all back in their place again now. Paris’s work no doubt. He fought the childish urge to send them tumbling from the shelf, and before he had the chance to stomp the notion found himself wondering where Lucas might be. He pushed the unhelpful thought away. Kaminsky must have got into his head. He slipped past Cécile’s open door. He really wasn’t in the mood for any of her shit.

  “Mum wants to know where you’ve been, bruv-bruv,” came his sister’s voice, freezing him in his tracks.

  Oyster sighed and stuck his head around the doorway. He blinked in the bright light of the room. Cess was lying on her stomach, on her bed with a notebook in front of her. Music played from a small stereo and she was humming along to it. The walls of her room were plastered with stickers and boy band posters. One of the shelves housed an array of Hello Kitty merchandise that Oyster had bought for her on various birthdays.

  “What happened to you?” she said without acknowledging him. “You stink.”

  “Even more than usual?” he said.

  She looked up.

  “Even for you this is a new low, I reckon.”

  Oyster stepped into her room and shut the door behind him.

  Cess mimed putting a clothes peg on her nose.

  “Ended up in the drink today,” he said.

  “How does that even happen?” She sat up cross-legged.

  “Biz.”

  Cess rolled her eyes.

  “What’s this racket?” Oyster nodded at the stereo and reached out to turn it down.

  “Touch that and I drop you, beast,” said Cess. It was Oyster’s turn to roll his eyes.

  Her gaze dropped to his naked feet.

  “And what is up with that?”

  “Alright, enough,” said Oyster, putting his index finger to his lips. “Hush now.”

  “I will but not ’cos you’re telling me to, cousin.”

  “I’m your brother, dingbat.”

  “Whatever. Dismissed,” said Cess.

  Oyster shook his head, laughing silently as he slid back into the dark of the flat. Paris remained bathed in the spectral TV light. It was easy for him to sidle into his room without being noticed.

  He put his phone on the radiator in his bedroom. There was a chance it might dry out. Then he collapsed on his bed. He wasn’t sure how he was going to tell Cécile he was in trouble with the law, on top of all the other shit that had already capsized the family in the last couple of years. He could already hear her rebuke: What did you expect, dim-low?

  A little voice in the pit of his stomach wanted him to run to Paris and plead with her to it to make it right, but that wouldn’t happen. Button it, he thought. That’s what Broadsides or Deano would do. Shut it up. Man it up.

  He undressed and chucked his clothes into a pile in the corner of his room. It was only then that he remembered the message. He pulled it out of his jeans’ pocket, collapsed onto the bed and unrolled the paper. It contained a scrawled picture of a spiral wearing a crown and the number ten beneath.

  It meant Mickey wanted to meet him at The Clip at ten a.m.

  Anxiety wriggled in his stomach. Did Mickey figure him for a snitch? Probably not. If he had then he’d already be at the bottom of the Wandsworth. And what was he worried about? He hadn’t done anything wrong. He’d kept his trap shut. Been a good soldier. The phrase filled him with a peculiar pride. The crew had been there for him, provided a sort of family. But Broadsides’ words ran through his head:

  We’re a short-con outfit. Ginals all. How come so many been fingered, done runners or worse?

  All Oyster knew was that he had no answer.

  THE CLIP

  O yster was outside the rendezvous early. He couldn’t risk annoying Big Mickey in any way, and he certainly didn’t want to give his boss any sense at all that he might not be on the up and up.

  He wandered back and forth on the cratered tarmac around the booze joint that the Urbans called The Clip: a big-arse shipping container stacked on two others at the edge of Wandsworth Enterprise Park. The sky was a powder-blue and the air was crisp. He shivered and pulled his puffer jacket tighter around himself.

  The area smelled of old rubber from the abandoned tyre garage next door. The garage’s roof had collapsed in on itself and its doors swung open onto a concrete courtyard that had cracked open as though giving birth to something long buried beneath. The garage’s brick walls buckled under the slow, subtle assault of moss, saplings and bushes. The whole place gave him the creeps.

  There was a figure in the shadows of the abandoned building, something looming and long. Someone watching him. A ribbon of anxiety uncoiled along his spine. He sucked in a breath, unable to move, then forced himself to look again. Relief flooded in from the edges. It was nothing, just a tree twisting in the shadow-tinged dark.

  A car horn sounded. Oyster jumped. A black beamer with tinted windows slid around the corner like a shark. It cruised to the kerb where he stood.

  The window rolled down.

  “Inside, youth,” commanded Big Mickey.

  Oyster took a deep breath and climbed in. The car reeked of weed and Lynx. Taking up most of the rear seat was Big Mickey. The car looked like it might split apart at any moment, unequal to the task of containing him. Mickey gently tapped the cream leather of the seat with a manicured finger. He was expressionless. Once Oyster was inside, they pulled into the road without making a sound. Oyster sat back, feeling himself swallowed up by the car’s luxury.

  He cleared his throat; all clammed up. Being in Big Mickey’s presence was always intimidating. The few words that he’d prepped in his head to explain what had happened on the bridge had fled the moment he’d got into the car. Streatham High Road slipped past them, one chain of shops following another. Oyster’s hands were sweating as he held them flat against the car’s leather interior. He cleared his throat again and swallowed.

  When he gathered the nerve to look up, Big Mickey was staring at him, nodding gently.

  “So, you got stiffed, young blood?” he said.

  Oyster nodded.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry, boss. I dunno what happened. I should have seen him coming.”

  “Yes, you should have,” replied Mickey. His tone was neutral; unreadable. “And that will come with time. I get it. You’re all juiced up. Keen to prove. Keen to earn. You gotta know when to cool it too, though.” He prodded Oyster’s midriff. Oyster winced as his tattoo squealed in pain.

  “You got instincts, I know. I got ’em too. But I always listen to mine. I know when a play is bad; when shit is going down. When someone smells fed even when they look like they’re hundred-percent. However close a grass might be, I always sniff them out. Where I come from, it’s a talent. That’s the diff between a captain and a soldier. Confidence in your talents.”

  Oyster looked at Mickey again and tried to hold his gaze. Mickey’s grey eyes burrowed into him as though measuring his soul. Oyster had to look away, his cheeks burning. Mickey had a way of making you feel guilty even when you were innocent.

  “Anything you need to tell me about while you were detained by the Five-O?” said Mickey, bringing his hands together and cracking his knuckles in a manner that Oyster found both menacing and strangely delicate.

  “Kept it tight, didn’t I?” he said. “Name, rank and serial number, just like you taught me.”

  Now it was Mickey’s turn to look ahead. After a beat or two, he turned to Oyster, who smiled nervously. Mickey’s face remained blank.

  “So, have you learned anything else?” he said, the car interior sighing as he rearranged himself.

  Oyster wasn’t sure what Mickey could mean. Then he realised.

  “Yes, yes. I mean, uh, no. I haven’t found anything out about that mystery crew.” He thought for a second. “Except, me and Broadsie had minor beef with the Stick Men the other day. They insisted that we’ve been painin’ them all over.”

  Big Mickey grunted.

  “Not so, cousin.”

  “Right,” said Oyster, “so—”

  “—so, you reckon they’re feeling this new squad too?” Big Mickey said.

  Oyster nodded. Keen to keep the subject of the conversation away from how things had gone during his arrest.

  “It’s gotta be this new lot, boss,” he said.

  Mickey cracked his knuckles again and nodded thoughtfully.

  “Nice Sherlocking, youth. Right. This is your stop. You’re running the graveyard shift tonight. You’ll pick up the package from Cluck’s at six, make the drop at seven. You can pick up your burner from Arthur’s.”

  He reached across Oyster to open the car door. Big Mickey’s bulk crushed him into the car seat. It was a suffocating mixture of sweat and aftershave.

  “I don’t need to tell you, do I,” whispered Mickey, “that even though we’re like family, you can’t be junkin’ shit up on the regular. That is a lesson that Lucas himself taught me. Up to me to pass it on now. Goin’ soft ain’t good for discipline, disciple. Comprende?”

  Oyster nodded and tumbled out of the car. He drew in a deep breath of London air; after the fug of Mickey’s ride, it tasted sweet.

  “Be seeing you, young blood,” Mickey said, as the car pulled into the traffic and back the way they had come.

  DEAD DROP

  Once a month, Big Mickey had one of the crew make a big money drop deep in Stick Up Kidz territory. Rumour had it the cash went to bent coppers, to keep them turning a blind eye to the crew’s activities.

  In any case, the Stick Ups had gotten wise to the money snaking through their turf and the drop was so prone to jacking that the rest of the Urbans, only half-jokingly, referred to it as the graveyard shift.

  Being entrusted with any part of the drop was a step up, and Oyster knew Big Mickey was testing him by suggesting he carry it out. He prickled at the idea anyone might rate him as a snitch or yellow, but now he was on his way to pick up a burner, anxiety about the whole thing worked its way into the pit of his stomach.

  I can do this, he told himself. Lucas had done it and so could he.

  Arthur’s was a nondescript phone repair shop on the High Road. It nestled between Rico’s the Turkish Barber and Touch Frik, a Nigerian cafe where Oyster treated himself and Cécile to goat stew with eba whenever he had the spare. The sweet smell of the food made his stomach rumble as he approached. He caught sight of himself in Rico’s shopfront and adjusted his beanie. The heartbeat of the town was close to the surface here: the smoky scent of paprika; the snip-snip of Rico’s scissors; the rush of overlapping people and ways of being. This was what the city had always been to him. Oyster loved it and the sense that he was a tiny, integral part of it.

  The Urbans slipped the shopkeeper – whose real name was Aahil – a bundle regularly to ensure they always had a ready supply of untraceable use-once-and-destroy phones. The shop was a narrow unit framed in jaunty yellow, its shopfront crammed with row upon row of used handsets. Two semi-deflated balloons hung from its doorway like stale grapes. Hangovers from the shop’s opening “bonanza sale”, they’d been there as long as Oyster could remember.

  He stepped inside. Aahil’s niece, Farida, was working the counter. Earphones in, she was nodding to some tunes and sucking on a cherry vape. She looked up and evaluated Oyster with a dead-eyed glance.

  “Hang on,” she said, ducking under the counter, to return with a brown paper bag which she slid across to him. She backed away as he approached, removing her earbuds and regarding him like some sort of escaped zoo specimen. Nice kids, good kids, usually did.

  Oyster nodded, ignoring her attitude, and checked the bag. All on the up.

  “Hey, can you throw in another burner?” he said. There was no reason not to replace his phone with a new one. It would be basic but could tide him over till he got around to a maxed-out replacement. Farida did as he asked.

  “Much obliged,” he said. “Tell your old man to stick this lot on Big M’s tab.”

  Farida stayed where she was, looking at him with undisguised disdain. Oyster turned to leave.

  “Why do you do it?” Farida blurted the words to his back.

  Oyster turned to her and shrugged.

  “Gang bangers. You give this place a bad name,” she continued.

  Oyster gave her a smile, determined not to look riled.

  “Before you get too up on your righteous, it’s the same reason your old man doesn’t mind being an accessory after the fact.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, echoing Broadsides’ “money” gesture from the other day.

  He stepped out of the shop before she had a comeback. Farida’s words had pissed him off. What he did was no different to what everyone else did. Everyone was on the make. Everyone was engaged in the same game. The whole city was just a collection of wins and losses; counted and paid for with money, tears and blood, sometimes all three. He was on the bottom of the pile right now. But maybe he was on the up. Unfair as it was, if there was another way of arranging the world he had yet to work out what it might be.

  In any case, it wasn’t like anyone gave a shit about what he thought. Right now, he was all set. As per Big M’s instructions, he waltzed up to Cluck’s where Deano sat in the window, trying and failing to fit into one of the restaurant’s plastic bucket seats. He was holding court with Ed and a couple of kiddies that Oyster didn’t recognise. New recruits, probably. Deano eyed him as he entered, nodding him on to the counter. Cluck’s smelled of hot oil and spray clean, his stomach gurgled. He ordered himself a box of nuggets and sat at the back squinting under the fluorescent lights. The food arrived and he made short work of it. Deano sauntered over and winked at him. He disappeared through the swing doors that led to the loos, returning with a plastic bag which Oyster knew held a brick of money.

  He sat across from Oyster, placing the package on the table, leaving one hand on top of it. He slid him a Rizla paper that contained an address written in Deano’s simple block capitals.

  “Know what to do, soldier?” His voice was low.

  Oyster nodded.

  Deano’s face cracked into a smile.

  “My baby’s all grown up,” he said, fanning himself as though overcome with emotion.

  “Fuck off,” replied Oyster good-naturedly.

  He took the money and zipped it into a khaki backpack he’d brought along for that purpose, along with the burners he’d picked up at Arthur’s. He looked at the address on the cigarette paper, memorised it and then tossed it into his mouth, chewing and swallowing. He rose, ready to leave.

  “Hold up,” said Deano, waving him back into his seat. He passed Oyster a second carrier bag under the table. He could tell immediately it was some kind of fucked-up knife: a machete or something even more brutal.

  “Just in case you gotta carve out,” he said. Then, nodding approvingly, he left Oyster to his business.

  Oyster pulled his beanie down and flipped up his hoodie. He slipped the knife out of its bag and into a long pocket in his puffer. It was a hunting knife. A lot more serious than the sort thing he normally carried. Eight inches long, with a wound leather grip, its razor edge looked like it would cut the air itself. I’ll be lucky if I don’t gut myself just carrying this thing, he thought.

  He walked out of Cluck’s, his brain already churning through the permutations of public transport that could get him to the drop’s address over in Tooting. He caught a rattling bus up to the nearest Underground, then hunkered down on the Tube with the backpack. He wanted some tunes to steady his nerves, but his phone was still dead and his new burner too basic. Just as well, he thought. I should probably stay sharp.

  He trucked north from Tooting station and headed past the hunched brick houses of Links Road. He didn’t like this street. It was long, monotonous and the railway line it paralleled to its south meant there were fewer turn-offs to evade pursuit.

  At its mouth was a patch of scrub that stretched into an overgrown alleyway; one that curled around the houses’ rear, and was bordered by uneven backyard fences. The passageway was lined by thin, circumspect trees and sparse muddy grass that revealed the city’s chalky bones. He was staring down a tunnel that led into an alternate city, one composed of dirt and absence. He scratched at his tattoo and the nape of his neck prickled. He had the sense that something was coming this way, something he did not want to be around.

  He double-stepped it, with his head down and spider-sense tingling, logging each house number with a sinking feeling. By his estimate he had to get most of the way down this bloody road to complete the drop-off. He pulled his unfastened jacket tighter around him; a zipped-up coat would make it harder to pull his shiv if he needed to.

  His skin was proper crawling now and he had the unmistakeable sensation he was being eyeballed. Creepiest thing was he couldn’t see anyone on his six. He pulled his hoodie up over his head and tried to fade as best he could. I just have to haul my arse a little bit further and then I can bunk on a train and be home.

  Footsteps hammered behind him and he spun around. He had the blade half out of his jacket before he saw Broadsides grinning at him under the streetlights.

  “Easy, killer,” he said.

  “Jesus,” said Oyster. “I just shit myself a bit. What are you doing here?”

  “Great to see you too,” said Broadsides.

  He was relieved to see his friend, but then considered that perhaps he had thought Oyster needed help.

  “I don’t need backup, my man.”

  “Nah, that’s not it at all,” said Broadsides. “You’re looking tight. Heard you was on the run solo out here. Figured you might want some chat.”

  Oyster snorted, offering him a fist bump. Pride aside, he was glad to see him. They swaggered up the street together, Oyster trying to unwind. Streetlights wove their shadows into long-limbed monsters. They reminded Oyster of the stories Lucas used to tell him back when he was a kid. Tales of the time before people, when giants roamed the land, twatting each other with clubs and anything else that was to hand.