What Came Before He Shot Her

  He did, and just the way she’d hoped because that was his goodhearted nature. He wanted to know about the kids. How were they doing? he asked her. He turned to continue cleaning the stove. He seemed to give his complete attention to the task.

  She said good, the kids were good. Ness was doing her community service without complaint and Toby was still topping up his education at the learning centre. She’d decided no further testing was going to be necessary for Toby, by the way, she added. He was doing that well.

  And Joel? Dix asked.

  Kendra didn’t answer until Dix turned back to her. She asked him if he minded if she smoked, adding that she remembered how he didn’t like it much.

  He told her to suit herself, so she did. She lit a cigarette and said, “Missing you.”

  “Joel?”

  She smiled. “S’pose. But I’m talking about me. I see you here and it all goes away, you know?”

  “Wha’s ’at?”

  “Whatever made us split apart. I can’t remember what it was, just what we had. Who’re you seein now?”

  Dix breathed out a laugh. “You t’ink I got time to see anyone?”

  “What about wanting to see someone? You know what I mean.”

  “Don’t work like dat for me, Ken.”

  “You’re a good man.”

  “Dat’s right.”

  “Okay. So I say it straight out: I was wrong and I want you back. I need you back. I don’t like life without you.”

  “T’ings’re different now.”

  “Cos you’re working here? Cos of your dad? What? You said there’s no one—”

  “You di’n’t answer me ’bout Joel.”

  And she wasn’t about to. Not just yet. She said, “We’re the same, you and me. We got dreams and we fight to keep the dreams alive. People c’n fight better together than alone. There’s that and everything we feel for each other. Or am I wrong? You not feeling wiv me what I’m feeling wiv you? You not wanting to leave this caff straightaway and be wiv me the way we c’n be together?”

  “I di’n’t say dat, Ken.”

  “Then let’s talk about it. Let’s see. Let’s try. I was in the wrong about everything, Dix.”

  “Yeah. Well. I can’t give you what you want.”

  “You gave me what I wanted before.”

  “Now,” he said. “I can’t give you what you want now. I ain’t a security service, Kendra. I know what you want, and I can’t give it.”

  “What I…?”

  “You ain’t mentionin Joel. The cops. The barge burning. You t’ink I don’t know wha’s going on in your life? Wha’ I’m saying’s t’ings no different’n the last time we talked except you got more reason to be worried now you got two kids under the eye of the cops instead of just one. An’ I can’t make a diff’rence in all dat. I can’t make it go away the way you want. I can’t make the reason for it go away. Like I said, I ain’t a security service.”

  Kendra wanted to tell herself that he was being deliberately cruel to her instead of merely honest. She also wanted to lie to him, telling him that her request had nothing to do with Joel and everything to do with love and the future they might have together. But she was, at the moment, too stricken by his knowledge of her that was far superior to her knowledge of him. She was additionally stricken by the fact that his mother had heard their conversation, as the satisfied expression on her face indicated when she emerged from the storage room with her salt and pepper cellars filled and ready to be replaced on the tables.

  Kendra said to Dix, “I was thinking family. What we could be.”

  “More to family ’n dat,” was his reply.

  Chapter

  20

  Kendra told herself that things weren’t as bad as they seemed. Since there were parts of Joel’s story that she knew were true and supported by the statement of one Ubayy Mochi, there was also a slim chance that the burning of the barge was a one-off situation having nothing to do with the boys who’d been tormenting both Joel and Toby. In order to believe this, however, there were other parts of the tale that she had to ignore—such as Joel’s having a confabulation scheduled with a boy who’d earlier been in several nasty fights with him—but she was willing to do that. She largely had no choice in the matter. Joel was saying nothing else.

  Kendra thought life might smooth out a bit. Fabia Bender’s return to the charity shop disabused her of that notion. She came on foot, accompanied as always by her two monstrous dogs. As always, they dropped to the ground upon hearing her command of “Down, dogs.” They remained there like sentinels on either side of the doorway, a position that Kendra found intensely irritating.

  “They’re going to scare away customers,” she said to Fabia as the social worker closed the door behind her. Rain was falling, and she wore a bright yellow slicker and a matching rain hat, of the sort one might see on a fisherman facing a raging southwester. It was an odd getup for London, but not, somehow, for Fabia Bender. She took off the hat but not the slicker. She brought a brochure out of its pocket.

  “I won’t be a moment,” she said to Kendra. “Are you expecting a throng? For a sale or something?”

  She said it without irony as she looked around the shop for an indication that at any moment Kendra was going to be fighting off two dozen customers vying for broken-down shoes and thirdhand blue jeans. She didn’t wait for a reply as she came to the counter where Kendra had been standing at the till, flipping through an old copy of Vogue from the magazine rack. She said she had been thinking of Joel. Of Ness as well, but mostly of Joel.

  Kendra grabbed onto the subject of her niece. “Ness’s not missed the drop-in centre, has she?”

  “No, no,” Fabia hastened to reassure her. “She actually appears to be doing quite well there.” She didn’t tell Kendra about the effort she was making on Ness’s behalf with regard to her recently revealed and somewhat surprising desire for a millinery certificate. That wasn’t going as well as she’d hoped: so many young people in need and so few financial resources to meet that need. She placed the brochure on the counter. She said, “There’s something…Mrs. Osborne, there may be something more we can do for Joel. I’ve come across this…Well, not quite come across it…I’ve had it for a while but I’ve been reluctant because of the distance. But as there’s nothing like it on this side of the river…It’s an outreach programme for adolescents. Here, you can see for yourself…”

  It turned out she’d come to tell Kendra about a special programme for adolescents who’d shown the potential for getting into trouble. It was called Colossus, she explained, and it was run by a privately funded group in South London. South London was, of course, an enormous commuting stretch for a troubled child living this far north of the river, but as there was no programme like it in North Kensington, it might be worthwhile to introduce Joel to it. They evidently had a high quotient of success with boys like him.

  Kendra jumped on to the final part of Fabia Bender’s statement. “‘Boys like him’? What’s that mean?”

  Fabia didn’t want to give offence. She knew the woman standing on the other side of the counter was doing her best with the three children she’d taken into her home, but it was a difficult situation to begin with: She had no experience with children and the children themselves had needs appearing far greater than those which one busy and inexperienced adult could meet. That, and not some bad seed planted deeply within them and lying dormant until an appropriate moment arose in which to germinate, was why many children ended up in trouble. If Fabia saw a way to head off trouble, she liked to pursue it.

  “I have a feeling that there’s more going on with Joel than what we’re seeing, Mrs. Osborne. This group”—she tapped her finger on the brochure, which Kendra had left on the counter—“provides outlets, counseling, job training, activities…I’d like you to consider it. I’m willing to go over there with you—with Joel as well—to speak to them.”

  Kendra looked at the brochure more closely. She read the location. She
said, “Elephant and Castle? He can’t be trekking over there every day. He’s got school. He’s got helping me out with Toby. He’s got…” She shook her head and slid the brochure back to the social worker.

  Fabia had thought Joel’s aunt would respond in this fashion, so she went on to her second suggestion. This was that Joel should have a male role model, a mentor, a friend, someone older and steady who could involve the boy in an interest beyond what could be found in the streets. Dix immediately sprang into Kendra’s mind at this: Dix, lifting weights, the gym, and bodybuilding. But she couldn’t go back to Dix with this suggestion after she’d already humiliated herself with an indirect and less than honest approach to getting him back into their lives. That left the only other male that Kendra knew about, the man who’d been flitting on the periphery of Joel’s life since he’d started attending Holland Park School.

  She said, “He used to see a white man over Holland Park School.”

  “Ah. Yes. Through their mentoring programme? I know about the setup. Who was this man?”

  “He’s called Ivan—” Kendra struggled to remember the surname.

  “Mr. Weatherall? Joel knows him?”

  “He was going to his poetry nights for a time. He was writing poetry himself. Seemed like he was always putting something in a notebook. Poems for Ivan, he’d say. I think he liked it.”

  Fabia thought this might be just the ticket. She knew Ivan Weatherall by reputation: an eccentric white man in his fifties with an advanced sense of social responsibility rare in people of his background. He came from a landed family in Shropshire whose landed condition could have developed within him the sort of sense of entitlement one frequently found in wealthy people whose wealth allowed them to lead marginally—or entirely—meaningless lives. But perhaps because the family’s wealth had grown out of a nineteenth-century glove-making business, they had a different attitude towards their money and what was meant to be done with it.

  If Joel could be encouraged to strengthen ties to Ivan Weatherall…Fabia said, “I’ll phone the school and see if they still have Mr. Weatherall mentoring Joel. In the meantime, will you encourage him with his poetry from your end? I’ll be frank with you. It’s little enough—this writing of poetry—but it might be something. And he needs something, Mrs. Osborne. All children do.”

  Kendra was raw on the subject of what children needed. She wanted Fabia Bender to be gone, so she said she’d do what she could to get Joel back into Ivan Weatherall’s poetry nights. But when the social worker left the charity shop, squashing her fisherman’s hat on her head and saying, “Come, dogs,” as she stepped out onto the pavement, Kendra was faced with an additional reality about Joel’s attending Wield Words Not Weapons. If he went back to that poetry event, he’d be out in the streets at night once again. Out in the streets at night put him in danger. Something had to be done to head that danger off. It seemed to Kendra that there remained only one way to do this. If Dix would not help her sort out the boys who were after Joel and Toby, she would have to do so herself.

  WHEN KENDRA ASKED Joel the full name of the boy who was giving him trouble in the street, Joel knew what she intended to do, but he didn’t associate this with Wield Words Not Weapons. She would not believe him when he claimed ignorance of the name of the very boy he’d earlier declared he was scheduled to meet in the football pitch, so he was forced to tell her that he was called Neal Wyatt. He asked her to stay away from him, though. Talk to Neal, you make things worse for me and Tobe, he told her. Things were fine at the present, anyway. Neal had had his fun with the burning of the barge. Joel hadn’t seen the other boy in weeks. This latter was a lie, but she wouldn’t know that. Neal had been keeping his distance, but he’d been making sure Joel knew he was not far away.

  Kendra asked if Joel was lying to her, and Joel managed to sound outraged at the question. He wasn’t about to lie in a circumstance involving Toby’s safety, he told her. Didn’t she know that about him, at least, if she didn’t believe anything he said? This was an excellent ploy: Kendra studied him and was momentarily appeased. But Joel knew he could not let matters rest there. He had only a reprieve. He still had to stop his aunt in her quest. He also had to back Neal off.

  Obviously, the return of the flick knife hadn’t made a sufficient impression on the Blade regarding Joel’s worthiness of the man’s notice. He would have to talk to him personally.

  He knew better than to ask Ness again, lest she raise a ruckus that Kendra might overhear. Instead, he moved on to a different source.

  He found Hibah at school, having lunch with a mixed group of girls, sitting in a circle in one of the corridors to keep out of the rain. They were talking about “dat bitch Mrs. Jackson”—this was a maths teacher—when Joel caught Hibah’s eye and signaled to her that he wanted to talk. She got to her feet and ignored the girls’ tee-heeing about her having a conversation with a younger man.

  Joel didn’t obfuscate the matter at hand. He needed to find the Blade, he told her. Did she know where he was?

  Like his sister, Hibah wanted to know what the bloody hell Joel wanted with the Blade, of all people. She didn’t wait for an answer, though. She merely went on to tell him that she didn’t know where he was and neither did anyone else who wasn’t meant to know. And that meant everyone in her acquaintance.

  Then she asked him what this was all about anyway, and she went on shrewdly to answer her own question. “Neal,” she said. “He vexin you. Tha’ barge an’ everyt’ing, innit.”

  This prompted Joel to ask Hibah something he’d wanted to know from the first. What was she doing hooked up with a lout like Neal Wyatt?

  “He ain’t all bad,” she replied.

  What she didn’t say and couldn’t have said was what Neal Wyatt represented to her: a modern-day version of Heathcliff, Rochester, and a hundred other dark heroes of literature, although in Hibah’s world he was more representative of the mysterious, elusive, and misunderstood hero found in modern romance novels, on the television, and in films. She was, in short, a victim of the myth that has been foisted upon women since the time of the troubadours: Love conquers all; love saves; love endures.

  She said, “I know you two been trouble for each other, Joel, but this is summick comes down to respect.”

  Joel made a sound of derision. Hibah didn’t take offence, but she did take it as invitation to continue.

  She said, “Neal’s clever, you know. He could be a good learner in this place here”—she indicated the corridor in which they stood—“if he wanted to. He could be anything, innit. He could go to university. He could be a scientist, a doctor, a solicitor. Anyt’ing he wanted to be. But you ain’t been able to see that, innit. An’ he knows that, y’unnerstan.”

  “He wants to run a crew in the street,” Joel said. “Dat’s what he wants.”

  “He doesn’t,” she said. “He’s only mixin wiv the other boys cos he wants respect. Tha’s what he wants from you as well.”

  “People want respect, they got to earn it.”

  “Yeah. Tha’s what he’s been tryin to—”

  “He tries the wrong way,” Joel told her. “An’ you c’n tell him dat, if you want. Anyways, I di’n’t ask to talk to you ’bout Neal. I ask you ’bout the Blade.”

  He began to walk off, leaving her to her mates, but Hibah didn’t like people being at odds with each other, and she didn’t like being at odds with Joel. She said, “I can’t tell you where tha’ bloke is. But girl called Six…? She prob’ly knows cos she involved wiv a blood called Greve an’ he knows the Blade good enough.”

  Joel looked back at her. He knew of Six. He didn’t know where she lived, though, or how to find her. Hibah told him that. Mozart Estate, she said. Just ask around. Someone would know her. She had a reputation.

  That turned out to be the case. When Joel went to Mozart Estate, it was a matter of questioning a few people to root out the flat in which Six lived with her mother and some of her siblings. Six recognised Joel’s name, looked
him over, assessed his potential to do her benefit or harm, and gave him the information he wanted. She told him about a squat on the edge of Mozart Estate, tucked into a crook of Lancefield Road where it led to Kilburn Lane.

  Joel chose darkness when he went there, not because he wanted the dubious safety of shadows but because he thought it was more likely that the Blade would be in the squat at night than in the daytime when he’d more likely be cruising the streets, doing whatever he did to maintain his credentials with the lower-level thugs in the area.

  Joel knew he was correct in his assumption when he saw Cal Hancock. The graffiti artist was at the foot of some stairs facing Lancefield Court, behind a chain-link fence whose gate had enough of a gap in it for people to slip through with a minimum of trouble. And people had done that, Joel could see. The flickering lights from candles or lanterns came from three derelict flats, two of which were at the top of the three-floor building and as far away as possible from the first-floor flat in which the Blade was apparently doing some sort of business. The stairs leading up to this flat were concrete, as was the building itself.

  Cal was definitely on guard this time. He sat, alert, on the fourth step from the bottom and when Joel slipped through the gate in the fence, he stood at ease but intimidating to someone who didn’t know him, legs spread and arms crossed.

  “Happenin,” he said as Joel approached. He gave a nod. He sounded official. Something, then, was going on above him in the Blade’s presence.

  “I got to see him.” Joel attempted to sound as formal as Cal but also insistent. He wasn’t to be put off this time. “You give him dat flick knife?”

  “Did.”

  “He chuck it or keep it?”

  “Likes the knife, mon. He got it wiv him.”

  “He know where it came from?”

  “I tell him.”