What Came Before He Shot Her

  But in all his planning, Joel failed to take into account the concern of Luce Chinaka. He failed to realise that she might have been told by Fabia Bender to keep a closer watch on Toby, that she might take matters into her own hands when Toby did not turn up as scheduled, phoning Kendra at the charity shop and asking if Toby was ill and unable to keep his regular appointment. So when Kendra arrived home for the day, she first deposited a bag of Chinese takeaway in the kitchen and she then demanded to know why Joel had failed in his duty to see to Toby.

  Here, however, a modicum of luck was on Joel’s side. He’d taken an unsettled stomach and a growing weakness in his arms and his legs up to his bedroom, and he’d deposited them upon his bed. There he curled in the darkness, and he stared at the wall on which he found—no matter what he did to try to get it out of his mind—the image of the dark-haired lady’s face floated, smiling at him, saying hello, and asking if he and Cal were lost. Thus, when Kendra flipped on the light and said, “Joel! Why didn’t you take your brother to the learning centre?” Joel spoke the truth. “Bein sick,” he said.

  This altered things. Kendra sat on the edge of the bed and, mother-like, felt his forehead. She said in an altogether altered tone, “You coming down with something, baby? You’re a bit hot. You should’ve phoned me at the shop.”

  “I thought Tobe could miss—”

  “I don’t mean for Toby. I mean for you. If you’re sick and you need me…” She smoothed his hair. “We’re going through bad times round here, aren’t we, luv? But I want you to know something: You don’t have to take care of yourself alone.”

  For Joel this was actually the worst thing she could have said, for the kindness in her words caused tears to well in his eyes. He closed them, but the tears leaked out.

  Kendra said, “I’m going to make you something to settle your stomach. Why don’t you come down to the lounge and wait on the settee? Have a lie down and I’ll fix you up a tray. You can watch the telly while you eat. How ’bout that?”

  Joel kept his eyes closed because he felt stung by her tone. It was a voice she’d never used before. Tears dripped across the bridge of his nose and onto his pillow. He did what he could not to sob, which meant he said nothing in reply.

  Kendra said, “You come when you’re ready. Toby’s got a video on the telly, but I’ll tell him to let you watch what you want.”

  It was the thought of Toby—and the thought of what Toby might say if Kendra questioned him—that got Joel up once his aunt left the bedroom. This, it turned out, was all to the good, for when he arrived in the sitting room, it was to find Toby blithely lying to their aunt about a supposed afternoon in the learning centre, just as Joel had instructed him to do but without the knowledge of Luce Chinaka’s phone call.

  “…readin today,” Toby was saying. “Only I don’t ’member the book.”

  Joel said, “Wa’n’t today, mon. What’re you on about, Tobe?” He joined Toby on the settee, his pillow in his hands and a blanket from his bed dragging along on the floor. “Today we came straight here from school cos I was sick. Remember?”

  Toby looked at him, his expression puzzled. “But I thought—”

  “Yeah. But you tol’ me all ’bout dat yesterday.”

  “‘That’,” Kendra corrected him patiently. And then, miraculously, she dismissed the topic, saying, “Toby, move over and let Joel have a lie down. Let him watch the telly. You can help me in the kitchen if you’ve a mind to.”

  Toby scooted over on the sofa, but his expression remained confused. He said to Joel, “But, Joel, you tol’ me—”

  “You’re getting all your days mixed up,” Joel cut in. “I tol’ you we wouldn’t be going to the centre when I fetched you from school jus’ dis af’ernoon. How c’n you not remember, Tobe? Ain’t they been workin on your memory an’ stuff?”

  “‘Haven’t they been working,’” came the automatic correction from Kendra. “Joel, don’t be so hard on him.” She went to the television and removed the video from the old recorder beneath it. She turned to a channel arbitrarily and once the picture flickered on, she gave a nod and descended to the kitchen. In a moment she was banging about down there, fixing the promised meal for Joel.

  Toby’s gaze hadn’t moved from Joel’s face, and what it showed was utter confusion. He said, “You said I was meant to say—”

  “I’m sorry, Tobe,” Joel murmured. He moved his own gaze to the stairway’s door and kept it there. “She found out, see. They phoned her up and asked where you were, so I had to tell her…Look, jus’ say we came straight here and we been here ever since. If she asks or summick, okay?”

  “But you tol’ me—”

  “Tobe!” Joel’s whisper was fierce. “Things change, y’unnerstan wha’ I say? Things change all the time. Like Ness not being here and Dix bein gone. Y’unnerstan? Things change.”

  But things didn’t easily change for Toby, not without some attempt at removing the fog from his brain. He said again, “But—”

  Joel grabbed his wrist tightly and turned to him. “Don’t be so fuckin stupid,” he hissed. “Jus’ this once act like you got a brain.”

  Toby recoiled. Joel dropped his wrist. Toby’s chin dimpled, and his eyelids lowered. The skin of them showed the delicate tracing of blue veins across a freckled, almond surface. Joel felt a tug at his heart at the sight, but he hardened it and he hardened himself because as far as he was concerned, Toby had to learn and he had to learn now. It was imperative that he memorise a story and get that story straight.

  “Joel,” Kendra called from the kitchen, “I’ve brought Chinese, but I’m making you boiled eggs and toast. D’you want jam?”

  Joel didn’t see how he’d be able to eat anything at all, but he called back weakly that jam was good, jam was fine, and whatever kind they had would be excellent. Then for the first time he looked at the television and saw what Kendra had switched on for him to watch. It looked like some channel’s nightly news because a female reporter stood in front of the entrance to a hospital, speaking into a microphone. Joel paid attention.

  “…footage from the vicinity of Sloane Square is being examined by Belgravia detectives who have pulled out all the stops to apprehend the shooter. There was, apparently, at least one witness—and possibly two—to the incident, which took place in broad daylight in Eaton Terrace. We’ve learned that the victim had just returned from a shopping trip, but that’s actually the extent of what we know about the incident itself. As far as we’ve been able to find out, the victim—thirty-four-year-old Helen Lynley, Countess of Asherton—is under twenty-four-hour guard here at St. Thomas’ Hospital. But what, exactly, her condition is, we do not know.”

  A man’s voice said, “Andrea, is anyone drawing a connection between this shooting and the serial killings currently under investigation?”

  The reporter adjusted her earpiece and said, “Well, it’s a bit difficult to avoid making the connection, isn’t it? Or at least assuming there might be one. When the wife of the head of an investigation that’s the size and scope of this one is shot…Inevitably, there are going to be questions.”

  Behind her, the hospital doors swung open. Camera lights began to flash. A man in doctor’s garb walked over to a bouquet of microphones while a number of other people in his company—a grim-faced group of individuals with plainclothes detectives written all over them—pushed through the reporters on their way to the car park.

  “…life support,” were the two words that came to Joel from the man in hospital garb. “The situation is very grave.”

  There was more—questions fired from all directions and answers given hesitantly and with a desire to protect the privacy of the victim and her family—but Joel could hear nothing of it. All he could hear was the windstorm in his ears as the picture on the television finally changed to show a montage of images with which he was only too familiar: the street in which he and Cal had found their mark; the crime scene tape defining a rectangle around the front of the chessboard fr
ont steps; a photograph of the lady herself with a name beneath it identifying her as Helen Lynley. What followed this were other shots of St. Thomas’ Hospital, on the south bank of the Thames, with a dozen panda cars flashing their lights outside; of a blond man and a dumpy-looking woman speaking into a mobile as they stood outside a grimy railway tunnel; of a bloke in the uniform of a high-ranking cop talking into a bank of microphones. And then a series of CCTV cameras pointing this way and that, on this building and under those eaves, and each of them—Joel knew this and could swear to it—in the act of filming two blokes on their way to shoot the wife of a cop from New Scotland Yard.

  Joel’s aunt was ascending the stairs. She brought with her a tray on which were boiled eggs and toast that gave off an aromatic smell that should have been comforting, but not for Joel. He flung himself from the settee and charged towards the stairs and the bathroom. He didn’t make it.

  CAL DISAPPEARED. JOEL sought him out the very next day and the day after that in all the regular places where he ought to have been: the sunken football pitch, where an incomplete piece of art in Cal’s style suggested he’d decamped in a hurry; Meanwhile Gardens near the spiral steps and beneath the bridge and atop the knolls, where he smoked and occasionally dealt dope to the adolescents in the neighbourhood; the abandoned flat in Lancefield Court, where the drug runners went to pick up their wares; the building that housed Arissa’s flat in Portnall Road. Joel even paced through Kensal Green Cemetery in an attempt to find him, but Cal was nowhere. He might as well have evaporated, so decidedly was the Rasta gone.

  To Joel, this made no sense. For who was to guard the Blade if not Cal Hancock?

  Except, when Joel looked for the Blade, he couldn’t find him either. At least, not at first.

  On the third afternoon, Joel finally saw him. He was on his way down the steps of the Westminster Learning Centre, having dropped Toby there for his appointment with Luce Chinaka. Across the street and some thirty yards away, he saw the Blade’s car, recognizing it from a stripe of black painted onto its light blue surface, from the piece of cardboard taped in place of one of the back windows. The car was parked illegally on double yellow lines at the kerb, and it was occupied, with someone bending from the pavement to speak to the two male figures inside.

  The speaker straightened as Joel watched. It was Ivan Weatherall, and he placed his hand on the roof of the car, gave it a friendly tap, and then spied Joel. He smiled and waved him over, then bent back to the car once again to listen to something someone was saying from inside.

  Had Ivan been alone, Joel would have made an excuse, for the last person he wanted to face was his mentor and his mentor’s good intentions. But the fact of the Blade’s being there and the fact of his needing to talk to the Blade about everything from Eaton Terrace to Ness…and the blessed fact that Cal was with him, which was going to make it safer to talk to the Blade in the first place…These considerations propelled Joel across the street.

  He came at the car from the rear. Through the back windows he could see yet another person within, and he recognised the shape of her head. He fervently wished Arissa wasn’t with the Blade and Cal—they could hardly talk frankly with a snow freak around, he thought, trying to put her hand down everyone’s trousers—but Joel knew he could remain with the three of them until the Blade got tired of Arissa’s presence and threw her out of the car somewhere to find her way home. Then they could speak: about what had happened in Eaton Terrace and what they were going to do next. And about Ness as well because there was still and always Ness and her trouble and the fact that what Joel had done he had done as a first step in getting her out of trouble.

  None of this took care of the problem of Ivan’s presence on the scene, however. Ivan would certainly wonder what Joel was doing, climbing into a car that belonged to the Blade, and he would definitely not forget it.

  Ivan said, “Joel, how excellent to see you. I was just bringing Stanley into the picture about the project.”

  So much had crowded into Joel’s mind over the weeks that he didn’t know at first what Ivan was talking about until he added, “The film. I’ve had an extraordinary meeting with a man called Mr. Rubbish—which, of course, isn’t his real name but rather the name he goes by professionally, but I’ll explain all that to you later—and at last the final piece of preproduction work is in place. We’ve the funding now. We’ve actually got the bloody funding.” Ivan grinned and made an uncharacteristic gesture of jubilation, thrusting one arm into the air. This allowed Joel to see that he was holding a tabloid, and that meant one thing only: coverage of the shooting in Belgravia, which meant bringing discussion of it into North Kensington, which was the last place on earth that Joel and Cal needed such a discussion.

  Joel looked towards the car and Cal. Dimly, he heard Ivan say, “I knew we would get it if we made the right connection with someone whose background…,” but the rest went the way of the wind. For in the car were indeed the Blade and indeed Arissa, but not Cal Hancock. Instead, riding in the front passenger seat, where Cal always sat, was Neal Wyatt, and he appeared to Joel to be someone who was perfectly comfortable there.

  Joel looked from Neal to the Blade. Vaguely behind him, he heard Ivan saying, “You’re acquainted with Neal. I was just telling him what we’re up to. I’d like both you boys to be involved in the project because—and you simply must listen to me—it’s time you set aside your dislike of each other. You have far more in common than you realise, and working on the film will show you that.”

  Joel barely heard any of this. For he was sorting through matters in his mind, and he was trying to work out what everything in front of him actually meant.

  He arrived at the conclusion that the Blade—informed by Cal that Joel was decidedly his man now—was finally keeping his end of the Neal Wyatt bargain. He’d fetched the boy from wherever Neal hung about when he wasn’t vexing people in the area, and he’d told Neal he was meant to come with him. Neal wouldn’t say no—no one would—so he’d climbed into the car. The Blade had shared a spliff with him, which was why Neal seemed so much at ease, his guard lowered, his humour good. Now that the Blade had Neal where he wanted him, he was going to sort the lout once and for all. Joel made an attempt to feel good about all this, trying to apply it to his own situation. Sorting out Neal as promised, he decided, had to mean also protecting Joel from the aftermath of shooting the policeman’s wife.

  What Joel didn’t go near was the why of that shooting. He didn’t touch upon why a mugging had become transformed into a bullet entering a woman’s body. Whenever he got close to that thought, he forced it away with the word accident. In his mind, it had to have been a terrible mistake, the gun exploding the world into violence by inadvertently discharging when Cal grabbed it from Joel, when Joel—seeing the white woman’s kind face—couldn’t bring himself to demand her money.

  “…go over it with you,” Ivan was saying, sounding as if he’d reached the conclusion of his remarks. He bent back to the car, “And, Stanley, think about what I’ve offered you as well, won’t you, my man?”

  The Blade gave Ivan a smile, his eyelids lowered. “Eye-van,” he murmured, “you are one lucky bugger, y’unnerstan wha’ I say? You been able to keep me ’mused for so long, I don’t ’spect I ever feel like killing you.”

  “Why, Stanley,” Ivan said, stepping away from the car as the Blade started it up and revved its engine, “I’m deeply touched. Have you read the Descartes yet, by the way?”

  The Blade chuckled. “Eye-van, Eye-van. Why don’t you get it? More’n thinking’s involved in order to get to being, mon.”

  “Ah, but that’s precisely where you’ve gone wrong.”

  “Is it.” The Blade put his hand on the back of Neal Wyatt’s neck and gave it a friendly tug. “Later, Eye-van. Me and the mon here got some serious business to conduct.”

  Neal sniggered. He wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand, as if this would smear the snigger away. He glanced at Joel. He mouthed the wor
d fucker.

  The Blade said, “Nice to see you, Jo-ell. And tell that cunt sister of yours the Blade says hello. Wherever she is.”

  He stepped on the accelerator and the car slashed into the traffic heading towards Maida Vale. Joel watched it go. An arm—Neal’s arm—came out of the passenger’s window, and Neal’s fist appeared. It altered into a two-fingered salute. No one inside the car tried to prevent him from making it.

  IVAN INSISTED THAT they go for a coffee. They had matters to discuss, now that Mr. Rubbish had stepped forward to put up the funding for the film that Ivan and his following of hopeful screenwriters had been working upon. Ivan said to Joel, “Come with me. I’ve a proposal for you,” and when Joel demurred, muttering vaguely about his aunt, his brother, homework to be done, Ivan promised they wouldn’t be long.

  Joel saw that Ivan wasn’t going to accept a refusal. He would compromise again and again until he had what he wanted, which was to be of assistance. This was something that he could never be, not now at least, but as he didn’t know that, he was likely to keep cajoling Joel into having a cup of coffee or a walk or a seat on a bench, unwilling to let up. So Joel agreed to accompany him. Whatever Ivan wanted to say, it wouldn’t take long, and Joel didn’t intend to respond, which would only prolong an unwanted conversation.

  Ivan led the way to a café not far along the Harrow Road, a grimy place of sticky-topped tables with a menu that bowed its head to an England that hadn’t existed in a good thirty years: beans or mushrooms on toast, fried eggs with rashers of bacon, fried bread, baked beans and eggs, sausage rolls, mixed grills. The scent of grease in the place was overpowering, but Ivan—happily oblivious to this—gestured Joel to a table in the corner and asked him what he wanted, heading to the counter to place the order. Joel chose orange juice. It would come from a tin and taste like something that had come from a tin, but he didn’t intend to drink it.