What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

15 Dix’s absence from Edenham Estate affected everyone differently. Ness began to swagger around the house as if she had successfully brought about a change that she had long desired. Kendra threw herself into work and didn’t mention the fact that Dix was gone. Toby explained Dix’s absence to someone unseen whom he began openly and daily referring to as Maydarc. And for the first time, Joel experienced a creative outpouring of poetry.

He couldn’t have told anyone what any of his poems were actually about. Nor could he have traced his surge of artistic energy to their source: Dix’s leaving them. All he could have said about his verse was that it was what it was, and that it came from a place he could not identify.

He showed none of these poems to anyone, save a single piece that he carefully selected after much thought—and an equal amount of screwing up his courage—to pass along to Adam Whitburn one night at Wield Words Not Weapons. He lingered near the basement door to do this, waiting till the young Rasta was heading out on his way home. He handed it over and then stood there mutely, in an agony of anticipation, while the Rasta read it. When he’d done so, Adam looked at Joel curiously, then returned his gaze to the page and reread. After that he handed the paper back to Joel, saying, “You show dis to Ivan?,” to which Joel shook his head. Adam said, “Mon, you got to show dis shit to Ivan, y’unnerstan? And why’n’t you readin at the mike? You got summick, blood. Ever’one want to see it.”

But that was unthinkable to Joel. He felt the pleasure of Adam Whitburn’s approval, which was enough. Only Ivan’s approval would have meant more to him, and as for the rest—the public reading, the analysing and critiquing, the opportunity to win money or certificates or acknowledgement in some form during Walk the Word—it had become less important as his pleasure in the process grew.

Something about all of the scribbling, the scratching out and staring upward without seeing what he was looking at, followed by further scribbling, took him to an altered state. It wasn’t one that he could have described, but he grew to look forward to being in it. It offered him a sanctuary, but more than that, it offered him a sense of completion that he’d never felt before. He reckoned how he felt was something akin to how Toby felt when he faded into Sose or when he watched his lava lamp or even carried it around in his arms. It just made things different, less important that their father was gone and their mother was locked up within padded walls.

So naturally, he sought this refuge when, where, and as often as he could. He was able to block out the world as he wrote, so even when he walked over to Meanwhile Gardens when Toby wanted to watch the riders and cyclists in the skate bowl, he himself could sit on one of the benches with his tattered notebook on his knees and he could pull words out of the air and put them together, much as he’d done on the night he’d been named a Poet of Promise.

He was doing just this, with Toby perched on the rim of the deepest skate bowl nearby, when someone sat next to him and a girl’s voice said, “So what’re you doing? Can’t be homework, this time ’f year. And where you been, Joel? You go on holiday or summick?”

Joel looked up to see Hibah trying to get a glimpse of what he was writing. She was, she said, just returning from taking her dad his lunch over at the bus depot. Her mum was expecting her home and would probably phone her dad on his mobile if she didn’t turn up when she was supposed to, which was in about fifteen minutes.

“Said they saw me out an’ about, they did,” Hibah confi ded. “An’ said they di’n’t much like what they saw. But I know tha’ cow who works Kensal Library was one tha’ ackshully saw me. Cos if it’d really been my mum and dad tha’ saw me, I wouldn’t be gettin out of tha’ damn flat on my own till I was married, no matter how bad Dad wanted his lunch. So see, they want me to think they saw me while they still givin me the benefit of the doubt wivout tellin me they’re doin it. It’s all cos they can’t be sure that ol’ library cow knows what she’s talkin about cos she doesn’t like us anyways.”

From all of this, Joel assumed that Hibah had been seen in improper company. He knew who that improper company was likely to be, so he glanced around uneasily, not eager for another encounter with Neal Wyatt. The coast seemed clear. It was a pleasant day, and there were other people in the park, but Neal wasn’t among them.

Hibah said, “So what’re you doing? Lemme see.”

“Just poems,” Joel said. “But they ain’t ready to be shown cos I’m still writin ’em.”

Hibah smiled. “Di’n’t know you ’as a poet, Joel Campbell. Like you writin rhymes? Rap songs or summick? C’mon. Lemme see. I never read a poem in person before.” She made a grab for the notebook, but he held it away. She laughed and said, “Come on. Don’t be like that. You go to tha’ poet event over Oxford Gardens? I know a lady goes there. Tha’ Ivan bloke from school goes ’s well.”

“He runs it,” Joel said.

“So you been? Well, lemme see. I don’t know much ’bout poems but I c’n tell if they rhyme.”

“Ain’t s’posed to rhyme, these,” Joel told her. “Ain’t dat kind ’f poem.”

“What kind, then?” She looked thoughtful and gave a glance towards one of the immature oak trees that dotted the little hills of the garden. Under several, young men and women lay: dozing, embracing, or more seriously entwined. Hibah grinned. “Love poems!” she crowed. “Joel Campbell, you got a girlfriend now? She round here somewheres? Hmm. I c’n tell you ain’t sayin, so lemme see I c’n make her come running. I bet I know how.”

She scooted over mischievously till she was touching thighs with Joel. She put her arm around his waist and tilted her head to his shoulder. There they remained for several minutes, as Joel wrote and Hibah giggled.

But “Wha’ the fuck . . . !” was the ultimate response to Hibah’s gesture of affection, and Joel wasn’t the person who said it. Instead, it came from the towpath beside the Grand Union Canal. No glance in that direction was required to see who the speaker was. Neal Wyatt came storming across the lawn.

Behind Neal, three members of his crew remained on the towpath. They’d all been slouching in the direction of Great Western Road. They evidently felt that whatever Neal wished to handle at that moment could be handled by Neal alone, a fact that became quickly evident when he homed in on Hibah rather than on Joel.

He said to the girl, “What the fuck you doing? I tell you where we meet and you bring dis wiv you? Wha’s dat all about?”

Hibah didn’t drop her arm from around Joel’s waist, as another girl might have done. Instead, she stared at Neal and tightened her grip on Joel. She wasn’t intimidated. She was, however, shocked and confused. She said, “What? Neal, who’re you talkin to like that? Wha’s going on?”

“Disre spec’s what’s going on,” he said. “You hang wiv dis shit, you shit yourself. An’ my woman ain’t displayin herself like shit. Y’unnerstand?”

“Hey! I said, who’re you talking to like that? I come here like you want and I see a friend. We talk, him and me. You can’t cope or summick?”

“You listen. I tell you who’s right f’r you to speak wiv. You don’t tell me. An’ dis yellow arse—”

“Wha’s wrong wiv you, Neal Wyatt?” Hibah demanded. “You los’

your mind? This’s Joel an’ he’s not even—”

Neal advanced on her. “I show you wha’s wrong wiv me.” He grabbed her arm and pulled her to her feet. He yanked her towards his mates on the towpath.

Joel had no choice. He stood. He said, “Hey! Leave her ’lone. She ain’t done nuffink to disrespeck you.”

Neal glanced his way contemptuously. “You tellin me . . . ?”

“Yeah. I tellin you. Wha’ kind of lowlife go after a girl? I guess same kind dat vex cripples up the Harrow Road.”

This reference to their last encounter and the intrusion of the police into it was enough to make Neal release the hold he had on Hibah. He turned to Joel.

“Dis bitch’s mine,” he said. “An’ you got nuffink to say ’bout dat.”

Hibah cried, “Neal, what’re you going on like tha’ for? You never talk like that. Ever. You and me—”

“Shut up!”

“I won’t!”

“You do what I say, an’ ’f you don’t, you feel the palm.”

She squared off at him. Her headscarf had loosened, and now it fell back altogether, revealing her hair. This was not the Neal Wyatt she knew, nor was this the Neal Wyatt for whom she was risking everything, from the goodwill of her parents to her reputation. She cried,

“You keep talkin to me like tha’, I make bloody well sure—”

He slapped her. She fell back in surprise. Joel latched on to him. He said to the girl, “Hibah, you get home.”

The idea that Joel would tell Hibah—Neal’s designated woman— what to do would have been enough to encourage a collective gasp from onlookers, had any of them been interested. As it was, no members of the community enjoying the bright fine day made a move to stop what happened next.

Neal swung on Joel. His face blazed absolute joy, which should have told Joel that forces far greater than those he understood were at work in this place and on this day. But he had no time to consider that. For Neal set upon him. He gripped Joel around the neck and Joel went down, Neal falling upon him with a grunt of pleasure.

Neal said, “Fuckin little . . .” But that was all. The rest was pounding, administered with his fists to Joel’s face. Hibah shrieked Neal’s name. That did no good. Neal was not to be thwarted in this encounter.

Joel flailed around beneath him, trying and failing to connect with Neal’s face. He kicked and squirmed to get away. He felt Neal’s blows on the sides of his head. He felt Neal’s spittle on his cheeks. Above the thwapping of the other boy’s fists, he heard the wind-rush noise of the skateboarders. He heard the dim shouting of Hibah.

Then Neal’s hands were around Joel’s neck. He grunted, “Stupid . . . I’ll kill . . . ,” as he tightened them. Joel’s knee sought his groin, but didn’t connect. Hibah screamed and Joel heard Toby crying out his name.

And then, just as suddenly as the encounter had begun, it was over. It hadn’t been ended by Ivan Weatherall this time, nor by Hibah’s entreaties, by Toby’s fearful tears, or by the intervention of the police. Rather, one of Neal’s crew had finally come down from the towpath and pulled Neal off. He said tersely, “Blood, blood. You ain’t s’posed to . . .”

And then in a clear correction of course, “You take it far ’nough. You got dat?”

Neal shook him off, and in doing so, he also shook off this apparent incursion into his rank as head of the crew. This left Joel on the ground, bleeding from a cut near his left eye and gasping for breath.

Hibah had crumpled onto the bench, where she rocked herself in shock and dismay. She shook her head at this Neal whom she had never seen and did not know, her fist to her mouth.

Toby had come running from the skate bowl. He’d brought his lava lamp along with him for the outing, and he trailed its flex over the grass. He’d begun to cry. Joel heaved himself to his knees in an attempt to reassure him.

He muttered, “S’all right, Tobe. S’all right, mon.”

Toby stumbled to him. “He bunged you up,” he cried. “You got cut on your face. He wanted to—”

“S’okay.” Joel staggered to his feet. For a moment Meanwhile Gardens whirled round him like images seen from a merry-go-round. When the dizziness passed, he pressed his arm to his face. It came away bloody. He looked at Neal.

Neal was breathing hard from his exertions, but he no longer looked as if he wanted to leap upon Joel. Instead, he made a move in Hibah’s direction. She jumped to her feet.

“You,” she said to him.

He said, “Listen.” He looked at his crew. Two of them shook their heads. He said urgently, “We talk, Hibah.”

To which she responded, “I die before I talk to you again.”

“You don’t unnerstan how t’ings goin down.”

“I unnerstan all I need, Neal Wyatt.”

She swept off, leaving Neal and everyone else watching her. Joel said nothing, but he didn’t need to. Neal took his presence as both cause and blame, and he jerked his head with a look that went from Joel to his brother.

He said, “You fucked. You and weirdshit. You got dat?”

Joel said, “I ain’t—”

“You fucked, yellow skin. Both of you. Next time.”

He tilted his chin in the direction of the towpath. His companion took it as it was meant and led the way so that Neal and he could rejoin the rest of the crew.

NESS ENJOYED THE absence of Dix initially. But the long-term delight that she thought she would feel with him gone did not materialise. She liked not having to listen nightly to her aunt’s bed thumping and she liked the fact that the ground seemed more or less even between herself and Kendra once Dix was gone. Beyond that, though, there was no permanent joy for her in Dix’s removal. She hated him for his rejection of her, yet she still wanted the chance to prove she was dozens of times the woman her aunt could ever be. Having the opportunity to move into Kendra’s bedroom to share her aunt’s bed and thus achieve a modicum of privacy in the household did not appeal to her, nor did it give her a sense of pleasure or power. Kendra made the offer, but Ness refused it. She couldn’t imagine sleeping in the same bed that Dix D’Court had so recently vacated and, even if that hadn’t been the case, sleeping in Kendra’s room with Kendra there was hardly going to give Ness the sort of privacy she preferred. She knew she didn’t belong in her aunt’s bedroom; she knew—although she never would have admitted it to anyone—that Dix did. She also knew her aunt didn’t really want her there.

The outcome of all this was that she felt bad when she wanted to feel good. She needed a way back to the good again, and she felt fairly certain of what would work.

She chose Kensington High Street this time. She went by bus and disembarked not far from St. Mary Abbots Church. From there, she sauntered down the slope to the flower stall in front of the churchyard. She surveyed her options from this vantage point, while behind her, tuberoses, lilies, ferns, and babies’ breath were fashioned into fine bouquets.

She decided first on H & M, where the crowded conditions and the racks of garments from the subcontinent promised her the camouflage of other adolescents as well as excellent pickings. She wandered from one floor to the next, seeking something that would challenge her as well as delight her, but she could find nothing that she did not deem b-o-r-i-n-g when she evaluated it. So she meandered up the street to Accessorize, where the challenge to pocket something was much greater since the shop was so small and her photograph was still Sellotaped next to the till as someone who wasn’t allowed inside. But conditions were crowded and she gained entry, only to discover that, on this day, the merchandise wasn’t signifi cant enough to provide her with the pleasure she wanted to feel upon successfully stealing it.

After trying Top Shop and Monsoon, she finally walked into a large department store, and this was the location she settled upon. A wiser girl with malefaction on her mind might have chosen otherwise, for there were no big crowds in which to hide and as a mixed-race adolescent in revealing clothes and big hair, Ness stood out like a sunfl ower in a strawberry patch. But the merchandise looked higher class, and she liked that. She quickly spied a sequinned headband that she coveted.

This headband was in a serendipitous location, as far as Ness was concerned. On a rack just a half dozen steps from the exit, it fairly announced its desire to be pocketed. Checking it out and deciding it was worthy of her efforts, Ness made a recce of the immediate area to make sure she was—if not safe from notice—then close enough to the doorway to dash out of the store once the headband was in her pocket.

There didn’t seem to be anyone watching her. There didn’t seem to be anyone of note nearby at all. There was an old pensioner giving her the eye from a rack of socks, but she could tell from his expression that the fact he was watching her had nothing at all to do with making sure she didn’t walk off with something she hadn’t paid for and everything to do with the décolletage supplied by her choice of T-shirt. She dismissed him with contempt.

In anticipation of pinching the desired item, Ness felt the nervous energy begin to tingle up her arms. It promised her that the rush of delight she wanted was already on its way. All she had to do was reach out, take two headbands from the rack, drop them to the floor, bend, pick them up, and return only one of them as the other was safely tucked into her bag. It was easy, simple, quick, and sure. It was sweets from an infant, food from a kitten, tripping a blind man, whatever you will.

With the sequinned band in her possession, she made for the door. She walked as casually as she’d done when she’d first entered the store, and she felt suffused with a combination of warmth and excitement as she mixed with a group of shoppers outside.

She didn’t get far. Lit with success, she’d decided on Tower Records next, and she was about to cross the road when she was blocked by the pensioner she’d seen inside the department store. He said, “I don’t think so, dearie,” as he took her by the arm.

She said, “What the hell you think you’re doing, mon?”

“Nothing at all, as long as you can provide a receipt for the merchandise you’ve got inside that bag of yours. Come with me.”

He was far stronger than he appeared. In fact, upon a closer look at him, Ness saw that he wasn’t a pensioner at all. He wasn’t stooped, as he’d appeared to be in the store, and his face wasn’t lined to match his thin, grey hair. Still, she didn’t realise how he fit into the scheme of things, and she continued to protest—loudly—as he led her back towards the door of the department store.

Once inside, he marched her along an aisle and towards the back of the store. There, a swing door led to the bowels of the building. Soon enough she was through it and being ushered down a flight of stairs.

Hotly, she said, “Where the fuck do you think you’re takin me?”

His answer was, “Where I take all shoplifters, dearie.”

Thus she understood that the man she’d thought was a pensioner was a security guard for the infernal department store. So she didn’t willingly go a step farther. She put up as much of a fight as his grip upon her arm would allow. For she knew that she’d just caused herself a fair amount of trouble. Already on probation, already doing community service, she had no wish to put in another appearance in front of a magistrate, where she’d be risking more this time than merely having to show up at the child drop-in centre.

Once down the stairs, she found herself in a narrow lino-floored corridor, where she could see that she wasn’t going to get away easily. She assumed they were on their way to wherever it was that they took shoplifters while they waited for a constable to show up from the Earl’s Court Road police station, and she began to prepare a tale to spin when the constable got there. She’d have time to do this in whatever lockup they provided for her. It would be, she reckoned, at best a small and windowless room and at worst a real cell.

It was neither. Instead, the security guard opened a door and pushed her into a locker room. It smelled of perspiration and disinfectant. Rows of grey lockers lined it on either side, and a narrow, unpainted wooden bench went down its middle.

Ness said, “I di’n’t do nothing, mon. Why’re you bringing me to dis place?”

“I expect you know. I expect we can open that bag of yours and see.” The guard turned from her, and locked the door behind them. The dead-bolt clicked into place like a pistol cocking. He held out his hand. “Give me the bag,” he told her. “And let me say that things tend to go easier with you lot if I can tell the cops you’ve been cooperative from the first.”

Ness hated the idea of handing over her bag, but she did it because cooperative was indeed how she wanted to seem. She watched while the guard opened the bag as any man might: clumsily and unsure how the thing was meant to be handled. He dumped out its contents and there was the offending article, sequins glittering in the overhead lights. He picked it up and held it dangling from one finger. He looked from her to it, and he said, “Worth it, then?”

“What’re you talkin ’bout?”

“I’m asking is it worth it to nick something like this when the consequences might be a lockup?”

“You sayin I nicked it. I ain’t.”

“How’d it get in your bag if you didn’t nick it?”

“Don’t know,” she said. “I never saw it before.”

“And who d’you expect to believe that? Especially when I give chapter and verse on your picking up two, dropping them both, and returning only one of them to the rack. There was this one—with the silver sequins—and there was the other one—with the red and blue. Who d’you think will be believed? D’you have any priors, by the way?”

“What’re you yammerin—”

“I think you know. And I think you have them. Priors, that is. Problems with the cops. The last thing you want is for me to phone them. I can see that in your face as plain as anything, and don’t deny it.”

“You don’t know nuffink.”

“Don’t I now? Then you won’t mind when the coppers come along, when I tell ’em my tale and you tell ’em yours. Who do you expect they’re likely to believe, a girl with priors—kitted out like a tart—or an upstanding member of the public who happens to be on staff at this establishment?”

Ness said nothing. She attempted to seem indifferent, but the truth of the matter was that she was not. She didn’t want to face the police another time, and the fact that she was eyeball to eyeball with doing just that infuriated her. The fact that she was in the hands of someone who was clearly going to play cat and mouse with her till he turned her over to the authorities only made matters worse. She felt tears of futility come into her eyes and this enraged her more. The security guard saw them, and carried on in accordance with what he believed about them.

“Not so tough when it comes down to it, are you, now?” he asked her. “Dress tough, act tough, talk tough, all of it. But at the end of the day, you want to go home like the rest of ’em, I expect. That it? You want to go home? Forget about this?”

Ness was mute. She waited. She sensed more was to come, and she was not wrong in this. The guard was watching her, waiting for a reaction of some kind. She finally said with a fair degree of caution, “What?

You sayin you mean to let me go home?”

“If certain conditions are met,” he said. “I being the only one who knows about this—” He swung the headband from his finger again. “I let you leave and I return this to where it belongs. Nothing further said between us.”

Ness thought about this and knew there was no alternative. She said,

“What, then?”

He smiled. “Take off your T-shirt. Bra as well, if you’re wearing one, which I doubt, considering how much I can already see.”

Ness swallowed. “What for? What’re you goin—”

“You want to leave? No questions asked? No further cause for interaction between us? Take off your T-shirt and let me look at them. That’s what I want. I want to look at them. I want to see what you have.”

“That’s all? Then you let me—”

“Take off your T-shirt.”

It wasn’t, she told herself, any worse than opening the dressing gown in front of Dix D’Court. And it surely wasn’t worse than everything else she’d already seen and done and experienced . . . And it meant that she would walk out of this place without a cop in attendance, which meant everything there was.

She clenched her teeth. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. In one quick movement, she pulled the T-shirt up, over her head, and off.

“Face me square,” he said. “Don’t cover yourself cause I don’t expect you do that for all the younger blokes, do you? Drop the shirt as well. Put your arms at your sides.”

She did it. She stood there. He drank her in. His eyes were greedy. His breathing was loud. He swallowed so hard she could hear the sound of it from where she stood some ten feet away. Too many feet away, as things turned out. He said to her, “One thing more.”

“You said—”

“Well, that was before I saw, wasn’t it? Come over here, then.”

“I don’t—”

“Just ask yourself if you want all this”—again the headband—“to go away, dearie.”

He waited then. He was sure of himself, as a man who’d stood in this spot many times before and made the most of it.