What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

16 Joel fairly threw himself at the doors of the learning centre. He was out of breath, but he managed to burst into reception and pant out, “Tobe . . . Sorry,” only to find himself being stared at by the sole occupants of the room, who were a young mother breast-feeding her infant, a toddler at her side with a dummy plugged into his mouth.

Still, Joel looked for Toby, as if he might be hiding under one of the vinyl sofas or behind the two artificial aspidistras. He next went in search of Luce Chinaka, and he found her in her office. She said, “He’s not waiting for you, Joel?” as she looked down at her wristwatch. She then said,

“Oh, but weren’t you meant to be here at . . . ,” but her voice drifted off mercifully when she saw the expression on Joel’s panicked face. She got to her feet and said kindly enough, “Let’s just have a quick look round.”

But Toby was nowhere in the learning centre: not at the pint-size tables where games were spread out, not at one of the keyboards in the computer room, not working in one of the smaller rooms with a teacher bent over him, not among the toys or the art materials. All this resulted in Joel’s reaching the last conclusion he wished to reach: Somehow Toby had slipped through a crack in the system and set off into the streets alone.

Luce Chinaka was saying, “Come with me. Let’s phone—,” when Joel tore out of the centre. His mouth had gone dry. He couldn’t think straight. He couldn’t, in fact, even remember the route he usually followed when taking Toby home. Since he rarely used the same route anyway—someone unfamiliar up ahead and he’d abruptly change course without telling Toby why—virtually any direction that ultimately took one to Edenham Way was possible.

He looked up and down the pavement, hoping against unreasonable hope that he might still catch a glimpse of Toby. But there was no familiar form in sight, tripping along on his tiptoes and trailing the flex of his lava lamp, which left Joel in an agony of indecision. He was finally roused from this by the thought of Kendra. The charity shop was just along the Harrow Road.

Resolutely, Joel set off. He walked at a fast clip, peering into each place of business on the route. At a William Hill betting shop, he even paused to ask Drunk Bob if Toby had somehow got inside, but all Drunk Bob said in reply was his usual—“Oy! Oy!”—and he shook the arms of his wheelchair as if he meant to tell Joel more.

Kendra was helping a Chinese lady when Joel entered the charity shop. She automatically looked up when the bell rang and, seeing Joel, she glanced to each side of him for Toby. Then she looked at an old clock that was mounted above a display of worn-out shoes and she said, “Where’s your brother?”

This told Joel all he wanted to know. He turned on his heel and left, with his aunt’s cry of “Joel! What’s going on?” following him.

Outside the learning centre once more, Joel bit on the side of his thumb and tried to think things through. He doubted his brother would have crossed over the road and headed into West Kilburn since he himself had never taken Toby there. This reduced the options to going right towards Great Western Road and ducking down one of the streets leading off it or going left in the direction of Kensal Town.

Joel chose right and tried to think like his brother. He decided it was likely that Toby would trip along the pavement, turning aimlessly when it veered into a side street. Joel would thus do that as well and, with luck, he would find that Toby had got distracted by something along the way and was, perhaps, staring meditatively at it with his mind gone elsewhere. Or, failing that, he had become tired and sat down to wait until someone found him. Or, what would be even more likely, perhaps he’d got hungry and wandered into a sweets shop or a newsagent’s where there’d be a display of snacks.

Bearing all this in mind and trying to think of nothing else— certainly nothing sinister—Joel turned right at the first street he came to. A line of terrace houses stood in a rank along it, all of them identical London brick. All along the way, cars were parked nose to tail at the kerb, and the occasional bicycle was chained to a railing or a street lamp, frequently with one of its tyres removed. Midway down the street, the road curved to the left, and it was at this spot that Joel saw someone alighting from a van. It was a man dressed in a navy blue boiler suit and likely returning home from work, but instead of proceeding into one of the nearby houses, he stood looking beyond the curve of the street to a point which Joel himself could not see. He shouted something and then dug in his pocket to bring out a mobile phone, into which he punched a few numbers. He waited, spoke, and then shouted down the street again.

Joel watched all this as he hurriedly advanced. By the time he reached the van, the man had gone inside one of the houses. What he’d been shouting at remained outside, however. Joel took it in and knew what he was looking at: Some ten or twelve houses farther along, a group of boys circled like a pack of hounds around a figure who was huddled on the pavement, quite small against the wall of a property, like a hedgehog protecting its vital parts.

Joel took off running and shouted as he ran, “Fuck you, Wyatt!

Leave him alone!”

But Neal Wyatt had no intention of leaving Toby alone, intent as he was upon keeping several promises. This time he had his full crew of henchmen to lend a hand in the proceedings and, by the time Joel reached them, Neal had already done his worst: Toby was weeping, he’d wet himself, and his treasured lava lamp lay stamped to bits on the pavement, all plastic and glass and liquid, with its flex lying like a splattered snake among the debris.

Joel’s vision went red, then black, then clear. He chose the most foolhardy of the alternatives open to him, and he threw himself at Neal Wyatt. But he got no further than a single blow, which barely connected anyway, when one of Neal’s crew grabbed him by the arms and another drove a fist into his stomach. Neal himself shouted,

“Fucker’s mine, ” and everything happened quickly after that. Joel felt a rain of blows. He tasted blood as his lip split open. The breath left him with an oof as he sank to the pavement. There, heavy boots and trainers connected with his ribs.

Finally, someone shouted, “Shit! Clear it!” and the boys began to run in every direction. Neal was the last to leave. He took a moment to bend to Joel, twist his hand in Joel’s hair, and say into his face with the rank breath of someone whose teeth are going bad, “It’ll be his arm next time, wanker.” Then he, too, was gone. What replaced him was what the boys had apparently seen cruising down from the Harrow Road.

The panda car pulled to a stop and a constable got out while his partner remained in the running vehicle. From where he lay on the pavement, Joel watched the policeman’s polished shoes approaching. Trouble here? he wanted to know. S’going on? Live round here?

Hurt? Cut? Shot? What?

The radio in the car squawked. Joel looked up from the polished shoes upon which he’d continued to gaze, and he saw the blank face watching him, a white man whose lips twisted in a movement of distaste as his opaque blue eyes moved from Joel to Toby and took in the urine that had spread in a widening stain on the child’s trousers. Toby’s eyes were squeezed shut so tightly that his face was nothing more than a mass of creases.

Joel reached for his brother. He said, “S’okay, mon. Le’s go home. You okay, Tobe? Here. Look. They’re gone. Cops’s shown up. You okay, Tobe?”

The driver of the panda car barked out, “Bernard, what’s the brief?

Anyone hurt?”

Bernard said that it was business as usual and what the hell else did they expect since this lot were going to kill each other eventually and sooner was better than later.

“D’they want a ride? Get ’em in the car. We c’n take ’em home.”

Hell no, Bernard told him. One of them’s pissed his panties and no way was that smell going to foul up their car.

The driver cursed. He stamped so hard on the parking brake of the vehicle that the sound was like chains dragging on concrete. He got out of the car and joined Bernard on the pavement, where he looked down on Joel and Toby. Joel had, by this time, got himself into a kneeling position and was trying to ease Toby out of his protective curl. The driver said, “Get the hell into the car,” and it took a moment before Joel realised that he was talking not to him and his brother but to his partner. Bernard responded with, “See for yourself, you love it so much,” as he complied.

The driver then squatted next to Joel. He said, “Let me see your face, lad. Want to tell me who did this?”

Both of them knew what naming and shaming meant in a boy’s life, so both of them knew Joel would not point a finger at anyone. He said, “Don’t know. I jus’ found ’em ’rassin my brother.”

The constable said to Toby, “D’you know who they were?”

But Joel knew they would get nothing from Toby. His brother was as good as done for on this day. Joel just needed to get him home. He said, “We’re okay. Tobe doesn’t know ’em, either. Just some bloods not likin the look of us, is all.”

“Let’s get him into the car, then. We’ll take you home.”

This was the last thing Joel wanted: drawing attention to themselves by arriving in Edenham Way in a panda car. He said, “We’ll be okay now. We just got to walk over to Elkstone Road.” He got to his feet and hauled Toby to his.

Toby’s head flopped forward to his chest like a rag doll’s. “They broke it,” he cried. “They grabbed it and it fell and they stamped it up and down.”

“What’s he on about, then?” the constable asked.

“Jus’ something he was carrying home.” Joel indicated the remains of the lava lamp. He said to Toby, “S’okay, bred. We’ll get ’nother,” although the truth of the matter was that Joel had no idea how, where, or when he’d ever be able to get another sixteen pounds to replace what his little brother had lost. He kicked the remains of the lava lamp to the kerb and deposited them in the gutter.

Inside the panda car, the radio squawked another time. Bernard spoke into it and then to his partner, “Hugh, we’re wanted.”

Hugh said to Joel, “You set off home, if you don’t want a ride. Here, use this on your mouth as you go.” He handed over his handkerchief, which he pressed onto Joel’s lip until Joel himself held it properly. He said, “Go on, lad. We’ll keep you in sight to the end of the street,” and he returned to the car and climbed inside.

Joel took Toby by the hand and began to pull him in the direction of Great Western Road, which was where the street they were walking along terminated. As good as his word, Hugh kept the panda car crawling along just behind them, leaving them only when they came to the corner and headed towards the bridge over the Grand Union Canal. Then they were on their own once more, descending the steps and crossing Meanwhile Gardens.

Joel urged Toby along as fast as he could, which wasn’t as fast as he would have liked. Toby babbled about the destruction of his lava lamp, but Joel had far greater worries to keep him occupied. He knew that Neal Wyatt would bide his time until he got the chance to make good his threat. He meant to go after Toby, and he wouldn’t rest until he dealt with Joel by dealing with Joel’s little brother.

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE for Joel to pretend that he’d taken a fall riding a skateboard this time. Even if his aunt had not known he’d been looking for Toby, even if consequently she might have been led into believing both of the boys had been in Meanwhile Gardens all along, the condition of Joel’s face and the bruises across his body did not suggest a simple tumble. While Joel managed to get Toby cleaned up prior to Kendra’s arrival home from the charity shop, he couldn’t do much about himself. He washed off the blood, but the cuts on his face were still there, and his right eye was swelling and would soon go black. Then there was the matter of the lava lamp, about which Toby was inconsolable, so when Kendra walked in, it was only moments before she learned the truth.

She whisked both boys to Casualty. Toby didn’t need attending to, but she insisted that he be looked over as well although Joel was her real concern. She was furious that this had happened to her nephews and insistent upon knowing who had set upon them.

Toby didn’t know their names and Joel wouldn’t say their names. Kendra could tell that Joel knew them, however, and the fact that he wouldn’t tell her infuriated her more. The conclusion she reached was that these were the same nasty little pieces of business who’d been after Joel the day he’d stormed through the charity shop and burst out of the back door into the alley. She’d heard one of them call their obvious leader Neal. It would, she decided, be no difficult task to ask around, find out his surname, and sort him out.

The only problem with this plan was the sorting-out part of it. Kendra remembered the boy, and he seemed a hateful creature. A talking-to wasn’t going to make any difference to him. He was the kind of yob who only understood the threat of bodily harm.

This called for Dix. Kendra knew she had no choice in the matter. She was going to have to be humble and throw herself upon his essential good nature in order to ask for his help, but she became willing to do that once she saw that Toby was afraid to leave the house and Joel was watching his back at all times, like a millionaire strolling through Peckham.

The question for her was where to approach Dix so that her approach would not be open to misinterpretation. She couldn’t go to the Falcon where, she assumed correctly, he had taken up residence once again with the two other power lifters. She couldn’t ring him and ask him to come to Edenham Estate lest he think she wanted him to move back in. A chance encounter in the street somewhere seemed the best, but she couldn’t rely upon that. This seemed to leave the gym, where he did his lifting.

So that was where she went, as soon as she was able to manage it. She made her way to Caird Street, where the Jubilee Sports Centre stretched in a low-slung brick mass just south of the Mozart Estate. She was taking her chances with regard to Dix’s being there, but as it was around lunchtime and as he put in a good six hours at his workout each day, it seemed reasonable to conclude he’d be power lifting.

He was. In a snowy vest and navy shorts, he was bench pressing what looked to Kendra to be a mind-boggling amount of weight. He was being spotted by a fellow lifter taking a casual approach to his job by discussing low reps versus singles with another lifter who was standing nearby with an upended water bottle, pouring its contents into his mouth.

These two men saw Kendra before Dix. Aside from the fact that she was a woman entering a largely male world, in her pencil skirt, her ivory blouse, and her heels, she was hardly dressed for the place. Beyond that, she did not have the look of a female bodybuilder or of anyone wishing to become a female bodybuilder. Dix’s near companions ceased their conversation when it became clear that she was approaching them.

Kendra waited until Dix had completed his reps and his spotter had guided the barbell back into position on the stand. The spotter said to him quietly, “Dis yours, mon?,” which directed his attention to Kendra. Dix reached for a white towel and used it as he rose from the bench.

They faced each other. Kendra would have had to be blind not to see that Dix looked good. She would have had to be insensate not to feel the same stirring for him that she’d felt when they were together. More, she would have had to be demented not to remember how they were together when they’d been together. All of this caused her to hesitate before she spoke.

So he spoke first, saying, “Ken. Lookin good. How you been?”

She said, “C’n I have a word?”

He glanced at the other two men. One shrugged and the other flipped his hand as if to say, Whatever.

Kendra added hastily, “Or later, if you’re in the middle of something.”

He clearly was in the middle of something, but he said, “’S okay. I’m good.” He came to join her. “Happening?” he asked. “Kids okay?”

“C’n we go . . . ? Not leave here or anything, but is there some place . . . ?” She felt shy with him, on the wrong foot. This had to do with the reason for her visit; nonetheless, she wished she felt more in control of the situation.

He nodded towards the door through which she’d come, where a vending machine sold bottled water and energy drinks. Four small tables with chairs ran along a window opposite the machine. This was where Dix took her.

She looked at the machine. She was parched. It was a warm day, and her nerves were in the process of drying out her mouth. She opened her bag and fished out some coins.

He said, “I c’n get you—”

She used his own, previous words. “I’m good. I don’t expect you’re carryin any money in those shorts,” and then she felt hot again because it seemed to her that what she’d said was rife with connotations. He chose to ignore them. He said, “Dat would be the truth.”

“You want something?”

He shook his head. He waited till she had her water. They both sat and faced each other. He said again, “Lookin good, Ken.”

She said, “Ta. Yourself. But that’s no surprise.”

He looked confused by this. He felt judged, her remark reminding him of obsession and of everything that had been off-kilter in their relationship.

Kendra saw this and hastened to add, “I mean, you always work hard. So it’s no surprise to me you look good. Any more competitions coming up?”

He thought about this before saying, “Dat’s not why you’re here, innit.”

She swallowed. “True.”

She had no real idea how to make her request of him, so she plunged in without prefatory remarks. She told him what had happened to Joel and Toby—she’d put two and two together on the earlier “fall” from a skateboard as well—and once she’d concluded with the Casualty department and Joel’s refusal to name their tormentor, she named him herself and asked for Dix’s help in the matter.

“Ugly little mixed-race kid with his face half frozen. He’s called Neal. Ask round and you should be able to find him without much trouble. He runs with a crew in the Harrow Road. All I’m asking is that you have a word with him, Dix. A serious word. Let him see Joel and Toby have a friend who’s willing to do something if they get hurt.”

Dix didn’t reply. He reached for the bottle from which Kendra had been drinking her water and he took a swig of it. He held onto it afterwards, rolling it between his palms. Kendra said, “These boys . . . They’ve been vexing Joel for a while, evidently, but they didn’t know about Toby till recently. Joel’s afraid they’ll go after him again—Toby, this is—”

“He sayin that?”

“No. But I can tell. He hovers. He . . . he gives instructions to Toby. Stay inside the learning centre and don’t go out on the steps. Don’t wander down to the charity shop. Don’t visit the skate bowl unless I’m with you. That kind of thing. I know why he’s saying it. I’d talk to those boys myself—”

“Can’t do that.”

“I know. They wouldn’t care if a woman—”

“Ken, that ain’t it.”

“—was the one trying to sort them. But if it was a man, if it was a man like you, someone they could see would take them on if he had to and would give them a dose of what they give to helpless little boys, then they’d leave Joel and Toby alone.”

Dix looked at the bottle in his hands and he kept his eyes on it as he replied. “Ken, ’f I sort dis for the boys, t’ings’ll go worse. Joel and Toby end up havin more trouble’n ever. You don’t want dat and neither do I. You know how t’ings on the street work out.”

“Yeah, I do know,” Kendra said curtly. “People die is how things in the street work out.”

He winced. “Not always,” he said. “And we’re not talkin ’bout a drug ring, Ken. We’re talkin about a group of boys.”

“A group of boys going after Toby. Toby. You should see him now, how scared he is. He’s had nightmares about it and his days aren’t much better.”

“It’ll pass. Boy like dis Neal, he’s into posturin, innit. His street creds’re not goin to grow ’f he does some job on an eight-year-old. What he’s doing right now—makin threats ’n’ all dat—you’ll see dat’s the limit of wha’ he’s goin to do an’ he’s doin it to unnerve you lot.”

“Well, he’s damn well succeeding.”

“Don’t have to be dat way. He’s a limp dick, innit. ’F he’s talkin

’bout seeing to Toby, it means he just dat—all talk and nuffink else.”

Kendra looked away from him as she realised what the outcome of this conversation was going to be. She said, “You aren’t willing to help.”

“Not what I’m saying.”

“Then what?”

“Kids got to learn survival round here. Kids got to learn how to get along or get away.”

“What you’re saying . . . That’s not a whole lot different to saying you won’t help me out.”

“I am helpin you out. I’m tellin you how it is and how it has to be.” He took another drink of the water and he handed the bottle back. His voice was not unkind. “Ken, you got to think . . .” He chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment. He made a study of her till she stirred uncomfortably beneath it. He finally sighed and said, “Maybe you got more ’n you can handle. You ever t’ink dat?”

Her backbone stiffened. She said, “So I should get rid of ’em? That what you’re saying? I should ring up Miss Fabulous Bender and tell her to come fetch ’em?”

“Dat’s not what I meant.”

“And I’m supposed to live with myself afterwards? Maybe by telling myself they’re safe now? Away from this place an’ all its troubles?”

“Ken. Ken. I said it wrong.”

“Then what?”

“I just meant maybe you got too much to handle alone.”

“Like what?”

“Why’re you asking dat? What d’you mean ‘Like what?’ You know what I’m talkin about. Like Toby ’n’ whatever’s wrong wiv him dat no one ever like to talk about. Like Ness an’—”

“Ness is doing fine.”

“Fine? Ken, she came on to me. More ’n once while I was livin wiv you. Last time, she presented herself wivout no clothes on, and I’m telling you somet’ing’s wrong wiv her.”

“She’s oversexed, like three-quarters of the girls her age.”

“Yeah. Sure. Dat I unnerstan. But she knew I was your man, and dat makes a diff’rence, or at least it should. But nuffink makes a difference to Ness, and you got to see that makes somet’ing wrong.”

Kendra couldn’t go to the subject of Ness, while staying with the subject of Joel, Toby, and the street thugs seemed to give her the moral high ground. She said, “If you don’t want to help, jus’ say it. Don’t make this a judgement on me, all right?”

“I ain’t judgin . . .”

She got to her feet.

He said, “God damn it, Kendra. I’m willing to make it so you don’t have to handle dis shit alone. Those kids got needs an’ you don’t have to be the only one tryin to meet ’em.”

“Seems to me that I am the only one meeting a need here,” she said. She headed for the doorway, leaving him sitting at the table with her bottle of water.

WHEN THE AUTUMN term began, Joel knew that dodging the occasion of a run-in with Neal and his crew was not going to be enough, especially since Neal and his crew knew exactly where to find him. He tried to vary the route he and Toby took to Middle Row School in the morning, but there was no way to vary the fact of Middle Row School or of Holland Park School either. He knew that he still needed to deal with the issue of Neal Wyatt, not only for himself but for Toby.

For himself, he came up with the knife.

In the long aftermath of the visit paid by the Blade to Edenham Way, everyone but Joel had forgotten about the flick knife that had been sent flying during the melee. Too many things had happened all at once for the household to remember that knife: Toby’s hysterics, Ness bleeding from the head, the Blade being thrown out on his arse, Kendra coping with Ness’s injury . . . In the midst of all this, the flick knife had gone the way of bad dreams.

Even Joel didn’t remember the knife at first. It was only when he was rescuing a piece of cutlery from beneath the cooker, where he’d accidentally dropped and kicked it while laying the table, that he saw the glint of silver against the wall. He knew at once what it was. He said nothing about it, but when the coast was clear, he went back and, using a long-handled wooden spoon, he scooped it forward. When he had his hands on it, he saw a thin line of his sister’s blood along the blade. So he washed it carefully and when it was dry, he put it under his mattress—right in the middle—where no one was likely to find it.

He had no thought of using it for anything until he overheard his aunt in conversation with Cordie, telling her about her visit with Dix, her umbrage high and her English going to hell accordingly. “He say let ’em sort t’ings out ’ emselves,” she was saying, her voice low but the hiss of it unmistakable. “Like I’m s’posed to wait till one of ’em gets beat bad enough to go into hospital wiv a broken skull.”

Joel understood this to mean he and Toby were on their own. He, too, had considered going to Dix for help—as unwise as he knew that would have been—but hearing Kendra and making the correct interpretation, he realised he would need a different plan.

So for himself, the plan was the knife. He fetched it from beneath his mattress and he put it in the rucksack that he carried to school. He’d get into serious trouble if he was caught with at school, but he had no intention of showing it around like someone in need of impressing his schoolmates. He only intended to bring it out if an emergency called for it, and this would be a Neal Wyatt emergency, one in which Neal needed to know what was in store for him if he crossed Joel another time.

That left Joel with the problem of what to do for Toby. He meant to keep a sharp eye on his brother, and he especially meant never again to be late to the Westminster Learning Centre when it was time to fetch him. He meant to hand Toby over to Ness at the child dropin centre—begging and bargaining for her help if necessary—should there be any occasion when he needed to leave Toby unsupervised. But on the chance that anything wreaked havoc with these carefully laid plans, he needed to have a carefully laid additional plan for Toby as well, one that would kick in automatically should Neal Wyatt appear anywhere near his horizon if he inadvertently found himself alone.

Joel knew Toby would not be able to remember anything complicated. He understood also that, in a moment of fear, Toby might well freeze up altogether, curling into a ball and hoping he might go unnoticed. So he tried to make the plan sound like a game and the game involved hiding like an explorer in a jungle the moment he saw . . . What? The dinosaurs coming after him? The lions getting ready to pounce on him? Gorillas? Rhinos? Pygmies with poisoned spears? Cannibals?

Joel finally settled on headhunters, which seemed gruesome enough for Toby to remember. He made a shrunken head from a dismembered and unsellable troll doll that he got from the charity shop. He plaited its bright orange hair and drew stitches on its face. He said in reference to it, “This’s what they do, Tobe, and you got to remember,” and he put the severed doll head into his brother’s school rucksack. There were headhunters out there, he told him, and he had to find places to hide from them.

After school, after the learning centre, at the weekends, whenever there was time, Joel took Toby out into the streets and together they found useful shelters. These would be the places Toby would run to if he saw anyone approaching him. The thing about headhunters, Joel told him, was that they looked just like everyone else. They wore disguises. Like those blokes who broke his lava lamp. Did Toby understand that? Yes? Truly?

On Edenham Estate, they practised dashing for the rubbish area where there was just enough space behind two wheelie bins for Toby to squeeze himself till he heard Joel call out that the coast was clear. Depending upon where he was in Meanwhile Gardens, he could slip down to the pond and hide in the reeds or—which was better—he could run for the abandoned barge beneath the canal bridge and there he could hole up under a crisscrossed pile of rotting timbers.

On the Harrow Road, he could dash to the charity shop and hide in the back room where their aunt kept bins for the clothing that was still to be sorted.

Joel took his brother to each location time and time again. He said,

“I’m the headhunter. Run!” and he gave Toby a shove in the correct direction. He kept this up until the sheer repetition of the exercise took Toby’s legs to the correct hiding places.

During all of this, Neal Wyatt and his crew kept their distance. They gave no trouble to either Joel or Toby, and Joel was beginning to think that they’d actually moved on to tormenting someone else when they resurfaced, like hungry sharks returning to their feeding area.

What they did was follow. They took this up one day as Joel walked Toby to the learning centre. They emerged from a video shop across the road, and when Joel first saw them, he was certain they would vault the railing, dash through the traffic as they’d done before, and chase him and Toby down. But instead, they kept their distance across the street, stalking along the pavement and making soft hooting noises, as if they were signalling someone to jump out of one of the shops that Toby and Joel passed.

When he saw them, Toby grabbed the leg of Joel’s trousers, saying, “There’s dem blokes’t broke my lava lamp,” and he sounded frightened, which he was.

For his part, Joel stayed as calm as he could and merely reminded his brother about jungle explorers and headhunters, asking him, “Where’d you run, Tobe, if I wasn’t here?”

Toby responded correctly: to the charity shop, to the back room, into those bins, and no stopping to tell Aunt Ken what he was doing.

But Neal and his crew didn’t do anything more than follow and hoot on that day. On subsequent days they merely followed, doing their best to unnerve their quarry. Surprise was well and good for some kinds of contests. But for others, psychological warfare worked better to soften up the foe.

That was exactly what it did to Toby. After four days of being trailed by the silent crowd of boys, Toby wet his trousers again. It happened right on the steps of Middle Row School where he was obediently wait ing for Joel. As Joel came round the corner from the bus, he saw Neal and his crew directly across the street from the school, gathered around a pub called the Chilled Eskimo, their eyes fastened on Toby.

Nothing in Joel’s experience had prepared him for such a degree of extended cleverness on the part of these boys. This type of individual he’d previously seen as the kind to jump, to clobber, and then to run. But now he understood that Neal was quite clever. There was a reason, then, why he was the one to run the crew.

Additional wisdom was called for: another way to handle the situation. Kendra could not be spoken to about it lest she worry even more. Ness—a peculiar change having come over her—was too involved with the drop-in centre. Dix was out of the question, as was Carole Campbell. That left Ivan Weatherall. Joel went at it through verse, which he gave to Ivan the next time he saw him.

Walking out he is, his poem began, blood and hurting heavy on hismind.

Ivan read it during their mentoring session at Holland Park School, where they still met as they’d done during the previous term. After he’d read the poem, Ivan spoke for a few minutes about emotive language and artistic intentions—as if he and Joel were at Wield Words Not Weapons or at the poetry class Ivan offered at Paddington Arts— and after a bit, Joel thought he meant to ignore the subject of the poem altogether.

Finally, though, Ivan said, “This is it, I dare say.”

“What?”

“Why you’ve not taken the microphone at Wield Words. Why you don’t participate in Walk the Word either.”

“I still been doing poems.”

“Hmm. Yes. And that’s to the good.” Ivan read Joel’s piece another time before he said, “So exactly who is he? Are we speaking of Stanley?

This is a fairly apt description of what appears to be his frame of mind.”

“The Blade? Nah.”

“Then . . . ?”

Joel reached down and retied his shoe, which didn’t need retying.

“Neal Wyatt. You know.”

“Ah. Neal. That altercation in Meanwhile Gardens.”

“There’s been more stuff. He’s vexin Toby. I been tryin to think what to do to stop him.”

Ivan set the poem on the table. He lined it up with the edge precisely, which allowed Joel to notice for the first time that Ivan’s hands were manicured, with trimmed and buffed nails. In that moment, the vast difference between them became emphasised. Joel saw those hands as extensions of the world in which they lived, one where Ivan Weatherall—for all his good intentions—had never known labour in the way that Joel’s own father had known it. This lack of knowledge created a chasm, not only between them but between Ivan and the entire community. No poetry event could span that chasm, no classes at Paddington Arts, no visits to Ivan’s home. Thus, before the white man responded, Joel had a good idea what he would say.

“Neal’s abandoned his art, Joel. Piano would have fed his soul, but he wasn’t patient enough to find that out. This is the difference between you. You have a greater means of expression now, but he does not. So what’s in here”—this, with a fist to his heart—“is experienced here”—the same fistlowered to the paper on the table. “This gives you no reason to strike out against others. And you’ll never have a reason while you have your verse.”

“But Toby,” Joel said. “I got to stop them vexin Toby.”

“To do that is to engage in the circle,” Ivan said. “You do see that, don’t you?”

“What?”

“‘Stopping them.’ How do you propose to do it?”

“They need sorting.”

“People always need ‘sorting’ if you insist upon thinking within the box.”

Circles. Boxes. None of it made sense. Joel said, “Wha’s that s’posed to mean? Toby can’t defend himself ’gainst those blokes. Neal’s crew’s waitin for a moment to get him, and if dat happens . . .” Joel squeezed his eyes shut. There was nothing more to say if Ivan could not imagine what it would be like for Toby should Neal’s crew put their hands on him.

Ivan said, “That’s not what I meant.” They were seated side by side, and he pulled his chair closer to Joel’s and put his arm around Joel’s shoulders. This was the first time he’d ever touched the boy, and Joel felt the embrace with some surprise. But it seemed like a gesture meant to comfort him and he tried to take comfort from it, although the truth of the matter was that nothing would truly be able to soothe him until the problem of Neal Wyatt was seen to. “What appears to be the answer is always the same when it comes to dealing with someone like Neal. Sort him out, have a dustup, give him a taste of his own medicine, do unto him exactly what has been done to you. But that perpetuates the problem, Joel. Thinking within the box of doing what’s always been done does nothing more than keep you going round the circle. He strikes, you strike, he strikes, you strike. Nothing gets resolved and the matter escalates to the point of no return. And you know what that means. I know you do.”

“He’s set to hurt Toby,” Joel managed to say although his neck and his throat were stiff with holding back everything else that wanted to come out of him. “I got to protect—”

“You can do that only up to a point. After that, you’ve got to protect yourself: who you are at this moment and who you can be. The very things Neal himself can’t bear to think of because they don’t gratify what he wants right now. Strike out at Neal for whatever reason, Joel, and you become Neal. I know you understand what I’m talking about. You have the words inside you and the talent to use them. That’s what you’re meant to do.”

He picked the poem up and read it aloud. When he was done, he said, “Not even Adam Whitburn wrote like this at your age. Believe me, that’s saying a lot.”

“Poems ain’t nuffink,” Joel protested.

“Poems,” Ivan said, “are the only thing.”

Joel wanted to believe that, but day after day in the street proved otherwise and Toby’s retreating into Sose—communing with Maydarc and afraid to leave the house—proved even more. Joel found himself ultimately at the place he never thought he’d be: wishing that his little brother could be sent away to a special school or a special place where, at least, he would be safe. But when he asked his aunt about the paperwork that Luce Chinaka had sent home to have filled out and what this paperwork might mean for Toby’s future, Kendra made it clear that no one was going to scrutinise Toby for love or money or anything else.

“And I expect you can work out why,” she said.

So the long and short of it was that Toby was going nowhere and now he was afraid to go anywhere. In Joel’s world, then, something had to give.

There turned out to be only one solution that Joel could see if he wanted to act in a way that existed outside the box, which Ivan had described. He was going to have to get Neal Wyatt alone. They were going to have to talk.