What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

18 Kendra was being far harder on herself than was necessary when it came to Ness, who had more pressing concerns than reacting to her aunt’s inviting some strange white man into her bed. True, finding him there had been something of a surprise. Ness had heard the commotion and had assumed that Dix was back. But, to her wonder, she didn’t feel what she’d earlier felt when listening to the rousing creak, bounce, and slam of Kendra’s bed from the floor above her. Instead, she’d awakened, heard the noise, grimaced, and realised she needed to use the toilet. Reckoning it was Dix with her aunt—which meant he’d stay the night and she’d run little risk of encountering him when she used the facility—she’d climbed the stairs, only to find a stranger emerging from Kendra’s bedroom.

At one time the sight of any man coming out of Kendra’s bedroom would have filled Ness with jealousy only thinly disguised as disgust. But that was before she’d shared a pappadum with a Pakistani woman she’d thought she didn’t like. It was also before what sharing a pappadum with that Pakistani woman had led to:

When Majidah informed her they’d be closing the drop-in centre early one day, not long after Ness’s visit to her flat, Ness thought it meant she was free from further obligation for the rest of the afternoon. But Majidah disabused her of that notion in short order, telling her that they were meant to be picking up supplies in Covent Garden. Ness was to go and assist.

At this Ness felt completely ill-used. Doing community service surely didn’t mean she was intended to traipse all round London like a servant, did it?

Majidah informed Ness that she was not the one whom the magistrate allowed to determine what constituted community service. “We will leave at precisely two o’clock,” she told Ness. “We shall take the tube.”

“Hey, I ain’t got—”

“Please. Ain’t got? What sort of language is this, Vanessa? How can you hope to make something of your life if you speak in this way?”

“Wha’? Like I’m s’posed to make summick of myself’? Dat it?”

“Good gracious, yes. What else are you thinking? Do you believe that you are entitled to whatever it is that you want and that you need do nothing to achieve it? And what is it that you want, precisely? Fame, fortune, additional pairs of silly high-heeled shoes? Or are you one of these foolish young girls who have ambitions solely of celebrity? Famous actress, famous model, famous pop star? Is that it, Vanessa? Celebrity alone when you could do whatever you want, a young woman like you with no man determining your fate as if you were a farm animal, mind you. There is no question that you could choose a career right out of the sky, and yet you have no gratitude for this. Only the wish to be a pop star.”

“Did I say dat?” Ness demanded when Majidah was finally forced to take a breath. “Did I f ’r one minute say any of dat? Hell, Majidah, you got a one-track mind, anyone ever tell you? An’ how’d we get on dis anyways? I ain’t got money—” She saw Majidah’s thunderous face and she relented. “I haven’t got money in my possession to purchase a ticket,” she said primly.

Majidah held back her smile at Ness’s posh accent. She said, “That is all? Good gracious, Vanessa, I do not intend you to pay for the journey. This is work, and work shall recompense me for supplying you with the ticket you require.”

That detail established, two o’clock saw them setting off from the drop-in centre, whose cabin Majidah locked and then rechecked three times before Ness took her by the arm and dragged her out of the chain-link gate. They walked the short distance to the Westbourne Park underground station. Majidah made much of studying the map to determine the best route to their destination, clucking and tutting and counting stops while Ness stood by and tapped her foot. The decision ultimately made, they embarked for the journey, alighting finally at Covent Garden at which point Majidah led the way not to the market— where one might assume some sort of supplies could be purchased albeit hardly economically—but north to Shelton Street. There a doorway between a minuscule bookshop and a coffee bar opened onto a stairway. This in turn took them up four flights—“The cursed lift in this wretched building does not work and never has,” Majidah informed Ness—and, breathless when they finally got there, into a loft where bolts of colourful linen, silk, cotton, velvet, and felt lay across wide worktables. At them four individuals worked in silence while Kiri Te Kanawa went through Mimi’s death throes on a CD player that sat atop a bank of containers holding everything from sequins to seed pearls.

Two of the workers were women dressed in shalwar kamis; one of them was a woman in a chador; the fourth was a man. He wore blue jeans, trainers, and a white cotton shirt. The women were sewing and gluing. He was fitting a headpiece onto the fifth person in the room: a sloe-eyed Mediterranean beauty who read from a magazine and muttered, “Bloody stupid warmongering idiots,” to which the man said, “Truer words and all that. But mind the position of your head, please, Miss Rivelle. The fit’s not right.”

He, like the women at work, was Asian. Miss Rivelle was not. She raised her hand to feel what he was affixing to her heavy dark hair. She said, “Really, Sayf, this is impossible. Can you not make it weigh less? It’s extraordinary you should expect me to be able to make an entrance, do the aria, and die dramatically, and all of it without this . . . this thing dropping to the floor. Who approved the design, for God’s sake?”

“Mr. Peterson-Hayes.”

“The director doesn’t have to wear it. No, no, this absolutely will not do.” She took the headpiece off, handed it over to Sayf, and saw Majidah and Ness across the room. As did Sayf, at that precise moment.

He said, “Ma! Bloody hell if I didn’t forget.” And to Ness, “Hullo. You must be the convict.”

“Sayf al Din,” Majidah said sternly. “What sort of greeting is this?

And you, Rand,” to the woman in the chador, “do you not stifl e beneath that ridiculous counterpane you’re wearing? When will your husband come to his senses? This is outdoor clothing you happen to have on. It is not meant to be worn within.”

“Your son’s presence . . . ,” Rand murmured.

“Oh yes, my dear, my goodness me, but he will surely ravish you if your face is exposed. Is that not the truth, Sayf al Din? Have you not ravished two hundred women and counting? Where is your dance card, my son?”

“Score card,” Sayf al Din corrected her. He took up the headpiece he’d been fashioning for Miss Rivelle and placed it carefully on a wooden form. He said to the singer, “I’ll try to reduce the weight, but it’ll come down to Peterson-Hayes, so you’ll want to have a word with him.” He went to a monstrously cluttered desk beneath one of the room’s windows and there he unearthed a diary. He said, “Thursday? Four o’clock?”

“If I must,” she replied languidly. She gathered her belongings— which consisted of shopping bags and a handbag the size of a picnic basket—and approached Sayf al Din for a formal farewell. This consisted of air kisses, three of them in the Italian fashion, after which she patted his cheek and he kissed her hand. Then she was gone, fluttering her fingers at the rest of them. One of the shalwar kamis women murmured, “Divas,” with some scorn.

“They are our bread and butter,” Sayf al Din reminded her, “despite sometimes being caricatures of themselves.” He smiled at his mother.

“And I am, beyond that, quite used to divas.”

Majidah tutted, but Ness could tell she took no offence. Indeed, she sounded pleased as she said to Ness, “This piece of nonsense is my Sayf al Din, Vanessa, the eldest of my children,” which made him the child of her first husband, less than thirteen years younger than his own mother. He was quite handsome—olive skinned and dark eyed—and he had about him an air of perpetual amusement.

“And how is that wife of yours, Sayf al Din?” his mother asked him. “Is she still scraping away at the teeth of the unfortunate rather than having more babies? This son of mine has wed a dentist, Vanessa. She produces two children and returns to her work when they are six weeks old. I cannot comprehend this lunacy: to wish to be looking into the mouths of strangers instead of gazing upon the faces of your infants. She should be like your sisters and like your brothers’ wives, Sayf al Din. Nine children among them so far and not one of them placed into the hands of a child minder.”

Sayf al Din had obviously heard this recitation before, as he said the last sentence of it in concert with his mother. He went on with, “What a scandal it is, this woman using her education as it was meant to be used when she could be at home making chicken tikka for her husband’s dinner, Vanessa.” He did such an accurate imitation of his mother that Ness laughed, as did the others in the room.

“Oh, you may find him amusing,” Majidah told them. “But he will be laughing out of his posterior should that woman walk off with—”

“An orthodontist,” he finished. “Ah, what dangers there are when one’s wife is a dentist. Beware. Beware.” He kissed his mother loudly on the cheek. “Let me look at you,” he said. “Why have you not come for Sunday dinner all this month?”

“And eat her dried-out chicken tikka? You must be mad, Sayf al Din. That wife of yours needs to learn how to cook.”

He looked at Ness, “She’s a record playing a single song, my mum.”

“I got that ’bout her,” Ness agreed. “Only the song’s diff ’rent for everyone she knows.”

“She’s clever that way,” Sayf al Din said. “It makes one think she actually possesses conversation.” He put his arm around his mother’s shoulders and squeezed. “You’re losing weight again,” he told her.

“Are you skipping meals, Ma? If you keep doing that, you know, I shall be forced to strap you down and feed you May’s samosas till you burst.”

“You might go ahead and just poison me instead,” Majidah said.

“This is Vanessa Campbell, as you have guessed, Sayf al Din. She has come to assist me, but you might show her your studio first.”

Sayf al Din accommodated his mother with pleasure, like any man might who enjoys his work. He showed off a loft of organised chaos, where he designed and fashioned headwear for the Royal Opera, for West End theatrical productions, for television and film. He explained the process and brought out sketches. In these, Ness recognised the finished hand-coloured drawings and their penciled notes as very similar to the framed pieces that hung on Majidah’s sitting-room walls. She said, “Oh yeah, I seen these at your mum’s. I wondered ’bout them.”

“What did you wonder?” he asked.

“Who did ’em, I s’pose. An’ why they ’as on the wall. Not that they ain’t—”

“‘Are not,’ Vanessa,” Majidah said patiently.

“Aren’t pretty, cos they are. Just not what you ’spect to see . . .”

“Ah. Yes. But she’s proud of me, aren’t you, Ma? You wouldn’t think so, considering how she goes on, but she’d not have it any other way. Is that not the truth, Ma?”

“Have no misconception about it,” Majidah said. “You are the most troublesome of my children.”

He smiled, as did she. He said, “As that will be. Rand, of whom you so disapprove, will help you gather up the materials you want. And while you do that, I’ll show your companion how the drawings get themselves made into the headgear.”

Sayf al Din was as much a talker as his mother. He gave Ness not only explanations of what he did but demonstrations as well. He offered not only demonstrations but gossip, too. He was as amusing a companion as he looked, and part of his pleasure in his work was to try his millinery on others. He beckoned Ness to put on everything from turbans to tiaras. He perched hats and headdresses on his workers, who chuckled and continued with their sewing. He put a sequined Stetson on Rand’s veiled head, and for himself he chose the hat and plume of a musketeer.

His enthusiasm got directly into Ness’s blood and filled her with what she had least expected upon setting out on this jaunt with Majidah: pleasure, interest, and curiosity. After several days reliving in her mind the experience in Sayf al Din’s studio, Ness took action. She went to the offices of the Youth Offending Team on a day when Fabia Bender was not expecting her.

Ness was different from what she’d been at their last meeting, and Fabia Bender had no trouble seeing this, although she couldn’t put a name to what had altered the girl. She learned soon enough when Ness introduced the reason for her call. She finally had a plan for her education, she said, and she needed the approval of the magistrate.

So far the matter of Ness’s schooling had been a dicey one for Fabia Bender. Holland Park School had refused to take the girl back, using as their excuse the lack of places for the autumn term. Every comprehensive nearby had told the same tale, and it was only on the south bank of the Thames that the social worker had finally found a school willing to take her. But an inspection of it had given Fabia pause. Not only was it in Peckham, which would have necessitated more than an hour’s commute by bus in either direction, but it was also in the worst part of Peckham, acting as a blatant invitation for Vanessa Campbell to fall in with the sort of young people most easily available to a troubled adolescent, which is to say the wrong sort of young people altogether. So Fabia had made a plea to the magistrate for more time. She would find something suitable, she told him, and in the meantime Vanessa Campbell was taking a simple course in music appreciation at the college and fulfilling her community-service sentence without a complaint from the Meanwhile Gardens Child Drop-in Centre. Surely that had to count in her favour . . . ? It had done, and a reprieve was given. But, she was told, something permanent had to be arranged before the winter term.

“Millinery?” Fabia Bender said when Ness told her what she wanted to pursue. “Making hats?” It wasn’t that she thought Ness had no ability to do this. It was just that out of every possible line of work that the girl might have come up with to define her future, millinery seemed the last of them. “Do you fancy designing for Royal Ascot or something?”

Ness heard the astonishment in the social worker’s voice, and she did not take it well. She shifted her weight onto one hip, that belligerent pose so common to girls her age. “Wha’ if I do?” she asked, although designing the huge and often nonsensical pieces of headgear worn by posh white ladies during that annual period of horseracing was the last thing on her mind. Indeed, she hadn’t even considered it and barely knew what Royal Ascot was, aside from a source of tabloid pictures of champagne-drinking, skinny females with titles in front of their names.

Fabia Bender was hasty in her reply. She said, “Forgive me. That was completely inappropriate of me. Tell me how you arrived at millinery and what plan you have to pursue it.” She examined Ness and took the measure of her determination. “Because you have a plan, haven’t you?

Something tells me that you wouldn’t have come here without a plan.”

In this she was correct, and the fact that she’d acknowledged Ness’s farsightedness pleased the girl. Assisted by Majidah and Sayf al Din, she’d done her homework. While she didn’t answer the first part of Fabia Bender’s query—her pride prevented her from admitting that something good might actually be coming out of her stint of community service—she did tell her about courses offered at Kensington and Chelsea College. Indeed, she’d discovered a veritable treasure trove of opportunities at the college to explore her newfound interest in millinery, even a yearlong national certificate course that she pronounced herself “dead keen” on taking.

Fabia Bender was pleased, but cautious. This change in Ness was sudden enough to give her pause and to remind her not to count her chickens. But since hers was a difficult and often thankless job, to have one of her troubled clients actually taking steps to alter what would otherwise have been the unswerving course of a life heading towards perdition did make her feel that her own career choice had perhaps not been in vain. Ness needed encouragement. Fabia would provide it. She said, “This is outstanding, Vanessa. Let’s see where you need to begin.”

AFTER HIS FUTILE confrontation with Neal Wyatt, Joel found himself at what he believed was the point of no alternatives. He heard the clock ticking, and he needed to do something to stop it.

The irony of his situation was that the one change in his life that he had once so feared was now the one change he most desired. If Toby could be sent away to a special school, he would be safe. But that possibility did not seem likely, which meant that Toby would not be leaving the near clutches of Neal Wyatt.

That put Joel on constant alert. It also necessitated never letting his brother out of his sight unless someone else was with him or he was at Middle Row School. As the weeks wore on—weeks in which Neal and his crew went back to following, hooting, snickering, and making lowvoiced threats—this constant vigilance took its toll. His schoolwork suffered, and his poetry dwindled. He knew things could not go on like this without his aunt finding out and taking steps to deal with the situation in a way that would only make it worse.

So he had to deal with it himself, and there appeared to be only one avenue left open. He could feel it in the weight of the flick knife that he carried in his rucksack or in his pocket. Neal Wyatt, he decided, wasn’t going to listen to reason. But he would very likely listen to the Blade.

Daily, then, after Joel took Toby to the learning centre, he sought out the Blade. He began by asking Ness where he could find her erstwhile lover, but her reply was unhelpful. “Wha’ d’you want wiv dat blood?” she asked him shrewdly. “You gettin up to trouble or summick?” And then more pointedly, “You smokin weed? Shit, you snorting?”

To his protestations that it was “nuffink like dat,” she said, “Better not be,” but that was all she said. She wasn’t about to tell him how to locate the Blade. No good had come out of her knowing him, so how could good come out of her brother’s having anything to do with the man?

Thus, Joel was on his own to find him. Hibah was no help. She knew who the Blade was—who, with eyes and ears in North Kensington, didn’t know who the Blade was?—but as to where he might be found . . . It was more a case of the Blade finding you than you finding the Blade.

Joel knew of only one place that the Blade actually went, so he went there, too: to the block of flats on Portnall Road, where Arissa lived. Having found him there once, it seemed reasonable to conclude that it was only a matter of time before he might find him there again.

Cal Hancock would be the sign. Joel would not have to knock upon doors. He would merely have to wait until he saw Cal lounging in the entryway of that building, doing guard duty.

Once Joel made this decision, it was three more days before he had a payoff. On an afternoon that blustered with the promise of an autumn rainfall, he finally saw Calvin in position, toking up on a spliff the size of a small banana, his knitted cap pulled low on his brow. He was stretched across the red and black tiles, his legs the only thing preventing anyone’s entrance to the building. A closer look, though, showed Joel that Cal meant business after his own fashion: A length of chain was wrapped around his wrist and the butt of what appeared to be a pistol stuck out from the waistband of his jeans. Joel’s eyes widened when he saw this last item. He could not think it was real.

Joel said to him, “Happenin, mon?” He spoke from a few feet away, having come up the path from the pavement without Cal’s knowledge. So much for guarding, was what Joel thought.

Cal came around from his meditative state. Dreamily, he nodded at Joel. “Bred,” he said. He toked up again.

“You s’posed to be guardin him like dis? I could’ve jumped you, blood. He see you...” Joel let his voice drop meaningfully.

“’S cool man, innit,” Cal replied. “Ain’t no one vexin the Blade while Calvin’s watchin. ’Sides, he ain’t in a mood to cause me aggro, he don’t like wha’ I do.”

“Why’s ’at?”

“Know V’ronica over Mozart Estate?” And when Joel shook his head, “She popped out a kid f’r him dis morning. A boy. His third, dis is. He tol’ her to get rid ’f it months ago, but she wouldn’t an’ now he’s pleased as punch. Three sons make him the mon, innit. He celebratin with Rissa.”

“She know about V’ronica, den?”

Cal laughed. “You mad all th’ way? Course she don’t know. Dumb bitch prob’ly t’inks he jus’ happy to see her. Well, I ’spect he’s happy enough. She got rid ’f hers like he told her.” Cal took another hit and held it in. “So what you want?”

“I got to talk to the Blade. I got summick for him.”

Calvin shook his head. “Bred, dat ain’t a good idea. He don’t like remindin ’bout you and yours.”

“Cos Ness—?”

“Le’s not go there. Less said ’bout your sister, better it is. Bu’ I tell you dis,” Cal leaned forward, drawing up his legs and resting his elbows on his knees as if to emphasise his next words. “No one throws the Blade over, bred. He the one does the throwin when he feels like the throwin time’s come, y’unnerstan what I say? ’F some woe-man makes a move on her own, an’ turns out there’s another swack involved and she lie about it . . .” Cal tilted his head to Joel, a movement that said Finish the thought for yourself. “You jus’ keep distance ’tween you and the Blade. Like I say, dis ain’t a good place for you to be.”

“Ness di’n’t have no other bloke,” Joel protested. “The Blade t’ink she did?”

Cal flicked ash off the spliff. “Don’t know, don’t want to, don’t intend to ask. And don’t you neither.”

“But he got Arissa,” Joel pointed out. “Can’t she take Ness’s place?”

“Ain’t ’ bout taking nobody’s place. Dis’s about respeck.”

“Dat’s how he sees it?”

“No other way.” Cal played with the chain wrapped around his wrist, moving it to wrap around his knuckles. He flexed his fingers to see how they worked thus bound. “So right now . . . ?” he said. “Best not to break up the party, y’unnerstan. Long as he’s doin Arissa, he’s gettin b’yond Ness Campbell, and dat’s a very good place for him to be.”

“But dat was months ago!”

Cal sucked his teeth. There was nothing more to say.

Joel’s shoulders dropped. The Blade was the only real hope he had. Without his help, Joel didn’t see how he could manage to keep Toby safe. If Neal had been after him only, he would have trudged back where he’d come from, knowing that a serious battle with the other boy was inevitable. But the fact was that Neal knew his real weakness, and it had nothing to do with his fear for his own safety and everything to do with Toby.

Joel thought about his alternatives. They came down to one thing. He said, “Okay, but I got summick for him. You give it him from me? He’s gonna want it and I want him to know it come from me. You promise dat, I hand it over and bunk off.”

“What you got he want?” Cal said with a smile. “You write him a pome? And yeah, we know you goin to dat word t’ing Ivan put on. The Blade know everyt’ing go down in dis place. Dat’s why he’s the Blade. And listen”—he showed off the pistol tucked into his waistband—“you wonder why I carry dis piece wivvout worry bout the cops haulin me into the Harrow Road station? T’ink bout dat one, too, m’friend. It ain’t rocket science, innit.”

This point seemed irrelevant to Joel. He chose to bypass it, which would not be the first of his mistakes. He said, “It ain’t a poem I got for him. I ain’t stupid, y’know.” He dug the flick knife out of his rucksack. He clicked it open, then closed it on his thigh. Cal looked impressed enough. “Where’d you get dat?”

“He used it on Ness. Cut up her head and lost it in a bang about wiv Dix D’Court right after. You give him dis, okay? You tell him I need his help wiv summick.”

Cal didn’t take the knife, which Joel held out to him. He said with a sigh instead, “Blood, wha’ c’n I tell you? You got to keep the Blade out of your life. Dat’s it.”

“Didn’t hurt you none to have him in yours.”

Cal gave a soft laugh. “Lemme tell you summick. You got Ness, right? You got your bruv. You got Auntie an’ Mum, an’ I know ’bout her being in the nuthouse, but still she’s Mum. You don’t need dis blood here. Trust me, you don’t need him. An’ if you want him, mon, he’s gonna name a price.”

Joel said, “Jus’ give him the knife for me, Cal. Tell him I give it back cos I need his help wiv summick. Tell him I could’ve kept it and that means summick. I di’n’t set up no trade wiv the knife. I handed it over. Take it and tell him, Cal. Please.”

While Cal thought this over, Joel considered yet another approach to his problems—that Cal himself might help him—but he dismissed this quickly. Cal without the Blade nearby would intimidate no one. He was just Cal: right-hand man and graffiti artist, spaced on weed. If he had to fight, he probably would, but going at Neal Wyatt wasn’t about fighting. It was about drawing a line in the sand. Cal couldn’t do that for Neal Wyatt or for anyone else. The Blade, on the other hand, could do it for everyone.

Joel thrust the knife at Cal once more. “Take it,” he said. “One way or ’nother, you know the Blade want it back.”

Reluctantly, then, Cal took the flick knife. “I ain’t promising—”

“Jus’ talk to him. Dat’s all I’m asking.”

Cal put the knife in his pocket. “Be in touch ’f he want to help out,” he said. And as Joel prepared to walk off, he went on, “You know the Blade do nuffink wivout there being a price attached to it.”

“I got dat,” Joel said. “You tell him I’m willin to pay.”