What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

21 Joel was not the only person in the Campbell clan to have sudden hope visited upon him. Ness, too, was blessed with it although she did not recognise this at first. Fabia Bender brought it to her at the child drop-in centre, accompanied as always by Castor and Pollux. When the social worker came through the chain-link gate, two separate reactions emanated from Ness and from Majidah. The former felt her back go up, assuming that Fabia was checking up on her. The latter—having never actually met the social worker but having only spoken to her on the phone—took one look at the dogs and raced out into the play area, coatless in the cold, damp weather and waving her arms.

“No, no, no!” she cried. “These beastly creatures have no place within these confines, madam. Aside from the danger they present to small children, there is the not small matter of defecation and urination, which cannot be tolerated. No, no, no, no.”

Fabia was surprised by the strength and volume of Majidah’s protest. She said, “Down, dogs,” and turned to reassure the Asian woman.

“Castor and Pollux only do their business on command,” she said.

“And neither of them will move from this spot until they’re instructed to do so. You must be Majidah, if I may call you by your given name?

I’m Fabia Bender.”

“You?” Majidah clucked in disapproval. She’d had another picture of the social worker entirely, and it had to do with twin sets, pearls, tweed skirts, brogues, and very thick tights. It certainly had nothing to do with blue jeans turned up at the ankles and pristinely white trainers. Not to mention berets, turtlenecked sweaters, donkey jackets, and cheeks red from the cold.

“Yes,” Fabia said. “I’ve come to see Ness. She’s here, isn’t she?”

“Where else would that girl be? Come in, come in. But if those animals move so much as an inch, I must ask you to tie them to the fence. This is a very dangerous business, you know, dogs like that running wild like so many wolves in the street.”

“I’m afraid they’re far too lazy for running wild,” Fabia said, and to the animals, “Stay, dogs, or you’ll become this lady’s dinner. Does this satisfy, Majidah?”

The irony was lost. “I do not eat meat that is not halal,” she said.

Inside the drop-in centre’s cabin, Ness had watched the exchange. Behind her, a group of three-year-olds and their mothers were playing a game of catch-and-fall-over with brightly coloured inflatable balls. Much laughter and squealing accompanied this. Across from them, several five-year-olds were building a stronghold from cardboard boxes painted to look like blocks of stone. Ness’s job in all this was to supervise and to fetch whatever the players required: more balls, more cardboard boxes, rubber mats to prevent excited children from smacking their heads on the lino. They were coming up to a snack time as well, so as Fabia Bender came into the cabin, Ness retreated to the kitchen where she began assembling biscuits and milk on large metal trays.

Fabia joined her, looking pleased. Ness assumed her expression had to do with finding a subject of probation doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing while on probation. But when Fabia spoke, it was on another subject.

She said, “Hullo, Ness. I have some good news. Some very good news, if I might add. I think we’ve come up with a solution that’s going to allow you to attend that course at the college.”

Ness had given up hope of this. Anything other than her dismal music-appreciation course during the autumn term was a long-ago impossibility at this point, and when that had become apparent to her in weeks gone by, she’d dismissed the thought of millinery altogether, bitterly concluding that anything Fabia Bender had said about looking into matters in order to help her finance her dream was just an example of the social worker blowing smoke to placate her.

But Fabia was there to prove her wrong. She said, “We’ve got the money. It took some doing because most funding had already been allocated for the year, but I did manage to find a rather obscure programme based in Lambeth and . . .” Fabia brushed aside the rest of the explanation. “Oh, the details don’t matter. What does matter is the course itself and getting you into it for the winter term.”

Ness could hardly believe things had fallen into place since the rest of her life had never given her an indication that such could possibly happen. But now . . . The certificate course would mean that she had the opportunity for a real career, not merely a job at which she worked day after day just waiting for something to happen to alter her circumstances. Still, life had taught her to be cautious about excitement. She said,

“They going to accept me? Dat course started in September, innit. How’d I catch up wiv the rest of the girls if I missed the opening? They give the same courses in the winter term? Cos they ain’t lettin me join up if I missed the first part, are they?”

Fabia drew her eyebrows together. It took her a moment to unravel what Ness was talking about. Then she realised. They were going at two slightly different subjects. She said, “Oh. No, no. Not the certifi-cate course, Ness. Wouldn’t it be lovely if I’d managed to find full funding for that? But alas, I haven’t. What I do have is one hundred pounds for a single course. I’ve had a look at the college catalogue and there are single courses available.”

“Jus’ one . . . ? Oh. Yeah. Well. Figgers.” Ness didn’t attempt to hide her disappointment.

Fabia was used to this sort of reaction. She said, “Hang on, Ness. You can only take one course at a time anyway. You’ve got your work to do here, and I can assure you that the magistrate has bent as far as he’s going to bend when it comes to you. He isn’t going to rescind the requirement for community service. That’s something we can’t even think about, my dear.”

Ness said in less than gracious fashion, “So wha’ course is it, den?”

“There are three actually, so you have your choice. But there’s one small problem, although it’s hardly insurmountable. None of the courses—and this includes the entire certification programme, by the way—are offered here at the Wornington Road college site.”

“Then where the hell’re they offered?”

“At a place called the Hortensia Centre. Near Fulham Broadway.”

“Fulham Broadway?” It might as well have been the moon. “How’m I s’posd to get down to Fulham Broadway, wivvout money for transport? Like you say, I got to do community service here. I can’t do dat an’ get a job ’s well to pay for transport—if there was any jobs, which there ain’t. And anyways, what’s one bloody course at some Hortensia Centre going to do f’r me? Nuffink, far ’s I c’n see.”

“I did think your aunt might be able to—”

“She works in a charity shop, Fabia. Wha’ d’you t’ink she makes for doin dat? I ain’t askin her for money. Forget dat shit.”

Majidah had come to the kitchen door, having heard the agitation in Ness’s voice, not to mention the volume, her grammar, and her choice of language. She said, “What is this, Vanessa? Have you forgotten there are small and impressionable children in the very next room? They are ears and sponges. Have I not told you this more than once? Profanity is an unacceptable form of expression in this building. If you cannot find another means of sharing your displeasure, then you must leave.”

Ness said nothing in reply. She merely slammed the biscuit containers back into the cupboards. She took the trays through to the playroom as a means of ending her conversation with Fabia Bender, which gave Majidah time to learn what it was that had caused her agitation. By the time Ness was back in the kitchen, the Asian woman knew it all. Particularly, she’d concluded that Ness’s interest in millinery had been the result of her visit to Sayf al Din’s studio in Covent Garden. Majidah was secretly thrilled by this. Ness was openly embarrassed. Ness hated the thought of fulfilling anyone’s expectations of her, and while she could not know what Majidah’s expectations were, the fact that Ness’s interest in millinery had arisen from her visit to the Soho studio was enough to suggest that Majidah was somehow responsible. In Ness’s mind, that gave the Asian woman power, and power was the last thing Ness wanted her to have.

“So,” Majidah said when Ness set the trays down on the work top.

“This is how you react to a small setback, is it? Miss Bender brings you news—which any other human being of reasonable intellect would be forced to consider good, is this not the case?—and because it is not pre-cisely the news you wish to hear, you throw the apples out with the bathwater, do you not?”

“What’re you on about?” Ness asked irritably.

“You know very well what I’m ‘on’ about. Girls like you, they are all the same. They want what they want in an instant. They want it tomorrow. They want it yesterday. They want the end without being capable of sustaining the effort to get to the end. They want to be . . . I do not know . . . some skinny, sickly, catwalk model, an astronaut, the archbishop of Canterbury. What does it matter? They always approach it the same way, do they not? And this is to say they have no plan. But even if they did have a plan, what would it matter since they cannot attain what they wish to attain by dinnertime? This is the problem with you girls. And boys as well. Everything must happen to you at once. You have an idea. You want the result. Now, now, now. What nonsense this is.”

Ness said, “You finished? Cos I don’t got to stand here and listen to you rave, Majidah.”

“Oh but that is exactly what you do have to do, Miss Vanessa Campbell. Fabia Bender has found you an opportunity, and you bloody well will take it. And if you do not, then I shall have to ask her to find you another community-service placement, for I cannot be expected to put up with an adolescent girl without any brains, which is what you will be indicating you seriously lack if you do not accept the money to take the millinery course.”

Ness was struck dumb by Majidah’s use of the word bloody. So she made no immediate reply.

For her part, Fabia Bender was less unrelenting than the Asian woman. She told Ness to think about her offer. One hundred pounds was the best she could do. There might be more money available in the spring and summer, setting students up for the autumn term. But as for now, it was a take it or leave it proposition. Ness could think it over, but since the enrollment period was fast coming upon them, perhaps she didn’t want to think it over for too long a period . . . ?

She would not need to think it over at all, Majidah said, if she had anything to say about it. She would accept, she would be grateful, she would attend, she would work hard.

Well and good, Fabia told the Asian woman kindly, but Ness would have to be the one to answer.

MAJIDAH WAS DETERMINED as to what Ness’s answer would be, so the very next day she ordered her over to her flat for late-afternoon tea once the child drop-in centre was locked tight as a drum, with its security lights switched on for the night. She made her usual stops in Golborne Road, purchasing courgettes from E. Price & Son, haddock from the corner fishmonger, and a loaf of bread and carton of milk from the grocery. Then she marched her charge onto Wornington Green Estate and up to her flat where she put on the kettle. She instructed Ness to get the tea things ready, telling her that a third cup, saucer, and spoon would be required but not telling her who the additional tea drinker would be.

That became apparent soon enough. As if the boiling water were a herald, the sound of a key sliding into the door of the flat announced the arrival of Sayf al Din. He did not immediately enter, though. Rather, he cracked open the door and called out, “Ma? Are you decent?”

“What else would I be, you foolish boy?”

“Lovemaking with a rugby player? Dancing in the nude like an Isadora Duncan?”

“And who might that be? Some nasty English girl you’ve met? A replacement for that dentist of yours? And why might she need a replacement, I ask you? Has she at last run off with the orthodontist? This is what comes of marrying a woman who looks into other people’s mouths, Sayf al Din. It should not surprise you. I told you from the first it would happen.”

Sayf al Din came into the kitchen as his mother was speaking. He leaned against the doorjamb and tolerantly listened to her expound on her favourite topic. He was carrying a covered dish, which he extended to her when she had concluded her remarks.

“May has sent you lamb rogan josh, ” he said. “Apparently, she had time to spend in the kitchen between her trysts with the orthodontist.”

“Am I not able to cook my own meals, Sayf al Din? What does she think? That her mother-in-law has lost her wits?”

“I think she’s trying to win you over, although I don’t know why. All things being equal, you’re an utter monster, and she shouldn’t bother.” He came to her side and kissed her soundly, setting the covered dish on the work top.

“Hmmph,” was his mother’s response. She looked pleased, however, and she peeked beneath the foil covering and sniffed suspiciously.

Sayf al Din said hello to Ness as he poured boiling water into the teapot and gave it a few swishes to heat the porcelain. He and his mother fell into a rhythm of making tea together, and as they did so, they talked family matters quite as if Ness were not in the room. His brothers, their wives, his sisters, their husbands, their children, their jobs, a new automobile purchase, an upcoming family dinner to celebrate a first birthday, someone’s pregnancy, someone else’s DIY remodeling project. They brought tea to the table, accompanied by Majidah’s pappadums. They sliced a fruitcake and toasted bread as well. They sat, they poured, they used milk and sugar.

Ness wondered what she was to make of all this: mother and son in harmony together. It left her with a raw feeling inside. She wanted to leave this place, but she knew Majidah would not permit it because she also knew Majidah’s ways by now and one of them was to do nothing without a purpose. She would have to wait to see what that purpose was.

This became clear when the Asian woman took an envelope from the windowsill where it stood propped up behind the treasured photo of herself and her first husband, the father of Sayf al Din. She slid this across the table to Ness and told her to open it. They would, she said, then speak further on a topic most important to all of them.

Inside the envelope, Ness found sixty pounds in ten-pound notes. This, Majidah told her, was the money she needed for transport. It was not a gift—Majidah did not believe in giving gifts of cash to adolescent girls who were not only not relatives but also quasi-criminals in the midst of fulfilling their sentences to community service—but rather a loan. It was meant to be repaid with interest, and it would be repaid if Ness knew what was good for her.

Ness made a not illogical assumption about the use to which this money was to be put. She said, “How’m I s’posed to pay dis back if I’m goin to dat class and workin in the drop-in centre and I got no job?”

“Oh, this is not money for your transport to Fulham Broadway, Vanessa,” Majidah then informed her. “This is to be used to travel to Covent Garden, where you will earn the money for transport to Fulham Broadway as well as the money to repay this loan.” To Sayf al Din, she said, “Tell her, my son.”

Sayf al Din did so. Rand was no longer in his employ. Her husband, alas, had put a stop to her working in the same room as another man, even draped in her claustrophobic chador.

“Foolish idiot,” Majidah interjected redundantly. Sayf al Din thus had to hire a replacement for her. His mother had told him that Ness was interested in millinery, so if she wished for employment, he would be happy to take her on. She wouldn’t earn a fortune, but she would be able save enough—after repaying Majidah, his mother put in—to finance her transport to Fulham Broadway. But hadn’t Rand worked for Sayf al Din full time? Ness wanted to know. And how could she do Rand’s work—or even a small part of her work—when she still had to do her community service?

That, Majidah informed her, would not be a problem. First of all, Rand at work had all the speed of a tortoise under anesthetic, her vision being occluded by that foolish black bedsheet she insisted upon wearing as if Sayf al Din would ravish her on the spot had he the opportunity to lay his eyes upon her. It would hardly take a full-time employee to replace her. Indeed, a one-armed monkey could probably do the job. Secondly, Ness would divide her day into two equal parts, spending half the time fulfilling her sentence to community service and the other half working for Sayf al Din. That, by the way, had already been arranged, cleared, signed, sealed, and delivered by Fabia Bender. But, Ness said, when was she supposed to take the millinery course?

How was she supposed to do all three things: work for Sayf al Din, fulfill her obligations to community service, and take the millinery course as well? She couldn’t do all three.

Of course she could not, Majidah agreed. Not at first. But once she became used to working instead of lolling about like most adolescent girls, she would find she had time for many more things than she thought she had time for. At first, she would merely work for Sayf al Din and do her community service hours. By the time she had the rhythm and endurance to take on more, another school term would have arrived and she could take her first millinery course then.

“So I’m s’posed to do all three t’ings?” Ness asked, incredulous.

“Take the course, work in the millinery studio, do community service?

When am I s’posed to eat an’ sleep?”

“Nothing is perfect, you foolish girl,” Majidah said. “And nothing happens by magic in the real world. Did it happen to you by magic, my son?”

Sayf al Din assured his mother that it had not.

“Hard work, Vanessa,” Majidah told her. “Hard work is what follows opportunity. It is time you learned that, so make up your mind.”

Ness was not so intent upon instantly being gratified in her desires that she failed to see a door opening for her. Because it wasn’t exactly the door she wanted, though, she didn’t embrace the idea with fullhearted gratitude. Nonetheless, she agreed to the scheme, at which point Majidah—always a woman to think ahead—produced an entirely unenforceable contract for her to sign. This included specific hours of community service, specific hours of work for Sayf al Din, and the schedule of repayment of the sixty-pound loan, with interest, of course. Ness signed it, Majidah signed it, and Sayf al Din witnessed it. The deal was concluded. Majidah toasted Ness in typical fashion:

“See that you do not fail, you foolish girl,” she said.

NESS BEGAN HER work with Sayf al Din at once, in the afternoons once her morning hours at the child drop-in centre had been completed. He set her to menial tasks at first, but when he was engaged in something that he believed would advance her education, he told her to join him and to watch. He explained what he was doing, with all the fire of a man engaged in work that he was meant by God to do. During this, Ness’s brittle carapace of self-preservation began to fall away. She didn’t know what to make of this, although someone with a bit more wisdom might have called it the needful death of anomie.

Kendra, it must be said, felt such relief at the change in Ness that she let down her guard when it came to Joel. When he talked with enthusiasm about the screenwriting class that Ivan Weatherall offered, and in particular about the film in development by Ivan’s band of street kids, she gave her blessing to his involvement in this project as long as his marks in school improved. Yes, he could be gone on the occasional evening, she told him. She would mind Toby and Ness would mind Toby when Kendra could not. Even Ness agreed to the plan, not with good grace, but then anything other than marginally intolerant compliance would have been wildly out of character in the girl.

Had Joel not been a marked man in the street, things might have proceeded smoothly then. But there were forces at work far larger than the Campbell children and their aunt, making North Kensington a place unsafe for harbouring or advancing dreams. Neal Wyatt still existed on the periphery of their lives, and while some circumstances had altered for the Campbells, this was not the case for Neal. He continued to be a lurking presence. There were scores to settle.

Respect remained the key for sweetening the bad blood between Neal and Joel. For his part, Joel intended to develop that in one way or another. It just wasn’t going to happen in the way that Hibah had intimated it should happen: with Joel submitting to the other boy like a dog fl ipping onto its back. For Joel knew what Hibah gave no evidence of knowing about life in a place like North Kensington: There were only two ways to be entirely safe. One was to be invisible or of no interest to anyone. The other was to have everyone’s respect. Not to give respect away like so much discarded clothing, but to garner it. To give it away as Hibah suggested meant to seal your fate, making you a lackey, a whipping boy, and a fool. To garner it, on the other hand, meant that you and your family would be able to survive.

JOEL’S ROUTE WAS still the Blade. His safety and the safety of his brother rested in his alliance with the Blade. Joel could raise his marks in school; he could write bulletproof poetry that brought tears to the eyes of everyone in Wield Words Not Weapons; he could take part in a film project that put his name in lights. But those accomplishments would gain him nothing in the world through which he had to walk every day because none of them were capable of reducing anyone else to fear. Fear came in the person of the Blade. To forge an alliance with him, Joel knew he would have to prove himself in whatever way the Blade ordered him.

Cal Hancock brought Joel the assignment several weeks later. He did it with two words, “Time, mon,” as he created a roll-up for himself, leaning against the window of a launderette on Joel’s route to Middle Row School from the bus stop in the late afternoon.

“F’r what?” Joel asked.

“What you wanted, dependin on if you still wan’ it.” Cal looked away from him, down the street where two old ladies walked arm in arm, each supporting the other. Cal’s breath steamed in the icy air. When Joel didn’t reply, he turned back to look at him. “Well? You in or out ’f dis business?”

Joel was in, but he hesitated, not because he was worried about what the Blade would ask of him but rather because there was Toby to consider. He was meant to fetch his brother from school to the learning centre, and that was going to take another hour. Joel explained this to Cal.

Cal shook his head. He told Joel in short order that he couldn’t pass that information along to the Blade. It would disrespect the man by indicating that something else was more important than fulfilling his wishes.

“I don’t mean to disrepeck him,” Joel said. “It’s only dat Toby . . . Cal, he knows Toby i’n’t right in the head.”

“Wha’ the Blade wants, he wants tonight.”

“I c’n do what he wants. But I can’t let Toby try to get home on his own from school. It’s already getting dark, and only time he tried to get home alone, he got set on.”

Joel would have to solve the problem, Cal said. If he couldn’t solve this one, he wasn’t going to be able to solve any others. He would have to go his way; the Blade would have to go his. Perhaps that was all for the best.

Joel tried to think what he could do. His only option seemed to be the age-old excuse used by every child who doesn’t want to do what he is meant to do. He decided he would feign illness. He would phone his aunt, tell her he’d sicked up at school, and ask her if she thought he should still fetch Toby. She would say no, naturally. She would tell him to go straight home. She would lock up the charity shop for a while and herself dash out to fetch Toby from school to the learning centre. She would then keep Toby with her till it was time for them both to go home for the evening. All things being equal, by the time she returned to Edenham Estate, Joel himself would be there as well, having demonstrated to the Blade loyalty and respect.

He told Cal to wait and he went for a phone box. In a few minutes, his plan was in motion. What he failed to take into account, however, was the nature of what the Blade wanted him to do. Cal made it clear soon enough, although not before trying to give Joel an oblique warning about what was to come. When Joel returned from the phone box, having made all the arrangements, Cal asked him if he’d thought things through.

“I ain’t stupid,” was Joel’s reply. “I know how t’ings go. The Blade does summick for me, I owe him. I got dat, Cal. I’m ready.” He hiked up his trousers as a means of emphasising his readiness. It was a let’s-go gesture: ready for anything, ready for it all, time to show the Blade his mettle, time to show commitment.

Cal examined him somberly before he said, “Come wiv me, den,” and began striding towards the north, in the direction of Kensal Green.

He walked without conversation and without pause to see if Joel was still with him. He didn’t stop walking until they came to the high brick wall that enclosed the crumbling, overgrown ruins of Kensal Green Cemetery. Here, at the large gates leading into the place, he finally looked at Joel. Joel couldn’t imagine what he was going to be asked to do, but robbing a grave came to mind and it didn’t hold much appeal.

An arch comprised the entrance to this place. It gave way to a square of tarmac and a keeper’s lodge where light shone through a curtained window. The tarmac itself marked the starting point for the cemetery’s main road. This veered off towards the west, strewn with the decomposing leaves of the many trees that grew scattered and untrimmed in the grounds.

Cal set off down this lane. Joel tried to see the delicious adventure of it all. He told himself it was going to be a bloody good lark, carrying out an assignment in this creepy place. He and Cal would attack some grave in the fast-coming darkness, and they’d jump behind a lopsided tombstone should a guard stroll by. They’d take care not to tumble into one of the collapsing grave sites that signs along the lane warned them about, and when they were done, they’d hop the wall and be on their way with whatever prize the Blade wished them to unearth. It was, he decided, like a scavenger hunt.

In the growing early darkness of winter, however, the cemetery was a grim location, not conducive to the sense of adventure Joel wished to feel. With enormous wing-spread angels praying on monuments and mausoleums shrouded by swathes of ivy and every inch of space overgrown with shrubbery and weeds, the cemetery was more like a ghoul town than it was a resting place for souls. Joel half-expected to see ethereal spirits emerging from broken-down tombs and headless ghosts flitting above the undergrowth.

Unpaved muddy tracks led off the main lane, and in the dying light, Cal took one of these. Some fifty yards along, he disappeared altogether through a thick stand of Italian cypresses, and when Joel ducked through them a moment later, he found himself facing a large and lichenous tomb. This had long ago been fashioned to resemble a chapel, but masonry filled in where its three stained-glass windows had been, and the door that once gave access to the little structure was buried by junipers so densely planted that only a machete could have hacked a way through them.

Cal was nowhere to be seen, and the idea of ambush came upon Joel with a rush. His previous consternation grew in proportion to his realisation that no one knew exactly where he was. He thought of Cal’s words of warning, of his own bravado. He muttered, “Shit,” and listened as hard as a frightened boy can listen. If someone was going to jump him now, he reckoned that he could at least try to sort out from what direction the danger would come.

It would come from above, it seemed. Joel heard a rustling that appeared to emanate from the cypresses, and he backed away. An old wooden bench stood some three yards from the chapel-shaped tomb, and he made for this and climbed upon it, as if this action would somehow protect him. But there he noticed what he could not see when he stood at the base of the chapel itself: Although its gabled roof had at one time been fashioned from large rectangles of slate, a number of them were missing, leaving a gaping hole that opened the tomb’s interior to the elements.

The noise Joel heard was actually coming from inside the tomb and as he watched, a shadowy form rose from within. It lifted head and shoulders above the wall and then a leg followed. All of it was black except the feet, which were dingy white and dressed in trainers. Joel said, “What the hell you doin, blood?”

Cal heaved himself over and dropped lightly from the chapel wall to the ground, a distance of some ten feet. He said, “You ready, mon?”

“Yeah, but what’re you doin in there?”

“Seeing.”

“What?”

“Dat t’ings all right. C’mere, den. You’re inside.” Cal jerked his thumb at the tomb.

Joel looked from him to the opening in the roof. “Doin what?”

“Waiting.”

“For what? How long?”

“Well, dat’s it, innit. Dat’s wha’ you don’t know. The Blade wants to know do you trust him, spee. You don’t trust him, he don’t trust you.

You stay till I fetch you, blood. You not here when I fetch you, the Blade knows who you are.”

Despite his youth, Joel saw the ingenious nature of the game. It was contained in the simplicity of not knowing. An hour, a day, one night, a week. One rule only: Put yourself into someone else’s hands entirely. Prove yourself to the Blade before the Blade was willing to prove himself to you. Joel’s mouth was drier than he would have liked. “What ’f I’m caught?” he said. “Ain’t my fault ’f some guard comes by and hauls me out, innit.”

“What guards you t’ink stick their heads in tombs if they don’t got reason to do it? You quiet, blood, no one comes looking. You in or out?”

What choice was there? “In,” Joel said.

Cal made a stirrup of his hand and Joel mounted. He felt himself hoisted onto the wall, where he straddled the top and looked down into the well of darkness below. He could see dim shapes only, one of them looking like a ghostly body under a pall of decomposing leaves. He felt a tremor at the sight of this and he glanced back at Cal, who was watching him, silent. Joel drew a deep breath, closed his eyes, and with a shudder dropped into the tomb.

He landed on leaves. One of his shoes sank through to a sodden depression and the cold rose around him as his foot hit water. He cried out and jumped back, half expecting a skeletal hand to reach up, begging for rescue from a liquid grave. He could see virtually nothing inside the rectangular chamber, and he only hoped his eyes would adjust quickly from the muted light of the graveyard to the darkness in here so that he might know with whom—or with what—he would be spending his time.

Cal’s voice came like a whisper from the distance. “All right, bred?

You in?”

“S’okay,” Joel said, although he hardly felt that way.

“You hang till I come.” Then Cal was gone, in a rustle of branches that indicated he was making his way back through the Italian cypresses. Joel smothered the protest that he wanted to give. This was nothing, he told himself. This was just proving to the Blade that he had the bottle to gut something out.

His hands felt clammy, so he rubbed them along the sides of his trousers. He remembered what he’d made out from the wall of the tomb just before he dropped down to its interior base. He steeled himself to the sight of a body, telling himself it was dead, long gone, and improperly buried, and that was all. But he’d never really seen a body before, not one that was out in the open, exposed to the elements, decomposing, with rotting flesh, grinning teeth, and worms eating out its eyeballs.

The thought of that body just behind him somewhere made Joel’s lips quiver. He became aware that his own body was shivering from head to toe, and he understood that in this place the cold of the night intensified because of the damp stone walls around him. Like Dorothy in Oz, he thought of home. He thought of his aunt, his brother, his sister, his bed, eating dinner around the table in the kitchen and watching a cartoon video with Toby afterwards. But then he made himself stop such thoughts because his eyes were filling. He was acting like someone who couldn’t bloody even cope, he thought. He remembered how easily Cal had appeared to climb out of the tomb and he understood that he wasn’t trapped in this place. He didn’t have to do something for which he might get into trouble with the law. All he had to do was wait, and he surely had the bottle to do that.

Thus reassured, he made himself take an action. Since he couldn’t exactly stand there forever with his face to the wall simply because he shared space with a body, he forced himself to turn and confront it. He pivoted with his eyes squeezed shut. He balled his fists and slowly raised his eyelids.

Adjusted to the darkness, his eyes picked out what they hadn’t been able to see earlier. The body was missing a nose; part of its cheek was caved in. The rest of it was dressed in some sort of flowing gown whose folds surged through the fallen leaves. All of it was white: the body itself, the head of hair upon it, the hands folded on the abdomen, the gown that clothed it. It was merely stone, Joel realised, an internal effigy that decorated the tomb.

At one end of this, he saw that a tartan blanket was folded over the effigy’s feet. It bore no leaves, which meant it had been placed there recently, and probably for him. He picked it up and beneath it found two bottles of water and two packaged sandwiches. He’d be there for a while.

He unfolded the blanket and wound it around his shoulders. He boosted himself up to the legs of the effigy and settled in for a lengthy stay.

CAL DIDN’T RETURN for Joel that night. Nor did he return the next day. The hours crawled by and the low winter sun never once warmed the inside of Joel’s place of waiting. Still, he remained. He was invested at this point. While it was true that he was cold and—despite the sandwiches—growing hungrier by the minute, that more than once he’d had to relieve himself in a corner beneath a pile of rotting leaves, that he’d barely dozed off during the night and every sound had startled him into wakefulness, he told himself that a payoff was coming and the payoff would make this waiting worthwhile.

He started to doubt this on the second night. He began to think that the Blade meant him to die in Kensal Green Cemetery. He understood how easily that could happen: He was in a tomb already; it hadn’t been opened in years and probably wouldn’t be opened again. He and Cal had come to the spot in near darkness, and if anyone had seen them sauntering along in the direction of the entrance to the cemetery, what would they have thought of it? There were many places they could have been heading: the underground station, a superstore across the canal, even all the way to Wormwood Scrubs.

He considered climbing out at this point. When he examined the interior walls of the tomb, he saw that it would be easy enough for him to scale the ten feet. But the list of what-ifs that accompanied the idea of departure stopped him. What if he climbed out just at the moment Cal was coming for him? What if the Blade was nearby, watching and waiting, and saw his disgrace? What if he was seen by a groundsman or a security man? What if he was collared and hauled into the Harrow Road police station again?

As to his family and the what-ifs they were conjuring up as this second night approached, he did not think of that. His aunt, his brother, and his sister were merely blips on the screen of his consciousness.

The second night passed slowly. It was terribly cold, and a soft rain fell. It became a long and windy rain that soaked his blanket, which in turn soaked his school trousers. He had only his anorak left as protection from the weather, but it would be useless by morning if the rain did not cease, and Joel knew that.

The sky was turning light when he finally heard the sounds he’d been waiting for: the swooshing of cypress branches and the sucking noise of trainers falling on saturated ground. Then Cal’s voice came softly, “You there, blood?”

Joel, crouching in the inadequate shelter of the damaged slate roof, got to his feet with a grunt. “Here, bred,” he said.

“Have it knocked good, den. You make it out okay?”

Joel wasn’t sure, but he said that he could. Hunger made him dizzy, and cold made him clumsy. It would, he thought, be a sodding hell of a thing if he broke his neck trying to get out of this place.

He tried several times. He had success on his fourth attempt. By that time, Cal had climbed the wall and was straddling the top, extending a hand to him. But Joel wouldn’t take it, so close was he to passing the Blade’s test completely. He wanted Cal Hancock to carry a message back to Mr. Stanley Hynds: He did it all, and he did it by himself.

He lifted his leg over the wall and straddled it, mimicking Cal’s posture there although, unlike Cal, he was forced to cling to the stones like a shipwreck survivor. He said, “You tell him, mon,” before he was out of strength. He toppled from the top of the wall to the ground.

Cal hopped down and helped him to his feet. “Okay?” he asked earnestly. “Noise goin down ’bout where you been.”

Joel squinted at Cal, with his head feeling weak. He said, “You rampin, mon?”

“Hell no. I been by your drum and there’s been cops wiv your aunt. I ’spect you in for it when you get home.”

“Shit.” Of all things, Joel hadn’t thought of this. He said, “I got to get home. When c’n I talk to the Blade, den?”

“He ain’t takin your part wiv the cops. On your own f’r dat, blood.”

“’S not what I meant. I got to talk to him ’bout dis bloke needs sorting.”

“He’ll sort him when he’s ready,” Cal said.

“Hey!” Joel protested. “Di’n’t I just—”

“Don’t work like dat.” Cal led Joel through the cypresses then, and along the muddy path towards the cemetery’s central lane. There, he took a moment to clean the bottom of his trainers on a spot in the tarmac where the fallen leaves had blown away during the night. He looked around—in the manner of a man searching for eavesdroppers— and said in a low voice and without looking up from his shoes, “You c’n stop dis, bred. You got dat power.”

“Stop what?” Joel asked.

“Blood, he mean you harm. Y’unnerstan?”

“Who? The Blade? Cal, I gave him the flick knife. And you weren’t there when we talked. We got t’ings sorted between us. We’re cool.”

“He don’t sort t’ings, spee. He i’n’t like dat.”

“He was straight wiv me. Like I said, you weren’t there. And anyways, I done what he asked. He c’n see I’m straight wiv him. We c’n go on.”

Cal, whose eyes had been cast down on his shoes during this, raised his head. He said, “Where ’xactly you t’ink you’re going? The Blade sort dis bloke, you owe him, y’unnerstan? You got family, bred. Whyn’t you t’ink ’bout dem?”

“Dat’s what I am doing,” Joel protested. “Wha’ you t’ink I’m doin dis for?”

“Dat’s a question you best start asking,” Cal returned. “What you t’ink he doin dis for?”