What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

22 When he made the turn into Edenham Way, Joel saw that Dix D’Court’s car was parked in front of his aunt’s house. He was cold, wet, tired, and hungry, and all he wanted was to fall into bed, which made his ability to fast-talk his way through the coming encounters sadly reduced. He took a moment to duck behind a wheelie bin and there he stayed for several more minutes, trying to work out what he was going to say to his aunt when he finally faced her. The truth would hardly do.

He thought at first that he might stay there behind the bin until Kendra left the house to go to work for the day, which would be sooner rather than later. She’d have to get Toby off to his school and Ness would be off as well, which would leave the house empty at that point, since Dix surely wouldn’t hang about once Kendra was gone. Joel would have the day, then, to cook up something . . . if only he managed to wait.

But waiting was exactly what Joel was not able to do. Seven minutes behind the wheelie bin was enough time to tell him he could remain outside in the cold no longer. He eased his way out and trudged to the front door. He hauled himself up the four steps like a dead man walking.

He used his key on the lock, but this was enough noise to alert his family. The door jerked open. He expected to see his aunt there, furious and ready to pounce, but it was Ness who had her hand on the knob and Ness whose body blocked his path. She took one look at him and said over her shoulder, “Aunt Ken, the lit’l sod’s home.” And then to Joel, “You in for it, mon. We got cops callin round, we got school on the phone, we got Social Services involved. Where you been, ’xactly?” And then in a lower voice, “Joel, you dopin up or summick?”

He didn’t answer, and there was no need, for the door was jerked more fully open and there Kendra stood. She was still dressed in the clothing she’d had on two days ago. Red rimmed her eyes, and bruised flesh half-mooned beneath them. Like Ness, she cried out, “Where you been? What’s been . . . Who’ve you been . . . ,” and then she simply wept. It was a release of pent-up stress, but as Joel had never seen his aunt cry before this, he did not know what to make of it. She grabbed him and hugged him fiercely, but the hug turned into fists beating against his back, although with all the force of a hummingbird’s heartbeat.

Over her shoulder, Joel saw Toby come out of the kitchen in his cowboy pyjamas, clattering across the lino in his cowboy boots. Beyond him, Dix D’Court stood in the centre of that room, his face expressionless. He watched for a moment before he came to the door and gently disengaged Kendra from Joel. He turned her to him and took her into his arms, giving Joel a disgusted shake of the head before he led Kendra in the direction of the stairs. Before he mounted them, he said to Ness, “Best phone the cops and tell ’em he’s back.”

Ness shot the front door home and went to the phone to make the call. She left Joel where he was, experiencing a form of solitary confinement that he hadn’t expected, one that he found far worse than being left in a tomb for two nights. It felt unfair to him that he was being treated like some sort of pariah instead of being welcomed home with celebration and relief. He wanted to say, D’you lot know what I been through for you?

Toby inadvertently added to Joel’s sense of indignation. He said unnecessarily, “Dix come back, Joel. Aunt Ken phoned him up to help when you di’n’t come home cos she thought you might’ve been wiv him at the gym or summick. Ivan said he di’n’t know where you were—”

“What? She rang Ivan?”

“She rang ever’one. It was late when she phoned Ivan. She thought he took you to a film or summick but he say no. Den she thought you got in trouble wiv the cops, so she phoned dem. Af ’er dat, she thought maybe dat bloke Neal set ’pon you an’—”

“Okay. Shut up,” Joel said.

“But I wanted—”

“Hey. I said shut up. I don’t care. Shut up.”

Toby’s eyes filled. This was a Joel he did not know. He came to him and tugged on the sleeve of his anorak, saying, “You got wet. You wan’

to change your clothes, innit. I got a jersey from the charity shop when Aunt Ken come to school to fetch me an’ you c’n borrow—”

“Shut up shut up shut up!” Joel pushed Toby to one side. He went through to the kitchen. Toby ran for the stairs with a sob. Joel hated himself for having hurt his brother’s feelings, but he also hated Toby for being so dim that he couldn’t take an order without having to be shouted at.

Ness was completing her phone call as Joel went to the kitchen table and slumped into a chair, pillowing his head into his crossed arms, which he folded upon a mass of tabloids that lay open on the table’s surface. He wanted only to be left alone. He didn’t understand why everyone was re act ing so much, as if he’d committed the crime of the century when Ness had been out all night more than once without coming home to a scene like this. He told himself that the lot of them were acting like he’d faked his own suicide or something.

Ness said to his bowed head, “You really done it, blood.” She lit a cigarette, and the acrid scent of sulfur from the match and then from the burning tobacco came to Joel and made his stomach churn. “Fabia Bender stopped by, talkin ’bout time to send you some place to be sorted out ’fore you really get into trouble. Cops went crawlin through ev’ry room like we murdered you. Some detective even went and tried to get some sense out of Mum, innit. I say dis: When you shit, mon, you do it like an elephant. So where you been?”

Joel shook his head, but he didn’t raise it. He said, “Why’d she go off the nut?”

“You ain’t heard?”

At this Joel wearily raised his head. Ness came to the table, cigarette dangling from her lips, and gestured for him to move his arms from the tabloids. She closed one of them—it was the Mirror—and she flipped it so that its front page faced him. “Have a look at dis,” she said. “Aunt Ken thought . . . Well, I ’xpect you got brains enough to sort it out.”

Joel dropped his gaze from his sister to the tabloid. “Another Body” blazed across the top of the page. Beneath this, three photographs showed a railway arch obstructed by sawhorses and crime scene tape, a clutch of people in earnest conversation, and a lone blond man in an overcoat, talking on a mobile and identified as a Scotland Yard detective superintendent. Joel looked up from this to his sister, saying, “I don’t get it. You saying Aunt Ken was t’inking . . . ?”

“‘ Course she t’inking,” Ness declared. “What else you ’xpect? You aren’t home when you say you home being sick. She rings dat bloke Ivan and he says he ain’t seen you, but dat’s after she been tryin to get him on the line for hours and she t’inks he did summick to you cos of these newspaper stories, innit. So she gives the cops a bell, and they drag dis Ivan to the station and grill him—”

“Ivan? ” Joel groaned. “Cops talked to Ivan?”

“Hell yes, what else you t’ink? So they give him aggro and all the time you’re . . . where?”

Joel stared at the tabloid. He couldn’t believe so much had happened simply because he was gone for two nights. And what had happened couldn’t have been too much worse: the involvement of the local police, Ivan being harassed, the Youth Offending Team becoming alerted through the person of Fabia Bender upon whose radar Joel already had a position. He felt light-headed with all of the information. He brought the tabloid back into focus.

“Boys been gettin took all over London,” Ness was saying. “Dis one here in th’ paper, he’s like number five or six or whatever. They been just round your age. So when you don’t come home and Aunt Ken sees dis story in th’ paper—Cordie brought it over, di’n’t she— she t’inks dis body’s you, innit. So you cocked t’ings up proper, y’unnerstan. You in f’r it, and I’m glad I ain’t you.”

“She’s right in dat.” It was Dix speaking. He’d come back down the stairs. He looked at Joel with the same expression of disgust he’d had on his face when Joel had come through the door. He carried a glass in his hand, and he took it to the sink and rinsed it out. “Where you been, Joel? What you been doing?”

“Why’n’t you stop her fr’m callin the cops?” Joel directed his question to both of them, and he asked it in despair. His aunt had complicated his entire situation more wildly than he ever would have expected, and right on the brink of his sorting out everything on his own. She was, he concluded, making a dog’s dinner out of all his efforts. Dix said, “Mon, I asked you a question. I want an answer.”

This sent Joel’s back up. It was the tone of it, the daddy tone. Whatever Dix was in their lives, the one thing he wasn’t was their father. Joel said, “Hey. Bugger off. I don’t got to tell you—”

“You,” Dix cut in, “best watch your mouth.”

“I c’n say what I want. You don’t run my life.”

Ness said, “Joel,” in a tone that blended warning with appeal, and this in itself was something unusual. For Joel, it put his sister directly into the enemy camp. He shoved himself away from the table and made for the stairs.

“Don’t t’ink dis conversation i’n’t going to be picked up later on,” Dix told him.

Joel said, “Whatever,” and began to climb.

He heard Dix following, and he thought that the bodybuilder meant to force him to cooperate by resorting to a physical confrontation. But rather than trail Joel into his room, Dix went into Kendra’s and shut the door.

She was on the bed with one arm over her eyes, but she removed it when he sat down next to her, his hand coming to rest on her thigh. She said, “He say anything?”

Dix shook his head. “Dis i’n’t good,” he told her. “How it start when boys go bad, Ken.”

“I know,” she said wearily. “I know, I know. I got ’n ex-husband in Wandsworth, you recall, and I c’n see him all over Joel just now. He’s involved in something—running drugs? breaking into houses? carjacking? mugging half-crippled pensioners?—and tha’s how it starts, don’t think I don’t know cause I do, Dix. I do.”

“You got to cut dis off.”

“You think I’m blind to that? I already got him wiv a mentor in school, only now I called the cops on the man, so I can’t ’xpect him to want to go on mentoring, can I. Meantime, the Social Services woman mentions a place across the river where boys like Joel go to get sorted but it’s all the way in Elephant and Castle and I can’t have him trekking there every day after school cause I need his help wiv Toby . . .” She plucked at the chenille counterpane on the bed. Since her head was aching and she hadn’t slept in two days, there were no answers for Kendra.

So Dix supplied the only answer he knew. “Needs a dad,” he said.

“Well, he doesn’ have a dad.”

“Needs someone to stand in place of his dad.”

“I figured that bloke Ivan—”

“Ken. Come on. White man? Dat partic’lar white man? You see him as someone Joel likely to become? Cos dat’s wha’ he needs: someone standing in front ’f him in place of his dad and dat someone bein someone he might like to become.”

“Joel’s part white.”

“So’re you. But dis ain’t about bein white, innit. It’s ’bout being practical and figgering what the boy’s likely to admire.”

“So what d’you suggest?”

To Dix it was evident. He would move back in, he told her. He missed her and he knew she missed him. They would make things work this time. The only reason they hadn’t worked before was that he’d been too consumed with his bodybuilding to pay sufficient attention to her and to the kids. But that didn’t have to be the case now. He would change his ways. He had to, hadn’t he?

Kendra pointed out to him that the case just now was even worse than it had been before, since his own dad was still recovering from his heart attack and Dix was, as a result, spread even more thinly. But Dix argued that the situation was actually improved and that it offered them possibilities they hadn’t yet discussed. Kendra wanted to know what these possibilities were. Dix told her that Joel could work at the Rainbow Café, earning himself some honest money and staying out of trouble at the same time. He could also go to the gym with Dix. He could otherwise go to school, help out with Toby, and continue with his poetry events. He wouldn’t have the leisure necessary to get into trouble. And he’d also have a man of colour to act as a role model, which he badly needed.

“An’ you want nothing in return?” Kendra asked him. “You do all this out of the goodness of your heart? Why is it I don’t believe that much?”

“I ain’t ’bout to lie. I want you like I always want you, Ken.”

“You say that today, but in five years . . .” Kendra sighed. “Dix. Baby. I can’t give you what you want. You got to know that at some level, man.”

“How c’n you say dat,” he asked her, touching her cheek fondly, “when you’re givin me th’ only t’ing I want right now?”

SO DIX RETURNED to them, and to the outside world they resembled a family. Dix proceeded with caution, but at twenty-three—albeit soon to be twenty-four—he was out of his depth with a teenaged girl, a soon-to-be-teenaged boy, and an eight-year-old with needs vastly outweighing Dix D’Court’s ability to meet them. Had these been ordinary children in ordinary circumstances, he might have stood a chance as foster father to them—despite his youth—because it was clear, even to them, that he did actually mean well. But Ness wasn’t having any part of a father figure merely seven years her senior and Joel wasn’t interested. Instead he was confident that, having proven his worthiness to the Blade, matters with Neal Wyatt would soon be taken care of. And once matters with Neal were taken care of, life could go on and they all would be reasonably secure. So Joel rebuffed Dix’s well-intentioned attempts at what might be called male bonding. Too little too late was what he thought of Dix’s invitations to the gym and his offer of afterschool employment at the Rainbow Café. Besides, he didn’t take the invitations or the offer seriously since he could nightly hear the extremely enthusiastic resumption of sexual relations between Dix and his aunt. This, he believed, told him the real reason for the bodybuilder’s return to Edenham Way, and he knew it had nothing to do with any of the Campbells or Dix’s interest in practising his paternal skills upon them.

Dix was patient with Joel’s reluctance. Kendra was not. She put up with Joel’s indifference to Dix’s overtures for only a few days before she decided to intervene. She did so once he’d gone to bed, on a night that Dix was at the gym for his workout. She went to the boys’ bedroom and found them in pyjamas, Joel on his side with his eyes closed and Toby sitting with his back against the banged-up headboard, skateboard across his knees, disconsolately spinning its wheels.

She said to the little boy, “He asleep?”

Toby shook his head. “He breathes funny when he’s asleep, and he ain’t.”

Kendra sat on the edge of Joel’s bed. She touched the side of his head and his crinkly hair depressed like candy floss beneath her fingers. She said, “Sit up, Joel. We got to talk.”

Joel continued with his pretence of sleep. Whatever she wanted with talking to him, he decided it couldn’t be good. He’d so far managed to keep her in the dark about what he’d been doing out all night, and that was the way he wanted things to remain.

She put her hand on his rump and gave it a tap. “Come on now,” she said. “I know you’re not sleeping. It’s time for a talk.”

But what she wanted to talk about was precisely what Joel wanted to keep hidden. He told himself that he couldn’t talk to her for the simple reason that she would not understand. Despite the fact that they were blood relations, her life was too much different from his. She’d always had people she could depend upon, so she would never understand what it meant to be completely on her own: reliant but with no one reliable on the horizon. She didn’t know how that felt.

He mumbled, “Wan’ to sleep, Aunt Ken.”

“Later. You c’n talk to me now.”

He scrunched his body into a ball. He held on to the blankets so she could not pull them off had she a mind to do so.

She sighed. “Right,” she said and her voice altered, causing Joel to steel himself to what was to come. “You’re making a decision, Joel, and that’s a fine and adult thing to do as long as you’re willing to live with the consequences. D’you want to think about that? D’you want to hang on to your decision or alter it?”

Joel said nothing. She said his name, less patiently now, less a reasonable woman making a reasonable request. She said, “We’ve been trying to help you out, but you’ve not met us halfway. Either me or Dix. You want to play your cards close, I s’pose that’s your right. But since I don’t know what’s going on with you, I got to do my duty to keep you safe. So home, school, home again. Fetch Toby from his school and that’s all. That’s your life.”

Joel’s eyes opened, then. “That ain’t fair.”

“No poetry events, no visits to Ivan. No trips to see your mum unless I take you out there and bring you back. We’ll see how you cope with all that for the next two months, and then we’ll renegotiate things.”

“But I di’n’t do—”

“Don’t take your auntie for a fool,” she said. “I know this whole situation goes back to that little lout you’ve been having run-ins with. So I’m taking care of that as well.”

Joel squirmed around then. He sat up. Her tone suggested what was coming next, and he sought a way to head her off. “It ain’t nuffink,” he told her. “He ain’t nuffink. Dis is all jus’ summick I had to do, okay?

I di’n’t break no laws. No one got hurt.”

“We’ll be working on your English as well,” she said. “No more street talk.”

“But Dix talk—”

“And that brings us to Dix. He’s trying his best with you lot. You meet him halfway.” She stood. “I held off before, but I’m not holding off any longer. It’s time the police—”

“You ain’t—”

“English.”

“You can’t get into this, Aunt Ken. Please. Just let it go.”

“Too late for that. Two nights away from home that you’re not talking about, Joel . . . They make it too late.”

“Don’t do it. Don’t do it,” Joel pleaded with her. His very protest told Kendra that Neal Wyatt was indeed the source of what was going wrong in Joel’s life. Burning the barge, assaulting Toby in the street, threatening her in the charity shop . . . She was going to phone the police and something was going to stick to this boy. If nothing did at this point, at least he’d be warned.

HIBAH WAS THE one who broke the news to Joel. She found him waiting for the bus after school, but she didn’t say anything until he’d made his way inside, where the crowded conditions forced both of them to stand, swaying with the bus and clinging to the poles. She said to him in a low, fierce voice, “Why’d you grass, Joel? Don’t you know how bloody stupid tha’ was? You know what he want to do to you now?”

Joel saw that her face was pinched beneath her headscarf. He picked up on her anger but he wasn’t able to read her exasperation. He said,

“I di’n’t grass no one. What’re you talkin ’bout?”

“Oh you di’n’t bloody grass,” she scoffed. “How’d Neal end up wiv the cops ’f you di’n’t grass, Joel? They had him down the station ’bout that stupid barge. And ’bout shakin up people in the street, your bruvver included. If you di’n’t do that, who bloody did?”

Joel felt air whoosh out of his lungs. “My aunt. She must’ve cos she said she would.”

“Your aunt, oh yeah,” Hibah said in derision. “An’ she know Neal’s name wivout you telling her? You are such a damn fool stupid idiot, Joel Campbell. I tell you how to cope wiv Neal and dis is what you decide. You vex him, and he set for you now. An’ don’t think I can help you cos I can’t. Y’unnerstan dat, mon? You got no brains.”

Having never heard Hibah express herself with such passion, Joel saw the jeopardy he was in. And not only him because he knew that Neal Wyatt was clever enough and determined enough to get to him through his relations as well, as he’d already proved through Toby. He cursed his aunt for her failure to see what her interference in his affairs might bring about.

Joel decided something had to be done. Even if the Blade had done his part and sorted out Neal Wyatt, the fact that Neal’s name had been given to the cops cancelled out everything and fired up Neal’s enmity once again. The long and short of it was that Kendra couldn’t have done much more to make matters worse.

After thinking through his options, Joel came to believe Ivan Weatherall was the answer to at least part of his problem. Ivan, poetry, and Wield Words Not Weapons constituted the door through which he would walk in order to make things right.

Joel hadn’t seen Ivan since a week before the cemetery fi asco and what had followed it when Kendra had given the white man’s name to the Harrow Road police. But Joel knew the days on which Ivan came to Holland Park School, so he put in a request to see the mentor and waited to be called into his presence. Despite what had occurred, he was confident Ivan would see him, Ivan being Ivan after all, optimistic about young people to the point of foolishness. So he prepared himself by writing five poems. They were little more than doggerel, but they would have to do. Then he waited.

He felt a rush of relief when he was called to meet the mentor. He took his five poems with him, and he did some Machiavellian mental gymnastics in order to convince himself that using a friend was not such a terrible thing to do if the use to which that friend was put was in a good cause.

He found Ivan not seated at their regular table but, rather, standing at a window looking out at the grey January day: trees leafl ess, ground sodden, shrubbery skeletal, sky somber. He turned when Joel came into the room.

Something was required of Joel in this moment, a bridge that would take them from Kendra’s phoning the police about Ivan to where they were on this day. It seemed that only an apology would suffice, so Joel made that apology, which Ivan accepted as was his nature. It was, he confessed, more embarrassing than anything else. He’d had a scriptwriting class on the first night Joel had been gone and a dinner with his brother on the second night, so he was “thick with a sufficiency of alibis,” as he put it wryly. But he would not lie to Joel about matters: It was embarrassing to have to account for his whereabouts and distressing to have the police insist upon searching his property for signs that Joel had been held hostage . . . or worse.

“That didn’t go down well with my neighbours, I’m afraid,” Ivan said, “although I suppose I ought to consider it a mark of distinction, being taken for a serial killer.”

Joel winced. “Sorry. I should’ve . . . I di’n’t think, see . . . Aunt Ken had a conniption, Ivan. She saw the news ’bout those kids being killed, those boys the same age ’s me, and she thought . . .”

“Of me. Logical, I suppose, all things considered.”

“Ain’t logical at all. Mon, I am sorry dis happened, y’unnerstan?”

“I’m quite recovered from it,” Ivan said. “Do you want to talk about where you were those two nights?”

Joel definitely did not. It was nothing, he said. Ivan could take his word. It had nothing to do with anything illegal like drugs, weapons, crimes against fellow citizens, or the like. As he spoke, he brought out his poems. He said he’d been writing as he knew this would divert Ivan from conversation about Joel’s two nights away from home. He had poems, he said. He could tell they weren’t very good, he confessed, and he wondered if Ivan would take a look . . . ?

This was raw meat to a starving lion. The fact that Joel had been writing poetry indicated to Ivan—however falsely—that all was not lost when it came to his young friend. He sat at the table, drew the poetry over, and read. The room was hushed and expectant, as was Joel.

He’d come up with a way to explain why the poetry was so wretched: No quiet place to write, he’d say, if Ivan wanted to talk about the general deterioration of his work. Toby watching the telly, Ness talking on the phone, radio playing, Aunt Ken and Dix going at it like monkeys up above in the bedroom . . . This did not make for the solitude required for inspiration to translate itself into words. But until things changed at home—which meant until the restrictions on his movements were somewhat lifted—this was probably the best he’d be able to do.

Ivan looked up. “These are very bad, my friend.”

Joel let his shoulders sink, a motion of spurious defeat. “I been tryin to sort how to fix ’em, but maybe they’re just ready for the bin.”

“Well, let’s not throw out the baby,” Ivan said, and he read them another time. But when he’d done so, he looked even less hopeful. He asked the question Joel was waiting to hear: What did Joel think had altered his writing so very much?

Joel went through his list of prepared excuses. He made no suggestions for rectifying the situation, but he did not need to do so when Ivan’s entire conditioning programmed him to make the suggestion himself. Would Joel’s aunt consider lifting part of the restrictions she had in place, in order to let Joel attend Wield Words Not Weapons once again? What did Joel think?

Joel shook his head. “No way c’n I ask her. She’s dat cheesed off wiv me.”

“What if I phoned her? Or stopped by the charity shop to talk?”

This was exactly what Joel had hoped for, but he didn’t want to seem overly enthusiastic. He said that Ivan could certainly try. Aunt Kendra felt dead bad about having put the cops on to Ivan in the first place, so she might want to do something to make up for that.

All that remained was waiting for the inevitable, which didn’t take long to happen. Ivan paid a call upon Kendra that afternoon, taking with him Joel’s five poems. They had never met personally so when Ivan introduced himself, Kendra felt a rush of chagrin. She dismissed this quickly, however, telling herself that she’d done what the situation called for when Joel had gone missing. When a white man involves himself with black kids, she reckoned, he has only himself to blame if something happens to one of them and he gets suspected of malfeasance in the aftermath.

The fact that Ivan was so ready to let the issue go melted any resistance to his ideas that Kendra might have had. The ideas were simple enough anyway: Ivan explained that Joel’s writing, which was surely the best representation of his future, was suffering under the restrictions his aunt had placed upon him. While he—Ivan—had no doubt these restrictions were absolutely well deserved, he wondered if Mrs.

Osborne might lift them just enough to allow Joel to return to Wield Words Not Weapons, where he would once again be exposed to other poets whose criticism and support would not only improve his verse but also allow him to mix with people of all ages—young people included—who were engaged in a creative act that kept them off the streets and out of trouble.

As Dix’s efforts with Joel—taking him daily to the Rainbow Café— had not paid off, as Fabia Bender was still suggesting an outside influence to keep Joel on the straight and narrow, as Wield Words Not Weapons was at least convenient and Joel’s attendance there did not involve a long bus ride to the other side of the river to some programme about which Kendra knew nothing, as she could wrest from Joel his word of honour that he would attend the poetry meetings and then return home . . . Kendra agreed. But if she found out he’d gone anywhere besides Wield Words Not Weapons on a night on which the poetry meeting took place, she would sort Joel in ways that currently defied his imagination.

“We clear on that?” she asked her nephew.

“Yes, ma’am,” he told her solemnly.

INSIDE, JOEL WAS clicking along, making plans. Neal had resurfaced, which was hardly a surprise. He kept his distance, but still he watched and Joel never knew where he would see him next. The other boy seemed capable of simply materialising, as if some force scrambled the atoms of his being, transported him, and reassembled him wherever he wished to be. He also seemed to have contacts everywhere—boys whom Joel had never before associated with Neal—and these contacts shoved into Joel hard when crowds were about, murmured Neal’s name at bus stops or in Meanwhile Gardens, shouted out a greeting to a Neal who could not even be seen just outside Toby’s school. Neal Wyatt became like an undercurrent, and Joel knew that he was merely biding his time as he waited for the moment when he’d be able to settle the score that Kendra had built up when she’d given his name to the cops.

All of this told Joel that he had to return to the Blade, and Wield Words Not Weapons gave him the opportunity. When the regular night for the meeting came around, he set off with his aunt’s warning in his ears. She’d be ringing Ivan to make sure he went to Wield Words and nowhere else. Did he understand? He said that he did.

He didn’t have so much a plan as knowledge, which he intended to use. He’d been to enough poetry evenings to know how Ivan organised them. When it came time for Walk the Word, those who weren’t up for the challenge afforded themselves of the refreshments, mingled, talked poetry, and sought out Ivan and each other for private help with their work. What they didn’t do was keep an eye out for what one twelveyear-old boy was up to. That, Joel decided, would be his moment, but he needed a bad poem to make it work.

He made certain that everyone knew he was in the Basement Activities Centre: He mounted the dais and read out one of his most ghastly pieces. At the end of his reading, he gamely suffered through the silence until from the back of the room a throat cleared and someone offered a bit of criticism meant to be constructive. More careful criticism followed and a discussion ensued. Through it all, Joel did his best to act like the serious student of verse that they supposed him to be, taking notes, nodding, saying ruefully, “Oooh. Ouch. I knew it was bad, but you lot are startin to vex me,” and going through the rest of the motions. These included a conversation afterwards with Adam Whitburn, one in which he was forced to listen to encouragement about a creative act that no longer held any importance to him.

After Adam clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Ballsy of you to read it, mon,” it was time for Walk the Word, and Joel eased his way to the door. He reckoned that anyone who noticed would conclude—as he intended—that he was slinking off in embarrassment.

He jogged the distance from Oxford Gardens to Mozart Estate. There, he wound his way through the narrow streets to the squat that stood in Lancefield Court. It was completely dark this time, however, with no Cal Hancock at the foot of the stairs, guarding the Blade from whoever might want in on the business he was conducting.

Joel muttered, “Damn,” and considered his next move. He hustled back through Mozart Estate and, in the dim light, he looked at the housing plan, a large metal map posted in Lancefield Street. This gave him nothing useful at all. The place was a sprawl and although he knew that a girl called Veronica lived within—mother to the Blade’s most recently born son—he had to wonder how likely it was that he could find her and, even if he found her, how likely it was that the Blade would be there. She’d served her purpose; he’d moved on. The block of flats in Portnall Road where Arissa lived was a more likely place to find him.

Joel trotted to this location next, arriving out of breath at the building midway down the street. But again, no Cal Hancock lounged in the doorway, which meant no Blade upstairs.

Joel felt thwarted on every side. Time was running out. He was due home at the end of Wield Words Not Weapons, and if he wasn’t there, there would be a hell designed by his aunt to pay. He felt defeated, and that feeling made him want to punch his hand into a dirty brick wall. There was nothing for it that he could see but to head for home.

He chose a route that would take him down Great Western Road. He began to think of another plan to find the Blade, and he was so deeply into his thoughts that he didn’t notice when a car slid up beside him. He only realised it was there when his nose caught an unmistakable whiff of weed. He looked up then and saw the Blade behind the wheel of a car with Cal Hancock in the passenger seat and Arissa in the back, leaning forward to lick her man’s tattooed neck.

“Blood,” the Blade said. He braked the car and jerked his head at Cal, who got out, took a hit of weed, and nodded at Joel. He said,

“Happenin, bred,” but Joel made no reply. Instead, he said to the Blade, “Neal Wyatt ain’t actin like he sorted, mon.”

The Blade smiled, without amusement or pleasure. “Listen to him,”

he said. “Spite of everyt’ing, you are the mon. So. You ready for Rissa, den? She likes ’em young.”

Arissa’s tongue came out and ran along the edge of the Blade’s ear.

“You sort dat bloke?” Joel demanded. “Cos you and me, we had a deal.”

The Blade’s eyes narrowed. In the car’s overhead light, the serpent on his cheek moved with the muscle in his jaw clenching. He said, “Get in, blood,” and jerked his head towards the backseat. “We got plans to make now you such a big mon.”

Cal flipped the seat forward. Joel looked at him to see if there was a sign on his face that would tell him what was going to happen next. But Cal was unreadable, and the weed he’d smoked hadn’t loosened his features.

Joel got into the car. A large dog-eared A to Z lay open, facedown on the seat. When he moved it to one side, he saw that it covered a ragged burn hole in the seat’s upholstery. Someone had been plucking at this, and stuffing leaked out from inside.

When Cal got back into the car, the Blade took off before the door was closed. Tyres squealed like something from a bad fi lm noir, and Joel was thrown back against the seat. Arissa cried, “Baby, do it.” She draped her arms over her man’s chest and resumed licking his neck. Joel kept his gaze away from her. He couldn’t help thinking about his sister. She’d been the Blade’s, before Arissa. He couldn’t imagine her in this girl’s place.

“How old’re you, blood?”

Joel met the Blade’s gaze in the mirror. They took a turn too fast, and Arissa slammed to one side. She giggled, rose up, and hung over the front seat to ease her hands down the front of the Blade’s black sweater. Cal glanced back at Joel and offered him a toke of his spliff. Joel shook his head. Cal jerked the spliff towards him more insistently. There was something in his eyes, a message he was meant to understand. Joel took the spliff. He’d never smoked weed, but he’d seen it done. He sucked in shallowly and managed not to cough. Cal nodded.

“Twelve,” Joel said in answer to the Blade’s question.

“Twelve. T-welve. You a tough little shit. You di’n’t tell me before when I ask: You still got your cherry?”

Joel said, “Neal Wyatt ain’t actin like he sorted, Stanley. I did what you tol’ me. When you doin your part?”