What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

23 The Blade drove Joel back to Edenham Estate, and all the way there the weapon lay in Joel’s lap like a cobra coiled. He had no intention of using it. Touching it had been unnerving enough. The Blade had thrust it at him—handle first— and told him to get used to it: the heft and the feel, cold metal and power and everyone in the street from now on looking at him and seeing a real man. For a real man was capable of violence, so no one messed a real man about. Respect was the order of the day when someone had a decent pistol upon him.

There were no bullets for the piece, and Joel was glad of that. He could only imagine what the future might have held had the weapon actually been loaded: Toby coming upon it no matter how well he had stowed it away; Toby thinking it was a toy and firing it without knowing it could kill; Toby shooting Joel by accident, shooting Ness, shooting Kendra, shooting Dix.

The Blade reached across him and opened the door. He said, “We straight on dis, mon? Y’unnerstan how t’ings go down?”

Joel looked at him. “Dis is all? You sort out Neal after? Cos I ain’t—”

“You calling the Blade a liar?” His tone was hard. “Seems to me you do what the Blade wants doing, not th’other way round.”

Joel said, “I did Kensal Green Cemetery like you wanted. How d’I know you ain’t just goin to ask for summick else, I do dis?”

“You don’t know, bred,” the Blade replied. “You just show you trust. Trust and obey. Dat’s how it works. You don’t trust the Blade, the Blade got no reason to trust you back.”

“Yeah. But if I get caught—”

“Well, dat’s th’ point, Jo-ell. ’F you get caught, wha’ you going to do? You grass the Blade or you play dumb? Wha’ll it be? Anyway, see you don’t get caught. You c’n run, innit. You got a piece. What d’you ’xpect to happen you take some care?” He smiled, taking out a spliff and lighting it, watching Joel over a flame that made his eyes look as if sparks danced in them. “You a clever little sod, Jo-ell. Dat’s your whole family. Clever as hell. So I see you doing dis job jus’ fine. An’ look at it like another step, blood. Bring you one bit closer to who you meant to be. So take that piece now, and get going, mon. Cal’ll let you know when you meant to act.”

Joel looked from the Blade to Edenham Estate. He couldn’t see his aunt’s house from this spot, but he knew what awaited him when he climbed the steps to her front door: what went for family in his world, as well as his responsibilities to them.

He had his rucksack with him from Wield Words Not Weapons, and he unbuckled it, shoving the pistol as far down as it would go. He got out of the car and bent to have a final word with the Blade.

“Later, mon,” he said with a nod.

The Blade offered him a smile made lazy by weed. “Later, bred,” he said. “And tell that cunt sister of yours hello.”

Joel shut the door smartly on the Blade’s laughter. He said to no one, “Yeah, I’ll do that, Stanley. Fuck you,” as the car shot off along the road in the direction of Meanwhile Gardens.

Joel trudged to his aunt’s house. He was deep in thought and most of those thoughts involved telling himself that he could do what the Blade was asking him to do. There was little enough risk. With Cal there to help him choose the victim—because Joel knew that Cal would not stand by idly and let him make the choice on his own without advice—how much time and effort and risk were involved in performing a garden variety mugging? He could even make it easier on himself by simply snatching someone’s bag. The Blade hadn’t said he had to stand there while some Asian woman pawed through her belongings with shaking hands, looking for her purse to hand over. He’d just said he wanted Joel to take cash from an Asian woman in the street. That was the limit of what his instructions had been. Certainly, Joel thought, he could interpret them in whatever way he wanted to.

For Joel, everything in that evening seemed to point to the ease with which he’d be able to accomplish this task for the Blade. He’d gone looking for the man, but the Blade had found him. Their entire encounter had ended just about the time that Wield Words Not Weapons ended as well. He was back at home unmolested and he even had notes from the critique to which he’d exposed his miserable poetry. All this could do nothing save improve his position in the eyes of his aunt. And if all that was not a sign of what he was meant to do next, what was?

Joel expected Kendra to be sitting at the kitchen table with her eyes fixed on the clock, testing the veracity of his announced plans for the evening. But when he got inside, he found the ground floor empty and dark. Sounds came from above, so he climbed the stairs. In the sitting room, a video was playing: a gang of train robbers on horseback galloping away from a blown-up boxcar as money blew everywhere and a posse pursued them. But no one was there. Joel hesitated, listening and worrying, with his rucksack feeling heavier than it ought. He climbed the second set of stairs, where he saw a strip of light beneath his bedroom door and heard the sound of rhythmically creaking bedsprings from behind his aunt’s. The latter was enough to tell him why Kendra hadn’t been waiting for him. He opened his own bedroom door and found Toby awake, sitting up in bed, using marking pens to decorate his skateboard.

“Dix give ’em to me,” Toby told Joel without preamble. He was referring to the pens. “He bring ’em home from the caff wiv a colouring book ’s well. Colouring book’s for babies, but I like the pens good enough. He brought a video dat I was meant to watch cos he want to do Aunt Ken.”

“Why di’n’t you watch the video?” Joel asked.

Toby examined his artwork closely, squinting at it as if this would alter its merit in some way. “Di’n’t like to watch it by myself,” he said.

“Where’s Ness?”

“Wiv dat lady an’ her son.”

“What lady and her son?”

“From the drop-in centre. They went for dinner someplace. Ness even phoned and asked Aunt Ken could she go.”

This was a startling development, which caused Joel no little wonder. It marked change in Ness, and while the courtesy of a phone call to her aunt wasn’t an earth-shattering event, it gave Joel pause. Toby held up the skateboard for his inspection. Joel saw that he’d drawn a lightning bolt upon it, making it multicoloured and most of the time staying within the original lines he’d sketched out. Joel said,

“Nice, Tobe,” and he set his rucksack on his bed, all too aware of what it contained and determined to put it somewhere safe as soon as Toby fell asleep.

“Yeah,” Toby said, “but I’m t’inkin, Joel.”

“’Bout what?”

“Dis board. If I do it up nice and we take it to Mum, d’you t’ink it might make her better? I like it a lot and I wan’ to keep it, but if Mum had it from me an’ if you told her what it was an’ all dat . . .”

Toby looked so hopeful that Joel didn’t know what to tell him. He understood what his brother was thinking: If he made the ultimate sacrifi ce for their mother, wouldn’t that somehow mean something to God or to whoever decided which person fell ill, which person stayed ill, and which person recovered? For Toby, giving Carole Campbell the skateboard would be akin to giving her the lava lamp. It would be a case of hand over something you love above all else and surely the recipient of this object would see that she counted so greatly in your life that she would want to be part of it.

Joel doubted it would work, but he was willing to give it a try. He said, “Next time we go, Tobe, we take that skateboard. But you got to learn to ride it first. You get good on it, you c’n show Mum. That’ll take her mind off what’s botherin her and maybe she c’n come home.”

“You t’ink?” Toby asked, his face bright.

“Yeah. Dat’s what I think,” Joel lied.

THE HOPE OF Carole Campbell’s improvement existed in varying degrees within her children. Its presence was largest within Toby, whose limited experience had not yet taught him to be leery of having expectations. In Joel it was a fleeting thought whenever he had to make a decision that involved the care and protection of his family. In Ness, however, Carole was a passing and summarily rejected thought. The girl was too busy to entertain fantasies in which her mother returned to their lives as the whole and functioning human being she had never been.

Majidah and Sayf al Din were largely responsible for this. As were having a plan for the future and a route to follow in achieving that plan.

Ness first paid a call upon Fabia Bender at the Youth Offending Team’s offices in Oxford Gardens. There, she told the social worker that she would be pleased and extremely grateful—these last two words, including the emphasis, were spoken at Majidah’s insistence—to accept the scholarship or grant or charity money or whatever it was that would allow her to take a single millinery course during the next term at college. Fabia declared herself delighted with this information, although she’d been brought into the picture by Majidah every step of the way to this destination. She allowed Ness to lay out the entire plan and she expressed interest, encouragement, and delight as Sayf al Din’s offer of employment was explained to her, along with Majidah’s loan, the manner of repayment, the schedule of work, the reduced hours at the child drop-in centre, and everything else remotely related to Ness’s circumstances. Everything, Fabia Bender told her, would be approved by the magistrate.

Fabia used Ness’s visit to ask about Joel as well. But on this topic, Ness was not forthcoming. She didn’t trust the social worker that far and, beyond that, she didn’t really know what was going on with her brother. Joel had become far more watchful and secretive than he’d been in the past.

Naturally, working for Sayf al Din didn’t unfold the way Ness would have liked it to. In her imagination, she descended upon his studio ablaze with ideas that he embraced, allowing her access to all his supplies and equipment. Her fantasy had it that he accepted a commission from the Royal Opera—or perhaps from a fi lm company producing an enormous costume drama—and that commission proved far too large for one man to design by himself. Casting about for a partner, he chose Ness the way the prince eternally chooses Cinderella. She expressed a suitable amount of humble doubt about her capabilities, all of which he brushed aside. She rose to the occasion, created one masterwork after another in rapid succession, earning herself a reputation, Sayf al Din’s gratitude, and a permanent creative partnership with him.

The reality was that she began her tenure in the Asian man’s studio with broom in hand, far more like Cinderella’s earlier life than her later days post fairy godmother’s appearance on the scene. She was a oneperson clean-up crew, assigned to keep the studio in order via dustpan, cleaning rags, mops, and the like. She chafed under this assignment, but she gritted her teeth and did it.

The day Sayf al Din finally allowed her to use a glue gun was thus one of celebration. The assignment was simple enough, involving beads fi xed to a band that was a very small part of the overall headpiece being fashioned. But even though the job was virtually insignificant, it signaled a step forward. So intent was Ness upon doing it perfectly and thus proving her superiority over the other workers, that it took her far longer than it should have done and it placed her in the studio far later than she should have been. There was no danger in her being there, since Sayf al Din was working as well. He even walked her to the underground station when she was finally ready to go home for the day, to make certain she arrived there unmolested. They chatted as they walked; he promised her work of a more advanced nature. She was doing well, she was catching on, she was responsible, and she was the kind of person he wanted working with him. With him, he said, not for him. Ness burned a little more brightly at the thought of the partnership that with implied.

Once he’d seen her through the turnstile in the Covent Garden underground station, Sayf al Din returned to his studio to finish up his own work. He had no worries about Ness getting home, since she had only to change lines at King’s Cross Station—which could be accomplished in the light of the underground tunnels—and afterwards, the walk to Edenham Estate from Westbourne Park station was less than ten minutes and closer to five if she was brisk about it. Sayf al Din had done his duty as prescribed by his mother, whose interest in the troublesome teenager was a source of mystification for him.

Because the delights of the day had been just that—delightful— Ness was full of future imaginings as she walked towards home from the underground station. Thus, she crossed over Elkstone Road with her mind somewhat fogged by her success. She walked along the edge of Meanwhile Gardens without the full consciousness required by a wintertime stroll along a dimly lit park in a questionable part of town.

She saw nothing. But she was seen. From midway down the spiral stairs—and consequently sheltered from view—a group of watchers had long waited for just such a moment. They saw Ness cross over Elkstone Road, and a nod was all they needed to tell them this was the girl they’d been looking for.

They moved with the silence and grace of cats, down the stairs and along the path. They hurried over the rise of land that marked one of the hillocks inside the garden, and by the time Ness reached the entrance to the place—never locked, for there were no gates—they were there as well.

“Yellow-skin bitch gonna give us some or wha’?” was the question Ness heard coming from behind her. Because she was feeling good, capable, and equal to anything, she broke the rule that might otherwise have ensured her safety. Rather than call out for help, run, blow a whistle, scream, or otherwise draw attention to her potential danger—which behaviour, it must be admitted, had only a limited possibility of success—she turned. She could tell the voice was young. She thought herself evenly matched to youth.

What she had not counted on was the number of them. What she did not realise was that this was no fortuitous encounter. There were eight boys behind her, and by the time she understood the extent to which she was outnumbered, they were upon her. One face emerged from the pack of them, genetically odd and further contorted by design and by loathing. Before she could put a name to that face, a blow on her back caused her to fall forward. Her arms were grabbed. She was dragged from the pavement into the park. She screamed. A hand clamped over her mouth.

“You gonna like wha’ we give you, bitch,” Neal Wyatt said.

NEITHER KENDRA NOR Dix was at home when three sharp raps sounded on the front door, followed by an accented male Asian voice. Had it not been for that voice, Joel wouldn’t have answered. As it was, he still hesitated until he heard the man say, “You please must open the door at once, as I fear this poor young lady may be seriously injured.”

Joel fumbled with the dead bolt and jerked the door open. A familiarlooking older Asian with heavy rimmed glasses, wearing shalwar kamis topped by an overcoat, had both arms around Ness. She was sagging against him, clinging to his coat’s lapel. Her jacket and scarf were missing, and her jersey was torn at the right shoulder and otherwise splattered with filth and blood. Round her jaw were ugly marks, the sort that came from trying to hold someone’s mouth closed or fully open.

“Where are your parents, young man?” the man asked. He introduced himself as Ubayy Mochi. “This poor girl was set upon in the gardens, I’m afraid.”

“Ness?” was the only thing Joel could say. “Nessa? Ness?” He was afraid to touch her. He stepped back from the door and heard Toby coming down the stairs from above. He called over his shoulder, “Tobe, you stay upstairs, okay? You watch the telly? ’S only Ness, okay?”

This was as good as an invitation. Toby descended the rest of the way and came through the kitchen. He stopped short, hugging his skateboard to his chest. He looked at Ness, then at Joel. He began immediately to cry, caught between fear and confusion.

“Shit,” Joel muttered. He himself was trapped between soothing Toby and doing something to care for their sister. He didn’t know how to accomplish either. He stood like a statue and waited for something to happen next.

“Where are your parents?” Ubayy Mochi asked again, more insistently this time. He urged Ness across the threshold. “Something must be done about this girl.”

“We ain’t got parents,” Joel responded, and this seemed to produce a further wail from Toby.

“Surely you do not live here alone?”

“We got an auntie.”

“You must then fetch her, boy.”

That was impossible, as Kendra was out for the evening with Cordie. But she had her mobile with her, so Joel stumbled to the kitchen to phone her. Mochi followed with Ness, passing Toby, who reached out to touch his sister’s thigh. He sobbed only louder when Ness flinched away from him.

Ubayy Mochi sat Ness in one of the kitchen chairs, and this revealed more of what had happened to her. She’d worn a short skirt that day, which was now ripped to the waist. Her tights were missing. So were her knickers.

Joel said, “Ness. Nessa. Wha’ happened? Who hurt you? Who did . . . ?”

But in truth he didn’t want her to answer him because he knew who had done it, he knew why, and he knew what it meant. When he heard his aunt’s voice on her mobile, he told her only that she had to come home. He said, “It’s Ness.”

“What’s she done?” Kendra asked.

The unexpected impact of the question made Joel gasp for a breath that did not come easily. He disconnected the call. He remained at one side of the kitchen, by the phone. Toby came to him, wanting comfort. Joel had nothing to offer his little brother.

Ubayy Mochi put on the kettle for want of something to do. Joel told him that their aunt was coming—although he didn’t know this to be the fact—and he waited for the Asian man to leave. But it became quite clear that Mochi had no intention of doing that. He said, “Fetch the tea, young man. And the milk and the sugar. And can you do nothing about that poor little boy?”

Joel said, “Toby, you got to shut up.”

Toby sobbed, “Someone bunged up Ness. She i’n’t talking. Why i’n’t she talking?”

Ness’s silence was unnerving Joel as well. His sister in a rage he could cope with, but he had no resources to deal with this. He said,

“Toby. Shut up, okay?”

“But Ness—”

“I said shut the fuck up!” Joel cried. “Get out ’f here. Go upstairs. Get out! You ain’t stupid, so do it ’fore I kick your arse.”

Toby clattered out of the room like an animal in flight. His broken yowls echoed back down the stairway. He went up the next flight, and a slamming door told Joel he’d hidden himself away in their bedroom. That left only Ness, Ubayy Mochi, and the injunction to make tea. Joel set about this although in the end, no one drank a single cup of it, and they found it the next morning still brewing, a cold, foul mess that was poured down the drain.

When Kendra arrived, it was to discover a tableau comprising a complete stranger, her niece, and Joel: two of them at the old pine table and the other standing in front of the sink. She came into the house, calling out Joel’s name. She said, “What’s going on?” before she saw them. She understood without needing to be told. She went to the phone. She punched the three nines and spoke tersely, in the perfect English she’d been taught for a moment just like this, the kind of English that got results. When she had completed the phone call, she went to Ness.

“They’ll meet us in Casualty,” she said. “Can you walk, Nessa?” And to the Asian man, “Where’d it happen? Who was it? What’d you see?”

Ubayy Mochi explained in a low voice, casting a look at Joel. He sought to protect him from disturbing knowledge, but Joel heard anyway, not that hearing was necessary at that point.

A gang of boys had set upon the young lady. Ubayy Mochi did not know where they had found her, but it was inconceivable to him that any young girl would be walking through Meanwhile Gardens by herself after dark. So they must have fetched her from some place else. But they’d taken her to where the footpath next to the Grand Union Canal passed beneath the bridge carrying Great Western Road over the water. There, thinking themselves safe from sight, they assaulted her and would no doubt have done even worse than they’d done but Mochi—roused from his nightly meditation practice by a single scream—had gone to the window of his small flat and had seen what was going on.

“I possess a powerful torch,” he said, “which I find quite useful for just such moments. This I shone upon them. I shouted that I recognised them—although I fear this is not the truth—and I told them I would name them to the police. They ran off. I went to this young lady’s assistance.”

“You ring the cops?”

“There was no time. Had I done so . . . Considering the length of time between a phone call and their arrival on the scene . . .” The man looked from Kendra to Ness. He said delicately, “I believe those boys had not yet . . . I felt it imperative to see to her safety first.”

“Thank God,” Kendra said. “They di’n’t rape you then, Ness? Those boys di’n’t rape you?”

Ness stirred at this, for the first time focusing on someone. She said,

“Wha’?”

“I asked did those boys rape you, Ness?”

“Like tha’s the worst c’n happen or summick?”

“Nessa, I’m asking because we got to tell the cops—”

“No. Lemme set you straight. Rape ain’t the worst. Just the end of the worst. Just the end, okay? Just the end, the . . .” And she began to cry. But on the subject of what had happened to her, she would say no more.

This continued to be the case in Casualty, where her injuries were seen to. Physically, they were superficial, requiring only ointments and plasters. In other ways, they were profound. When questioned by a youthful white constable with beads of sweat shining on his upper lip, she declared herself without memory of what exactly had happened after the time she’d left the underground station and until she’d found herself sitting at the table in her aunt’s kitchen. She didn’t know who had set upon her. She didn’t know how many of them there were. The constable didn’t ask any whys of her, such as why she might have been targeted for assault. People were targeted for assault all the time, by virtue of being out by themselves, foolishly, after dark. He told her to take some care next time, and he handed over a pamphlet called “Awareness and Defence.” She should read it, he told her. Half the battle against thugs was knowing what they were likely to do and when they were likely to do it. He closed his notebook and told them to come down to the Harrow Road station in the next day or two when Ness was able. There would be a statement for her to sign and, if she wished, she could look through their collection of mug shots and old e-fits—for whatever good it might do, he added unhelpfully—to see if she could pick out one or more of her attackers.

“Yeah. Right. I’ll do that,” was Ness’s reply.

She knew the dance. Everyone knew the dance. Nothing would be done because nothing could be done. But as things happened, that suited Ness fine.

She said nothing more on the matter. She acted as if the attack upon her was moving water under the bridge of her life. But that armour of indifference that she’d worn for so long prior to her acquaintance with Majidah and Sayf al Din began to cover her once again, an insentient insulation that held the world at bay.

Everyone reacted differently to Ness’s unreal calm, depending upon their understanding of human nature and the level of energy they possessed. Kendra lied to herself, believing she was giving Ness “time to recover” when in reality she was embracing the opportunity to pretend that life was returning to normalcy. Dix kept a wary distance from Ness, unequal to the task of being a father to her in these circumstances. Toby developed a neediness that had him clinging to all who would allow it. Joel watched, waited, and knew not only the truth but what had to be done in response.

Only Majidah took Ness on directly. “You must not allow this matter to cloud your vision,” she said to her. “What happened to you was terrible. Do not think I do not know that. But to give up on yourself, to abjure your plans . . . This hands triumph over to evil, and that you must never do, Vanessa.”

“Wha’ever,” was Ness’s response. She went through the motions of getting on with what she’d been doing so as not to arouse anyone’s suspicions, but she, too, watched and waited.

JOEL SAW TOBY to Middle Row School and then himself went truant. He sought out Cal Hancock, and he found the graffiti artist in Meanwhile Gardens, generously handing over a spliff to three girls who’d rolled their school uniforms at the waist to make them shorter and themselves appear sexier, a questionable manoeuvre considering the general dowdiness of the rest of their apparel. They were standing on the spiral steps, with Cal sitting below them. He saw Joel and said, “Happenin, mon?” and then to the girls, “Have it ’f you want,” with a nod at the spliff. They took the hint and disappeared up the stairs, passing the weed among them.

“Early for tokin up,” Joel noted.

Cal gave him a lazy, drug-induced salute. “Never too early for dat, mon. You lookin for me or for him?”

“Here to do what the Blade wants doing,” Joel said. “Neal Wyatt went after my sister, mon. I want him sorted.”

“Yeah? You got the means, I unnerstan. So whyn’t you sort him yourself?”

“I ain’t killin him, Cal,” Joel said. “And I ain’t ’xactly got bullets for the piece.”

“So use it to scare th’ fuck out ’f him.”

“Then he comes back strong ’nother time. Him and his crew. Goin after Toby. Or Aunt Ken. Look. I want the Blade to do what needs bein done to sort this bloke. So who’s the bitch I’m meant to mug?”

Cal studied Joel before he got to his feet. He said, “You bring the piece?”

“In my rucksack here.”

“Okay, den. Le’s go.”

Cal led him out of the gardens and beneath the Westway Flyover. They passed the tube station and began to crisscross streets until they arrived at the northern section of Portobello Road, not far from where—in what felt to Joel like the far distant past—he had bought the lava lamp for Toby. There, Cal pointed out a newsagent’s shop. He said, “Turns out dis is perfec’ timin, mon. She comes out reg’lar every day round dis time. You hang till I tell you who she is.”

Joel didn’t know if this was the truth or a lie, but he found it didn’t much matter. He just wanted to get the job done. So he positioned himself in a doorway next to Cal, the entrance to an abandoned bakery whose windows were covered in plywood. Cal lit up yet another spliff— the man had an endless supply of them, it seemed—and then handed it over. Joel took a hit and breathed in more deeply this time. He took another and then a third. He would have gone on toking up had Cal not taken the weed from him with a low laugh, saying, “Hang on wiv dat, bred. You wan’ to be able to stand, speck.”

Joel’s brain felt larger. He himself felt more relaxed, more capable, far less frightened, even rather amused by what was to happen in the next few minutes to what he thought of as some poor dumb cow. He said, “Whatever,” and he dug around in his rucksack till he found his pistol. He slipped it into the pocket of his anorak, where it felt heavy and secure against his thigh.

“There she is, blood,” Cal murmured.

Joel looked around the corner of the old bakery’s entry. He saw that an Asian lady had come out of the newagent’s. She wore a man’s overcoat, and she limped along with the aid of a stick. A leather bag dangled from her shoulder. She was, according to Cal, “Easy money, mon. She don’t even look round to see ’f she safe. She waitin to be mugged. Go ’head. Take you less ’n a minute.”

It was clear that the woman didn’t stand a chance, but suddenly Joel wasn’t so sure how he was meant to accomplish the Blade’s wishes in this matter. He said, “C’n I jus’ snatch her bag, den? Stead of makin her hand over her money?”

“No way, mon. The Blade wants you face-to-face wiv the bitch.”

“We wait till later, den. We do it af’er dark. Try ’nother woman. Cos I run by her and grab the bag, she doesn’ see me. But ’f I go face-toface in daytime—”

“Shit, we look the same to ’em, mon. Go on wiv you. You goin to do it, you got to do it now.”

“But I don’ look the same to ’em. Let me snatch the bag on the run, Cal. We c’n tell the Blade I stuck her up. How’s he gonna know—”

“I ain’t lyin to the Blade. He find out the truth, you don’t want to be round him, b’lieve it. So go ahead. Stick her up. We runnin out of time on dis, mon.”

That much was true. For across the street, the targeted woman was hobbling along at a relatively steady pace, approaching the street corner. If she turned there and disappeared from view, the opportunity Joel had could easily be gone.

He ducked out of the entry to the derelict bakery. He crossed over the road and jogged to catch up with the woman. He kept his hand curled around the gun in his pocket, sincerely hoping he would not have to take it out. The pistol scared him as much as it would likely scare the woman whose money and credit cards he meant to have.

He came upon her and grabbed her arm. He said, ridiculously, “’Scuse me,” driven by years of instruction about common courtesy. Then he altered his tone, roughing it up as the woman turned to face him. “Give us your money,” he said. “Hand it over. I’ll have credit cards ’s well.”

The woman’s face was lined and sad. She seemed not all present. In this, she reminded Joel of his mother.

“I said,” Joel told her roughly. “Give us the money. The money, bitch.”

She did nothing.

There was no alternative. Joel pulled out the gun. “Money,” he said.

“Y’unnerstan me now?”

She screamed then. She screamed twice, three times. Joel grabbed her bag and jerked it from her. She toppled to her knees. Even as she fell, she continued to scream.

Joel shoved the gun back into his pocket. He began to run. He didn’t think of the Asian woman, the shopkeepers, people in the street, or Cal Hancock. All he thought of was getting out of the area. He tore down Portobello Road. He veered around the first corner he came to. He did this again and again, going left and going right, until he found himself finally on Westbourne Park Road, where the traffic was heavier, a bus was trundling to the kerb, and a panda car was five yards away and coming steadily in his direction.

Joel halted on the edge of a hair. He looked frantically for a way to escape. He hopped over the low wall to a housing estate. He set off across a winter-pruned rose garden. Behind him, he heard someone yell, “Stop!” Two car doors slammed in rapid succession. He kept going, for he was running for his life, for the lives of his siblings, for his entire future. But he wasn’t fast enough.

Near the second building he came to, a hand clamped on to the back of his anorak. An arm went around his waist and threw him to the ground, and a foot stamped onto the small of his back. A voice said, “So what’ve got here, then?” and the question itself told Joel the tale:

The cops hadn’t been after him. Their presence was not the result of an Asian woman screaming on Portobello Road. How could it have been? The police got around to responding to crimes committed in the street when they got around to responding to crimes committed in the street. How long had it taken them to get to the scene when Joel’s own father had been shot? Fifteen minutes? More? And that had been a shooting, while this was simply a woman screaming in Portobello Road. Cops didn’t respond to that with their tails on fire.

Joel swore. He struggled to get free. He was hauled upward till he was eye to eye with a uniformed constable possessing a face like the underside of a mushroom. The man pushed Joel back towards the street where he tossed him against the side of the panda car next to which his partner was standing. The gun Joel carried clanged against the metal of the car, and that brought the other constable to assist as the first cried, “Pat! This bugger’s got a weapon!”

A crowd began to gather and Joel looked frantically around them to find Cal. He’d not had the presence of mind to toss away the Asian woman’s shoulder bag, so he was caught and he knew very well he was done for. He didn’t know what they did to muggers. Less did he know what they did to boys who were caught with pistols, whether they were loaded or not. It wouldn’t be good, though. He understood that much.

One of the constables took the gun from his pocket as the other put his hand on Joel’s head and lowered him to the backseat of the car. The shoulder bag was tossed into the front of the car, after which the two constables climbed inside. The driver turned on the roof lights to get the gathering crowd to disperse. Joel saw faces he did not recognise as the car pulled from the kerb. None of them were friendly. Heads shook, eyes looked sorrowful, fists clenched. Joel was unsure whether all this was directed towards him or towards the cops. What he was sure of was that Cal Hancock’s head, eyes, and fists were not among them.

BACK AT THE Harrow Road police station, Joel found himself in the same interview room he’d been in before. The same individuals danced attendance on him as well. Fabia Bender sat opposite him in the unmoving chair at the unmoving table. At her side was Sergeant Starr, whose black skin shone like satin beneath the room’s otherwise unforgiving light. A duty solicitor had joined Joel on his side of the table, and this was a new development. The presence of this lawyer—a stringy-haired blonde girl in shoes with foolishly elongated points and a wrinkled black trouser suit—informed Joel of how serious his present situation was.

August Starr wanted to know about the gun, for the Asian woman was a closed book to him. She’d been scraped up around the knees, but otherwise unharmed aside from the fact that a few years had been taken off her life by the terror of what she’d gone through. Nonetheless, she had her bag returned to her, along with her money and her credit cards, so her part of the equation was solved once she identified Joel as the boy who’d mugged her. She was a signed, sealed, and delivered matter in August Starr’s mind. The gun, however, was not.

In a society in which handguns had once been virtually nonexistent among the thieving and murdering classes, they were now becoming disturbingly prevalent. That this was a direct result of the easing of borders that came along with European unification—which was, to some, just another term for opening one’s arms to smuggling into the country everything from cigarettes to explosives—could have been mooted forever, and Sergeant Starr had no time for such mooting. The fact was that guns were here, in his community. All he wanted to know was how a twelve-year-old boy had got his hands on one.

Joel told Starr that he’d found the gun. Back of the charity shop where his aunt worked, he said. There was an alley there with skips and wheelie bins, all over the place. He’d found the gun inside one of them while doing some bin diving one afternoon. He didn’t remember which.

Where, exactly? Starr wanted to know. He was taking notes as well as recording Joel’s every word.

Just in one of the bins, Joel told him. Like he said, he didn’t remember which one. It was wrapped up in someone’s rubbish, in a plastic carrier bag.

What kind of carrier bag? Starr asked him, and he wrote those words— carrier and bag—in a well-schooled script on a new page in his notebook, signaling the expectation that they were at last getting somewhere and triggering in Joel the determination to lead them nowhere at all.

Joel said he didn’t know what sort of bag the gun had been in. It could have been a Sainsbury bag. It could have been a Boots bag.

Boots or Sainsbury? August Starr made this sound like a fascinating detail. He wrote Boots and Sainsbury in his notebook as well. He pointed out that this was quite an odd detail since those bags were so very different from each other. They weren’t even the same colour and, even if that were not the case, you wouldn’t expect to find rubbish inside of a Boots bag, would you?

In this, Joel could sense a trick. He looked at the duty solicitor in the hope she would intervene in some way, as lawyers did on the television when they talked assertively about “my client” and “the law.” But the solicitor said nothing. Her concerns—although Joel would never know this—revolved around the pregnancy test she’d administered to herself that morning, right there in the police station in the woman’s lavatory.

Fabia Bender was the one to speak. Boots bags were too fl imsy to pack rubbish into, she explained to Joel. A gun would likely burst right through a Boots bag. So didn’t Joel prefer to tell Sergeant Starr the truth? It would be far easier if he did that, dear.

Joel said nothing. He would tough it out, he decided. The best thing to do was to keep his mouth shut. He was twelve years old, after all. What were they going to do to him?

Into his extended silence, Fabia Bender asked if she might have a private word with Joel. Finally, his solicitor spoke. She said that no one was going to speak to her client—Joel was gratifi ed to hear her use that term—without his solicitor being present. Starr pointed out that there was no cause for anyone to be unreasonable about anything since all they were trying to do at the moment was sort out the truth. The solicitor said, “Nonetheless,” but was interrupted by Fabia Bender, who declared that all anyone wanted was the best for the boy, whereupon August Starr cut in on them both but was unable to make a complete statement since the door to the interview room opened before he said anything other than, “Let’s hang on and consider—”

A female constable said, “C’n I have a word, Sergeant?” and Starr stepped out of the room. During the two minutes that he was gone, the solicitor gave Fabia Bender a short lecture on what she referred to as “the rights of the accused under British law, madam, when the accused is a juvenile.” She said that she’d expected Miss Bender to know all this, considering her line of employment, a remark that set Fabia Bender off. But before Fabia could complete a reply that put the solicitor in her place, the sergeant returned. He slapped his notebook onto the table and said without looking at anyone but Joel, “You’re free to go.”

All three of them stared at the policeman in various stages of what could only be called gobsmacked. Then the solicitor stood. She smiled triumphantly, as if she’d somehow managed to effect this development, and said, “Come along, Joel.”

As the door closed behind them, leaving the other two within the room, Joel heard Fabia Bender say, “But, August, what’s happened?”

He also heard Starr’s terse reply. “I don’t God damn bloody know, do I.”

IN VERY SHORT order, with a hasty good-bye from the duty solicitor and an unfriendly look from the special constable behind the reception counter, Joel was released from custody. He found himself out on the pavement in front of the station: no phone call made to his aunt or to anyone else, no request for someone to fetch the wayward youth home, to school, or to a remand centre.

Joel couldn’t sort out what had happened. One moment he’d been seeing his freedom and his life going up in smoke. The next moment it had all been a dream. Without a slap on the wrist. Without a lecture. Without a word. It didn’t make sense.

He headed up the road towards the Prince of Wales pub on the corner. He walked on psychological tiptoes, all the way expecting a cop to leap out of a doorway, laughing at the trick that had just been played on a very foolish boy. But in that, too, Joel found his anticipation went unfulfilled. Instead, he made it to the corner before a car pulled up along the kerb. It halted next to Joel. Its passenger door opened. Cal Hancock got out.

Joel didn’t need to see who the driver was. He got into the back without question when Cal nodded at him. The car shot into the street. Joel wasn’t so foolish as to believe the Blade intended to drive him home.

No one spoke, and Joel found this an unnerving state of affairs, far more unnerving than if the Blade had railed at him. He’d failed in his mission to mug the Asian lady, and that was bad. What was worse was that he’d lost the gun. But what was the very worst of all was that he’d lost the gun to the cops. They’d try to trace it. It probably had the Blade’s fingerprints on it. If the cops had the Blade’s prints on file for some reason, there would be enormous trouble for the man. And this didn’t even begin to address the money that was lost now that the gun could not be sold in the street.

The tension in the car felt to Joel like a windless, tropical day. He couldn’t bear what it was doing to his stomach, so he said, “How’d I get out, mon?” and he directed the question to either of the two men in the front seat.

Neither answered. The Blade turned a corner too quickly and had to swerve to avoid a colourfully garbed African woman who was using a zebra crossing. He swore and called her a fucking freak show.

Joel said, “Cheers, then,” referring to whatever the Blade had done to get him out of trouble. He knew that such assistance had to have come from the Blade, as there was simply no way he could have walked out of the Harrow Road police station otherwise. It was one thing to be caught trying to snatch a purse or trying to mug someone out on the pavement somewhere. That sort of thing resulted in an appearance in front of the magistrate followed by a spate of counseling with someone like Fabia Bender or a period of community service at a place similar to the child drop-in centre in Meanwhile Gardens. But it was quite another thing to have been caught with a weapon upon you. Knives were bad enough. But guns . . . ? Guns meant more than a talking-to by a well-meaning but essentially weary adult.

So Joel couldn’t imagine what the Blade had done to get him out of the clutches of the police. More, he couldn’t imagine why he’d done it unless he thought Joel was on the verge of grassing him up, in which case Joel would be in need of the kind of sorting out he’d hoped the Blade would use upon Neal Wyatt.

They headed nowhere near Edenham Estate. This reinforced in Joel’s mind the thought that he was indeed going to be dealt with. Not far away from where they were lay the stretch of land that was Wormwood Scrubs. Joel knew it would be an easy matter for the Blade to march him out there—broad daylight or not—and put a bullet through his head, leaving his body for someone to find in a few hours, a few days, even a few weeks. The Blade would know where to leave his body so that it would be found when he wanted it found. And if he didn’t want it found at all, the Blade would know how to manage that, too.

Joel said, “I di’n’t say nuffink, mon. No way.”

Cal cast him a look from the passenger seat, but there was no degree of reassurance to it. This was a different Cal entirely, a man who moved his upper lip in a way that told Joel he was meant to keep his mouth shut. Joel, though, with his life on the line, didn’t see how he would be able to do that.

The Blade changed down gears, and they turned another corner. They passed a newsagent’s shop, where an advertising placard for the Evening Standard announced “Another Serial Killing!” in boldly scrawled blue letters. That seemed to Joel like a definite message about what was to come in very short order, and he felt a resulting weight on his chest. He struggled against his desire to cry.

He dropped his gaze to his lap. He knew exactly how badly he’d cocked up. He’d forced the Blade to pull in a marker—or perhaps to pay off someone in a very big way—and there was simply no walking off with a “Cheers, mon” for such a favour. It wasn’t, in fact, a favour at all. It was an inconceivable inconvenience, and when someone caused the Blade an inconceivable inconvenience, someone was inconceivably inconvenienced in return.

Cal had certainly tried to warn him. But Joel had assumed he had nothing to fear from the Blade as long as he didn’t cross him. And he hadn’t expected to cross him, least of all when he was in the act of doing what he’d been instructed to do.

The car finally jerked to a stop. Joel raised his head to see the A. Q. W. Motors sign that he’d seen before. Despite it being broad daylight, albeit a grey and rain-threatening broad daylight, they’d come to the Blade’s special secret place. They climbed out of the car and went wordlessly into the deserted alley.

The Blade led the way. Cal and Joel followed. Joel tried to get a muttered word from Cal about what was going to happen next, but the graffiti artist didn’t look his way as the Blade unlocked the gate in the old brick wall and jerked his head to them in a sign that they were meant to enter the yard of the abandoned underground station. There he unlocked the door to the erstwhile motor garage. As if he knew that Joel was considering making a useless run for it, the Blade jerked his chin at Cal. Cal took Joel firmly by the arm, in a grip that was neither warm nor friendly.

Inside the old garage, it was pitch dark once the Blade shut the door behind them. Joel heard the sound of a lock clicking into place and he spoke hastily into the gloom. “I di’n’t ’xpect her to scream, mon. Who would’ve, y’unnerstan? She walked wiv a stick and she acted like she di’n’t even know where she was going. You c’n ask Cal. He picked her for me to mug.”

“You blaming Cal?” The Blade’s voice came from quite nearby. Joel started. The man had moved in perfect silence, like the striking snake tattooed on his cheek.

“I ain’t sayin dat,” Joel protested. “I just telling you anyone could’ve done like I did. When she start screamin, I had to get out of there, di’n’t I?”

The Blade said nothing. A moment passed. Joel could hear himself breathing. It was a wheezy sound which he tried and failed to stop. He strained to hear something besides himself, but there didn’t seem to be anything to hear. It was as if they’d all fallen down a great dark hole. Then a click sounded, followed by a pool of light that formed on top of one of the wooden crates from which the Blade had taken the pistol the last time Joel had been in this place. Joel saw that the Blade had moved away from him in silence again, that he’d lit the same electric lantern that he’d used before. It cast elongated shadows against the walls.

Behind Joel then, Cal snicked a match against something. The smell of tobacco joined the other scents—motor oil, mould, dust, and wood rot—in the icy air.

Joel said, “Look, mon—”

“Shut the fuck up.” The Blade turned to a second crate. He prised open the top. He removed a mixture of balled-up newspapers, straw, and Styrofoam pellets, tossing all this to the floor.

There were many more crates in this dismal place than there had been before, and this was a fact that Joel noticed, despite his fear. He gave himself a moment to hope that the newness and the number of them might indicate different contents, but in this he would soon be disappointed. The Blade removed an object thickly wrapped in plastic bubbles. Its size suggested in advance what it was.

Joel knew how unlikely it was that, after his wretched performance in Portobello Road, the Blade was unpacking a gun to give him another try at having it taken by the cops. That meant he had another use for it, and Joel didn’t want to consider what that use might be.

His tumbling thoughts led directly to the loosening of his bowels. He told himself in the roughest language he could manage that he would not defecate in his trousers. If he was meant to pay with his life for his inept performance, then pay he would. But he wouldn’t do it like a sniveling little wanker. He wouldn’t give the Blade that pleasure.

“Cal,” the Blade said, “you got lead wiv you?”

“Got it.” Cal brought forth from his pocket a small box, which he handed over. The Blade loaded the bullets into the weapon with the sureness of movement that indicated long practice. Joel, seeing what he concluded his limited future would be, said, “Hey, mon, hang on.”

“Shut the fuck up,” the Blade told him. “Or can’t you hear?”

“I only want you to unnerstan—”

The Blade slammed home the top of the crate with such force that dust rose around it. “You are one damn stubborn cocksucker motherfucker, ain’t you, Jo-ell?” He advanced on Joel, the gun in his hand. In three steps he was there, and he jabbed the pistol beneath Joel’s chin.

“This enough to get you to plug it, mon?”

Joel squashed his eyes closed. He tried to believe that Cal Hancock possessed enough humanity that he would not simply stand there and watch Joel be blown away to kingdom come. But Cal said nothing, and Joel couldn’t hear him move. He could, on the other hand, smell the Blade’s rank sweat and he could feel the simultaneously cold and fi ery metal of the gun barrel shaping a coin beneath his chin.

“You know what they gen’rally do with wankers your age get caught wiv weapons?” the Blade said into Joel’s ear. “They send ’em away. Couple years in youth de ten tion start it off. How’d you like it in there, Jo-ell? Tossing off in the toilet for the entertainment of the sixteenyear-olds? Bending over when they tell you to afterwards cos you got yours and now they want theirs. Think you’d like that, mon?”

Joel couldn’t answer. He was trying not to pee, trying not to cry, trying not to lose control of his bowels, trying not to pass out because he couldn’t get enough air to fill his lungs.

“Answer me, fucker! And you best tell me wha’ I want to hear.”

“No.” Joel made his lips form the word, although no sound actually came out of him. “I wouldn’ like dat.”

“Well, dat’s what happens, I leave you to the cops.”

“Cheers, mon,” Joel whispered. “I mean it.”

“Oh, fuck you mean it. I oughta blast your bloody face—”

“Please.” Joel despised himself for saying that word. It came out of his mouth, however, before he was able to stop it.

“You know what it took, getting you out ’f there, fucker?” The gun dug more deeply into Joel’s chin. “You t’ink the Blade just picks up the phone and has a word wiv Mr. Chief Constable or summick? You got any idea what dis cost me?”

“I pay you back,” Joel said. “I got fifty pounds and I can—”

“Oh, you pay me back. You pay me back.” With each word the Blade thrust the gun upward, harder.

Joel went with it, rising on his toes. “I will. Jus’ tell me.”

“I’ll tell you, fucker. I’ll God damn tell you.”

The Blade dropped the gun to his side as quickly as he’d raised it. Joel nearly sank to his knees: both with the sudden movement and with his own relief. Cal came up behind him. He led Joel to a crate and pushed him down upon it. Cal’s hands held him there, by the shoulders. They weren’t harsh hands, but they were far from friendly.

“You,” the Blade said, “are going to do exactly like I tell you to do. And if you don’t, Jo-ell, I find you and I deal wiv you. I deal wiv you one way or th’ other. Before the cops get to you or after. Don’t make no difference. You get me, mon?”

Joel nodded. “I get you.”

“An’ I deal wiv your family next. You get dat as well?”

Joel swallowed. “I get you.”

He watched, then, and saw the Blade wipe every vestige of his fi n gerprints from the pistol. He extended it in Joel’s direction. He said,

“You take this piece and you listen good, then. You cock dis one up, and there’s going to be real hell to pay.”