What Came Before He Shot Her

Chapter

25 What Joel had not considered in his careful planning was that he and his siblings had ceased to be part of London’s anonymous mass of children and adolescents who daily go about their lives: in and out of school, taking part in sports, doing homework, flirting, gossiping, shopping, hanging about, mobile phones pressed to their ears or gazed upon raptly as text messages appear, blasting music into their heads via various intriguing electronic devices . . . In an ordinary London world, Joel would have been a fellow among them. But he did not live in an ordinary London world. So when he took the decision to travel out to see his mother, he was not able to do it surreptitiously.

In part, this was because he went to the hospital in the company of Toby, whose absence from school was reported at once. But in part it was also because, having come under closer scrutiny since his brief encounter with the Harrow Road police and owing to a message from Fabia Bender, his own absence from school was duly noted. Both notations triggered a phone call to his aunt.

With Toby missing as well as Joel, Kendra did not leap to the conclusion that Joel was involved in anything risky or illegal. She knew her elder nephew would never jeopardise Toby’s safety. But a serial killer had been stalking young boys just Joel’s age, and since the most recent two boys had been from North London, Kendra could not stop her thoughts from heading ineluctably in that direction, just as they’d done when Joel had gone missing for two nights.

She didn’t arrive at that mental destination immediately. Instead, she did what any woman might have done when informed that her boys were not where they were supposed to be. She phoned home to see if they’d bunked off school to watch videos; she phoned the child dropin centre in the unlikely event they’d gone there to hang about; she phoned the Rainbow Café to check with Dix on the chance he’d taken them to work with him for some reason; ultimately, she panicked. She closed the charity shop and went on the hunt. After driving up streets and through housing estates, she remembered Ivan Weatherall and phoned him as well, to no avail. This sent her into further panic, which was her state when she went into the Rainbow Café.

Dix didn’t join her in full-blown anxiety. He sat her down with a cup of tea and, not as sanguine as Kendra about the probability of Joel’s keeping his brother out of trouble at all costs, he phoned the Harrow Road police. Two boys were missing, he told them when he learned Joel was not in custody for some heretofore unknown malefaction. What with the serial killings . . .

The constable on the other end of the line cut him off: The boys had not been missing even twenty-four hours, had they? Put quite simply, there was nothing the police could do until they’d been missing for a longer period.

So Dix phoned New Scotland Yard next, where the investigation into the serial killings was headquartered. But there again, he had no luck. They were being inundated with phone calls from parents whose boys had been missing far longer than a mere few hours, sir. New Scotland Yard was not equipped to send up a hue and cry over two boys who’d merely played truant from school.

There was nothing for it but for Dix to follow Kendra’s example. He turned his job over to his harried mother and changed out of his cook’s garb. He had to be part of the search, he explained, handing over his apron.

His mother made no comment. She glanced at Kendra, tried to keep her face impassive, rued the day her son had fallen into the clutches of a woman with whom he could build no conventional future, and donned his large apron. Go, she told him.

Dix was the one to suggest the hospital where Carole Campbell was housed. Could the boys have gone there?

Kendra didn’t see how. They had no money for the bus and the train. But she phoned anyway, and that was how Dix D’Court came to be waiting at Paddington station when Toby and Joel debarked some hours later.

He’d been meeting every train. He’d missed his workout. By the time the boys showed up, he was devilishly hungry but unwilling to pollute his body with anything sold within the station. He was, as a result, tightly coiled from frustration and annoyance. It wasn’t going to take much to set him off, no matter his earlier intentions.

When Joel saw Dix on the other side of the barrier, he could tell the man was coiled like a wound-up spring. He knew he was in trouble, but he didn’t care. He saw himself as someone out of every option, so the fact that Dix D’Court was cheesed off at him was a minor wrinkle in the altogether permanently crumpled linen that was his life. Toby was tripping along at Joel’s heels, mostly involved in a conversation with a spider transfer that a previous owner had applied to his skateboard. He didn’t see Dix until Dix was upon them, until Joel said,

“Hey! Let go my arm, mon.” Then Toby looked up and said, “’Lo, Dix. Mum wanted fingernails. I got a bag of crisps. It looked like snow ever’where, only it wasn’t.”

Dix marched Joel out of the station. Toby followed. Joel continued to protest. Dix said nothing. Toby grabbed Joel’s arm, needing the reassurance of something solid that represented something he understood. At his car, Dix stuffed both boys into the backseat. Looking into the rearview mirror, he said to Joel, “You know the state you put your aunt into? How much more you ’spect she’s goin to take off you?”

Joel turned his head away and looked out of the window. Hopes dashed, he was in no state to accept blame for anything. He mouthed Fuck you.

Dix read the words. They were match to tinder. He got out of the car and jerked open the back door. He pulled Joel out. He shoved him against the wing and barked, “You want to take me on? Dat’s wha’ you lookin to happen just now?”

“Hey,” Joel said. “Lemme alone.”

“How long you t’ink you last wiv me, mon?”

“Lemme the fuck alone,” Joel said. “I di’n’t do nuffink.”

“Dat’s how you see it? Your aunt out searchin, phoning the cops, gettin told there’s no help, fallin into a state . . . And you di’n’t do nuffink?” In a disgust that was only in part directed at Joel, Dix shoved him back inside.

The drive to North Kensington was not a long one. They made it in silence, with Dix incapable of seeing past Joel’s external animus and Joel incapable of seeing past Dix’s reaction to what lay at the core of it. In Edenham Way, Joel flung himself up the steps to his aunt’s house. Toby rapidly followed. He clutched his skateboard to his chest like a life ring. When inside the house Dix snatched it from him and tossed it to one side, he began to cry.

It was too much for Joel. He said, “You fuckin leave Toby alone, mon! You got summick to say or summick to do, you do it to me. You got dat, blood?”

Dix might have responded but Kendra came from the kitchen. So instead of speaking, he pushed the boy towards his aunt, saying, “Here he is, den. He’s a big mon now, hear him talk. Cause of all th’ trouble and him wivout a care in th’ world dat he worried anyone.”

“Shut up,” Joel said. He said it in exhaustion and despair. Dix took a step towards him. Kendra said, “Don’t.” And then to Joel, “What’s going on? Why’d you go out there without telling me?

You know the school phoned? Yours? Toby’s?”

“I wanted to see Mum,” Joel said. “I don’t get what the big deal’s all ’bout.”

“We had rules. School. Toby. Home.” Kendra ticked off these items on her fingers. “Those’re your limits. That’s what I told you. The hospital isn’t among them.”

“Whatever,” Joel said.

“And where’d you get the money for tickets?”

“It was mine.”

“Where’d you get it, Joel?”

“I tol’ you. It was mine, and if you don’t believe me—”

“That’s right. I don’t. Give me a reason to.”

“I fuckin don’t have to.”

“Joel . . . ,” Toby cried. All of this was beyond his ability to compre hend. One moment they had been on the train, gazing out at a landscape shrouded in mystery through the means of freezing fog, and the next moment they’d been in trouble. So much trouble that Joel was cursing, Dix was angry and ready to bang people about, and Kendra’s face was looking like a mask. The burden of all this was too heavy to carry in his mind. Toby said, “Mum wanted hearts on her fingernails, Auntie. Tell her, Joel. ’Bout them gold hearts.”

Kendra said thinly, “Right,” ignoring Toby’s fruitless attempt to alter the course of what was happening. She said, “Let’s just have a check of things, then,” and she headed up the stairs. Joel followed her. Toby tagged along, and Dix trailed Toby.

It was obvious what Kendra’s intentions were. Joel didn’t protest. Indeed, he found he didn’t much care. There was nothing for her to discover in his room because he was telling her the truth, and he knew she wouldn’t find the gun he’d been given by the Blade. This was tucked in the space between the floor and the bottom drawer of the clothes chest. The only way to get it out was to tilt the chest up, and his aunt was unlikely to go to that extreme once she realised there was nothing to find elsewhere in the room.

Kendra dumped out his rucksack and pawed through it, a woman on an undefined mission. She was looking for something without knowing what she was looking for: evidence that he’d mugged someone successfully, gobs of cash to indicate he was selling some kind of contraband— weapons, drugs, cigarettes, alcohol . . . It didn’t matter. She just wanted to find something that would give her a sign of what she was meant to do next because, just like Joel but with different cause, she was finding herself running out of options.

There was nothing: in the rucksack, under or in the bed, inside books, behind posters on the walls, in the chest of drawers. She went from all this to shaking Joel down, and he removed his clothes for her in an indifferent cooperation that infuriated her. The only answer was Toby, she thought, and she wondered why she hadn’t considered it before. So he was made to undress as well, and this in turn infuriated Joel.

He said, “I told you! He don’t have nuffink to do wiv . . .” He said nothing else.

“What?” Kendra demanded. “With what? What? ”

Joel would have liked to stalk from the room, but Dix was in the doorway, an impassable object. Toby was, if anything, crying harder than ever. He fell onto his bed in his underwear. Joel was inflamed, but he did nothing. There was nothing to do, and he knew it. So he told his aunt the truth. “I won it, okay? I won the fuckin money at Wield Words. Fifty pounds. Dat’s it. You happy now?”

She said, “We’ll see about that,” and she left him, crossing the corridor to her own bedroom where she placed a phone call that she made certain her nephews could hear.

She told Ivan Weatherall Joel’s claim. She even used the word claim to indicate her incredulity. Governed more by anger than by wisdom, she told him more than he needed to know. Joel had to be watched, she said. He had fractured her trust in him. He’d sneaked off without permission, he was responding to her questions with insolence and defiance, and now he was claiming he’d got some unaccounted-for money off the poetry evening. What did Ivan know about that?

Ivan, naturally, knew quite a lot about it. He confirmed Joel’s story. But more than one seed in more than one breast was planted through this conversation. It would not take long for that seed to sprout.

WITH A CLEAR understanding of what would happen should she fail to cooperate, Ness went to counselling in Oxford Gardens. She sat through three appointments, but since she was there under duress, that was the extent of her participation in recovering from the assault made upon her: sitting in a chair that was faced towards the counsellor.

The counsellor in question was twenty-five years old, in possession of a first-class degree from a third-class university, and of a solid middleclass background—clearly evident in her choice of clothing and her careful use of words like loo instead of toilet—which put her in the unfortunate position of believing she had most of the answers required to navigate encounters with recalcitrant adolescent girls. She was white, blonde, and squeaky clean. These were not faults, but they were disadvantages. She saw herself as a role model instead of what she appeared to be to those who were supposed to be her clients: an adversary incapable of relating to a single element of their lives.

After those three meetings with Ness, she decided group counselling might be an efficacious approach to achieve what she termed “a breakthrough.” To her credit, she did a considerable amount of homework on her client, and it was on this subject that she approached Fabia Bender, a manila folder in her hand.

“No luck?” Fabia said to her. They were in the copy room, where an antique Mr. Coffee was delivering a viscous-looking brew into a glass carafe.

The counsellor—whose name, for reasons known only to her parents, was Ruma, which the well-travelled Fabia knew very well meant “queen of the apes”—recounted what her sessions with Ness had been like so far. Tough, she said. Indeed, Vanessa Campbell was a very tough nut to crack.

Fabia waited for more. So far, Ruma was telling her nothing that she didn’t know.

Ruma drew a breath. The truth of the matter was that they were getting absolutely nowhere, she said. “I was thinking about a different approach, like a group,” she offered. “Other girls who’ve gone through the same thing. God knows we’ve got them by the dozens.”

“But . . . ?” Fabia prompted her. She could tell there was more to come. Ruma had not yet learned to obscure her intent through the use of careful intonation.

“But I’ve done some digging around, and there’s information here . . .”

Ruma tapped her fingernails—well-groomed, French manicured, uniformly shaped—against the folder. “I’m thinking there’s a lot more than meets the eye. D’you have the time . . . ?”

There was never enough time, but Fabia was intrigued. She liked Ruma, she knew the young woman meant well, and she admired the tireless way Ruma pursued every avenue for her clients, no matter how ineffective her efforts might prove to be. Where there was breath, there was life. Where there was life, there was hope. There were worse philosophies for someone who’d chosen the profession of counselling the unfortunate, Fabia thought.

They repaired to Fabia’s office once the coffee was brewed and Fabia had filled herself a cup. There, Ruma shared the information she’d come up with.

“You know Mum’s in a psychiatric hospital, right?” Ruma began. To Fabia’s nod, she added, “How much d’you know about why she’s there?”

“Unresolved postnatal blues is what I’ve got,” Fabia told her. “She’s been in and out for years, as I understand things.”

“Try psychosis,” Ruma said. “Try severe psychotic postnatal depression. Try attempted murder.”

Fabia sipped her coffee, watching Ruma over the rim of her cup. She evaluated the young woman, heard no excitement in her voice, and approved of the level of her professionalism in the matter. She said, “When? Who?”

“Twice. Once she was prevented—evidently just in the nick of time—from chucking her youngest out of a third-floor window. This is from a flat they lived in, in Du Cane Road. East Acton. Neighbour was there and she phoned the cops once she got the kid away from her. Another time she parked the same kid’s pram in the path of an oncoming bus and did a runner. Clearly out of her head.”

“How was that determined?”

“History and examination.”

“What sort of history?”

“You said she’s been in and out for years. Did you know it’s been since she was thirteen?”

Fabia didn’t know this. She considered the fact. “Any precipitating event?”

“And then some. Her mum committed suicide just three weeks after being released from a facility herself. Paranoid schizophrenic. Carole was with her when she took the leap in front of a train in Baker Street underground station. This would have been when Carole was twelve.”

Fabia set down her cup. “I should have known this,” she said. “I should have found out.”

Ruma said quickly, “No. That’s not why I’m telling you. And anyway, how much digging are you supposed to do? It’s not your job.”

“Is it yours?”

“I’m the one trying to make the breakthrough here. You’re just trying to hold things together.”

“I’m putting on plasters where surgery’s called for.”

“No one knows till it’s time to know,” Ruma said. “Anyway, here’s my point.”

Fabia didn’t need to be told. “Ness slipping into psychosis? Like her mum?”

“It’s possible, isn’t it? And here’s what’s interesting: Carole Campbell tried to kill the youngest because she believed he’d inherited the affliction. I don’t know why, because he was a baby, but she singled him out. Like a mother dog who won’t nurse a newborn pup because she knows something’s wrong with it. Her instincts tell her.”

“Are you saying this is inherited, then?”

“It’s the old nature and nurture thing. The predisposition is inherited. Look. This is a brain disorder: proteins not doing what they’re supposed to be doing. A genetic mutation. That sets someone up for psychosis. The person’s environment does the rest.”

Fabia thought about Toby, what she’d seen and heard, and how the family attempted to shield him, about everything they’d done from the first to see to it that he would not be evaluated by someone who might pinpoint an illness that could spell misery for him. She said, “There’s clearly something wrong with the youngest. That’s evident enough.”

“They all need to be tested. Evaluated by a psychiatrist. Have a genetic history taken. What I’m saying is that my idea for Ness to enter group counselling is a load of bollocks. If she’s heading for a psychotic breakdown—”

“If she’s in one already,” Fabia offered.

“Or if she’s in the midst of one, then we need to get on to this before something else happens.”

Fabia agreed. But she wondered how Ness—both uncommunicative and uncooperative in sessions with a counsellor—was going to take having her mind probed in one way or another by a psychiatrist. Not well, she decided.

A visit to the magistrate was in order, then. What Fabia and Ruma could not effect in the girl would surely come about if the magistrate’s court gave her the word. And more than the word: the option between cooperation or incarceration. The mere threat of an increase in her community-service hours would hardly make an impression upon her.

“Let me talk to some people,” Fabia said.

IVAN WEATHERALL, BEING neither an idiot nor a fool, had quickly put together a number of pieces to the puzzle of Joel Campbell once he’d taken that phone call from Kendra. Most of these pieces had to do with Joel’s talent and with Wield Words Not Weapons, but some of them related to the attempted mugging in Portobello Road. This, he’d earlier concluded, was so far out of character in the boy that only a case of mistaken identity could possibly explain it. In conjunction with Joel’s quick release from custody, there seemed to be no other answer.

But Kendra’s call had forced him to consider the possibility that there was a Joel he didn’t know. Since there were two sides to every coin—a ghastly cliché, but one that had an apparent application in this particular case as far as Ivan was concerned—it stood to reason that Joel had kept part of himself hidden from Ivan, and the truth was that the facts supported this conclusion.

Ivan didn’t know about Joel’s dealings with the Blade. As far as the less wholesome individuals who populated parts of North Kensington went, Ivan knew only that Joel had rubbed metaphorical elbows with Neal Wyatt. And Neal was someone whom Ivan mistakenly saw as troubled, but not essentially dangerous. So while Ivan understood that something worrisome was brewing within Joel, he thought in terms of the home itself instead of the streets.

What Ivan knew was this: The aunt’s boyfriend was a live-in. The father was dead. The mother was gone. The sister had been sentenced to community service. The younger brother was . . . well, rather odd. Change in the form of a new home, new school, and new associates was difficult for anyone to endure. Was there any wonder that Joel occasionally lost his grip on the ability to cope? The way Ivan saw things, Joel was a perfectly good lad. Surely, then, any potential for serious trouble could be nipped in the bud if the adults in his life all agreed on how to deal with him.

Ivan himself had grown up under the firm but loving thumbs of his parents. Thus, firmness was what was called for, he decided. Firmness, fairness, and honesty.

He decided to visit Joel at home. Seeing Joel in situ, as he described it to himself, would gain him further information on how best to help the boy.

Joel admitted him to the house—obviously surprised but quickly altering his expression to shield whatever else was going on within him— and cartoon noise from upstairs suggested that the little brother was present as well. Beyond the entrance and in the kitchen, Ivan could see Joel’s sister. She was at the table, one foot propped up on the edge as she painted her toenails metallic blue. An ashtray sat next to the bottle of varnish. Cigarette smoke plumed upward in a lazy spiral. A radio playing on the work top added to the general cacophony of the household. Rap music issued forth, most of it grunted indecipherably by a singer later identified by the DJ as someone calling himself Big R Balz. Ivan said, “Could I have a word, Joel?”

“I ain’t written nuffink lately.” Joel glanced beyond Ivan as if wishing him to leave. Ivan wasn’t about to be dismissed. “This isn’t about your poetry, actually. Your aunt phoned me.”

“Yeah. Know.”

“I’d like to talk about that.”

Joel led him into the kitchen, where Ness looked Ivan over. She didn’t say anything, but she didn’t have to. Lately, as she’d managed in the past, all Ness had to do was to fix her great dark eyes upon people to discomfit them. She was scornful on the surface but something else beneath it. That something else made people uneasy.

Ivan nodded a hello. Ness’s full lips curved in a smile. She gave him a head-to-toe and made an evaluation of him that she didn’t bother to hide, taking in his lank grey hair, his bad teeth, his worn and countrified tweed jacket, his scuffed shoes. She nodded but not in an exchange of greeting. Rather, her nod said Man I know your kind, and she lit another cigarette from the dying end of the one in the ashtray. She held it between her fingers with the smoke coiling around her head. She said to her brother, “Dis’s Ivan, eh? Di’n’t t’ink I’d ever see him over here. ’Spect he i’n’t round dis part of town very often, innit. So how you like it, mon, seein how us ethnic types live?”

“He ain’t like dat,” Joel said.

“Right,” was her laconic response.

But Ivan wasn’t put off by Ness. He said, “Good heavens, I’ve seen you before, but I’d no idea you were Joel’s sister. You’re in the drop-in centre, aren’t you? Playing with the children? You’ve obviously got a real gift for working with them.”

This was hardly the response Ness expected to get from the man. Her expression fixed itself into place. She drew in on her cigarette and barked a harsh laugh. She said, “Yeah. Make a proper little mummy, wouldn’t I?” She pushed away from the table and sauntered from the room, up the stairs and out of sight.

Ivan said to Joel, “Did I say—”

“Dat’s just Ness,” Joel said.

“Bruised soul,” Ivan murmured.

Joel looked at him sharply. Ivan met his gaze. His own was open and too difficult to look at, so Joel glanced away.

Ivan sat at the table. He carefully screwed the top back onto Ness’s abandoned nail varnish. He nodded at a chair, meaning Joel was to sit as well. When Joel had done so, moments ticked by. Rap music continued to blare from the radio. Joel got up from the table and snapped it off. They were left with the sound of explosions upstairs: a cartoon character meeting his fate, Toby crowing with laughter as he watched.

In keeping with his determination that firmness, fairness, and honesty were called for, Ivan brought up the topic of Wield Words Not Weapons. More specifically, he brought up the topic of Joel’s use of the poetry event to serve his own interests. Ivan began by saying, “I’d thought we were friends, Joel. But I must say that your aunt’s phone call has forced me to reevaluate.”

Joel—having taken the opportunity presented by turning off the radio to remain standing—leaned against the work top but said nothing. He wasn’t sure what Ivan was talking about anyway, although at this point he knew adults well enough to understand that clarification was not far off.

Ivan said, “I don’t like being used. Even less do I like Wield Words being used. This is because using Wield Words for a purpose other than the creation of poetry runs in the face of what I’ve created the event to be. Do you understand?”

Joel didn’t. He knew he was supposed to, however. That knowledge and the knowledge of his failure acted in concert to encourage his silence. Ivan read this silence as indifference, and he was affronted. He tried not to go in the direction of after all I’ve done and, in this, he was fairly successful. He knew enough about boys like Joel to understand that their behaviour was not about him. Still, he’d thought Joel different, more sensitive to nuance, and Ivan didn’t like considering he might have been wrong.

He clarified. “You came to Wield Words, but you left. During Walk the Word. You thought I didn’t see, and I might not have done but for the phone call from your aunt. Oh, not the one asking about the money, not the one you heard. There was another.”

Joel’s eyebrows rose in spite of himself. He drew his lip in between his teeth.

“Yes. That very night, she phoned. In the midst of Walk the Word, so that was how I knew you weren’t there. But I couldn’t be certain, could I? You might’ve gone to the lavatory at the very moment when my mobile went off, so I couldn’t tell her you weren’t there, could I? I said of course he’s here. He’s even read to us a rather abysmal poem, Mrs. Osborne. Not to worry, I said. I’ll see he goes home straightaway, when we’re fi nished here.”

Joel looked down. What he saw were his trainers, one of them untied. He bent and redid the laces.

Ivan repeated his theme. “I don’t like being used.”

“You di’n’t have to tell her—”

“That you were there? I realise that. But you were there, weren’t you? You were careful that way. You were there, you made sure I knew it, and then you left. Would you like to tell me about it?”

“Nuffink to tell, mon.”

“Where did you go?”

Joel said nothing.

“Joel, don’t you see? If I’m to help you, there has to be an element of trust between us. I thought we had that. Now to see that I’ve been mistaken . . . What is it you don’t want to talk about? Has it do with Neal Wyatt?”

It had and it hadn’t, but how was Joel to explain this to Ivan? To Ivan the solution to everything was to write a poem, to read it to strangers, to listen to them and pretend that what they said made a difference in life when it made no difference at all save in that moment of sitting in front of them on the dais and engaging them in conversation. It was playacting, really, just a useless bit of salve on a sore that would not heal.

He said, “It’s nuffink, innit. I jus’ di’n’t want to be there. You c’n see I ain’t writin, not like I was. It ain’t workin for me, Ivan. Dat’s all there is.”

Ivan attempted to use this, as he saw no other way to proceed. “So you’ve hit a dry patch. That happens to everyone. What’s best is to divert your attention on to another area of creative endeavour, related to the written word or not.” He was silent as he looked for an anodyne for what he saw as the boy’s situation: a not unreasonable creative blockage rising from his home circumstances. Ludicrous to suggest he take up painting, sculpture, dance, music, or anything else requiring his presence some place where his aunt was entirely unlikely to let him go. But there was one outlet . . .

“Join us on the film,” he said. “You went to that one meeting. You saw what we’re about. We need input on the script, and yours would be most welcome. If your aunt will agree to your coming to our meetings . . . perhaps once a week at first? . . . then chances are the act of working with words once again will stimulate your ideas and get them rolling.”

Joel could see this playing out, and how it played out wasn’t helpful. He would go to the meetings if his aunt agreed, and she would ring up Ivan in the midst of them to make certain he was where he said he’d be. He would have nothing to offer the scriptwriting team because he could no longer think about anything as unimportant as a dream of film that would never come true.

Ivan waited and read Joel’s hesitation as despair, which in part it was. He merely applied Joel’s sense of desolation to the wrong source. He said, “You’re struggling now, but it won’t be that way forever, Joel. Sometimes you have to grasp on to a lifeline that’s being offered, even if that lifeline doesn’t look like something that will pull you out of the troubles you have.”

Joel went back to looking at his feet. Above them, calliope music played. Joel recognised it as the theme song to yet another cartoon show. He couldn’t have known how otherwise appropriate it was to the conversation they were having.

Ivan did and he smiled. “Ah. The Muse,” he said. And then because the very sound of a calliope told him things were truly meant to be as they were in this moment—the two of them in the neat little kitchen with Ivan proposing a cure for what ailed his much younger friend—he said, “Know that I’m not the enemy, Joel. I never have been and I never will be.”

But what Joel thought upon hearing this was that everyone in his world was the enemy. That being the case, there was danger everywhere. Danger to himself and danger to anyone who, against all odds, decided to be his friend.

JOEL WAS ON his way to fetch Toby from the learning centre when Cal Hancock appeared. He seemed to come from out of nowhere, materialising at Joel’s side as he passed a William Hill betting shop. Joel smelled him first as Cal fell into step beside him: The odour of weed clung to his clothing.

Cal said to him, “Nex’ week, blood.”

Joel said, startled, “What?”

Cal said, “Wha’ you mean what? There is no what, mon. There’s nuffink but wha’ you got arranged.”

“I don’t got nuffink—”

“You clear on wha’ happens, you don’t do like the Blade wants you to do? He got you out. Jus’ as easy he can put you back in. A word from him an’ the cops gonna move. On you, y’unnerstan. You got dat now?”

It would have been impossible not to have got it. But Joel stopped walking and made no reply. More and more, words had no meaning for him. Mostly he heard them but they did not compute. They were background noise while in the foreground was a symphony playing the notes of his fear.

Cal said, “You owe him, and he a man dat collects. You cock dis up like dat Asian cow over Portobello Road, you got more trouble ’n anyone c’n help you wiv.”

Joel looked over at a schoolyard that they were passing. He found he wasn’t sure where they were. He felt like someone caught in a maze: too far in, too many turns, no way to the centre, and no way out. But still there was something he didn’t understand. He said, “How’s he do all dis, Cal?”

“Do all wha’, mon?”

“Make t’ings happen like he does. Gettin me out. Puttin me back in. He bribin the cops? He got dat much cash?”

Cal blew out a breath that hovered like fog in the frigid air. He’d come to Joel wearing the uniform of the streets—grey sweatshirt with the hood drawn up over a baseball cap, black windbreaker, black jeans, white trainers. It wasn’t Cal’s usual garb, and Joel wondered about this, just as he wondered how the graffiti artist was managing to stay warm without a heavier anorak.

“Shit, mon.” Cal kept his voice low and he looked around as if searching for eavesdroppers. “T’ings more important to cops ’an money. Don’t you know dat yet? Ain’t you figgered out how t’ings happen round here? Why no one ever bust into dat squat waving submachine guns?” He dug into a pocket of his windbreaker, and Joel thought he meant to bring out a pertinent piece of evidence that would show him once and for all who the Blade was and what Joel was deal ing with. But he brought forth a spliff. He lit up without even a glance around, which should have illuminated for Joel what he’d been saying, but it did not.

“I don’t get—”

“You don’t need to get. You jus’ need to do. It happens nex’ week and you be ready. You carrying?”

“What?”

“Don’ what me no more. You got dat gun wiv you?”

“Course not. I get caught wiv dat—”

“You carry it ever’day, now. Y’unnerstan? I give you th’ word ’bout dis goin down and you ain’t carryin, consider dat’s it. Cops get the word. You go back for a visit.”

“Wha’s he gonna make me—”

“Mon, you know when you know.” Cal took a hit from his joint and studied Joel. He shook his head as he let the smoke ease its way from his lungs. “Tried,” he said. He sounded defeated. That said, Cal left him. Joel was free to go on his way. But he knew that was the extent of his freedom.

What Joel didn’t know as he fetched his brother was that he’d been seen. Dix D’Court, in transit from the Rainbow Café to the Jubilee Sports Centre, had caught sight of Joel in conversation with Cal. While he was not aware of the name of Joel’s companion, he recognised the signature garments. He read them as gang and his thoughts moved in a logical direction. He knew he could not let this go. He had a duty, both to the kids and to Kendra.

His mind was on this as he completed his workout, a rushed and abbreviated affair. He arrived home having planned an approach, but also rather feverish in his anticipation of the conversation he intended to have. Kendra wasn’t there—a massage in progress somewhere in Holland Park, according to a note she’d left on the fridge, with suitable exclamation marks to illustrate her happiness about the destination—but, to Dix, this was just as well. If he was to be a father figure to the Campbells, there were times when he’d have to be that father figure alone.

No one was on the ground floor of the house. Television noise—that perennial background motif to every waking moment—drifted down from above. That meant Toby was at home, which meant Joel was at home. Ness’s shoulder bag dangled over a kitchen chair, but there was no other evidence of her.

Dix strode to the stairs at the back of the house and yelled Joel’s name. Doing it, he heard the sound of his own father’s voice issuing forth, and he recalled how both he and his sister had jumped to at the bellow. He added, “Get down here, mon,” when Joel replied with,

“What?” from somewhere above. To that he went on with, “We got to talk,” and when Joel said, “’Bout what?” he replied, “Hey! Get your arse down the stairs.”

Joel came, but he did it without haste. On his tail came Toby, ever Joel’s shadow. To Dix, Joel seemed to slouch down the stairs and into the kitchen and when Dix told him to sit at the table, he did so but without the alacrity that might otherwise have telegraphed respect. Joel was in another world, and it wasn’t a pleasant one. He’d tipped up the chest of drawers in his room. He’d found the gun where he’d left it. He’d buried it in his rucksack. After that, he’d sat on his bed, feeling sick at heart and sick in stomach. He tried to tell himself he could do as the Blade had ordered him. He added that, after he did it, he could go back to being who he was.

Dix said, “What’re you doin wiv dat lout, Joel?”

Joel blinked. “Huh?”

“Don’t huh me, blood. I seen you wiv him in the street. Him tokin up an’ you standin there waitin for a hit yourself. What’re you doin wiv him? You sellin now or you just smokin? How your aunt goin to react to dis, I tell her what I see you up to.”

“What?” Joel said. “Wiv Cal, you mean? We were talkin, mon. Dat’s it.”

“How you come to be talkin to some candyman, Joel?”

“I jus’ know him, okay? An’ he don’t—”

“Wha’? Sell? Use? Offer it round? You t’ink I’m stupid?”

“I tol’ you, it was Cal. Dat’s all.”

“An’ wha’ you talkin about, if it ain’t dope?”

Joel didn’t reply.

“Asked you a question. I mean to have it answered.”

Joel’s back went up at Dix’s tone. “None of your business,” he replied. “Bugger off. I don’t got to tell you nuffink.”

Dix crossed the kitchen in one long bound and jerked Joel out of his chair like an unstrung marionette. “Watch your mouf,” he ordered. Toby, lurking in the doorway to the stairs, where he’d been all along, cried, “Dix! Dat’s Joel! Don’t!”

“You shut up. Let me get on wiv my business, okay?” He tightened his grip on Joel.

Joel cried, “Lemme go! I don’t got to talk to you or anyone.”

Dix shook him, hard. “Oh yeah, you do. Start ’splainin yourself and do it now. And lemme tell you, mon, it better be good.”

“Fuck you!” Joel squirmed to get away. He kicked out and missed.

“Lemme go! Lemme go, you fuckin cocksucker.”

The slap came quickly: Dix’s open hand squarely meeting the flesh of Joel’s face. It sounded like wet meat coming down on a board, and it flipped Joel’s head backwards and upset his balance. Another slap followed it, harder this time. Then Dix began to drag him towards the sink.

He grunted, “So. Like dirty words? Like dem better’n answerin questions? Le’s see if dis makes you like dem words less.” He bent Joel back against the work top and stretched out to reach for the Fairy Liquid. Toby shot across the kitchen to stop him. He grabbed Dix by the leg. He cried, “Get ’way from my bruvver! He ain’t done nuffink. Get ’way from my bruvver! Joel! Joel!”

Dix shoved him away, too hard. Toby weighed next to nothing and the force sent him crashing into the table, where he began to wail. Dix had the Fairy Liquid in his hand and he squirted the detergent into Joel’s face. He aimed for his mouth but got it everywhere else. He said,

“Someone’s mouf needs dis’nfectin,” as he tried to drive the spout between Joel’s lips. But a clatter from the stairs brought Ness into the room. She flung herself upon Dix and her brother. The force of her flying body threw Dix hard against Joel and Joel just as hard against the edge of the work top. His feet scrambled for purchase against the lino and he slipped in some of the Fairy Liquid. He went down. Dix went with him. Ness landed on top of them both.

She shrieked a string of curses as she clawed at Dix’s head. His grip loosened on Joel as he tried to protect his face from her nails. Joel rolled away and against the table, where he reached for a chair and staggered to his feet.

Ness was screaming, “Damn you! Fuck you! Don’t you never touch one of my brothers!” as she went after the bodybuilder with her hands, her feet, her elbows, her teeth.

Dix managed to catch her arms. He flipped her over and himself with her. He was on top now, and he pinned her to the floor. They writhed there in the Fairy Liquid, a desperate coupling that he tried to still by covering the length of her body with his. She screamed then. She gave one long, horrifying cry, sounding like someone just entering hell.

It was into this scene that Kendra came: Toby in a ball under the table, Joel trying to pull Dix off his sister, Dix doing what he could to quell her, Ness far gone to another place.

“Get off her. Get off her!” Ness shrieked. She flung her head back and arched her spine with such strength that she managed to lift both of them off the floor. “You leave her be! No! Mummy . . . Mum my. . .” And on that final fruitless appeal to a woman not there, never there, and never to be there, she began to howl. It was like the sound of an animal shot, doomed to dying by degrees.

Kendra rushed forward. “Dix! Stop this!”

Dix rolled off the girl. He was bleeding from the face and panting like a runner. He shook his head, incapable of speech. Which didn’t matter, because Ness was doing all the speaking: on the floor, spread-eagled, but kicking now and beating her fi sts against the air and then against her own body.

“You get off. You bloody get off . Get off !”

Kendra knelt at her side.

“He did it to me. He did it. He did.”

“Ness!” Kendra cried.

“An’ no one there.”

“Ness! Ness! What’s—”

“You go off to the fruit machines. You say watch ’em and he say fine. An’ you jus’ go and leave us wiv him. But it ain’t him. It’s all of dem. Pressin up ’gainst me an’ I c’n feel it’s hard. An’ he reaches up my top and squeezes . . . says I like ’em young. I like em like dis cos dey still firm mmm mmmm an’ I don’t know wha’ to do, innit, cos I don’t ’xpect—”

Kendra yanked her fiercely into her arms. She cried, “Jesus God.”

The others watched, like statues, turned to salt not by what they saw but what they heard.

“An’ you been there for a visit,” Ness cried, clinging to Kendra and pounding at her back. “You come round ’fore you going to dis club, dat club, anywheres, innit, pullin dis man, dat man. An’ ever’one sees what you mean to do cos you got dat look an’ how you dress. But only a certain age you want and you make dat clear cos they got to be young cos if they old like sixty, sixty-five, seventy, you don’t want ’em. But they hot now, see? All of ’em. They hot an’ they hard and they know what they want. So you leave, she leaves cos she always go to the fruit machines and dat’s when they take it. They bloody fuckin take it. George an’ his mates on the bed in Gran’s room. They all got their cocks out . . . They climb on . . . And I can’t . . . I can’t . . .”

“Ness! Ness!” Kendra cried. She held her, she rocked her. And to Joel, “Did you know?”

He shook his head. He’d bitten into his fist as his sister was talking, and he could taste the coppery fl avour of his blood. Whatever had happened to Ness had happened in silence and behind closed doors. But he could recall how often they’d come to his gran’s—those friends of George, there to play cards, sometimes as many as eight of them. He could remember Glory saying as she pulled on her coat, “George, you be able to mind the kids wiv all your mates here like dis?”

And George saying happily in reply, “Don’t you worry, Glor. Don’t you worry ’bout nuffink. I got ’nough help here to man a ocean liner or two, so three kids ain’t a problem. Sides, Ness old enough to help out ’f the boys get out ’f hand. Ain’t you, Nessa?” with a wink at her. And Ness saying only, “Don’t go, Gran.”

And Gran saying, “You make your bruvs some Bournvita, darlin’. Time you got it drunk up, your gran be home.”

But not home soon enough.

SO WHEN NESS sharpened a paring knife, it seemed the logical outcome of what she’d revealed and what had happened in the kitchen. Joel saw her do it, but he said nothing. He could see that Ness was, in this, just like him. If the paring knife made her feel secure, what of it? he thought.

In the aftermath of what happened with the children, Dix questioned everything. His dream had always centred around the romantic ideal of family, for his dream of the future was grounded in the past, which had as its most notable characteristic the warm kinship he’d always experienced with his own relations. To him family meant paterfamilias sitting at the head of the table, carving a joint of beef at Sunday lunch. It meant fairy lights strung from the ceiling at Christmastime and day trips to Brighton on the odd bank holiday when there was money enough for candy floss, a bag of rock, and fish and chips by the sea. It meant parents keeping a watchful eye over children’s schoolwork, their afternoon activities, their mates, their dress, their manners, and their growth. Dentist for their teeth. Doctor for their inoculations. Thermometer thrust beneath their tongues, soup and soldiers when they were ill. Children spoke respectfully to their parents in this sort of family, and parents responded with firm but loving guidance, disciplining when necessary and making sure the lines of communication were occluded by nothing. If any family can be described as normal, it was the family in which Dix D’Court had grown up. This had provided him with an image of what life should look like when it came to his own future with wife and offspring, but nothing about it had prepared him for dealing with children who were plagued by trouble and by horror.

The Campbells, he believed, needed help. More help than either Kendra or he would be able to give them in a hundred thousand lifetimes. Dix broached this subject with her, but she did not take it well.

“You want me to get rid of them?” she demanded.

“Ain’t saying dat,” he told her quietly. “Jus’ dat they been through too much and we ain’t got the skills to lead ’em away from where they are.”

“Ness’s in counselling. Toby’s in his learning centre. Joel’s doing what he’s meant to do. What more do you want?”

“Ken, dis is bigger ’n you and it’s bigger ’n me. You got to see dat.”

But Kendra could not. She told herself that if she had not been so bloody-minded about keeping her life exactly as it was when Glory dropped the children upon her like three sacks of grain, she might have built an adequate life for them. So anything that even smacked of abandoning them at this point was something she would not consider. She would do what she had to do to save them, even if it meant doing so on her own.

“Even if it means givin up everyt’ing you been workin for?” Cordie asked when they saw each other next. “The massage business? The someday spa? You lettin dat go?”

“Isn’t that what you’ve done?” Kendra countered. “Didn’t you give in to Gerald and give up on your dreams?”

“What? Cos he wants ’nother baby and I’m makin him one? How’s dat givin up on dreams? An’ what dreams, anyways? I was doing fi ngernails, f ’r God’s sake, Ken.”

“You were going to be part of the spa.”

“Yeah. True. But bottom line is dis: I gonna choose Gerald if I got to make a choice. I always gonna choose Gerald. Spa come along and if it fit in wiv what I got goin at th’ moment, I join dat dream. If it don’t fit in, I choose Gerald.”

“What about the others?”

“Wha’ others?”

“Men you pull. You know what I mean.”

Cordie looked at her blankly. “You mistaken,” she said. “I don’t pull men.”

“Cordie, you been snogging wiv nineteen-year-old boys—”

“I know wha’ I got here,” Cordie said firmly, always a woman capable of turning a blind eye to her own weaknesses of the flesh. “An’ I choose Gerald. You best look at what you got and make a choice you c’n live wiv as well.”