What Came Before He Shot Her (16 page)

He said to Hibah, “Thanks for helpin wiv the handouts,” and he started to move towards Toby, who was bouncing rhythmically against the glass of the newsagent’s by means of his life ring.

She said, “Hey. Hang on.” And then to Neal, “This is Joel, innit. He goes to school wiv me over Holland Park.” The tone of her voice made it clear enough: She wasn’t happy about making the introduction because she wasn’t happy about Neal’s attempt to claim ownership of her.

She said to Joel, “This here is Neal.”

Neal looked Joel over, disgust making his lips go thin and his nostrils flare. He said, not to Joel but to Hibah, “Why you wiv him in the tower, den? Saw you come out, di’n’t I.”

“Oh, cos we makin babies, Neal,” Hibah said. “Wha’ else we be doin in the tower in the middle of th’ bloody day?”

Joel thought she was mad to speak in this way. Neal took a step towards her and for a moment Joel thought he’d be put into the position of having to brawl with Neal in order to keep Hibah safe from his wrath. That was far down on the list of things he wished to do with his afternoon, and he was relieved when Hibah defused the situation by saying with a laugh, “He just
twelve
years
old
, Neal. I showed him and his bruvver the view is all. Tha’s his bruvver over there.”

Neal searched out Toby. “_Dat? _” he said and then to Joel, “Wha’s he, a freak or summick?”

Joel said nothing. Hibah said, “Shut
up
. Tha’s dead stupid, Neal.

He’s a lit’le kid, innit.”

Neal’s yellow face went red as he turned back to her. Something within him was going to need to be released, and Joel braced himself to be on the receiving end of it.

Toby’s call supervened. “Joel, I got to poo. C’n we go home?”

Neal muttered, “Shit.”

Hibah said, “You got tha’ right, at least.” And then she laughed at her own joke, which made Joel smile although he tried to suppress it.

Neal, who couldn’t track the humour, said to Joel, “Wha’ you laughin at, yellow arse?”

Joel said, “Nuffink.” And then to Toby, “Come on, Tobe. We ain’t far. Le’s go.”

Neal said, “Di’n’t say you could go anywheres, did I?” as Toby came to join them.

Joel said, “Won’t answer f’r the smell ’f you mean us to stay.”

Hibah laughed again. She shook Neal by the arm. “Come
on
,” she said. “We got time ’fore my mum wonders where I am. Le’s stop usin it up like this.”

Neal came around at that reminder. He allowed himself to be led in the direction of the scent garden and its shrouded path. But he looked over his shoulder as he walked away. He was marking Joel. It would be for a future encounter of some sort. Joel knew it.

KENDRA’S INTENSITY OF purpose paid off sooner than she expected.

The day after Joel set out with her massage advertisements, she received her first phone call. A man requested a sports massage as soon as possible. He lived in a flat above a pub called the Falcon, where Kilburn Lane became Carlton Vale. She made home visits, didn’t she, because that’s what he needed.

He sounded polite. He was soft-spoken. The fact that he lived above a pub seemed to make it safe. Kendra logged an appointment for him and loaded her table into the Punto. She threw Cumberland pie into the oven for Joel and Toby and produced some Maltesers and fig rolls for their pudding. She gave Joel an extra pound for having placed the advertisements so wisely, and she went on her way to find the Falcon, which turned out to be sitting on what was nearly a roundabout, with a modern church opposite and traffic shooting by from the three roads that met in front of it.

It was no easy feat to find somewhere to park, and as a result Kendra had to lug the massage table some hundred yards from a lane that veered away from the main roads and provided space for two schools.

She also had to cross over Kilburn Lane, so by the time she struggled inside the pub to enquire how to get to the flats above, she was out of breath and sweating.

She ignored the stares of the regular patrons gathered at the bar and hoisting pints at the tables. She followed the directions, which had her return to the pavement, go around the building, and find a door with four buzzers lined up on one side. She rang, banged her way up the stairs, and paused at the top to regain her breath.

One of the doors opened abruptly, silhouetting a well-built man in the light from within. He was obviously the one who’d phoned for the massage, for he hurried forward in the gloom of the corridor, saying,

“Lemme help you wiv dat.” He took the massage table from her and carried it easily into the flat. This turned out to be little more than a large bedsit, possessing several beds, a basin, an electric fire, and a single ring for cooking whatever could be cooked on a single ring.

Kendra was taking all this in as the man set up the table. For this reason, she didn’t take much note of him nor he of her until he had the table unfolded with its legs extended, and she had unpacked most of the accoutrements of massage.

He set the table upright and turned to face her. She shook out the table’s cover and glanced his way. They both said, “Damn,” at the same moment. It was the man who, on Kendra’s disastrous girls’ night out, had brought Ness home drunk and eager to do whatever he wished her to do to him.

Kendra was at a momentary loss. She was holding the table’s covering, her arms extended, and she dropped them at once.

He said, “Well,
dis
is a bloody awkward moment, innit.”

Kendra reached a quick decision about the matter. Business was business, and this was business. She said formally, “You said a sports massage?”

He said, “Yeah. Dat’s what I said. Dix.”

“What?”

“My name. It’s Dix.” He waited until Kendra had the table covered, the soft terry cushioning for his head in place. Then he said,

“She ever tell you what really happened dat night? It was like I said, y’know.”

Kendra smoothed her hand over the cover. She opened her bag and brought out her oils. She said, “We didn’t talk about it, Mr. Dix. Now what scent oil would you like? I recommend lavender. It’s most relaxing.”

A smile played around his lips. “Not Mr. Dix,” he said. “Dix D’Court. You’re called Kendra what?”

“Osborne,” she said. “Mrs.”

His glance went from her face to her hands. “You got no ring, Mrs.

Osborne. You divorced? Widowed?”

She could have told him it was none of his business. Instead she said,

“Yes,” and left it at that. “You said you wanted a sports massage?”

“What I do first?” he asked.

“Strip down.” She handed him a sheet and turned her back. “Keep your shorts on,” she told him. “This’s a real massage, by the way. I hope that’s what you wanted when you phoned me, Mr. D’Court. This is a legitimate business I’m running.”

“Wha’ else would I want, Mrs. Osborne?” he asked, and she could hear the laughter in his voice. In a moment, he said, “I’m ready, den.”

She turned to see him supine on the table, the sheet pulled up dis-creetly and tucked around his waist.

She thought a single word:
shit
. He had an exquisite body. Weight lifting had defined his muscles. Over them stretched skin as smooth as a baby’s. He had no hair that Kendra could see, save for eyebrows and lashes. Not a mark was on him. The sight of him reminded her at the worst possible time of the ages it had been since she’d had a man. This, she told herself, was not what she was supposed to be feeling in her line of work. A body was a body. Her hands upon it were the tools of her trade.

He was watching her. He repeated his question. “She tell you?”

Kendra had forgotten the reference. She drew her eyebrows together, saying, “What?”

“Your daughter. She tell you wha’ happened b’tween us dat night?”

“I don’t got . . . I don’t have a daughter.”

“Den who . . . ?” For a moment it seemed he thought he was mistaken about who Kendra was. He said, “Over Edenham Estate.”

“She’s my niece,” Kendra said. “She lives with me. You’ll need to turn over. I’ll begin with your back and shoulders.”

He waited for a moment, watching her. He said, “You don’ look old

’nough to have a daughter
or
a niece like dat.”

“I’m old,” Kendra said, “just well preserved.”

He chuckled and then cooperatively turned over. He did what most people do at first when being given a massage: He cradled his head with his arms. She changed his position, bringing his arms down to his sides and turning his head so he was lying facedown. She poured the oil into her palms and warmed it, realizing at that moment that she’d left her soothing music in the car. The result of this was that the massage would have to be given to the accompanying noise from the pub below, which came up through the floor steadily, impossible to ignore. She looked around for a radio, a stereo, a CD player, anything to make a difference to the ambience. There was virtually nothing in the bedsit, save for the beds, which were difficult to ignore. She wondered why the man had three of them.

She began the massage. He had extraordinary skin: dark as black coffee, with the feel of a newborn infant’s palm, while just beneath it the muscles were perfectly defined. He had a body that indicated hard manual labour, but what encased it suggested he hadn’t held a tool in his life. She wanted to ask him what he did for a living, that he should be fashioned so magnificently. But this, she felt, would betray an interest that she wasn’t supposed to feel towards a client, so she said nothing.

She remembered her massage instructor explaining something that, at the time, had seemed rather mad. “You must get into the zen of the massage. The warmth of your intentions for the client’s comfort should transmit itself to your hands until the you of you disappears, so there is nothing left but tissue, muscles, pressure, and movement.”

She’d thought, What bollocks, but now she attempted to go there.

She closed her eyes and aimed herself towards the zen of it all. “Feels bloody good,” Dix D’Court murmured.

In silence, she did his neck, his shoulders, his back, his arms, his hands, his thighs, his legs, his feet. She knew every inch of him, and not a centimetre of his body was different in condition from any other.

Even his feet were smooth, not a callus anywhere. When she finished this part of the massage, she concluded he’d spent his life floating in a vat of baby oil.

She asked him to turn over. She made him more comfortable with a towel she rolled up and placed behind his neck. She picked up the bottle of oil to continue but he stopped her by reaching out and grasping her wrist, at the same time saying, “Where’d you learn dis, anyway?”

She said automatically, “Go to school, mon. Wha’ else you t’ink?”

And then, the correction because she’d spoken almost out of a dream state, matching his dialect simply because—she told herself—she’d achieved the zen that her instructor had spoken of, “I’ve taken a course at the college.”

“Give you high marks.” He grinned, showing teeth that were straight and white and as perfect as the rest of him. He closed his eyes and settled in for the second half of the massage.

Because she’d inadvertently slipped from Lady Muck, Kendra felt found out. Her discomfort propelled her through the rest of the massage. She wanted to finish and be gone from this place. When she’d completed her work on his body, she stepped away and wiped her hands on a towel. The procedure was to give the client a few minutes at the end of the massage to lie on the table and savour the experience. But in this instance, Kendra just wanted to be out of the bedsit. She turned from the table and began to pack up.

She heard him move behind her and when she swung around, she found him sitting up on the table, his legs dangling over the side, watching her, his body still lightly glistening from the oil she’d used upon him. He said, “She tell you the truth, Mrs. Osborne? You never said and I can’t le’ you out ’f here till I know. The sort you t’ink I am? Not the truth, innit. She ’as down below”— by this he meant the pub—“an’ I go in cos I get a glass of tomato juice from the bar. She dead drunk, and she letting two blokes dance wiv her in a corner and feel her up. She got her blouse open. She hiking her skirt like she means—”

“All
right
,” Kendra said. All she could think was
fifteen years old, fifteen years old
.

He said, “No. You got to hear cos you t’ink—”

“If I say I believe you . . .”

He shook his head. “Too late for dat, Mrs. Osborne. Too late. I get her out ’f the pub but she t’inks dat means wha’ it don’t. She offer it all, wha’ever I want her to do to me. I say fine, she can blow me—”

Kendra flashed her eyes at him. He held up a hand.

“—but we got to get to
her
place to do it, I tell her. The only way, see, I c’n get her to say where she lives. I drive her there. Dat’s when you show up.”

Kendra shook her head. “You was . . . No. You were—” She didn’t know how to express it. She gestured to her breasts. She said, “I saw you. Raising up.”

He turned his head, but she could see he was doing it to think back to that night. He finally said, “Her bag was on the floor. I
fetchin
it.

Woman, I do
not
do kids, an’ one t’ing I c’n see is she’s a kid.” He added, “Not like you, not like you at all. Mrs. Osborne. Kendra. C’n you walk over here?” He gestured to the table, to himself.

She said, “Why?”

“Cos you a beauty, an’ I want to kiss you.” He smiled. “See? I don’t lie ’bout nuffink. Not ’bout your niece. Not ’bout me. Not ’bout you.”

“I told you. This’s my business. ’sF you think I—”

“I
know.
I phone you up cos I see the handout in the gym, dat’s all. I don’t know who shows up an’ I don’t care. I got a competition to get ready for, an’ I need my muscles seen to. Dat’s it.”

“What sort of competition?”

“Bodybuilding.” He paused, waiting for her to comment. When she didn’t, he said, “Working towards Mr. Universe. I been lifting since I was thirteen years old.”

“How long’s that, then?”

“Ten years,” he told her.

“You’re
twenty-three
.”