What Came Before He Shot Her (25 page)

Since Six was not a girl to hold a grudge where a potential source of free substance was concerned, she pretended that what had happened between herself and Ness on Kensington High Street had never happened. Instead, she welcomed Ness into the disreputable flat on Mozart Estate, and after insisting Ness join in a karaoke rendition of “These Boots Are Made for Walking”—all the more melodious for the fact that she had drunk a large bottle of her mother’s mouthwash in an attempt to get high prior to singing it—she imparted the information Ness sought. Arissa lived in Portnall Road. Six didn’t know the address, but there was only one block of flats in the street, mostly inhabited by old-age pensioners. Arissa lived there with her gran.

Ness took herself to Portnall Road, and there she waited. She found the building with no trouble and had little more devising a spot from which she could watch the entrance to the building unobserved. She did not have long to wait. On her second attempt to catch the Blade in what she saw as a sexual transgression, he showed up driven by Cal, as always, and let himself into the building. For his part, Cal lounged in the entry. He took out a pad—it looked like a sketch pad from where Ness stood—and he began to use a pencil upon it. He leaned against the wall and only occasionally looked up to make sure the area was still safe for whatever the Blade was up to.

Which could be only one thing, and Ness knew it. So she was unsurprised when the Blade reappeared half an hour later, making final adjustments to his clothes. He and Cal had started down the path to the street when a window opened above them. Cal immediately thrust himself between the Blade and the building, using his body as a shield. A girl laughed from above and said, “You t’ink I hurt dat mon, Cal Hancock? You f’rgot dis, baby,” and Ness followed the sound to see her: perfect chocolate skin and silky hair, full lips and heavy-lidded eyes. She tossed a set of keys down to the men. “Bye-bye,” she said with another laugh—this one sultry—and she closed the window.

What prompted Ness to move from her hiding space wasn’t so much the knowledge of the girl as the expression on the Blade’s face as he gazed up at the window. Ness could see that he was thinking of going back up to her. He wanted more of whatever it was that she could give him.

Ness was on the path before she could consider the ramifications of a public scene with the Blade. She strode up to him and made her demand.

“I want to see that cunt who’s fuckin my man,” she told him, for she put the blame not on the Blade but on the girl. It was the only way she could survive the moment. “Dat cunt Arissa, you take me
to
her,” Ness said. “I show her what happens she put her hands on my man. Take me to her, blood. I swear, you don’t, I wait out here anyways an’ I jump her she comes out dat door.”

Another sort of man might have sought to defuse the situation. But as the Blade did not dwell much on women as human beings but rather as a source of entertainment, he considered the amusement value of a catfight over him between Ness and Arissa. He liked the idea and took Ness by the arm. He shoved her towards the door.

Behind her, Ness heard Cal say, “Hey, mon, I don’t t’ink—” But whatever else he intended for the Blade, it was cut off when the door shut behind them.

The Blade said nothing to Ness. She kept her anger at a high pitch by picturing the two of them—the Blade and Arissa—doing what she and the Blade should have been doing instead. She kept the picture of them so clear in her mind that when the door to the flat swung open, she charged in and went for the girl’s long hair. She grabbed it up in her fist and shrieked, “You fuckin stay ’
way
, you hear me? I see you near dis mon again, I kill you, cunt. Y’unnerstan?” She pulled back her fist and punched Arissa solidly in the face.

What she expected then was a claw-and-scratch fight, but that didn’t happen. The girl didn’t fight back at all. Instead, she dropped to the floor in a foetal position, so Ness kicked her in the back, going for her kidneys, and then repositioned herself to kick her in the stomach as well. She connected once, and that was when Arissa screamed. She screamed far out of proportion to the violence.

“Blade! I got a baby inside!”

Before the Blade could move, Ness kicked her again. Then she fell upon her because she could see that Arissa spoke the truth. Not so much because there was a telltale bump on the other girl’s body but because Arissa hadn’t bothered to try to take Ness on. That was indication enough that there was something more at stake for the girl than her street credentials.

Ness beat her around the face and shoulders, but what she was beating was a fact, not a girl. It was a fact that she couldn’t look at squarely because to do so meant to look at herself and to draw a conclusion from her past that would colour her future. Ness shrieked, “Bitch! I kill you, slag, you don’t stay ’way.”

Arissa screamed, “Blade!”

This put an end to the entertainment, which, while it hadn’t gone on long, had escalated quickly enough to sate the Blade’s need for a demonstration of his desirability. He pulled Ness off the other girl. He held her, bent at the waist and panting and trying to get back to Arissa for more. Ness continued to shriek her curses at the girl, which obviated the necessity of asking her any outright questions about the true history of her relationship with the Blade, and she fought savagely as the Blade jerked her back towards the door and in two deft movements opened it and shoved her into the corridor.

He did not follow at once, instead remaining behind to assess the re-liability of Arissa’s declaration. To him, she looked no different from when he’d taken her upright in the kitchen a short while before, thrusting and grunting with her back against the cooker, working quickly as was his habit when he had other things waiting for his attention.

She was still on the floor, foetally arranged as before, but he didn’t help her up. He merely gazed upon her and did a few mental calculations. Could be she was; on the other hand, could be she was merely a lying slag. Could be his; could be anyone’s. In any case, there was a simple answer and he gave it to her.

“Get rid of it, Riss. I got two and ’nother on the way. Don’t need no more.”

That said, he went out to Ness in the corridor. His plan was to sort her out in a fashion she wouldn’t likely forget because the one thing a man in his position couldn’t have was a woman following him around North Kensington and causing scenes whenever she felt like it. But Ness wasn’t there.

The way the Blade looked at this development was: could be good; could be bad.

AFTER THAT, NESS decided she was finished with the Blade. The reason she admitted to herself was the lying, cheating, two-faced nature of the man, going at Arissa like a hatchet-faced monkey at the same time he was going at her. The other reason, however, she didn’t get far enough within herself to examine even superficially. It was enough that he had cheated on her. She wasn’t about to stand for that, no matter who he was or how big his reputation.

She chose her moment. The Blade had a past, as she had learned, and what she’d also learned—from careful questioning of Six on the matter—was that the other women who’d been in his life over the years had been dismissed without troubling him further. This included the two hapless souls who’d borne him children. Whatever their expectations had been of the Blade’s future part in the lives of his offspring, he had disabused the two women of them in very short order, although he did drop by the estates on occasion when he felt the need to point out to Cal—or to anyone else he wished to impress—the fruit of his loins as they played in their nappies among the rusting shopping trolleys.

Ness determined that she would not be one of these women, going meekly out of the Blade’s life when he was tired of her. What she told herself was that she was sick and tired of
him
, and tired especially of his pathetic skill as a lover.

She waited for the right opportunity to present itself, which it did in a mere three days. Again, Six—that font of useful information on the topic of illegal activities in North Kensington—put her in the picture as to where the Blade took receipt of the contraband whose sale allowed him to keep his position of dominance in the community. This place was on Bravington Road, Six told Ness, where it intersected Kilburn Lane. There was a brick wall along a shop yard that backed onto an alley. The wall had a gate, but this was always locked, and even if it wasn’t, Ness wasn’t to go inside for love or money. No one went inside except the Blade and Cal Hancock. Everyone else did business with him in the alley. This alley was in full view not only of the street but of a line of houses that backed onto it. No one would think to phone the police about the furtive business going on outside, though. Everyone knew who was conducting it.

Ness went there when she knew the Blade would be dealing with his underlings. She found him as she hoped she might: looking over the goods provided by two thugs and three boys on bicycles.

She elbowed through them. The gate in the brick wall was open, revealing the back of an abandoned building, a platform running along it and upon this platform several wooden crates that were open and others that were not. Cal Hancock was shifting goods around in one of these crates, which meant that he’d left the Blade unguarded. The Blade himself was examining an air pistol he’d been handed, the better to see how much work would be required to modify it into a useful weapon.

Ness said, “Hey. We finished, fucker. Jus’ thought I stop by and let you know.”

The Blade looked up. An indrawn breath seemed to be taken in unison by the group that surrounded him. Across the yard, Cal Hancock dropped the top of the crate back into place. He leapt from the platform. Ness knew his intention. She had to be quick, so she spoke in a rush.

“You nuffink,” she said to the Blade. “You got dat, bred? Act like you a
real
big mon cos you know you a worm crawl round in the dirt.

An’
size
of a worm, you got dat, mon?” She laughed and put her hands on her hips. “Blood, I been
sick
of y’r face wiv dat stupid tattoo since second time I saw you, an’ I even more sick of dat eight-ball head an’

the way it looks when you licking. Y’ unnerstan me? You get what I say? You good for gettin high, i’s true, but, shit, it jus’ ain’t worth it no more, not f’r what you got to offer. So—”

Cal clamped on to her. The Blade’s face was a mask. His eyes had gone opaque. No one else moved.

Cal strong-armed her away from the wall and out of the alley, through a dead silence in which Ness acknowledged her triumph by saying to the thugs and the boys on their bikes, “You t’ink he’s summick? He
nuffi nk
. He a worm. You ’fraid of him? You ’fraid of a
worm
?”

Then she was back in Bravington Road, and Cal was hissing, “You one stupid cow. You one sorry, stupid, bloody-minded cow. You know who you messin wiv? You
know
what he c’n do ’f he wants? Get
out
of here now. An’ stay out of his way.” He gave her a push, one that was designed to direct her reluctant feet away from the spot. Since Ness had accomplished what she’d set out to do, she didn’t protest or fight to get away.

Instead, she laughed. She was finished with the Blade. She felt as light as the air. He could have Arissa and anyone else he wanted, she told herself. What he would
not
have—and could never have again—

was Vanessa Campbell.

IN HIS QUEST for physical perfection—which the title
Mr. Universe
would affirm—Dix D’Court needed financial support, and so he had gathered sponsors. Without them, he would have been doomed to squeezing out time for his power lifting before or after work or at the weekends, and this would be when the gym was most crowded. He’d have had little real hope of attaining his dream of the world’s most magnificently sculpted male body if he had to pursue it that way, so early on he’d gathered around him individuals who were willing to fi-

nance his endeavour. He had to meet them occasionally, to bring them up to date on the recent competitions he’d entered and won, and he had inadvertently scheduled one of these meetings for the night of Toby’s birthday. Once he learned of this, Dix wanted to cancel his meeting. But allowing this cancellation suggested another step taken towards the sort of commitment that Kendra was trying to avoid, so she told him that the birthday needed to be a private, family affair. The message in this was implicit: Dix was not family. He shot her a look that said
Have it your own way
. Privately, however, he told Joel he would be there directly after his sponsors’ meeting.

From this remark, Joel knew not to tell Kendra that Dix would be turning up. There were depths between his aunt and Dix that he could not plumb, and he had other worries anyway. Primary among these was his failure to find a “Happy Birthday” sign to hang upon the kitchen window. It was bad enough not to have the family’s old tin carousel any longer to set in the middle of the table, but to have no dramatic way to wish the birthday boy happiness felt to Joel like a more significant blow. For even Glory Campbell had managed to hang on to the children’s birthday sign, resurrecting it—more tattered every year—

from wherever she stowed it when it wasn’t in use. This sign with its grommets, which allowed it to be hung with haphazard cheer any which way, had gone the way of most of Glory’s nonsartorial possessions prior to her departure for Jamaica: She’d tossed it in the rubbish without Joel’s knowledge, and only when he looked through his own belongings did he realise it was no longer a possession of the immediate Campbell clan.

He didn’t have enough cash to get another one, so he’d had to settle for making one himself, which he did by using notebook paper. He took one sheet for each letter and he coloured them with a red pencil borrowed from Mr. Eastbourne at Holland Park School. On Toby’s birthday he was ready to hang them on the window, but there was nothing to use as adhesive save a book of first-class postage stamps.

He would have preferred Sellotape or Blu Tac. But he lacked the funds to purchase that as well. So he used the stamps, reckoning they could be glued to envelopes afterwards, as long as he was careful to put them on the window in such a way as to make them easy to get off later. That was how he began to explain matters to his aunt when she arrived home after work on the day in question, exclaiming, “What the hell!” as she saw the handmade sign and how it had been attached to the window. She dropped her carrier bags on the work top and turned to Joel, who’d followed her into the kitchen with his explanation ready.