What Came Before He Shot Her (26 page)

But she stopped him in the midst of it by putting her arm around his shoulders.

“You did a good thing,” she said into the top of his head. Her voice was husky, and it occurred to Joel that she’d softened a bit since Dix had started coming around number 84 Edenham Way, especially since the day they’d all trooped up to the Rainbow Café to meet his dad and his mum, the latter of whom was more than generous with dollops of hot custard when it involved an order of her apple pie.

Kendra unpacked the carrier bags, which turned out to be holding takeaway curry. She said, “Where’s Ness?” and then called up the stairs, where the television sounds indicated cartoons were playing, “Mr. Toby Campbell? You get into this kitchen straightaway. You hear?”

Joel shrugged, his answer to the whereabouts of Ness. She’d been around more often in the past few days, a brooding presence licking its wounds when she wasn’t out and about with Six and Natasha. Joel didn’t know where she’d taken herself off to. He hadn’t seen her since yesterday evening.

“She knows what day this is, doesn’t she?” Kendra asked.

“S’pose,” Joel said. “I di’n’t tell her. I ain’t seen her.”

“Haven’t,” Kendra said.

“I haven’t seen her.” He added, “Have you?” because he couldn’t help it. So much still the child, it seemed to him that, as the adult, Kendra could have done something about the problem that was Ness.

Kendra eyed him, and she read him as well as if he’d spoken. “What?”

she said. “Tie her down? Lock her up in a room?” She removed plates from the cupboard and handed them to him, along with cutlery. He started to set the table. “Time comes, Joel, when a person decides what her life’s going to look like. Ness’s decided.”

Joel said nothing because he couldn’t articulate what he believed since
what
he believed rose from the history he shared with his sister as well as what he felt about her. What he felt was longing: for the Ness she had been. What he believed was that she missed who she’d been as much as he did, but had even less hope of getting her back.

Toby clattered down the stairs, his lava lamp under his arm. He set it in the middle of the table and extended its flex to plug it into a point. He climbed into a chair and rested his chin on his hands to watch the shining orange globules begin their rhythmic rising and falling.

Kendra said to him, “Got your favourite here, Mr. Campbell.
Naan
with raisins, almonds, and honey. You ready for that?”

Toby looked over at her, his eyes bright at the thought of the bread.

Kendra smiled and took from her shoulder bag an envelope with three foreign stamps affixed to it. She handed this over to Toby, saying,

“Looks like your gran didn’t forget your special day, either. This came all the way from Jamaica”—she made no mention of the fact that she’d phoned her mother three times about sending it and had herself included the five-pound note Toby was going to find when he wrestled it open—“so open it up and let’s see what she says.”

Joel helped Toby ease the large card from its envelope. He scooped up the limp five-pound note that fluttered to the floor. He said, “Hey, lookit this, Tobe! Y’r rich,” but Toby was studying a Polaroid picture Glory had sent as well. In it, she and George stood with a string of strangers, arms slung around one another and bottles of Red Stripe hoisted in the air. Glory wore a halter top—not a wise choice for a woman her age—a baseball cap with “Cardinals” written on it, shorts, and no shoes.

“Looks like she’s found her niche,” Kendra said when she took the picture from Toby and gave it a look. “Who’re all these people?

George’s clan? And she sent you five pounds, Toby? Well, that was nice, wasn’t it? What’re you going to do with all that dosh?”

Toby smiled happily and fingered the note, which Joel handed to him. It was more money than he’d ever had at any one time in his entire life.

Ness joined them soon after that, right at the point when Joel was deciding what would do as a special plate that Toby could eat from on his special day. He’d settled for a tin tray painted with the face of Father Christmas, which he unearthed from beneath two pie tins and a baking dish. Dust grimed the edges, but a quick wash would remedy that.

Ness hadn’t forgotten Toby’s birthday either. She arrived bringing what she announced was a magic wand. It was made of clear plastic and filled with sparkles, which glowed brightly when someone shook it. She made no mention of where she’d got it, which was just as well since she’d pinched it from the very same shop in Portobello Road where Joel had purchased the lava lamp.

Toby grinned when Ness demonstrated how the magic wand worked.

He said, “Wicked.” He shook it happily. “C’n I make a wish when it’s shook?”

“You c’n do whatever you want,” Ness told him. “It’s your birthday, innit.”

“And
since
it’s his birthday,” Kendra said, “I got something as well . . .”

She disappeared up the stairs at a trot, returning with a long package that she handed to Toby. This he unwrapped to discover a snorkel and an underwater mask, perhaps as useless a gift as any child has ever received from a well-meaning relation. Kendra said helpfully, “They go with your life ring, Toby. Where is it, anyway? Why’ve you not got it on?”

Joel and Toby hadn’t told her, of course, about the day they’d had the confrontation with Neal Wyatt, the day on which the life ring had taken its near fatal wound. Since that time, Joel had attempted a repair with glue, but it hadn’t held well. Consequently, the life ring was pretty much done for.

Things were not perfect, but no one dwelt on that since every one of them—including Ness—was determined to maintain an aura of good cheer. Toby himself didn’t appear to notice everything that was missing from his celebration: the birthday sign, the tin carousel, and most of all the mother who’d given him birth.

The four of them tucked into the takeaway, revelling in everything from vegetable
jalfrezi
to onions
bhaji
. They drank lemonade, and they talked about what Toby could do with his birthday five pounds. All the time the lava lamp sat in the middle of the table, blurping and oozing with an eerie light.

They’d just got to the naan when someone banged on the front door. Three sharp raps were followed by a silence, two more raps, and someone yelling, “Give it
over
, cow. You hear me?” It was a man’s voice, nasty with threat. Kendra looked up from tearing off a piece of
naan
for Toby. Joel gave his attention to the door. Toby gazed at the lava lamp. Ness kept her eyes fixed on her plate.

The banging on the door began again, more in earnest this time.

Another shout accompanied it. “Ness! You hear me? I say open or I kick this piece of shit door down wiv one foot, easy.” More banging ensued. “Don’t vex me, Ness. I break up your fucking head, you don’t open when I say.”

This wasn’t the sort of language that frightened Kendra Osborne.

But it was the sort of language that fired the cylinders of her outrage.

She began to get to her feet, saying, “Who the hell is that? I won’t have
anyone
—”

“I c’n get it.” Ness rose to stop Kendra.

“Not alone, you won’t.” Kendra stalked to the door, Ness hard on her heels. Toby and Joel followed. Toby was chewing on his piece of
naan
, his eyes wide with curiosity, like someone believing that this was part of an unexpected birthday show.

“What the
hell
are you on about?” Kendra demanded as she swung open the door. “What d’you mean, pounding on this door like a common—” Then she saw who it was, and the seeing stopped her from saying anything more. Instead, she looked from the Blade to Ness and then back to the Blade, who was dressed like a London banker but who, with a red beret covering his hairless head and a venom-spitting cobra tattooed on his cheek, would never have been mistaken for one.

Kendra knew who he was. She’d lived in North Kensington long enough to have heard about him. Even had this not been the case, Adair Street was no great distance from Edenham Way, and it was on Adair Street that the Blade’s mother lived in a terrace house from which—according to gossip exchanged in the market in Golborne Road—she had evicted her eldest son when it became apparent to her that following in an older sibling’s footsteps meant that her younger children would be treading one path or another that led without diver-sions to places like Pentonville or Dartmoor.

Kendra added everything up in the time it took her to digest the Blade’s words, which was no time at all. She said to Ness, “You’ve got some talking to do about this.”

In the meantime, the Blade pushed past her, uninvited and unwilling to wait for an invitation to enter, which he correctly assumed was not about to be issued. He was accompanied by Arissa, black miniskirt riding high on her thighs, black crop top plunging over her breasts, a pair of black boots soaring up her legs to her knees, the heels so high and so tapered they might have been considered lethal weapons. She was the perfect companion for this night’s adventure, and her appearance at the Blade’s side effected the result he’d wanted when he told her to accompany him.

Ness came forward. “What d’you want, blood? I tol’ you b’fore. I ain’t havin no more ’f what you got to offer, ’specially if it means I end up looking like this slag here.”

“Liked it fine last time you had it, though. Di’n’t you, skank?” he asked her.

“Dat’d be summick you’d not likely notice.”

At this exchange, Arissa made a noise that could have been taken as amusement. The Blade shot her a look and her face went blank. She said, to him, “C’mon, baby. We don’t need vexin ourselves wiv dis.”

She ran her hand down his arm to reach his fingers.

He shook her off. “Fuck it, Arissa. We got business here.”

“You done y’r business wiv me,” Ness told him. “It’s over.”

“_You _ don’t tell
me
when t’ings’s over, slag.”

“Oh, dat never happen before? No one else got the bot’le to walk away from you?”

“No one else dat stupid. I’m th’ one dat say—”

“I am jus’ shiverin in my knickers, mon. Wha’ you want anyway, bringin’ dis slag to my house? ’M I s’posed to give her a demonstration so she know how to give you what you want?”

“You don’t know nothing ’bout what I want.”

Kendra put herself between them. The front door was still open—

with Arissa standing well inside, and Kendra pointed to it. She said, “I don’t know what’s gone on between you two, and I don’t want to hear it just now. This is my house you’re in”—this she directed at the Blade and his companion—“and I’m telling you to leave. Not asking. Telling.

Take yourselves back to whatever . . .” She hesitated and then made a wise correction since
cesspool you’ve crawled out of
was an expression she deemed likely to escalate matters. “Take yourselves back to wherever you came from.”

“Best idea I heard in weeks.” Ness might have let things go at that—

indeed, she actually would have done so—had the Blade not come accompanied by Arissa and all that Arissa stood for. She couldn’t let him leave without having the last word. She said with a smile that expressed a depth of insincerity and animosity that was more than evident to the others in the room, “’Sides, now you an’ crackbitch here c’n go do a grind. You c’n even take her up that deluxe establishment you got in Kilburn Lane an’ go for it among the cockroaches, which I expect she’ll like. Cos den she won’t have to take notice dat you, blood, don’t know more’n stickin it in and having it off when it comes to pleasing y’r partner. Like I—”

The Blade surged forward. He caught Ness’s face on the jaw. He held her head in a grasp that dug into her skin. Before anyone else could move, he brought the side of his other fist into her temple. The strength behind the blow knocked Ness off her feet. The force of the fall left her out of breath.

Toby cried out. Joel pulled him away. Arissa sighed, “Oh,” with pleasure fanning across her features.

Kendra moved. In an instant she’d shoved past Joel and Toby into the kitchen to get to the cooker. She kept her pots and pans inside the oven, and she snatched up a frying pan as a weapon. She dashed back across the room at the Blade.

“You get out of here, rabbit sucker,” she said. “You aren’t out ’f the door in the next five seconds, this pan’ll be making acquaintance with your skull. And
you
,” to Arissa, who was grinning inanely at the unfolding scene, “if this is the bes’ you c’n do for a man, you’re a sorrier sight than I’m looking at with my eyes.”

“Shut your ugly gob,” the Blade said to Kendra. He kicked Ness to one side. He faced Kendra down. “Come on, den. You want t’ distress me, cow? You jus’ try it. Come on. Come
on
. I ain’t going nowhere, so you better come get me.”

“You scare me as much ’s shit on a tissue,” Kendra told him. “I been blowing off divs like you since you was in nappies. Now get out of here,
now.
You don’t, you’ll be trying your stuff on someone likely to serve your little prong on yesterday’s toast. Y’unnerstan me, blood?”

The fact that the Blade understood Kendra perfectly was demonstrated in the very next moment. From his pocket, he brought out the flick knife that had long ago given him his sobriquet. It caught the light as it flashed open. He said to Kendra, “Your tongue goes first,” and sprang towards her.

She hurled the frying pan at his head. The pan made hard contact just above his eye, splitting the skin. Arissa screamed. Toby wailed. The Blade went for Kendra, who was now weaponless.

Ness grabbed the Blade’s leg as Joel dashed from the kitchen, where he’d huddled in the doorway with Toby. Ness shrieked at him,

“Get summick, Joel!” and she sank her teeth into the meat of the Blade’s calf. He slashed down at her. The knife sliced through her crinkly puff of hair. Ness cried out. Kendra leapt onto the Blade’s back.

Joel scrambled around the brawling bodies, desperately trying to get to the only weapon he could see: the frying pan, which had skittered beneath a chair. As he did this, Kendra locked on to the Blade’s slash-ing arm to keep him from striking at Ness again. Joel reached for the pan, but Arissa stopped him. She pulled him away. He slipped on the floor. He found himself inches from the Blade’s left leg, so he did as his sister had done and bit deep. Ness was shrieking, both in pain and in fear, the blood from her scalp wound dripping down her face. Arissa was shouting and Toby was crying. The Blade grunted as he tried to dislodge Kendra. All of this whirled around the room, like suds on clothes in a washing machine.