What Came Before He Shot Her (35 page)

in anticipation of whatever was to come as Joel charged by.

A quick glance over his shoulder allowed Joel to see that he’d been momentarily blessed. A bus and two lorries had swerved into view. Neal and his crew were hot to pursue him but not hot to be caught under the wheels of a vehicle, so they had to wait until all three had passed before they crossed the road and took up the chase. By that time and despite his labouring lungs, Joel had gained fifty yards on them. The charity shop was in view, and he flung himself inside, panting like an overheated dog as he slammed the door behind him.

Kendra was in the back, sorting through bags of new donations. She looked up when the door crashed closed, and what was on her tongue was something meant to sort Joel for the way he’d arrived. But when she saw his face, her intention altered. She said, “What’s going on?

Where’s Toby? Aren’t you meant to fetch—”

Joel waved her off, a response so unusual that she was stunned into silence. He peered out of the window and saw Neal on his way, leading his crew like a hound on the scent. Joel glanced back at his aunt, then beyond her to the little room at the back of the shop. There was a door within it and an alley behind it. He made for them both without a word.

Kendra said, “Joel. What’s going on? What’re you doing? Who’s out there?”

He managed, “Blokes,” as he pushed past her. His breath was coming so hard that he was feeling light-headed, and his chest seemed branded with a red-hot iron.

Kendra walked to the window as Joel dived for the back room.

Seeing the boys on their way, she said, “Are they vexing you?
That
lot?

I’ll sort them out.” She reached for the door’s handle.

“No!” Joel shouted. He had no time to say more, certainly no time to tell his aunt she would make things worse if she tried to deal with the other boys. No one sorted anyone in this kind of situation, and sometimes an enemy was just an enemy for reasons no one could actually fathom. Joel was Neal Wyatt’s chosen death partner. That’s just how it was. Joel crashed into the back room, where a dim bulb lit the way to the door.

He shoved it open. It slammed against the rear wall of the building.

He threw himself out into the alley, and a moment later he was hurtling up it while Kendra shut the door behind him.

Joel pounded along for another thirty yards before he was too winded to continue. He knew he had to catch his breath, but he also knew he had only moments before Neal Wyatt worked out which shop he had gone into and what he’d done when he got there. He looked for a place that was safe to hide in. He found it in a skip that was sprouting rubbish from a building site just behind a block of flats.

With the last of his breath, he heaved himself inside. He had to toss out several cardboard boxes and carrier bags filled with rubbish, but this was something his pursuers were unlikely to notice, given the condition of the rest of the alley.

He ducked down and waited, breathing as shallowly as his aching lungs could manage. In less than two minutes, he was rewarded. He heard the slapping of feet coming in his direction. And then their voices:

“Fuckin yellow arse got away.”

“Nah. He’s round here, innit.”

“Wants sortin, dat cunt.”

“Neal, you see where?”

“Real shit hole, dis.”

“Perfec’ place for likes of him, den.”

Laughter and then Neal Wyatt’s voice saying, “Le’s go. Dat slag is hidin him. Le’s get her.”

The boys moved off, and Joel stayed where he was. Indecision and fear made his bowels pressure downward, demanding release. He concentrated on not letting anything go. Arms wrapped around himself, knees tucked up to his chest, he closed his eyes and listened harder.

He heard a door slam in the distance. He knew it was the back door to the charity shop, with the boys returning there and intent upon damage. He tried to remember how many of them there were—as if this would somehow help the situation—because he knew that his aunt was more than a match for one or two boys, perhaps even three. But more than that in a confrontation would mean trouble for her.

Joel forced himself past the fear, past the rumbling at the bottom of his gut. He rose and lifted himself to the edge of the skip. He was saved by the sirens, which at that point came screaming down the Harrow Road.

When Joel heard them, he knew what his aunt had done. Anticipating the boys, she’d phoned 999 the moment Joel had ducked into the alley. She’d done Lady Muck for them, and her accent, her language, and the term
gang of boys
or perhaps even better
gang of black louts
had got the police moving, quicker than usual, bringing them on the run with lights, sirens, batons, and handcuffs. Neal Wyatt and his crew would soon know the rough justice of the Harrow Road police station if they weren’t quick about clearing out of the charity shop. His aunt had won the day.

Joel dropped to the ground and scurried off. Less than five minutes later he was entering the learning centre, where Toby had his meetings with the specialist who’d been assigned to help him.

In the vestibule, Joel stopped to brush himself off. He’d got fairly dirty inside the skip, mostly from having landed on a bag of kitchen rubbish, largely containing discarded baked beans and coffee grounds.

His jeans bore the evidence of this, all along one leg, as did his jacket, where his shoulder and arm had ploughed into the remains of what looked like a mustard sandwich. He cleaned himself off as well as he could, pushed open the inner doors, and entered the centre.

Toby was waiting for him on the cracked vinyl sofa that comprised the furnishings of the reception area. He had his lava lamp on his lap, his hands curved around the bottom of it. He wasn’t looking at anything other than the unplugged lamp, but his bottom lip was trembling and his shoulders were hunched.

Joel said cheerfully, “Hey, Tobe. Wha’s going, blood?”

Toby looked up. A bright smile eased the drawn expression on his face. He scooted off the sofa, all eagerness to leave, and it came to Joel that Toby had been frightened, thinking that no one was going to turn up, claim him, and take him home. Joel’s heart grew fiery for his little brother. Toby, he decided, was not intended to feel so scared.

He said to him, “Le’s nick off, mon. You ready, or wha’? I’m sorry I’m late. You wa’n’t worried or nuffi nk?”

Toby shook his head, everything forgotten. He said, “Nah,” then,

“Hey, c’n we get some chips ’long the road before we go home? I got fifty pee. Dix gave it me. I got dat five pounds from Gran as well.”

“You don’t want to be spendin dat money on chips,” Joel pointed out. “It’s birthday money. You got to spend it on somet’ing to remember your birthday by.”

“But if I want chips, how else I get ’em? An’ the fifty pee wa’n’t birthday money anyways.”

Joel was trying to come up with a reply for this, one that would explain—with kindness—that fifty pence would not be enough to buy the chips, no matter that it wasn’t birthday money, when a tall black woman with close-cropped hair and golden earrings the size of hubcaps appeared from one of the centre’s interior offices. This was Luce Chinaka, one of the learning specialists who worked with Toby. She smiled and said, “I thought I heard someone out here talking to my young man.

Could I have a word, please?” This last she said to Joel before she went on to Toby, “Did you forget to tell him I wanted to see him when he came to fetch you, Mr. Campbell?”

Toby ducked his head. He clutched his lava lamp closer to his chest.

Luce Chinaka touched him lightly on his sparse hair and said, “It’s all right, luv. You’re allowed to forget things. Wait here, won’t you? We won’t be long.”

Toby looked to Joel for guidance, and Joel could see the panic rise in his brother’s face at the idea of being left alone so soon after being rescued. He said, “Hang here, mate,” and he searched the room until he found a Spider-Man comic for Toby to look at. He handed it over and told him to wait, promising that he wouldn’t be long. Toby took the comic under his arm and clambered back onto the sofa. He placed the lava lamp carefully next to him and laid the comic on his lap. He didn’t look at it, however. Instead, he fastened his eyes on Joel. They were simultaneously trusting eyes and eyes of appeal. Only someone with a stone in his chest in place of his heart would have failed to be moved by their expression.

Joel followed Luce Chinaka to a small office crammed with desk, table, chairs, notice boards, white boards, and bookshelves that spilled notebooks, volumes, board games, and folders everywhere. She had a name plate on her desk—brass, with “Luce Chinaka” engraved upon it—and next to it stood a picture of her with her family: arm in arm with an equally tall dark-skinned husband, three winsome children stair-stepped in front of them.

Luce went behind her desk, but she didn’t sit. Instead, she pulled the chair out and drew it around the side. She pointed to another chair for Joel, so that they could sit facing each other. They almost touched knees since space in the room was so limited.

Luce took a folder from the top of her desk, and she glanced inside it as if to verify something. She said to Joel, “We haven’t talked before this. You’re Toby’s brother . . . It’s Joel, isn’t it?”

Joel nodded. The only reason he knew that adults called children into official places like their offices was if there was some sort of trouble. So he assumed Toby had done something he wasn’t meant to do.

He waited for elucidation and steeled himself to its inevitable appearance.

“He’s talked about you quite a bit,” Luce Chinaka went on. “You’re very important to him, but I expect you know that.”

Joel nodded again. He sought something in his head as a response, but he could come up with nothing other than the nod.

Luce picked up a pen. It was gold and slender, and it suited her. Joel saw that a form had been fixed to the cover of the folder she was holding, and there was writing on this, which she read for a moment before she spoke. Then it was to tell Joel what he already knew: that Toby’s primary school had made the recommendation that he enroll in the learning centre, that in fact the school had made it a condition of his acceptance as a pupil. She concluded with, “Do you know this, Joel?”

At his nod, she continued. “Toby’s quite behind where he should be for his age. Do you understand anything about the nature of his problem?” Luce Chinaka’s voice was kind, as were her eyes, which were deep brown although one had flecks of gold in it.

“He i’n’t stupid,” Joel said.

“No. Of course not,” Luce assured him. “But he has a serious learning disability and . . . well, there do appear to be . . .” She hesitated.

Once again, she looked at the file, but this time it seemed to be a way of deciding how best to say what needed saying. “There appear to be other . . . well, other problems as well. Our job here at the centre is to determine exactly
what
those problems are and how best someone like Toby can be taught. We then teach him in the way that he learns, as an adjunct to his regular schooling. We also offer him alternatives in . . .

well, alternatives in social behaviour that he can learn to choose from.

Do you understand all this?”

Joel nodded. He was concentrating hard. He had the distinct feeling that Luce Chinaka was leading up to something important and dreadful, so he felt wary.

She continued. “Essentially, Toby has trouble both processing and retrieving information, Joel. He has a
language
disability complicated by what we call a cognitive dysfunction. But that,” Luce fluttered her fingers as if to wave the words away and make what she had to say sensible to a twelve-year-old boy for whom every word sounded like another step on the familial trail of tears he and his siblings had been treading for ages, “is just how we label things. The real issue is that a language disability is serious because everything we’re taught in school depends first and foremost upon our capacity for taking it in in the form of language: words and sentences.”

Joel could tell that the woman was making her explanation simple for him to understand because he was Toby’s brother and not Toby’s dad. He wasn’t offended by this. Rather it felt oddly comforting, despite the trepidation he was feeling about the entire discussion. He expected that Luce Chinaka was a very good mother. He pictured her tucking her three children into their beds at night and not leaving the room till she made sure they’d said their prayers and received her kiss.

“Good,” she said. “But now we come to the crux of the matter. You see, there are limits to what we can do for Toby here in the learning centre. When we reach those limits, we have to consider what we’re going to do next.”

Alarms went off in Joel’s head. He said, “You sayin you can’t help Toby or summick? You want him to leave?”

“No, no,” she said hastily. “But I do want to develop a plan for him, which we can’t do without a broader assessment. Call it . . . well, call it a study of him. Now, everyone needs to be involved in this. Toby’s teacher at Middle Row School, the learning centre staff, a doctor, and your parents. I see from the records that your father is deceased, but we’d definitely like the opportunity to have a meeting with your mum.

We’ll need to begin by having you give her these documents to read and after that—”

“Can’t.” It was the only word Joel could manage. The thought of having his mother here, in this offi ce, facing this woman, was too much for him, even though he knew it would never happen. She wouldn’t ever be allowed out on her own, and even if Joel could fetch her from the hospital, Carole Campbell would have lasted less than five minutes in the presence of Luce Chinaka before she crumbled to bits.

Luce looked up from the paperwork she’d been removing from Toby’s file. She seemed to dwell on the word
can’t,
and she seemed to compare it to everything she knew about the family so far, which was very little and had been deliberately kept that way by the family itself.

She made an interpretation. “Your mum doesn’t read?” she asked. “I’m sorry. I did assume because her name’s on the paperwork . . .” Luce brought it closer to her face and examined what Joel knew had to be his aunt’s hasty scrawl.