What Came Before He Shot Her (57 page)

WHEN KENDRA ASKED Joel the full name of the boy who was giving him trouble in the street, Joel knew what she intended to do, but he didn’t associate this with Wield Words Not Weapons. She would not believe him when he claimed ignorance of the name of the very boy he’d earlier declared he was scheduled to meet in the football pitch, so he was forced to tell her that he was called Neal Wyatt. He asked her to stay away from him, though. Talk to Neal, you make things worse for me and Tobe, he told her. Things were fine at the present, anyway.

Neal had had his fun with the burning of the barge. Joel hadn’t seen the other boy in weeks. This latter was a lie, but she wouldn’t know that. Neal had been keeping his distance, but he’d been making sure Joel knew he was not far away.

Kendra asked if Joel was lying to her, and Joel managed to sound outraged at the question. He wasn’t about to lie in a circumstance involving Toby’s safety, he told her. Didn’t she know
that
about him, at least, if she didn’t believe anything he said? This was an excellent ploy: Kendra studied him and was momentarily appeased. But Joel knew he could not let matters rest there. He had only a reprieve. He still had to stop his aunt in her quest. He also had to back Neal off.

Obviously, the return of the flick knife hadn’t made a suffi cient impression on the Blade regarding Joel’s worthiness of the man’s notice.

He would have to talk to him personally.

He knew better than to ask Ness again, lest she raise a ruckus that Kendra might overhear. Instead, he moved on to a different source.

He found Hibah at school, having lunch with a mixed group of girls, sitting in a circle in one of the corridors to keep out of the rain. They were talking about “dat bitch Mrs. Jackson”—this was a maths teacher—when Joel caught Hibah’s eye and signaled to her that he wanted to talk. She got to her feet and ignored the girls’ tee-heeing about her having a conversation with a younger man.

Joel didn’t obfuscate the matter at hand. He needed to find the Blade, he told her. Did she know where he was?

Like his sister, Hibah wanted to know what the bloody hell Joel wanted with the Blade, of all people. She didn’t wait for an answer, though. She merely went on to tell him that she didn’t know where he was and neither did anyone else who wasn’t meant to know. And that meant
everyone
in her acquaintance.

Then she asked him what this was all about anyway, and she went on shrewdly to answer her own question. “Neal,” she said. “He vexin you.

Tha’ barge an’ everyt’ing, innit.”

This prompted Joel to ask Hibah something he’d wanted to know from the first. What was she
doing
hooked up with a lout like Neal Wyatt?

“He ain’t all bad,” she replied.

What she didn’t say and couldn’t have said was what Neal Wyatt represented to her: a modern-day version of Heathcliff, Rochester, and a hundred other dark heroes of literature, although in Hibah’s world he was more representative of the mysterious, elusive, and misunderstood hero found in modern romance novels, on the television, and in films.

She was, in short, a victim of the myth that has been foisted upon women since the time of the troubadours: Love conquers all; love saves; love endures.

She said, “I know you two been trouble for each other, Joel, but this is summick comes down to respect.”

Joel made a sound of derision. Hibah didn’t take offence, but she did take it as invitation to continue.

She said, “Neal’s clever, you know. He could be a good learner in this place here”—she indicated the corridor in which they stood—“if he wanted to. He could be anything, innit. He could go to university.

He could be a scientist, a doctor, a solicitor. Anyt’ing he wanted to be.

But you ain’t been able to see that, innit. An’ he knows that, y’unnerstan.”

“He wants to run a crew in the street,” Joel said. “Dat’s what he wants.”

“He doesn’t,” she said. “He’s only mixin wiv the other boys cos he wants respect. Tha’s what he wants from you as well.”

“People want respect, they got to earn it.”

“Yeah. Tha’s what he’s been tryin to—”

“He tries the wrong way,” Joel told her. “An’ you c’n tell him dat, if you want. Anyways, I di’n’t ask to talk to you ’bout Neal. I ask you

’bout the Blade.”

He began to walk off, leaving her to her mates, but Hibah didn’t like people being at odds with each other, and she didn’t like being at odds with Joel. She said, “I can’t tell you where tha’ bloke is. But girl called Six . . . ? She prob’ly knows cos she involved wiv a blood called Greve an’ he knows the Blade good enough.”

Joel looked back at her. He knew of Six. He didn’t know where she lived, though, or how to find her. Hibah told him that. Mozart Estate, she said. Just ask around. Someone would know her. She had a reputation.

That turned out to be the case. When Joel went to Mozart Estate, it was a matter of questioning a few people to root out the flat in which Six lived with her mother and some of her siblings. Six recognised Joel’s name, looked him over, assessed his potential to do her benefit or harm, and gave him the information he wanted. She told him about a squat on the edge of Mozart Estate, tucked into a crook of Lancefi eld Road where it led to Kilburn Lane.

Joel chose darkness when he went there, not because he wanted the dubious safety of shadows but because he thought it was more likely that the Blade would be in the squat at night than in the daytime when he’d more likely be cruising the streets, doing whatever he did to maintain his credentials with the lower-level thugs in the area.

Joel knew he was correct in his assumption when he saw Cal Hancock. The graffiti artist was at the foot of some stairs facing Lancefi eld Court, behind a chain-link fence whose gate had enough of a gap in it for people to slip through with a minimum of trouble. And people had done that, Joel could see. The flickering lights from candles or lanterns came from three derelict flats, two of which were at the top of the three-floor building and as far away as possible from the first-fl oor flat in which the Blade was apparently doing some sort of business. The stairs leading up to this flat were concrete, as was the building itself.

Cal was definitely on guard this time. He sat, alert, on the fourth step from the bottom and when Joel slipped through the gate in the fence, he stood at ease but intimidating to someone who didn’t know him, legs spread and arms crossed.

“Happenin,” he said as Joel approached. He gave a nod. He sounded official. Something, then, was going on above him in the Blade’s presence.

“I got to see him.” Joel attempted to sound as formal as Cal but also insistent. He wasn’t to be put off this time. “You give him dat flick knife?”

“Did.”

“He chuck it or keep it?”

“Likes the knife, mon. He got it wiv him.”

“He know where it came from?”

“I tell him.”

“Good. Now you tell him I need to talk. And don’t mess me about, Cal. Dis is business.”

Cal came down the steps and looked Joel over. “How you come to have business wiv the Blade?”

“You jus’ tell him I got to talk.”

“Dis about dat sister of yours? She got a wanker boyfriend or summick? You come wiv a message from her?”

Joel frowned. “I said before. Ness’s moved on.”

“Dat ain’t summick the Blade likes, mon.”

“Look. I can’t help what Ness’s doing. You jus’ tell the Blade I want to talk. I’ll keep watch here and put up a shout ’f someone wants to go up. Dis is important, Cal. I ain’t leave dis time till I see him.”

Cal drew in a breath and glanced above at the dimly lit flat. He started to say something but changed his mind. He climbed the stairs.

While Joel waited, he listened for sounds: voices, music, anything.

But the only noise came from Kilburn Lane, where the occasional car passed by.

A soft footfall brought Cal back to him. He said that Joel was to go on up. The Blade was willing to have a chat. He added that there were people above, but Joel wasn’t to look at them.

“I’m cool,” Joel told him, although he didn’t feel it.

Since the stairs were not lit, Joel felt his way upwards by means of the handrail. He came out on a landing off of which opened a door to the external first-floor corridor. He went out and found the light was better since it came from a streetlamp not too far away on Lancefi eld Court. He made his way towards a partially opened door from which more light flickered. As he approached, he smelled burning weed.

He pushed the door farther open. It gave onto a short corridor at the end of which a battery lantern burned. This illuminated soiled walls and lino ripped from the floor. It also exposed part of a room in which old mattresses and damaged futons were stacked, in which shadowy forms were engaged in transactions with the Blade.

Joel thought at first that he’d come to a crack house and he understood why Cal Hancock had been hesitant about allowing him to climb the stairs to this place. But he soon realised that what he was looking at was a different sort of business being conducted. Instead of men and women on the mattresses and futons, nodding off on substances supplied by the Blade, these were boys being handed plastic bags of powder, of rock, and of weed, and being given addresses to make deliveries. The Blade was doing the portioning out of substances from a card table, speaking occasionally to callers who rang his mobile.

The scent of weed was coming from a far corner of the room. There, Arissa was sitting, her eyes half closed and a stupefi ed smile on her face.

She had a half-burnt spliff between her fingers, but she was obviously high on something more than weed.

The Blade ignored Joel until all the delivery boys had been supplied and had shuffled out of the squat. Following Cal’s instructions, Joel hadn’t made a study of any of them, so he didn’t know who they were or who was among them, and he was clever enough to realise that this was all for the best. The Blade closed up shop—an exercise in putting goods into a large satchel and locking it—and glanced at Joel. He didn’t speak, though. Instead, he crossed over to Arissa, bending to her and kissing her deeply. He slid his hand down the front of her jumper and caressed her breasts.

She moaned and made a stab at working his jeans zipper, but she lacked the coordination to get it down. She said, “You wan’ it, babe?

No shit I do you in front ’f the queen an’ the House of Commons if you want, innit.”

The Blade looked around at Joel, then, and it came to Joel that this was a performance on his part, something from which he himself was supposed to take a message. But what it was didn’t compute because of what Joel knew of the man in front of him.

Ivan had said Stanley Hynds was intelligent and self-educated. He’d studied Latin and Greek and the sciences. He had a part to him that was not a part of what people saw when they had a run-in with him.

But what all that meant in light of the man who was looking at him from across the room as a strung-out teenager tried to massage his member . . . This was something Joel did not understand, and he did not struggle to understand it. All he knew was that he needed the Blade’s help, and he meant to have it before he left the squat.

So he waited for the Blade to decide whether he’d allow Arissa to service him in front of Joel, and he did his best to look unconcerned in the matter. He crossed his arms as he’d seen Cal do, and he leaned against the wall. He said nothing and kept his face without expression, hoping this reaction was the key to proving whatever he needed to prove to the Blade.

The Blade laughed outright and disengaged from Arissa’s ineffectual fingers. He crossed back over to Joel and, as he did so, he took a spliff from the breast pocket of the suit jacket he was wearing, and he lit it with a silver lighter. He took a toke and offered it to Joel. Joel shook his head. “Cal give you the knife?” he asked.

The Blade observed him long enough to let Joel know he wasn’t meant to speak before being told it was appropriate to do so. Then he said, “He give it. You lookin for summick in return, I spect. Dat what dis is?”

“I ain’t lying,” Joel said.

“So what you need from the Blade, Jo-ell?” He drew in a lungful of smoke that seemed to go on forever. He held it there. In the corner, Arissa scrambled unenergetically on her futon, apparently looking for something. He said to her sharply, “No more, Riss.”

She said, “I comin down, baby.”

“Dat’s where I want it,” he told her. And then to Joel, “So what you need?”

Joel told him in as few words as possible. They amounted to safety.

Not for him but for his brother. One word on the street that Toby had the Blade’s protection and Toby wouldn’t have anyone vexing him any longer.

“Whyn’t you get what you need from someone else?” the Blade inquired.

Joel, hardly an idiot in these matters, knew the Blade was asking so that he would have to say what the Blade believed about himself: There was no one else with his power in North Kensington; he could sort people out with a single word, and if that didn’t work, he could pay them a visit.

Joel made the recitation. He saw the gratified gleam come into the Blade’s dark eyes. Obeisance made in this form, Joel went on to make specific his request.

This required a history of his encounters with Neal Wyatt, and he gave it, beginning with his first run-in with the other boy and concluding with the fire on the barge. He crossed the final line when he said Neal’s name in advance of any agreement he might garner from the Blade to help him. He could think of no other way to demonstrate how willing he was to trust the older man.

What he hadn’t considered was that the Blade might not reciprocate that trust. He hadn’t considered that the return of a flick knife might not serve as an adequate expression of his good intentions. Because of this, he waited for the Blade’s reply in mistaken confi dence, assuming that now all would be well. He wasn’t prepared, therefore, to receive a response that was noncommittal.

“Ain’t my man, Jo-ell,” the Blade said, knocking ash from his spliff onto the floor. “Spitting on me, ’s I recall. Outside Rissa’s, you remember?”