What Came Before He Shot Her (77 page)

Cal turned to Joel and said in a low, fierce voice, “You got warned, y’unnerstan? What you had you threw away.”

Something in Cal gave way then, despite the ferocity of his words.

Joel could see this: in the way a muscle moved in Cal’s cheek, as if he chewed on additional words to hold them back. In that moment Joel could have sworn that the graffiti artist wanted to be the Cal he really was, but he was afraid to go there.

Concluding this, Joel decided that in this situation he and Cal were compatriots, and this gave him a modicum of comfort as they hurtled towards an unknown destination while people boarded and debarked from the train when it came into stations and while Joel waited for Cal to rise and move towards the doors. Or to give him a sign that this or that person who boarded and rode with them was the person Joel was meant to mug. Not on the train—he could see that now—

but following carefully at a distance when a station was reached and their unknowing target got out and began the short or the long walk home.

He tried to sort out who it would be: the turbanned bloke in patent leather shoes, his orange beard with its long grey roots making him difficult not to stare at; the two Goths with multiple piercings on their faces, who boarded at High Street Kensington, sat, and immediately began to suck hungrily upon each other’s tongue; the old lady in the dingy pink coat, easing her swollen feet from broken-down shoes. And there were others, many others, whom Joel studied and wondered, Him? Her? Here? Where?

At last Cal stood when the train began to slow yet another time. He grasped the rail running along just inches beneath the ceiling of the carriage, and he excused himself politely and worked his way along to the door. Joel followed.

On the platform, they could have been anywhere in London. For here on the walls were the same enormous advertisements for films, the same announcements for gallery exhibitions, the same posters beckon-ing one to take a sunny holiday on a sunny beach. A set of stairs marked the route to the exit farther along the platform, and above it—indeed, spaced at intervals along the entire length of the platform—hung London’s ubiquitous CCTV cameras, documenting all action within the station.

Cal moved out of the way of the other commuters. He took something from his pocket. For a crazy sweat-inducing moment, Joel thought Cal meant him to do the deed right on the platform, in full view of the cameras. But instead, Cal pressed something soft into Joel’s hand, saying, “Put dis on. Keep your head down good.” It was a black knitted cap, similar to his own.

Joel saw the wisdom of this headgear. He pulled it down over his steel-wool mop of ginger hair. He was grateful for it and grateful that the time of year had him wearing a dark anorak that obscured his school uniform as well. Once the job was done and they were running off, it wouldn’t be likely that their mark would be able to identify them to the police.

They moved along the platform and when they got to the stairs, Joel could not resist a look upward, despite Cal’s injunction to keep his head low. He saw there were additional cameras on the ceiling here, catching the image of anyone climbing towards the street. Yet another camera was doing its business above the turnstiles going into and out of the station itself. There were, indeed, so many security cameras around that it came to Joel that he and Cal had journeyed to a place decidedly important. He thought of Buckingham Palace—although he didn’t know if there was a tube station anywhere near the royal residence—and he thought of the Houses of Parliament and he thought of wherever it was that they kept the crown jewels. That seemed the only explanation for the cameras.

He and Cal emerged from the station into everywhere bustle, before them a tree-lined square where at the distant end Joel could see the backside of a statue of a naked woman, pouring water from an urn into a fountain below her. The winter-bare trees were like a procession leading up to this fountain, and between them black iron streetlamps with perfectly clean glass shades stood next to benches of wood that were decorated with green wrought iron. Around the square, black taxis waited in ranks so gleaming that they refl ected the late sun, while buses and cars navigated the many streets that poured into it.

Outside of programmes on the television, Joel had never seen anything like this place. This was a London he did not know, and if Cal Hancock decided to desert him anywhere in this vicinity, Joel realised that he would be done for. Thus, he took no time to gawk or even to wonder what two blokes such as they were doing in this part of town where they both stood out like raisins in rice pudding. Instead, he hurried to keep up with Cal.

The graffiti artist was striding off to the right along a pavement more crowded than any Joel had ever seen in North Kensington save on market days. Everywhere, shoppers hurried by with fancy carrier bags, some ducking into the underground station and others entering a large-windowed café where a burgundy awning bore a scroll of gold letters.

“Oriel,” they spelled. “Grand Brasserie de la Place.” As Joel passed, he saw through the windows a trolley piled high with pastries. White-coated waiters carried silver trays. They moved among tables where men and women in fine clothing smoked, talked, and drank from tiny cups. Some of them were alone, but they spoke into their mobiles, with their heads bent low to protect their private conversations.

Joel was about to say, “Fuck! Wha’ we
doin
here, blood?” when Cal came to a corner and made a turn.

Here, suddenly, the atmosphere altered. A few shops operated near the square—Joel saw the gleam of cutlery in one window, modern furniture in another, elaborate arrangements of flowers in a third—but in less than twenty yards from the corner, a row of fine terrace houses sprang up. They were nothing like the dismal terraces Joel was used to. These were sparkling, from their roofs to their basement windows, and beyond them a block of flats stretched out, filled with windowboxes that were bright with pansies and green with great swags of thriving ivy.

Although this place, too, was altogether different from what Joel was used to, he breathed more easily, out of sight of so many people.

While none of them had appeared to notice him, it remained true that he and Cal were an anomaly.

After a short distance, Cal crossed the road. More terrace houses followed a long block of flats, all of them painted white—pure white and absolutely unblemished—with black front doors. These buildings all had basements with windows visible from the pavement, and Joel glanced inside these as they passed. He saw spotless kitchens with work tops that were covered in stone. He saw the glint of chrome and open racks of colourful crockery. Outside, he also saw well-made security grilles, barring entrance to burglars.

Another corner loomed and Cal turned yet again. Here they entered a street that was as quiet as death itself. It came to Joel that this place was like a film set waiting for the actors to appear. Unlike North Kensington, here there were no boom boxes pounding out music, and no voices raised in argument. On a distant street, a car
whooshed
by, but that was it.

They passed a pub, the only commercial enterprise in the street, and even it was a picture like everything else. Forest etchings covered its windows. Amber lights glowed. Its heavy front door stood closed against the cold.

Beyond the pub, the rest of the street was lined with fine houses: another terrace but this one cream instead of white. Another set of perfect, gleaming black doors gave entrance to these places, though, and wrought-iron railings ran along the front, marking basements below and balconies above. These held urns, pots of plants, ivy spilling down towards the street, while overhead security alarms on the buildings warned off intruders.

At yet another corner, Cal turned again, leaving Joel wondering how they would ever find their way out of this maze when they’d done what they’d come to do. But this corner led to a passage that was just the width of a single car, a tunnel that dipped between two buildings, blindingly white and surgically clean like everything else in the area.

Joel saw a sign that said “Grosvenor Cottages,” and he noticed that beyond the tunnel a row of little houses lined a narrow, cobbled street.

But the street quickly trickled into a twisting path, and the path went absolutely nowhere but to a tiny garden in which only a fool would try to hide. At the end of that garden, a brick wall loomed some eight feet high. There was nowhere else. There was nothing else. There was one way in. There was one way out.

Joel panicked at the thought that Cal meant him to confront someone here. With only a single means of escape should things go badly, it came to him that he might as well turn the pistol on himself and shoot off his feet because it would be highly unlikely that he’d be going anywhere after he’d done what he was intended to do.

Cal, however, didn’t venture more than five feet into this tunnel.

What he said to Joel was, “Now.”

Joel, confused, said in turn, “Now what, mon?”

“Now we wait.”

“Cal, I ain’t doin nuffink in dis alley here.”

Cal shot him a look. “The point, mon,” he said, “is you do wha’ I tell you when I tell you. Ain’t you got dat yet?”

That said, he leaned against the tunnel wall, just beyond a set of iron gates that hung open to admit cars and pedestrians into the vicinity of the cottages. Then, though, his face softened a bit and he said to Joel,

“Safe here, bred. No one’s on guard dis part of town. First person comes ’long . . . ?” He patted his pocket where the gun resided. That gesture—and the gun—completed his thought.

Despite Cal’s words of reassurance, Joel began to feel light-headed.

Without wanting to, he thought of Toby patiently waiting to be fetched from school, confident that Joel would turn up in good time because Joel generally turned up in good time. He thought about Kendra, dusting off the shelves in the charity shop or straightening up the merchandise, believing that no matter what else happened to turn the world upside down, she was going to be able to depend on Joel now to be the man every household needed. He thought of Ness locked up and his mother locked up and his father dead and gone forever. But those thoughts resulted in his vision swimming, so he tried to stop thinking altogether, which made him think of Ivan, think of Neal Wyatt, think of the Blade.

Joel wondered what the Blade might do to him if he just walked off, saying to Cal, “No way, mon,” and made his way back to the underground station where he’d cadge enough money to get himself a ticket and get himself home. What would the Blade do? Kill him? That hardly seemed likely since even the Blade would surely draw the line at killing a twelve-year-old, wouldn’t he? The problem, though, was that defying the Blade now meant disrespecting him as well, and that made Joel fair game for some sort of discipline administered by the Blade himself, by Cal, or by anyone wishing to get into the good graces of Mr. Stanley Hynds. And
that
, Joel concluded grimly, was exactly what he didn’t need at the moment: a crew of wanna-be gangstas on the lookout for a chance to sort him or his family with guns, with knives, with coshes, or with fists.

Any way Joel turned the matter in his head, he was caught. His only hope was to run off permanently, never to return to North Kensington, never to be present for his brother, never to be around for his aunt. He could do that, he thought, or he could stay where he was and wait for Cal to give him the nod to perform.

Cal said suddenly, “Here, mon.”

Joel roused himself. He could see nothing near the tunnel, and no one had come out from one of the cottages along the little cobbled street. Nonetheless, Cal had taken the gun from his jacket pocket. He pressed it firmly into Joel’s hand and curved his fingers around it. It felt to Joel like one of Dix’s twenty-kilo weights. He desperately wanted to let it fall to the ground.

Joel said, “What—?” and then heard the brisk slam of a car door somewhere beyond them, out in the street. He heard a woman say,

“What on earth was I thinking, wearing these ghastly shoes? And for
shopping
of all things. Why didn’t you stop me, Deborah? At the very least, a decent friend would have saved me from my worst inclinations.

Could you possibly park the car for me?”

Another woman laughed. “Shall I take it to the garage? You do look done in.”

“You’ve read my mind. Thank you. But first let’s unload . . .” Her voice grew fainter for a moment and then, “Heavens, do you have any idea how to open the boot? I pushed one of these gizmo things, but . . .

Is
it open, Deborah? Unlocked? Lord, I’m hopeless when it comes to Tommy’s car. Ah yes. It appears we have success.”

Joel risked a look. He saw two white women perhaps three houses along the street, lifting what looked like four dozen fancy carrier bags from the boot of a fine silver car. They carried them several at a time up the front steps of one of the houses and then returned for more. When they’d emptied the boot, one of the women—a redhead wearing an olive coat and a matching beret—opened the driver’s door. Before she climbed inside, she said, “I’ll take it to the garage, then. You go and take off your shoes.”

“Cup of tea?”

“Lovely. I’ll be right back.”

“Mind Tommy’s car, though. You know how he is.”

“Don’t I just.”

She started the engine—it was very nearly soundless—and she drove the car slowly past the tunnel where Joel and Cal were waiting. Unfamiliar with the vehicle, she was completely focused on the street before her, her hands high on the steering wheel in the manner of someone intent upon getting from point A to point B without damage.

She didn’t look once in the direction of Joel and Cal. A short distance down the street, she turned left into a mews and disappeared from view.

Cal said, “Now, mon,” and he jerked Joel’s arm. He made for the pavement and for the other woman, who was still standing on the steps of the house. She was surrounded by her shopping, and she was rooting around in a leather shoulder bag for the keys to her front door. A curtain of her smooth jaw-length dark hair hid one half of her face, and as Joel and Cal approached her, she whisked this hair back behind her ear to reveal her earrings. They were gold hoops, delicately engraved.