What Came Before He Shot Her (80 page)

Joel’s aunt was ascending the stairs. She brought with her a tray on which were boiled eggs and toast that gave off an aromatic smell that should have been comforting, but not for Joel. He flung himself from the settee and charged towards the stairs and the bathroom. He didn’t make it.

CAL DISAPPEARED. JOEL sought him out the very next day and the day after that in all the regular places where he ought to have been: the sunken football pitch, where an incomplete piece of art in Cal’s style suggested he’d decamped in a hurry; Meanwhile Gardens near the spiral steps and beneath the bridge and atop the knolls, where he smoked and occasionally dealt dope to the adolescents in the neighbourhood; the abandoned flat in Lancefield Court, where the drug runners went to pick up their wares; the building that housed Arissa’s flat in Portnall Road. Joel even paced through Kensal Green Cemetery in an attempt to find him, but Cal was nowhere. He might as well have evaporated, so decidedly was the Rasta gone.

To Joel, this made no sense. For who was to guard the Blade if not Cal Hancock?

Except, when Joel looked for the Blade, he couldn’t find him either.

At least, not at first.

On the third afternoon, Joel finally saw him. He was on his way down the steps of the Westminster Learning Centre, having dropped Toby there for his appointment with Luce Chinaka. Across the street and some thirty yards away, he saw the Blade’s car, recognizing it from a stripe of black painted onto its light blue surface, from the piece of cardboard taped in place of one of the back windows. The car was parked illegally on double yellow lines at the kerb, and it was occupied, with someone bending from the pavement to speak to the two male figures inside.

The speaker straightened as Joel watched. It was Ivan Weatherall, and he placed his hand on the roof of the car, gave it a friendly tap, and then spied Joel. He smiled and waved him over, then bent back to the car once again to listen to something someone was saying from inside.

Had Ivan been alone, Joel would have made an excuse, for the last person he wanted to face was his mentor and his mentor’s good intentions. But the fact of the Blade’s being there and the fact of his needing to talk to the Blade about everything from Eaton Terrace to Ness . . .

and the blessed fact that Cal was with him, which was going to make it safer to talk to the Blade in the first place . . . These considerations propelled Joel across the street.

He came at the car from the rear. Through the back windows he could see yet another person within, and he recognised the shape of her head. He fervently wished Arissa wasn’t with the Blade and Cal—

they could hardly talk frankly with a snow freak around, he thought, trying to put her hand down everyone’s trousers—but Joel knew he could remain with the three of them until the Blade got tired of Arissa’s presence and threw her out of the car somewhere to find her way home. Then they could speak: about what had happened in Eaton Terrace and what they were going to do next. And about Ness as well because there was still and always Ness and her trouble and the fact that
what
Joel had done he had done as a first step in getting her out of trouble.

None of this took care of the problem of Ivan’s presence on the scene, however. Ivan would certainly wonder what Joel was doing, climbing into a car that belonged to the Blade, and he would defi nitely not forget it.

Ivan said, “Joel, how excellent to see you. I was just bringing Stanley into the picture about the project.”

So much had crowded into Joel’s mind over the weeks that he didn’t know at first what Ivan was talking about until he added, “The film.

I’ve had an extraordinary meeting with a man called Mr. Rubbish—

which, of course, isn’t his real name but rather the name he goes by professionally, but I’ll explain all that to you later—and at last the final piece of preproduction work is in place. We’ve the funding now. We’ve actually got the bloody
funding
.” Ivan grinned and made an uncharacteristic gesture of jubilation, thrusting one arm into the air. This allowed Joel to see that he was holding a tabloid, and that meant one thing only: coverage of the shooting in Belgravia, which meant bringing discussion of it into North Kensington, which was the last place on earth that Joel and Cal needed such a discussion.

Joel looked towards the car and Cal. Dimly, he heard Ivan say, “I knew we would get it if we made the right connection with someone whose background . . . ,” but the rest went the way of the wind. For in the car were indeed the Blade and indeed Arissa, but not Cal Hancock.

Instead, riding in the front passenger seat, where Cal always sat, was Neal Wyatt, and he appeared to Joel to be someone who was perfectly comfortable there.

Joel looked from Neal to the Blade. Vaguely behind him, he heard Ivan saying, “You’re acquainted with Neal. I was just telling him what we’re up to. I’d like both you boys to be involved in the project because—and you simply must listen to me—it’s time you set aside your dislike of each other. You have far more in common than you realise, and working on the film will show you that.”

Joel barely heard any of this. For he was sorting through matters in his mind, and he was trying to work out what everything in front of him actually meant.

He arrived at the conclusion that the Blade—informed by Cal that Joel was decidedly
his
man now—was finally keeping his end of the Neal Wyatt bargain. He’d fetched the boy from wherever Neal hung about when he wasn’t vexing people in the area, and he’d told Neal he was meant to come with him. Neal wouldn’t say no—no one would—

so he’d climbed into the car. The Blade had shared a spliff with him, which was why Neal seemed so much at ease, his guard lowered, his humour good. Now that the Blade had Neal where he wanted him, he was going to sort the lout once and for all. Joel made an attempt to feel good about all this, trying to apply it to his own situation. Sorting out Neal as promised, he decided, had to mean also protecting Joel from the aftermath of shooting the policeman’s wife.

What Joel didn’t go near was the
why
of that shooting. He didn’t touch upon why a mugging had become transformed into a bullet entering a woman’s body. Whenever he got close to that thought, he forced it away with the word
accident
. In his mind, it had to have been a terrible mistake, the gun exploding the world into violence by inadvertently discharg-ing when Cal grabbed it from Joel, when Joel—seeing the white woman’s kind face—couldn’t bring himself to demand her money.

“. . . go over it with you,” Ivan was saying, sounding as if he’d reached the conclusion of his remarks. He bent back to the car, “And, Stanley, think about what I’ve offered you as well, won’t you, my man?”

The Blade gave Ivan a smile, his eyelids lowered. “Eye-van,” he murmured, “you are one lucky bugger, y’unnerstan wha’ I say? You been able to keep me ’mused for so long, I don’t ’spect I ever feel like killing you.”

“Why, Stanley,” Ivan said, stepping away from the car as the Blade started it up and revved its engine, “I’m deeply touched. Have you read the Descartes yet, by the way?”

The Blade chuckled. “Eye-van, Eye-van. Why don’t you get it?

More’n thinking’s involved in order to get to being, mon.”

“Ah, but that’s precisely where you’ve gone wrong.”

“Is it.” The Blade put his hand on the back of Neal Wyatt’s neck and gave it a friendly tug. “Later, Eye-van. Me and the mon here got some serious business to conduct.”

Neal sniggered. He wiped his upper lip with the back of his hand, as if this would smear the snigger away. He glanced at Joel. He mouthed the word
fucker
.

The Blade said, “Nice to see you, Jo-ell. And tell that cunt sister of yours the Blade says hello. Wherever she is.”

He stepped on the accelerator and the car slashed into the traffi c heading towards Maida Vale. Joel watched it go. An arm—Neal’s arm—

came out of the passenger’s window, and Neal’s fist appeared. It altered into a two-fingered salute. No one inside the car tried to prevent him from making it.

IVAN INSISTED THAT they go for a coffee. They had matters to discuss, now that Mr. Rubbish had stepped forward to put up the funding for the film that Ivan and his following of hopeful screenwriters had been working upon. Ivan said to Joel, “Come with me. I’ve a proposal for you,” and when Joel demurred, muttering vaguely about his aunt, his brother, homework to be done, Ivan promised they wouldn’t be long.

Joel saw that Ivan wasn’t going to accept a refusal. He would com-promise again and again until he had what he wanted, which was to be of assistance. This was something that he could never be, not now at least, but as he didn’t know that, he was likely to keep cajoling Joel into having a cup of coffee or a walk or a seat on a bench, unwilling to let up. So Joel agreed to accompany him. Whatever Ivan wanted to say, it wouldn’t take long, and Joel didn’t intend to respond, which would only prolong an unwanted conversation.

Ivan led the way to a café not far along the Harrow Road, a grimy place of sticky-topped tables with a menu that bowed its head to an England that hadn’t existed in a good thirty years: beans or mushrooms on toast, fried eggs with rashers of bacon, fried bread, baked beans and eggs, sausage rolls, mixed grills. The scent of grease in the place was overpowering, but Ivan—happily oblivious to this—gestured Joel to a table in the corner and asked him what he wanted, heading to the counter to place the order. Joel chose orange juice. It would come from a tin and taste like something that had come from a tin, but he didn’t intend to drink it.

Mercifully, there was no one else in the place besides Drunk Bob, who was nodding off in his wheelchair at a table in the corner. Ivan placed their order and unfolded the paper he’d been carrying to have a look at its front page. Joel could see part of the headline of the
Evening
Standard
. He was able to read “CCTV” and the word “Crimewatch”

beneath it. From this, he concluded that the police had come up with the video footage they’d been looking for from the CCTV cameras around the square as well as from the cameras in the neighbourhood near the shooting. They intended to show that footage on
Crimewatch
.

There could be little to surprise in this. Any film that dealt with the shooting of a white woman standing on her front porch in a posh London neighbourhood was likely to find its way onto the television.

The shooting of a white woman married to a New Scotland Yard detective working on a major case was guaranteed to get there.

The only hope for Joel lay in two possibilities when it came to the video from those cameras: that the quality of the CCTV footage was poor and too distant to be of any use in identifying anyone, or that the television programme itself held little or no interest in a community like his own North Kensington neighbourhood.

Ivan brought their drinks to the table. He had the paper secured under his arm. As he sat, he tossed it onto an extra chair. He doctored his coffee and began to speak. “Who would have thought it possible to make a fortune on rubbish? And then to be willing to share that fortune . . . ?” Ivan curved his hands around his mug and went on to make it clear he wasn’t speaking about journalism. “When a man remembers his roots, my friend, he can do a world of good. If he doesn’t turn his back on those people he left behind . . . That’s what Mr. Rubbish has done for us, Joel.”

Joel tried not to look at the paper on the nearby chair but, folded in half, the
Standard
had landed upside down, with its headline now hidden and the rest of the front page in clear view, and this acted like the call of a siren, utterly compelling, and there Joel sat, without a ship’s mast to tie himself to. What he could see was a photograph now, with the beginning of a story beneath it. He was too far away to read any part of the story, but the picture was visible. In it, a man and a woman leaned against a railing, smiling at the camera, champagne glasses in their raised hands. The man was handsome and blond; the woman was attractive and brunette. They looked like an advertisement for Perfect Couple, and behind them the placid water of a bay sparkled beneath a cloudless blue sky. Joel turned his head. He tried to attend to Ivan’s words.

“. . . call himself Mr. Rubbish,” Ivan was saying. “Apparently, it’s a simple design that’s been snapped up by metropolitan areas all over the world. It’s operated by computerised conveyors or some such device that separates everything, so the entire populace doesn’t have to be educated about recycling. He’s made a fortune on it and now he’s willing to funnel some of it back into the community he came from. We’re one of his beneficiaries. We’ve got a renewable grant. What do you say to that?”

Joel had the presence of mind to nod and say, “Wicked.”

Ivan cocked his head. “That’s
all
you can say to two hundred and fifty thousand pounds?
Wicked?
”

“It’s cool, Ivan. Adam an’ that lot’re gonna be ravin for sure.”

“But not you? You’re part of it. We’ll need everyone we can find to be involved in the project if we’re to carry it off.”

“I can’t make no film.”

“What nonsense. You can write. You can use language in ways that other people . . . Listen to me.” Ivan brought his chair closer to Joel’s and spoke earnestly, the way he generally spoke when he believed that something needed to be conveyed with great urgency. “I don’t expect you to act in the film or stand behind the camera or do anything that you’re not already used to doing. But we’re going to need you on the script. . . . No, don’t argue.
Listen
. Right now, the dialogue leans too heavily towards the vernacular, and I need an advocate for broadening its appeal. Now, the vernacular’s fine if all we want is a local release.

But, frankly, now that we’ve got this backing behind us, I think we ought to be aiming for more. Film festivals and the like. This is not the moment for keeping our aspirations humble. I believe you can make the others see that, Joel.”

Joel knew that this was rubbish, and he wanted to laugh at the irony of it: that he would not be sitting in this place at this moment having this conversation with Ivan had not rubbish on a very large scale made it possible. But he didn’t want to argue with Ivan. He wanted to get his hands on a newspaper so that he could see what the police were up to.