What Came Before He Shot Her il-14

by Elizabeth George

  He was standing at the kitchen sink when she accosted him. He’d made himself one of his protein-packed juice drinks, and he was powering it down. His back was to her. They were alone in the house. She murmured, “Ken’s got all the luck. You, blood, are one fine man.”

  He turned to her, surprised because he thought she’d left the house. He had things to do—primary among them his daily workout—and having a tête-à-tête with his woman’s niece wasn’t among them. Besides, he’d seen the way Ness had started looking at him, assessing and deciding, and he had a fairly good idea of where a private colloquy with her might lead. He drank down the rest of his smoothie and turned to rinse out the glass.

  Ness joined him at the sink. She put her hand on his shoulder and ran it down his arm. It was bare, as was his chest. Ness turned his wrist and traced his vein. Her touch was light, her hands were soft, and there was no mistaking her intentions.

  He was human, and if he thought fleetingly of returning her touch and if his eyes dropped even more fleetingly to the rich dark nipples that, braless, pressed against her thin white T-shirt, it was owing to this humanity. Pure biology worked in him for a moment, but he mastered it. He removed Ness’s hand from his body. He said, “Good way to get into trouble, innit.”

  She caught his hand, pressed it to her waist and held it there. She fixed her eyes on his and raised his hand slowly till she had it at the swell of her breast. “Why she got all the luck?” she repeated. “’Specially when I saw you first. Come on, mon. I know you wan’ it. I know how you wan’ it. An’ I know you wan’ it from me.”

  Biology again and he felt himself heating in spite of his wishes. But this prompted him to jerk away from her. He said, “You readin t’ings wrong, Ness. Dat, or you makin ’em up.”

  “Oh right. You was bein’ noble at the Falcon dat night, Dix? You tellin me dat? You sayin you don’ re mem ber just before you drove me home? We go to your car. You put me inside. You make sure I got dat seat belt fastened. ‘Here, lemme help you, lit’le lady. Lemme draw it ’cross you, make sure you’re snug.’”

  Dix held up a hand to stop her words. “Don’t go dat way,” he told her.

  “What way? Way of you grazin your fingers cross me like you want to do now? Way of your hand sliding up my leg, high as you can, till you find what you want? Which way is it you don’t want me to go?”

  He narrowed his eyes. His nostrils flared when he breathed, and he took in her scent. Kendra was sexy, but this girl was sex. She was raw, she was present, and she scared him to death. He said, “You a liar as well as a slag, den, Ness? Keep away from me. I mean it, y’unnerstan.”

  He pushed past her then and left the kitchen. What he left behind was the sound of her laugh. A single note of it, high and possessing neither heart nor amusement. It felt like a scalpel peeling back his flesh.

  NESS WAS NOT of an age to understand what she felt. All she knew about what was going on inside her was that she was roiling. To her, this roiling was a thing demanding action, for action is always easier than thought.

  Her opportunity for taking an action to express herself came soon enough. She’d imagined the action being sexual: herself and Dix entwined hotly in such a manner and in such a place that discovery by Kendra was guaranteed. But that was not how her life played out. Instead, Six and Natasha supplied the opportunity for expression, which came about because two circumstances to which none of them were strangers occurred simultaneously: Lack of cash collided with a desire for substance on an evening when the girls had nothing to do.

  This should have presented no problem. Following hand jobs, blow jobs, full penetration, or whatever else they had negotiated for, the area’s bicycle-delivery boys had always been happy to hand over to the girls payment in the form of cocaine, cannabis, Ecstasy, crystal meth . . . the beauty for them being that the girls weren’t choosy about substance. But lately, the situation had altered. The source of dope had begun watching the boys more carefully because a wary customer along the line had complained about someone skimming. Thus, the well had run dry and no number of sexual favours appeared to be able to prime it.

  There was no question that the girls needed money. But they had nothing to sell, and the idea of actually seeking employment—had any of them been employable, which they were not—didn’t occur to them. They were of the instant-gratification generation anyway, so they thrashed around through their options in order to decide how best to come up with cash. There seemed to be two possibilities: They could sell sexual favours to someone other than the delivery boys or they could nick the money. They chose the latter option, as it seemed quicker, and it left them with merely deciding from whom they should lift what they needed. Here again, there were further choices: They could nick money from Six’s mother’s purse; they could nick it from someone using a cash-point machine; they could nick it from someone defenceless in the street.

  Since Six’s mother was rarely around, neither was her bag and she had no cache of cash in the flat that Six knew about, so that eliminated her as a possibility. The cash-point machine sounded quite good until Tash, of all people, pointed out that most machines had CCTV cameras mounted nearby and the last thing they wanted was to have their faces photographed in the midst of mugging someone using the machine. That left them with a confrontation in the street. This was agreed to, and all that remained was selecting the area in which to carry out the operation and selecting the appropriate victim.

  The three estates in which the girls lived were rejected at once. So were Great Western Road, Kilburn Lane, Golborne Road, and the Harrow Road. These, they decided, were far too crowded and a person mugged would likely send up a cry that would get them noticed if not get them stopped. They settled on an estate directly across from the Harrow Road police station. While others might have rejected this as a ludicrous spot in which to mug a London citizen, the girls liked it for two reasons: It had a locked entry gate, which would foster a false sense of security in their potential victim; it was so close to the police station that no one would expect to be mugged there. It was, the girls decided, sheer brilliance on their part to make the estate their selection.

  Getting onto the estate proved no problem. They merely hung around three wheelie bins near the gate and waited until an unwary elderly woman approached, toddling along with a shopping trolley in tow. Tash dashed forward to hold the gate open for her once she had it unlocked, saying, “Lemme help you wiv dis, ma’am,” and the woman was so surprised to be spoken to and dealt with politely that she had no suspicions when Tash followed her inside and gestured for Six and Ness to do likewise.

  Six shook her head to indicate that they’d let the woman go on her way. A pensioner, she’d be unlikely to have enough cash on her for what they wanted, and anyway, Six drew the line at mugging defenceless old ladies. They reminded her of her own gran, and not mugging them was a form of deal making with fate, guaranteeing that her gran would remain unmolested on her own estate.

  So the girls began to prowl up and down the paths, watching and waiting. Neither operation took long. They hadn’t been inside the walls ten minutes when they saw their target. A woman came out of one of the terrace houses and set off towards the Harrow Road, foolishly— and in direct defi ance of everything the police recommended—taking a mobile phone from her bag.

  She seemed a godsend as she punched in a few numbers, oblivious of what was going on around her. Even if she had no cash, she had a mobile, and nothing had changed in the lives of Six and Natasha heretofore, so possession of a mobile phone still represented the apex of their dreams.

  Three of them and one of her: The odds seemed excellent. All it would take was two girls in front of her and one behind. A confrontation without violence but with the threat of bodily harm omnipresent. Looking tough because they were tough. What’s more, she was white and they were black. She was middle-aged and they were young. It was, in short, a match made in heaven, and the girls had no hesitation about going forward.

  Six led th
e way. She and Tash would confront. Ness would be surprise backup behind the lady.

  “Patty? This is Sue,” the woman was saying into her mobile. “Could you unlock the door for me? I’m running late, and the students aren’t likely to wait more than ten minutes if . . .” She saw Tash and Six in front of her. She stopped on the path. From behind, Ness clamped a hand on her shoulder. The woman stiffened.

  “Le’s have the moby, bitch,” Six said. She closed in quickly. Tash did the same.

  “Le’s have the purse ’s well,” Tash said.

  Sue’s face was white to her lips, although the girls had no way of knowing this was her natural colour. She said, “I don’t know you girls, do I?”

  “Well, ain’t that true,” Six said. “Give us the moby an’ do it now. You don’t, you get cut.”

  “Oh yes, oh of course. Just . . .” Sue said into the phone, “Listen, Patty, I’m being mugged. If you wouldn’t mind ringing—”

  Ness shoved her forward. Six shoved her back. Tash said, “Don’t play games wiv us, cunt.”

  The woman, appearing flustered, said, “Yes. Yes. I’m terribly sorry. I just . . . Here. Let me . . . My money’s inside . . .” And she fumbled round to reach into her bag, which had straps and buckles all over it. She dropped it and the mobile on the ground. Six and Tash bent to get them. And in an instant the complexion of the mugging altered. From her pocket the woman whipped out a small can, which she began spraying wildly at the girls. It was nothing more than a strong room freshener, but it did the trick. As Sue sprayed and began screaming for help, the girls fell back.

  “I’m not afraid of you! I’m not afraid of anyone! You rotten little . . .”

  Sue shrieked and shrieked. And to prove whatever point she was attempting to make, she grabbed the girl nearest her and sprayed her directly in the face. This was Ness, who doubled over just as lights went on in nearby porches and residents began opening their doors and blowing whistles. It was a neighbourhood watch from hell.

  All this was enough for Six and Natasha, who took off in the direction of the gate. The mobile and the bag they left behind, along with Ness. Since she was already incapacitated by the spray, she was easy for Sue to deal with, and this she did summarily. She threw her to the ground and sat upon her. She reached for her phone and punched in three nines.

  “Three girls have just attempted to mug me,” she said into the phone when the emergency operator answered. “Two of them are heading west on the Harrow Road. The third I’m sitting on . . . No, no, I have no idea . . . Listen to me, I suggest you send someone straightaway because I don’t intend to let this one go, and I won’t answer for her condition if I have to spray her in the face again . . . I’m directly across the street from the Harrow Road station, you absolute ninny. You can send the janitor for all I care.”

  Chapter

  11 Thus did Ness Campbell end up meeting her social worker. How it happened followed the rule of law. The police—in the person of a female constable with sturdy shoes and bad hair—arrived to assist Sue, who continued to sit upon Ness and occasionally spray her in the face with the room freshener. This same constable made short work of hauling Ness to her feet in the presence of the gathered estate neighbours who, mercifully and finally, stopped blowing their whistles. They formed a jeering gauntlet—from which exercise they could not be dissuaded by the constable—and Ness found herself being frog-marched through it. She was actually relieved when she was away from the place. She was less relieved to be inside the Harrow Road police station, where the female constable dumped her in an interview room and left her there with her eyes still running from the spray. She was shaken as well, but that was not something Ness would ever admit to.

  The police knew they could not speak to Ness without a non-police adult present to monitor the conversation. Ness not being forthcoming about the responsible adult in her life, the only recourse for the Harrow Road station was to phone the Youth Offending Team. A social worker was dispatched: Fabia Bender, the very same social worker who’d been trying to contact Kendra Osborne about her for weeks.

  Fabia Bender’s job in this situation was not herself to question Ness. The girl wasn’t in the clutches of the police because she had failed to attend school, which was the reason behind the Youth Offending Team’s previous interest in her. In this situation, the social worker’s job was to act as a buffer between the police and the arrested juvenile. Acting as a buffer meant seeing that the rights of the juvenile being questioned were not violated.

  Since Ness had been caught red-handed in an attempted mugging, the only questions the police had were ones that dealt with the names of her accomplices in the crime. But Ness turned away instead of giving up Six and Natasha. When the policeman—his name was Sergeant Starr—asked her if she understood that she would take the fall alone should she not name her mates, Ness said, “Whatever. Like I ackshully care,” and told him that she wanted a fag. Fabia Bender she ignored altogether. She was a white woman. The cop, at least, was black. Sergeant Starr said, “No cigarettes.”

  Ness said, “Whatever,” and dropped her head onto her arms, crossed on the table. They were in a room designed to be uncomfortable. The table was bolted to the floor, the chairs were bolted to the floor, the lights were blinding, and the heat was tropical. The arrested party was meant to think that cooperation in the matter of being questioned would at least get him—or her, in this case—into a more comfortable environment. That, of course, was a fairy tale only an idiot would believe. Sergeant Starr said, “Y’unnerstan you’re facing the magistrate on this?”

  Ness shrugged without raising her head.

  “Y’unnerstan he can do with you what he likes? Send you to detention, take you away from your family?”

  Ness laughed at this. “Ooooh. Dat scares me shitless, innit. Look. Do wha’ you want. Only I ain’t talking.”

  The only thing she would tell Sergeant Starr was where she lived and Kendra’s phone numbers. Let the cow come fetch her, was how Ness thought of things. The cops ringing up her aunt would probably disrupt the woman’s nasty, nightly shag, and that was absolutely fine with Ness. But when Kendra got the call, she wasn’t in bed. She was, instead, giving herself a face peel, waiting for the solution to dry. She was doing this in the relative privacy of the bathroom, the better to keep Dix from knowing what she was up to.

  Joel was the one to answer the phone and the one to tell her the cops were ringing. He said, on the other side of the closed bathroom door, “They got Ness, Aunt Ken.” He sounded worried. Kendra felt her spirits plummet. She rinsed off her face, the treatment incomplete, looking exactly the same as when she’d begun it. She looked no different when she walked into the Harrow Road police station less than twenty minutes later. Dix had wanted to go with her, but she’d refused. Stay with the boys, she told him. Who knew what might happen if someone out there—and they both knew whom she meant— realised Joel and Toby were alone.

  There was a small waiting area in reception—currently occupied by a slouching young black man nursing a swollen eye—but Kendra wasn’t required to wait there very long. In a few minutes, a white woman came to fetch her. She wore blue jeans turned up at the ankles, a French beret, and a blindingly white T-shirt. She had equally white trainers on her feet. Feisty was what Kendra thought when she saw her. She was short, wiry, with tousled grey hair and a no-nonsense attitude that suggested the course of wisdom was not to mess her about.

  When Kendra heard her name—Fabia Bender—it was everything she could do not to wince and begin making excuses for why she hadn’t returned the social worker’s calls, which had been numerous over the last few weeks. She managed to look at the white woman blankly, as if she’d never heard of her before. She said, “What’s Ness done?”

  “Not ‘What’s happened to her?’” Fabia Bender noted shrewdly.

  “You’ve been expecting this, Mrs. Osborne?”

  Kendra disliked her at once. Partly because the white woman had leapt to a conclusion tha
t was utterly accurate. Partly because the white woman was simply who she was: the sort who liked to think she could tell what type of individual she was dealing with by the way they acted when she locked her milky blue eyes with theirs.

  Kendra felt smaller than she was. She loathed that feeling. She said shortly, “Cops called me to come fetch her. Where is she, then?”

  “She was talking to Sergeant Starr. Or rather, he was talking to her. I expect they’re waiting for me to get back to them because he’s not allowed to ask her any questions unless I’m in the room. Or you’re in the room. She wouldn’t give your name when she was first arrested, by the way. Have you any idea why?”

  “Arrested for what?” Kendra asked, for she wasn’t about to give Fabia Bender chapter and verse on her relationship with her niece.

  Fabia Bender related what she knew of what had happened, information she’d been given by Sergeant Starr. She concluded with the fact that Ness wouldn’t give up her friends. Kendra did it for her. But all she knew was the first name of each of the girls: Six and Natasha. One of them lived on Mozart Estate. She did not know where the other lived.

  Kendra burned with shame even as she relayed this information to the social worker. It wasn’t the shame of handing over details, however. It was the shame of having so few facts. She asked if she could see Ness, talk to her, take her home. Fabia Bender said, “Presently,” and ushered Kendra into an empty interview room.

  Hers was a thankless job, but Fabia Bender was a woman who did not see it that way. It was a job she’d done in North Kensington for nearly thirty years, and if she’d lost more children than she’d managed to save, it was not because she was lacking either in commitment to them or in a belief in the inherent goodness of mankind. She rose every day knowing that she was exactly where she was meant to be, doing exactly what she was supposed to be doing. Each morning was ripe with possibility. Each evening was an opportunity to reflect on how she had met the challenges of the day. She knew neither discouragement nor despair. Change, she had long ago come to understand, was not something that happened overnight.