What Came Before He Shot Her il-14

by Elizabeth George

  “What’s she done?” Kendra asked.

  The unexpected impact of the question made Joel gasp for a breath that did not come easily. He disconnected the call. He remained at one side of the kitchen, by the phone. Toby came to him, wanting comfort. Joel had nothing to offer his little brother.

  Ubayy Mochi put on the kettle for want of something to do. Joel told him that their aunt was coming—although he didn’t know this to be the fact—and he waited for the Asian man to leave. But it became quite clear that Mochi had no intention of doing that. He said, “Fetch the tea, young man. And the milk and the sugar. And can you do nothing about that poor little boy?”

  Joel said, “Toby, you got to shut up.”

  Toby sobbed, “Someone bunged up Ness. She i’n’t talking. Why i’n’t she talking?”

  Ness’s silence was unnerving Joel as well. His sister in a rage he could cope with, but he had no resources to deal with this. He said,

  “Toby. Shut up, okay?”

  “But Ness—”

  “I said shut the fuck up!” Joel cried. “Get out ’f here. Go upstairs. Get out! You ain’t stupid, so do it ’fore I kick your arse.”

  Toby clattered out of the room like an animal in flight. His broken yowls echoed back down the stairway. He went up the next flight, and a slamming door told Joel he’d hidden himself away in their bedroom. That left only Ness, Ubayy Mochi, and the injunction to make tea. Joel set about this although in the end, no one drank a single cup of it, and they found it the next morning still brewing, a cold, foul mess that was poured down the drain.

  When Kendra arrived, it was to discover a tableau comprising a complete stranger, her niece, and Joel: two of them at the old pine table and the other standing in front of the sink. She came into the house, calling out Joel’s name. She said, “What’s going on?” before she saw them. She understood without needing to be told. She went to the phone. She punched the three nines and spoke tersely, in the perfect English she’d been taught for a moment just like this, the kind of English that got results. When she had completed the phone call, she went to Ness.

  “They’ll meet us in Casualty,” she said. “Can you walk, Nessa?” And to the Asian man, “Where’d it happen? Who was it? What’d you see?”

  Ubayy Mochi explained in a low voice, casting a look at Joel. He sought to protect him from disturbing knowledge, but Joel heard anyway, not that hearing was necessary at that point.

  A gang of boys had set upon the young lady. Ubayy Mochi did not know where they had found her, but it was inconceivable to him that any young girl would be walking through Meanwhile Gardens by herself after dark. So they must have fetched her from some place else. But they’d taken her to where the footpath next to the Grand Union Canal passed beneath the bridge carrying Great Western Road over the water. There, thinking themselves safe from sight, they assaulted her and would no doubt have done even worse than they’d done but Mochi—roused from his nightly meditation practice by a single scream—had gone to the window of his small flat and had seen what was going on.

  “I possess a powerful torch,” he said, “which I find quite useful for just such moments. This I shone upon them. I shouted that I recognised them—although I fear this is not the truth—and I told them I would name them to the police. They ran off. I went to this young lady’s assistance.”

  “You ring the cops?”

  “There was no time. Had I done so . . . Considering the length of time between a phone call and their arrival on the scene . . .” The man looked from Kendra to Ness. He said delicately, “I believe those boys had not yet . . . I felt it imperative to see to her safety first.”

  “Thank God,” Kendra said. “They di’n’t rape you then, Ness? Those boys di’n’t rape you?”

  Ness stirred at this, for the first time focusing on someone. She said,

  “Wha’?”

  “I asked did those boys rape you, Ness?”

  “Like tha’s the worst c’n happen or summick?”

  “Nessa, I’m asking because we got to tell the cops—”

  “No. Lemme set you straight. Rape ain’t the worst. Just the end of the worst. Just the end, okay? Just the end, the . . .” And she began to cry. But on the subject of what had happened to her, she would say no more.

  This continued to be the case in Casualty, where her injuries were seen to. Physically, they were superficial, requiring only ointments and plasters. In other ways, they were profound. When questioned by a youthful white constable with beads of sweat shining on his upper lip, she declared herself without memory of what exactly had happened after the time she’d left the underground station and until she’d found herself sitting at the table in her aunt’s kitchen. She didn’t know who had set upon her. She didn’t know how many of them there were. The constable didn’t ask any whys of her, such as why she might have been targeted for assault. People were targeted for assault all the time, by virtue of being out by themselves, foolishly, after dark. He told her to take some care next time, and he handed over a pamphlet called “Awareness and Defence.” She should read it, he told her. Half the battle against thugs was knowing what they were likely to do and when they were likely to do it. He closed his notebook and told them to come down to the Harrow Road station in the next day or two when Ness was able. There would be a statement for her to sign and, if she wished, she could look through their collection of mug shots and old e-fits—for whatever good it might do, he added unhelpfully—to see if she could pick out one or more of her attackers.

  “Yeah. Right. I’ll do that,” was Ness’s reply.

  She knew the dance. Everyone knew the dance. Nothing would be done because nothing could be done. But as things happened, that suited Ness fine.

  She said nothing more on the matter. She acted as if the attack upon her was moving water under the bridge of her life. But that armour of indifference that she’d worn for so long prior to her acquaintance with Majidah and Sayf al Din began to cover her once again, an insentient insulation that held the world at bay.

  Everyone reacted differently to Ness’s unreal calm, depending upon their understanding of human nature and the level of energy they possessed. Kendra lied to herself, believing she was giving Ness “time to recover” when in reality she was embracing the opportunity to pretend that life was returning to normalcy. Dix kept a wary distance from Ness, unequal to the task of being a father to her in these circumstances. Toby developed a neediness that had him clinging to all who would allow it. Joel watched, waited, and knew not only the truth but what had to be done in response.

  Only Majidah took Ness on directly. “You must not allow this matter to cloud your vision,” she said to her. “What happened to you was terrible. Do not think I do not know that. But to give up on yourself, to abjure your plans . . . This hands triumph over to evil, and that you must never do, Vanessa.”

  “Wha’ever,” was Ness’s response. She went through the motions of getting on with what she’d been doing so as not to arouse anyone’s suspicions, but she, too, watched and waited.

  JOEL SAW TOBY to Middle Row School and then himself went truant. He sought out Cal Hancock, and he found the graffiti artist in Meanwhile Gardens, generously handing over a spliff to three girls who’d rolled their school uniforms at the waist to make them shorter and themselves appear sexier, a questionable manoeuvre considering the general dowdiness of the rest of their apparel. They were standing on the spiral steps, with Cal sitting below them. He saw Joel and said, “Happenin, mon?” and then to the girls, “Have it ’f you want,” with a nod at the spliff. They took the hint and disappeared up the stairs, passing the weed among them.

  “Early for tokin up,” Joel noted.

  Cal gave him a lazy, drug-induced salute. “Never too early for dat, mon. You lookin for me or for him?”

  “Here to do what the Blade wants doing,” Joel said. “Neal Wyatt went after my sister, mon. I want him sorted.”

  “Yeah? You got the means, I unnerstan. So whyn’t
you sort him yourself?”

  “I ain’t killin him, Cal,” Joel said. “And I ain’t ’xactly got bullets for the piece.”

  “So use it to scare th’ fuck out ’f him.”

  “Then he comes back strong ’nother time. Him and his crew. Goin after Toby. Or Aunt Ken. Look. I want the Blade to do what needs bein done to sort this bloke. So who’s the bitch I’m meant to mug?”

  Cal studied Joel before he got to his feet. He said, “You bring the piece?”

  “In my rucksack here.”

  “Okay, den. Le’s go.”

  Cal led him out of the gardens and beneath the Westway Flyover. They passed the tube station and began to crisscross streets until they arrived at the northern section of Portobello Road, not far from where—in what felt to Joel like the far distant past—he had bought the lava lamp for Toby. There, Cal pointed out a newsagent’s shop. He said, “Turns out dis is perfec’ timin, mon. She comes out reg’lar every day round dis time. You hang till I tell you who she is.”

  Joel didn’t know if this was the truth or a lie, but he found it didn’t much matter. He just wanted to get the job done. So he positioned himself in a doorway next to Cal, the entrance to an abandoned bakery whose windows were covered in plywood. Cal lit up yet another spliff— the man had an endless supply of them, it seemed—and then handed it over. Joel took a hit and breathed in more deeply this time. He took another and then a third. He would have gone on toking up had Cal not taken the weed from him with a low laugh, saying, “Hang on wiv dat, bred. You wan’ to be able to stand, speck.”

  Joel’s brain felt larger. He himself felt more relaxed, more capable, far less frightened, even rather amused by what was to happen in the next few minutes to what he thought of as some poor dumb cow. He said, “Whatever,” and he dug around in his rucksack till he found his pistol. He slipped it into the pocket of his anorak, where it felt heavy and secure against his thigh.

  “There she is, blood,” Cal murmured.

  Joel looked around the corner of the old bakery’s entry. He saw that an Asian lady had come out of the newagent’s. She wore a man’s overcoat, and she limped along with the aid of a stick. A leather bag dangled from her shoulder. She was, according to Cal, “Easy money, mon. She don’t even look round to see ’f she safe. She waitin to be mugged. Go ’head. Take you less ’n a minute.”

  It was clear that the woman didn’t stand a chance, but suddenly Joel wasn’t so sure how he was meant to accomplish the Blade’s wishes in this matter. He said, “C’n I jus’ snatch her bag, den? Stead of makin her hand over her money?”

  “No way, mon. The Blade wants you face-to-face wiv the bitch.”

  “We wait till later, den. We do it af’er dark. Try ’nother woman. Cos I run by her and grab the bag, she doesn’ see me. But ’f I go face-toface in daytime—”

  “Shit, we look the same to ’em, mon. Go on wiv you. You goin to do it, you got to do it now.”

  “But I don’ look the same to ’em. Let me snatch the bag on the run, Cal. We c’n tell the Blade I stuck her up. How’s he gonna know—”

  “I ain’t lyin to the Blade. He find out the truth, you don’t want to be round him, b’lieve it. So go ahead. Stick her up. We runnin out of time on dis, mon.”

  That much was true. For across the street, the targeted woman was hobbling along at a relatively steady pace, approaching the street corner. If she turned there and disappeared from view, the opportunity Joel had could easily be gone.

  He ducked out of the entry to the derelict bakery. He crossed over the road and jogged to catch up with the woman. He kept his hand curled around the gun in his pocket, sincerely hoping he would not have to take it out. The pistol scared him as much as it would likely scare the woman whose money and credit cards he meant to have.

  He came upon her and grabbed her arm. He said, ridiculously, “’Scuse me,” driven by years of instruction about common courtesy. Then he altered his tone, roughing it up as the woman turned to face him. “Give us your money,” he said. “Hand it over. I’ll have credit cards ’s well.”

  The woman’s face was lined and sad. She seemed not all present. In this, she reminded Joel of his mother.

  “I said,” Joel told her roughly. “Give us the money. The money, bitch.”

  She did nothing.

  There was no alternative. Joel pulled out the gun. “Money,” he said.

  “Y’unnerstan me now?”

  She screamed then. She screamed twice, three times. Joel grabbed her bag and jerked it from her. She toppled to her knees. Even as she fell, she continued to scream.

  Joel shoved the gun back into his pocket. He began to run. He didn’t think of the Asian woman, the shopkeepers, people in the street, or Cal Hancock. All he thought of was getting out of the area. He tore down Portobello Road. He veered around the first corner he came to. He did this again and again, going left and going right, until he found himself finally on Westbourne Park Road, where the traffic was heavier, a bus was trundling to the kerb, and a panda car was five yards away and coming steadily in his direction.

  Joel halted on the edge of a hair. He looked frantically for a way to escape. He hopped over the low wall to a housing estate. He set off across a winter-pruned rose garden. Behind him, he heard someone yell, “Stop!” Two car doors slammed in rapid succession. He kept going, for he was running for his life, for the lives of his siblings, for his entire future. But he wasn’t fast enough.

  Near the second building he came to, a hand clamped on to the back of his anorak. An arm went around his waist and threw him to the ground, and a foot stamped onto the small of his back. A voice said, “So what’ve got here, then?” and the question itself told Joel the tale:

  The cops hadn’t been after him. Their presence was not the result of an Asian woman screaming on Portobello Road. How could it have been? The police got around to responding to crimes committed in the street when they got around to responding to crimes committed in the street. How long had it taken them to get to the scene when Joel’s own father had been shot? Fifteen minutes? More? And that had been a shooting, while this was simply a woman screaming in Portobello Road. Cops didn’t respond to that with their tails on fire.

  Joel swore. He struggled to get free. He was hauled upward till he was eye to eye with a uniformed constable possessing a face like the underside of a mushroom. The man pushed Joel back towards the street where he tossed him against the side of the panda car next to which his partner was standing. The gun Joel carried clanged against the metal of the car, and that brought the other constable to assist as the first cried, “Pat! This bugger’s got a weapon!”

  A crowd began to gather and Joel looked frantically around them to find Cal. He’d not had the presence of mind to toss away the Asian woman’s shoulder bag, so he was caught and he knew very well he was done for. He didn’t know what they did to muggers. Less did he know what they did to boys who were caught with pistols, whether they were loaded or not. It wouldn’t be good, though. He understood that much.

  One of the constables took the gun from his pocket as the other put his hand on Joel’s head and lowered him to the backseat of the car. The shoulder bag was tossed into the front of the car, after which the two constables climbed inside. The driver turned on the roof lights to get the gathering crowd to disperse. Joel saw faces he did not recognise as the car pulled from the kerb. None of them were friendly. Heads shook, eyes looked sorrowful, fists clenched. Joel was unsure whether all this was directed towards him or towards the cops. What he was sure of was that Cal Hancock’s head, eyes, and fists were not among them.

  BACK AT THE Harrow Road police station, Joel found himself in the same interview room he’d been in before. The same individuals danced attendance on him as well. Fabia Bender sat opposite him in the unmoving chair at the unmoving table. At her side was Sergeant Starr, whose black skin shone like satin beneath the room’s otherwise unforgiving light. A duty solicitor had joined Joel on his side of the table, and this was
a new development. The presence of this lawyer—a stringy-haired blonde girl in shoes with foolishly elongated points and a wrinkled black trouser suit—informed Joel of how serious his present situation was.

  August Starr wanted to know about the gun, for the Asian woman was a closed book to him. She’d been scraped up around the knees, but otherwise unharmed aside from the fact that a few years had been taken off her life by the terror of what she’d gone through. Nonetheless, she had her bag returned to her, along with her money and her credit cards, so her part of the equation was solved once she identified Joel as the boy who’d mugged her. She was a signed, sealed, and delivered matter in August Starr’s mind. The gun, however, was not.

  In a society in which handguns had once been virtually nonexistent among the thieving and murdering classes, they were now becoming disturbingly prevalent. That this was a direct result of the easing of borders that came along with European unification—which was, to some, just another term for opening one’s arms to smuggling into the country everything from cigarettes to explosives—could have been mooted forever, and Sergeant Starr had no time for such mooting. The fact was that guns were here, in his community. All he wanted to know was how a twelve-year-old boy had got his hands on one.

  Joel told Starr that he’d found the gun. Back of the charity shop where his aunt worked, he said. There was an alley there with skips and wheelie bins, all over the place. He’d found the gun inside one of them while doing some bin diving one afternoon. He didn’t remember which.

  Where, exactly? Starr wanted to know. He was taking notes as well as recording Joel’s every word.

  Just in one of the bins, Joel told him. Like he said, he didn’t remember which one. It was wrapped up in someone’s rubbish, in a plastic carrier bag.

  What kind of carrier bag? Starr asked him, and he wrote those words— carrier and bag—in a well-schooled script on a new page in his notebook, signaling the expectation that they were at last getting somewhere and triggering in Joel the determination to lead them nowhere at all.