What Came Before He Shot Her (79 page)

Just thick posh curtains hanging low on the windows. And those chimneys lining up just like soldiers, rank upon rank of them along the rooftops, etching their shapes against the grey sky: balloons and shields, pots and dragons. Whoever thought there could be so many chimneys?

Cal had paused at the corner of yet another street. He looked right and left, an act that assessed where they were and where they might go.

Across from him was a building different from every other they’d seen so far: It was grey steel and concrete, interrupted by glass. It was more like what they were used to seeing in their own part of town, albeit newer, fresher, cleaner.

When Joel joined him, it was clear there was no safety here. People with carrier bags were emerging from shops, and the shops offered coats with fur collars, crisp bed linens, bottles of perfume, fancy bars of soap. A grocery displayed oranges resting individually in nests of green foil, and a flower seller nearby offered buckets of blooms in every imaginable colour.

It was posh. It was money. Joel wanted to run in the opposite direction. But Cal paused and looked at the display in the bakery window.

He adjusted his knitted cap, pulling it low, and he turned up the collar of his donkey jacket.

Two more sirens sounded up ahead. A heavy white man came out of the bakery, cake box in his hands. He said, “What’s going on?”

Cal turned to Joel. “Le’s check it out, mon,” he said and he passed the white man with a polite, “’Scuse me,” as they headed onward.

To Joel, this seemed a lunatic activity since Cal was walking directly towards the sirens now. He said fiercely as he strode by the young man’s side, “We can’t. We
can’t
! Cal, we got to—”

“Mon, we got no choice ’less you see one.” Cal jerked his head in the direction of the noise. “Dat way’s to the tube and we got to get out ’f here, y’unnerstan wha’ I say? Jus’ be cool. Look curious. Like ever’one else.”

Joel’s gaze automatically followed the way Cal had indicated with his head. He saw, then, that Cal was correct. For in the distance, he made out the shape of the naked lady pouring water into that fountain, only seeing her from a different angle this time. So he realised that they were coming up to the square where they’d emerged from the underground. They were five minutes or less from escaping the area.

He took a few deep breaths. He needed to look like someone curious about what was happening, but nothing more. He said to Cal,

“Right. Le’s go, then.”

“Jus’ be cool,” was Cal’s reply.

They walked at a normal pace. As they reached the corner, yet another siren sounded, and a panda car passed. They entered the square.

It seemed to them as if hundreds of people milled around on the pavements that marked the perimeter. They’d come out of cafés. They hesitated in the doorways of banks, of bookshops, and of department stores. They stood as statuelike as the bronze woman in the middle of the fountain: Venus gazing tenderly down upon a life-sustaining substance that she eternally poured from her urn.

A fire engine roared into the square. Another panda car followed.

Voices buzzed. Bomb? Terrorists? Riot? Armed robbery? Street demonstration getting out of control?

Joel heard all this as he and Cal wove through the crowd. No one spoke of murder or street crime, of a mugging gone bad. No one at all.

As they crossed over into the centre of the square and made diagonally for the station beyond, an ambulance shrieked up from the south, siren blasting and roof lights twirling. The ambulance was what finally gave Joel some hope, for an ambulance meant that Cal hadn’t actually killed the lady when the gun went off.

Joel only hoped that she hadn’t hurt her head too badly when she banged it on the wrought-iron railing as she fell.

The worst was Toby, which was certainly something that Joel did not expect. But when he finally arrived at Middle Row School to take Toby home for the day, it was to find him huddled in the February darkness just outside the locked gates, having somehow escaped the notice of the school’s administra-tors and teachers, carefully hidden in the deeper shadows cast by a pillar box. He was staring at a jagged crack in the pavement, his skateboard clutched to his chest.

Joel crouched by his brother and said, “Hey, mon. Sorry, Tobe. I di’n’t forget you or nuffink. Did you think I forgot? Tobe? Hey, Tobe?”

Toby roused himself. “Meant to go to the learnin centre today,” he mumbled.

Joel said, “Tobe, I’m sorry. I had to do summick . . . Look it’s important you don’t grass me up on this. It won’t happen again. I swear.

You c’n promise me, Tobe?”

Toby gazed at him blankly. “I waited like I was s’posed to, Joel. I di’n’t know what else to do.”

“You did good, mon. Waitin here like dis. Come on now. Le’s go.

When I take you to the learnin centre next, I’ll talk to them. I’ll ’splain wha’ happened. They won’t be vex at you or nuffi nk.”

Joel urged his little brother to his feet, and they set off towards their home. Joel said to him, “Tobe, you can’t tell Aunt Ken ’bout dis.

Y’unnerstan wha’ I say? She find out I di’n’t take you to the learnin centre . . . She got ’nough vexin her already, innit. Wiv Ness. Wiv Dix gone. And dat Fabia Bender woman jus’ waitin for a reason to take you and me away . . .”

“Joel, I don’t
want
—”

“Hey. Dat ain’t goin to happen, bred. Which is why you got to keep quiet ’bout me bein late. C’n you pretend?”

“Pretend what?”

“You went to the learnin centre. C’n you pretend you went today like always?”

“’Kay,” Toby said.

Joel looked at his brother. Toby’s brief lifetime rose up to declare how unlikely it was that he would be able to pretend anything, but Joel had to believe it would be possible to carry off a deception about the afternoon, for it was crucial to him that life should look to his aunt the way it always looked to his aunt. The slightest deviation and Kendra would be suspicious, and suspicion felt to Joel like the last thing that he could endure.

But in all his planning, Joel failed to take into account the concern of Luce Chinaka. He failed to realise that she might have been told by Fabia Bender to keep a closer watch on Toby, that she might take matters into her own hands when Toby did not turn up as scheduled, phoning Kendra at the charity shop and asking if Toby was ill and unable to keep his regular appointment. So when Kendra arrived home for the day, she first deposited a bag of Chinese takeaway in the kitchen and she then demanded to know why Joel had failed in his duty to see to Toby.

Here, however, a modicum of luck was on Joel’s side. He’d taken an unsettled stomach and a growing weakness in his arms and his legs up to his bedroom, and he’d deposited them upon his bed. There he curled in the darkness, and he stared at the wall on which he found—

no matter what he did to try to get it out of his mind—the image of the dark-haired lady’s face floated, smiling at him, saying hello, and asking if he and Cal were lost. Thus, when Kendra flipped on the light and said, “Joel! Why didn’t you take your brother to the learning centre?” Joel spoke the truth. “Bein sick,” he said.

This altered things. Kendra sat on the edge of the bed and, mother-like, felt his forehead. She said in an altogether altered tone, “You coming down with something, baby? You’re a bit hot. You should’ve phoned me at the shop.”

“I thought Tobe could miss—”

“I don’t mean for Toby. I mean for you. If you’re sick and you need me . . .” She smoothed his hair. “We’re going through bad times round here, aren’t we, luv? But I want you to know something: You don’t have to take care of yourself alone.”

For Joel this was actually the worst thing she could have said, for the kindness in her words caused tears to well in his eyes. He closed them, but the tears leaked out.

Kendra said, “I’m going to make you something to settle your stomach. Why don’t you come down to the lounge and wait on the settee?

Have a lie down and I’ll fix you up a tray. You can watch the telly while you eat. How ’bout that?”

Joel kept his eyes closed because he felt stung by her tone. It was a voice she’d never used before. Tears dripped across the bridge of his nose and onto his pillow. He did what he could not to sob, which meant he said nothing in reply.

Kendra said, “You come when you’re ready. Toby’s got a video on the telly, but I’ll tell him to let you watch what you want.”

It was the thought of Toby—and the thought of what Toby might say if Kendra questioned him—that got Joel up once his aunt left the bedroom. This, it turned out, was all to the good, for when he arrived in the sitting room, it was to find Toby blithely lying to their aunt about a supposed afternoon in the learning centre, just as Joel had instructed him to do but without the knowledge of Luce Chinaka’s phone call.

“. . . readin today,” Toby was saying. “Only I don’t ’member the book.”

Joel said, “Wa’n’t today, mon. What’re you on about, Tobe?” He joined Toby on the settee, his pillow in his hands and a blanket from his bed dragging along on the floor. “Today we came straight here from school cos I was sick. Remember?”

Toby looked at him, his expression puzzled. “But I thought—”

“Yeah. But you tol’ me all ’bout dat yesterday.”

“‘That’,” Kendra corrected him patiently. And then, miraculously, she dismissed the topic, saying, “Toby, move over and let Joel have a lie down. Let him watch the telly. You can help me in the kitchen if you’ve a mind to.”

Toby scooted over on the sofa, but his expression remained confused. He said to Joel, “But, Joel, you tol’ me—”

“You’re getting all your days mixed up,” Joel cut in. “I tol’ you we wouldn’t be going to the centre when I fetched you from school jus’

dis af ’ernoon. How c’n you not
remember
, Tobe? Ain’t they been workin on your memory an’ stuff?”

“‘Haven’t they been working,’” came the automatic correction from Kendra. “Joel, don’t be so hard on him.” She went to the television and removed the video from the old recorder beneath it. She turned to a channel arbitrarily and once the picture flickered on, she gave a nod and descended to the kitchen. In a moment she was banging about down there, fixing the promised meal for Joel.

Toby’s gaze hadn’t moved from Joel’s face, and what it showed was utter confusion. He said, “You said I was meant to say—”

“I’m sorry, Tobe,” Joel murmured. He moved his own gaze to the stairway’s door and kept it there. “She found out, see. They phoned her up and asked where you were, so I had to tell her . . . Look, jus’ say we came straight here and we been here ever since. If she asks or summick, okay?”

“But you tol’ me—”

“Tobe!” Joel’s whisper was fierce. “Things change, y’unnerstan wha’

I say? Things change all the time. Like Ness not being here and Dix bein gone. Y’unnerstan? Things
change
.”

But things didn’t easily change for Toby, not without some attempt at removing the fog from his brain. He said again, “But—”

Joel grabbed his wrist tightly and turned to him. “Don’t be so fuckin
stupid
,” he hissed. “Jus’ this once act like you got a brain.”

Toby recoiled. Joel dropped his wrist. Toby’s chin dimpled, and his eyelids lowered. The skin of them showed the delicate tracing of blue veins across a freckled, almond surface. Joel felt a tug at his heart at the sight, but he hardened it and he hardened himself because as far as he was concerned, Toby had to learn and he had to learn
now
. It was imperative that he memorise a story and get that story straight.

“Joel,” Kendra called from the kitchen, “I’ve brought Chinese, but I’m making you boiled eggs and toast. D’you want jam?”

Joel didn’t see how he’d be able to eat anything at all, but he called back weakly that jam was good, jam was fine, and whatever kind they had would be excellent. Then for the first time he looked at the television and saw what Kendra had switched on for him to watch. It looked like some channel’s nightly news because a female reporter stood in front of the entrance to a hospital, speaking into a microphone. Joel paid attention.

“. . . footage from the vicinity of Sloane Square is being examined by Belgravia detectives who have pulled out all the stops to apprehend the shooter. There was, apparently, at least one witness—and possibly two—to the incident, which took place in broad daylight in Eaton Terrace. We’ve learned that the victim had just returned from a shopping trip, but that’s actually the extent of what we know about the incident itself. As far as we’ve been able to find out, the victim—thirty-four-year-old Helen Lynley, Countess of Asherton—is under twenty-four-hour guard here at St. Thomas’ Hospital. But what, exactly, her condition is, we do not know.”

A man’s voice said, “Andrea, is anyone drawing a connection between this shooting and the serial killings currently under investigation?”

The reporter adjusted her earpiece and said, “Well, it’s a bit diffi cult to avoid making the connection, isn’t it? Or at least assuming there might be one. When the wife of the head of an investigation that’s the size and scope of this one is shot . . . Inevitably, there are going to be questions.”

Behind her, the hospital doors swung open. Camera lights began to flash. A man in doctor’s garb walked over to a bouquet of microphones while a number of other people in his company—a grim-faced group of individuals with
plainclothes detectives
written all over them—pushed through the reporters on their way to the car park.

“. . . life support,” were the two words that came to Joel from the man in hospital garb. “The situation is very grave.”

There was more—questions fired from all directions and answers given hesitantly and with a desire to protect the privacy of the victim and her family—but Joel could hear nothing of it. All he could hear was the windstorm in his ears as the picture on the television finally changed to show a montage of images with which he was only too familiar: the street in which he and Cal had found their mark; the crime scene tape defining a rectangle around the front of the chessboard front steps; a photograph of the lady herself with a name beneath it identifying her as Helen Lynley. What followed this were other shots of St. Thomas’ Hospital, on the south bank of the Thames, with a dozen panda cars flashing their lights outside; of a blond man and a dumpy-looking woman speaking into a mobile as they stood outside a grimy railway tunnel; of a bloke in the uniform of a high-ranking cop talking into a bank of microphones. And then a series of CCTV cameras pointing this way and that, on this building and under those eaves, and each of them—Joel knew this and could swear to it—in the act of filming two blokes on their way to shoot the wife of a cop from New Scotland Yard.