What Came Before He Shot Her

            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 fi lm.”

            “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. And he wanted to have a word with the Blade.

            Abruptly he shoved himself away from the table. He stood and said,

            “Ivan, I got to go.”

            Ivan stood as well, his expression altered. He said, “Joel, what’s happened? I can tell something’s . . . I’ve heard about your sister. I’ve not wanted to mention it. I suppose I was hoping that news of this fi lm would allow you to think of other things for a while. Look. Forgive me. I hope you know I’m your friend. I’m ready to —”

            “Later,” Joel cut in. He said this past his need to fight off the useless kindness, to fight it off physically and not only with words. “Great news you got, Ivan. Got to go.”

            He departed in a rush. It was ages before Toby would be done with his work at the learning centre, so Joel knew he had the time to get up to Lancefield Court, which was where he went once the cafe was behind him. He slipped through the opening in the chain-link fence, and he climbed to the first floor. No one was standing guard at the foot of the stairs, which should have told him that the flat from which the Blade distributed his wares to his runners was going to be empty. But he was desperate and his desperation compelled him to make his useless search anyway.

            Joel decided then that the Blade had taken Neal Wyatt somewhere quite safe in order to deal with him. He thought of the abandoned underground station, of a tucked-away corner of Kensal Green Cemetery. He thought of large car parks, of lockup garages, of warehouses, of buildings about to be torn down. It seemed to him that London was teeming with places that the Blade might have taken Neal Wyatt, and he attempted to comfort himself with the thought that there—in any one of these thousand places—Neal Wyatt was currently being informed that his days of shadowing, bullying, assaulting, and tormenting the Campbell children were at an end.

Because that, Joel assured himself, was what was going on. Today. Right now. And once Neal Wyatt was finally and permanently sorted, they could get on to extricating Ness and bringing her home to her family.

Thinking about all this went a small distance towards comforting Joel. It also gave him something else to dwell upon so that he didn’t have to consider what he couldn’t bear to consider: what it actually might mean that Cal Hancock was nowhere to be found, that a white lady was shot, and that Belgravia, New Scotland Yard, and everyone else in the world intended to find the person responsible.

But despite his determination to keep his thoughts away from the unbearable, Joel couldn’t blind himself as well. On the route back from Lancefield Court to the Harrow Road, he passed a tobacconist, and outside on the pavement stood the sort of placards that advertise newspapers all over London. The words leaped out, bleeding black ink into the porous paper on which they were written: “Belgravia Killer on Crimewatch!” one declared, while another announced “Countess Killer TV Pix.”

            Joel’s vision went to a pinprick in which the only thing visible was

            “Killer.” And then even that disappeared, leaving behind a fi eld of black. Killer, Belgravia, Pix, Crimewatch. Joel held out his arm and felt for the side of the building he’d been passing when he’d seen the placards. He remained there until his vision cleared. He bit at his thumbnail. He tried to think.

But all he could come up with was the Blade.

            He walked on. He was only vaguely aware of where he was, and he ended up in front of the charity shop without knowing how he’d got there. He went inside. It smelled of steam hitting musty clothes.

He saw that his aunt had an ironing board set up at the back of the shop. She was dealing with wrinkles on a lavender blouse, and a pile of other clothing lay waiting for her attention on a chair to her left.

            “There’s no sense in not giving people an idea of what things are meant to look like when they’re taken care of,” Kendra said when she saw him. “No one’s going to buy a wrinkled mess of a thing.” She pulled the blouse off the ironing board and hung it neatly on a plastic hanger. “Better,” she said. “I can’t say I’m wild about the colour, but someone will be. Did you decide not to wait for Toby at the centre?”

            Joel came up with an explanation. “Went for a walk instead.”

            “Bit cold for that.”

            “Yeah. Well.” He didn’t know why he’d entered the shop. He could put it down to a vague desire for comfort, but that was the extent of his ability to explain things to himself. He wanted something to alter how he felt inside. He wanted his aunt to be that something or, failing that, to provide it somehow.

            She went on ironing. She laid a pair of black trousers on the ironing board and examined them from