What Came Before He Shot Her

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