What Came Before He Shot Her

similar to the child drop-in centre in Meanwhile Gardens. But it was quite another thing to have been caught with a weapon upon you. Knives were bad enough. But guns . . . ? Guns meant more than a talking-to by a well-meaning but essentially weary adult.

            So Joel couldn’t imagine what the Blade had done to get him out of the clutches of the police. More, he couldn’t imagine why  he’d done it unless he thought Joel was on the verge of grassing him up, in which case Joel would be in need of the kind of sorting out he’d hoped the Blade would use upon Neal Wyatt.

            They headed nowhere near Edenham Estate. This reinforced in Joel’s mind the thought that he was indeed going to be dealt with. Not far away from where they were lay the stretch of land that was Wormwood Scrubs. Joel knew it would be an easy matter for the Blade to march him out there—broad daylight or not—and put a bullet through his head, leaving his body for someone to find in a few hours, a few days, even a few weeks. The Blade would know where to leave his body so that it would be found when he wanted it found. And if he didn’t want it found at all, the Blade would know how to manage that, too.

Joel said, “I di’n’t say nuffink, mon. No way.”

            Cal cast him a look from the passenger seat, but there was no degree of reassurance to it. This was a different Cal entirely, a man who moved his upper lip in a way that told Joel he was meant to keep his mouth shut. Joel, though, with his life on the line, didn’t see how he would be able to do that.

            The Blade changed down gears, and they turned another corner. They passed a newsagent’s shop, where an advertising placard for the Evening Standard  announced “Another Serial Killing!” in boldly scrawled blue letters. That seemed to Joel like a definite message about what was to come in very short order, and he felt a resulting weight on his chest. He struggled against his desire to cry.

He dropped his gaze to his lap. He knew exactly how badly he’d cocked up. He’d forced the Blade to pull in a marker—or perhaps to pay off someone in a very big way—and there was simply no walking off with a “Cheers, mon” for such a favour. It wasn’t, in fact, a favour at all. It was an inconceivable inconvenience, and when someone caused the Blade an inconceivable inconvenience, someone was inconceivably inconvenienced in return.

            Cal had certainly tried to warn him. But Joel had assumed he had nothing to fear from the Blade as long as he didn’t cross him. And he hadn’t expected to cross him, least of all when he was in the act of doing what he’d been instructed to do.

            The car finally jerked to a stop. Joel raised his head to see the A. Q. W. Motors sign that he’d seen before. Despite it being broad daylight, albeit a grey and rain-threatening broad daylight, they’d come to the Blade’s special secret place. They climbed out of the car and went wordlessly into the deserted alley.

The Blade led the way. Cal and Joel followed. Joel tried to get a muttered word from Cal about what was going to happen next, but the graffiti artist didn’t look his way as the Blade unlocked the gate in the old brick wall and jerked his head to them in a sign that they were meant to enter the yard of the abandoned underground station. There he unlocked the door to the erstwhile motor garage. As if he knew that Joel was considering making a useless run for it, the Blade jerked his chin at Cal. Cal took Joel firmly by the arm, in a grip that was neither warm nor friendly.

            Inside the old garage, it was pitch dark once the Blade shut the door behind them. Joel heard the sound of a lock clicking into place and he spoke hastily into the gloom. “I di’n’t ’xpect her to scream, mon. Who would’ve, y’unnerstan? She walked wiv a stick and she acted like she di’n’t even know where she was going. You c’n ask Cal. He picked her for me to mug.”

            “You blaming Cal?” The Blade’s voice came from quite nearby. Joel started. The man had moved in perfect silence, like the striking snake tattooed on his cheek.

            “I ain’t sayin dat,” Joel protested. “I just telling you anyone could’ve done like I did. When she start screamin, I had to get out of there, di’n’t I?”

            The Blade said nothing. A moment passed. Joel could hear himself breathing. It was a wheezy sound which he tried and failed to stop. He strained to hear something besides himself, but there didn’t seem to be anything to hear. It was as if they’d all fallen down a great dark hole. Then a click sounded, followed by a pool of light that formed on top of one of the wooden crates from which the Blade had taken the pistol the last time Joel had been in this place. Joel saw that the Blade had moved away from him in silence again, that he’d lit the same electric lantern that he’d used before. It cast elongated shadows against the walls.

            Behind Joel then, Cal snicked  a match against something. The smell of tobacco joined the other scents—motor oil, mould, dust, and wood rot—in the icy air.

            Joel said, “Look, mon—”

            “Shut the fuck up.” The Blade turned to a second crate. He prised open the top. He removed a mixture of balled-up newspapers, straw, and Styrofoam pellets, tossing all this to the floor.

There were many more crates in this dismal place than there had been before, and this was a fact that Joel noticed, despite his fear. He gave himself a moment to hope that the newness and the number of them might indicate different contents, but in this he would soon be disappointed. The Blade removed an object thickly wrapped in plastic bubbles. Its size suggested in advance what it was.

Joel knew how unlikely it was that, after his wretched performance in Portobello Road, the Blade was unpacking a gun to give him another try at having it taken by the cops. That meant he had another use for it, and Joel didn’t want to consider what that use might be.

His tumbling thoughts led directly to the loosening of his bowels. He told himself in the roughest language he could manage that he would not  defecate in his trousers. If he was meant to pay with his life for his inept performance, then pay he would. But he wouldn’t do it like a sniveling little wanker. He wouldn’t give the Blade that pleasure.

            “Cal,” the Blade said, “you got lead wiv you?”

            “Got it.” Cal brought forth from his pocket a small box, which he handed over. The Blade loaded the bullets into the weapon with the sureness of movement that indicated long practice. Joel, seeing what he concluded his limited future would be, said, “Hey, mon, hang on.”

            “Shut the fuck up,” the Blade told him. “Or can’t you hear?”

            “I only want you to unnerstan—”

            The Blade slammed home the top of the crate with such force that dust rose around it. “You are one damn stubborn cocksucker motherfucker, ain’t you, Jo-ell?” He advanced on Joel, the gun in his hand. In three steps he was there, and he jabbed the pistol beneath Joel’s chin.

            “This enough to get you to plug it, mon?”

            Joel squashed his eyes closed. He tried to believe that Cal Hancock possessed enough humanity that he would not simply stand there and watch Joel be blown away to kingdom come. But Cal said nothing, and Joel couldn’t hear him move. He could, on the other hand, smell the Blade’s rank sweat and he could feel the simultaneously cold and fi ery metal of the gun barrel shaping a coin beneath his chin.

            “You know what they gen’rally do with wankers your age get caught wiv weapons?” the Blade said into Joel’s ear. “They send ’em away. Couple years in youth de ten tion start it off. How’d you like it in there, Jo-ell? Tossing off in the toilet for the entertainment of the sixteenyear-olds? Bending over when they tell you to afterwards cos you got yours and now they want theirs. Think you’d like that, mon?”

            Joel couldn’t answer. He was trying not to pee, trying not to cry, trying not to lose control of his bowels, trying not to pass out because he couldn’t get enough air to fill his lungs.

            “Answer me, fucker! And you best tell me wha’ I want to hear.”

            “No.” Joel made his lips form the word, although no sound actually came out of him. “I wouldn’ like dat.”

            “Well, dat’s what happens, I leave you to the cops.”

            “Cheers, mon,” Joel whispered. “I mean it.”

            “Oh, fuck you mean it. I oughta blast your bloody face—”

            “Please.” Joel despised himself for saying that word. It came out of his mouth, however, before he was able to stop it.

            “You know what it took, getting you out ’f there, fucker?” The gun dug more deeply into Joel’s chin. “You t’ink the Blade just picks up the phone and has a word wiv Mr. Chief Constable or summick? You got any  idea what dis cost me?”