What Came Before He Shot Her

good there between her and Ness. A fi eld to plough if not to plant. Let me see what I can do.”

            With the newfound knowledge she’d been given, Ruma suggested a different course of action, one that Fabia would not have expected. Support groups were all well and good, she said, and a psychiatric evaluation might give them information about the state of Ness’s brain chemistry vis-a-vis everything from schizophrenia to depression, but now they were talking about the state of her psyche and her mind, and with a client unwilling to touch upon the subject of molestation and certainly too old for something as obvious as anatomical dolls to play with . . . “Hippotherapy,” Ruma concluded. “There’ve been some excellent results with that.”

            “Hippo?” Naturally, Fabia thought of the lumbering, rotund African mammals, of their huge gaping mouths and tiny twitching ears.

Ruma said, “Horses,” to correct her vision. “Treatment for the mind with the help of a horse.” When Fabia’s expression registered scepticism, Ruma explained how it was meant to work, this form of tactile therapy in which the horse-to-human and human-to-horse interaction not only served as metaphor for subjects too painful for the patient to discuss but also as a high-speed means of making progress in someone’s recovery. “It’s about coming to terms with issues of control, power, and fear,” Ruma said. “I know it sounds mad, Fabia, but we’ve got to try it. Without some sort of breakthrough with Ness . . .” She let the rest hang, and Fabia finished it for her mentally. Without a breakthrough, things would only get worse.

            “Can we dig round for funding?” Ruma asked.

            Fabia sighed. “I don’t bloody know.” It was so unlikely. This was one girl among many in a system stressed and overburdened. There might be a special fund somewhere, but it could take ages of research to find it. Fabia could look and she was willing to do so. But in the meantime, Ness’s wounds would fester.

            Fabia went to Majidah. She would, she decided, leave no stone unturned in this project of Vanessa Campbell. Majidah, Ruma, Fabia, Kendra. . . All the women in Ness’s life had to present a united front. The message they would pass to Ness was one of concern, love, and support.

            “Ah, that these terrible things must happen,” was Majidah’s quiet reaction to the story Fabia told her. She herself told Fabia what little she knew about Ness’s past from the girl’s earlier partial admissions.

            “Ten  years old?” Fabia repeated in horror.

            “It makes one question the ways of God.”

            Fabia was not a believer in God. Mankind, she’d long ago decided, was an accident of atoms colliding in an ancient atmosphere: without design, without plan, and without a single hope of a positive result unless a huge effort was put into getting one. She said, “We’re trying to arrange a special therapy for her. In the meantime, should she decide to speak to you about what’s happened to her . . . I thought it best that you be brought into the picture.”

            “And indeed I am glad that you have done so,” Majidah said. “I, too, shall try to talk to the girl.”

            “It’s unlikely she’s going to speak about—”

            “Oh my gracious, I shall not speak about this,” Majidah said. “But there are many things to talk about besides the past, as you must know.”

            So that was the course that Majidah pursued. To her, terrible incidents could try one’s soul, but lack of acceptance and lack of forgiveness led to a rotting of the spirit. She had a plan. In the child drop-in centre she set out magazines, pots of glue, poster board, and round-tipped scissors. She set the children to the task of collage making, and she insisted Ness join in. They would, she said, create a picture representation of their families and their world.

            “Why’ve I got to do it?” Ness demanded. “I can’t help them, innit, ’f I got to make one of these t’ings myself.”

            “You will act as their model,” Majidah told her placidly.

            “But I don’t—”

            “Vanessa, this is what we’re going to do just now. I cannot see a problem in this. If you do, then we must discuss it privately.”

            This was fine with Ness, a private discussion. It was better than sitting at a table that didn’t even come up to her knees, crammed alongside a four-year-old wielding scissors, no matter how dull were the blades. She followed Majidah to the side of the room, to a bank of windows looking out on the playing area and into Meanwhile Gardens. But Majidah was only able to say, “Vanessa, Sayf al Din and I are wondering why you will not return to him,” before Ness’s attention shifted from the Pakistani woman. A movement in her peripheral vision caused her to see what she’d been waiting for days upon days to see.

After that, everything happened quickly. Ness grabbed her bag and flew out of the door. She hurtled into the play area. She dashed towards the gate in the chain-link fence, and she pulled from her bag the paring knife she’d been carrying. Her face was set.

Just beyond the fence, Neal Wyatt was talking to Hibah. No member of his crew was with them, and surprise was the advantage Ness had at last.

            She launched herself. Through the gate and on top of Neal. Before Hibah or the boy himself could do a thing to stop her—and certainly before Majidah could go after her—Ness had used the speed, the surprise, and the weight of her attack to topple Neal Wyatt to the ground.

            She went down with him. The blade of her paring knife flashed grey against the grey winter sky. It disappeared. It came up red. It disappeared again. Again. Again.

Hibah screamed. She couldn’t get close. Ness flailed the knife when she made the attempt. Neal fought back, but he could not match Ness for revenge and hate. Blood flecked her cheeks and her chest.

She started to shriek, “You wan’ it, baby? You wan’ it like dis?” and she raised the knife in such a way that it was clear she intended to plunge it directly into Neal Wyatt’s heart.

            Majidah dashed outside and the children followed. She screamed, “No!” at them and they huddled in a mass near the fence. Blood seemed to be everywhere. On Ness, on the boy she’d attacked, on the Asian girl who’d been his companion. Majidah said to this girl, “You must help. Now,” and she grabbed Ness’s upraised arm, pulling her back as the other young girl—incoherently shrieking—did the same.

All three of them fell. Neal rolled away. And then he was up on his feet, bleeding but not so wounded that he couldn’t still kick. Grunts and curses accompanied these kicks. His feet met heads, arms, legs.

Then footsteps pounded from the direction of Elkstone Road. A young man carrying his mother’s walking stick used it to drive Neal back. On the pavement, his mother stood with an elderly companion, who spoke into a mobile.

            “Blood everywhere . . . three women . . . a boy . . . a dozen children. . .” The words bridged the distance from the pavement to where the attack had occurred. They were hardly accurate, but they did the trick. The police and the ambulance were not long in arriving.

But they were long enough for Ness to run off, and no one was in any condition to go after her.

            Chapter

      26 Joel saw the dogs before Toby did: the enormous schnauzer, the smaller but more menacing Doberman. They were doing what they’d always done when he’d seen them in the past, lounging with their heads on their paws, awaiting instructions from their mistress. But where  they were—on either side of the steps leading up into his aunt’s house—told him something was wrong. If Fabia Bender was inside the house, that meant Kendra was inside the house. At this time of day, she was supposed to be at the charity shop.

Toby murmured, “Lookit ’em dogs,” as he and Joel edged by them carefully.

            “Don’t be touchin ’em or anyt’ing,” Joel warned his brother.

            “’Kay,” Toby said.

            Inside, they were safe, but only from the dogs. For in the kitchen, the boys’ aunt and the social worker sat at the table with three manila folders fanned out in front of them and an ashtray planted with cigarette stubs next to Kendra’s elbow. A zippered notebook spilling out paperwork lay on the floor next to Fabia Bender’s feet. Joel zeroed in on the manila folders. Three of them. Three Campbell children. The suggestion was transparent. He looked to his aunt. He looked from his aunt to Fabia Bender.

            “Where’s Ness?” he asked.