What Came Before He Shot Her

            “Dix is looking for her,” Kendra said. For a frantic phone call from Majidah had taken Kendra out into the streets to hunt for her niece, just as a phone call from Fabia Bender had brought her home, leaving Dix to continue the frenzied search. “Take Toby up to your room, Joel. Take a snack up with you. There’re some ginger biscuits, if you’d like them.”

            If her language had not already done so, food in the bedroom did the trick. For food in the bedroom was a violation, so Joel knew from this that whatever had happened was bad. He didn’t want to leave, but he knew there was no point to staying. So he got the biscuits, climbed to their room, established Toby on the bed with his skateboard and the food, and returned himself to the stairs. He eased down them and sat, straining to hear the worst.

            “. . . realistically look at your ability to cope . . .” was what he heard Fabia Bender saying.

            “These are my niece and nephews,” Kendra responded dully. “They are not cats and dogs, Miss Bender.”

            “Mrs. Osborne, I know you’ve been doing your best.”

            “You don’t know. How can you? You don’t. What you see—”

            “Please. Don’t do this to yourself, and don’t do it to me. This is no foiled mugging we’re talking about. This is assault with intent. They don’t have her yet, but they will soon enough. And when they have her in custody, she’ll go directly to a youth remand centre, and that’s the end of it. They don’t give community-service hours for what amounts to attempted murder, and they don’t let children go home to wait for the magistrate to deal with them. I don’t mean to be cruel by saying all this. You must know the reality of her situation.”

            Kendra’s voice went low. “Where’ll they take her?”

            “As I said, there are youth remand centres . . . She won’t be mixed in with adults.”

            “But you’ve got to see and they’ve got to see, there’s a reason. She’d been attacked by that boy. He’s got to be the one who went after her that night. He and his mates. She wouldn’t say, but he did it. I know this. He’s been after all three of the kids from the first. And then there’s what happened to her before. At her grandmother’s house. There are reasons.”

            Joel had never heard his aunt sound so broken. Her tone made his eyes prickle. He put his chin on his knees to stop its trembling. The front-door buzzer went. Below, Kendra and Fabia turned as one to the sound. Kendra scraped back her chair, and she hesitated only a moment—a woman gathering courage for the next terrible event— before she crossed over to open the door.

            Three people stood crowded on the top step, with Castor and Pollux still motionless on the ground, sentinels marking the changing circumstances in Edenham Way. Two of the people were uniformed constables: a black woman and a white man. Between them was Ness: coatless, shivering, her jersey stained with blood.

            When Kendra said, “Ness!” Joel clattered down the stairs and into the kitchen. He stopped short at the sight of the police. They said,

            “Mrs. Osborne?” Kendra said, “Yes. Yes.”

            It was a moment of tableau: Fabia Bender still at the kitchen table, but half risen now; Kendra with both hands extended to take Ness into her arms; the constables openly evaluating the situation; Joel afraid to make a move lest he be told to return to his room; and Ness with her face a hard mask that said, Do not approach, and do not touch.

The female constable was the one to alter the hesitation among them. She put her hand on Ness’s back. Ness flinched. The constable didn’t react to this. She merely increased the pressure till Ness moved inside the house. The police moved with her. All of them lifted their feet at once, as if they’d rehearsed this moment of reunion.

            “This young lady had some trouble with a bloke in Queensway,” the female constable said. She introduced herself as PC Cassandra Anyworth and her partner as PC Michael King. “Big black bloke. Strongman type. He was attempting to get her inside a car. She put up a good fight. Marked him up, which is to her credit. I’d say that’s why she’s standing here right now. The blood’s not hers. Not to worry about that.”

            It came to everyone simultaneously that these constables had no idea what had happened between Ness and Neal Wyatt in Meanwhile Gardens, which meant they were not local police. That alone would have been evident when they said they’d found Ness in altercation with a black man in Queensway. For Queensway was not in the borough monitored by the Harrow Road police. Instead, it was monitored by the Ladbroke Grove station, but this was in itself not happy news.

The Ladbroke Grove station had a rough reputation. Someone taken there was not likely to be received with dispassion, especially someone of a minority race. Black man  seemed to echo in the room.

            “Dix found you?” Kendra asked Ness. “Dix found you?” When she didn’t answer, Kendra asked the constables, “Was the black man called Dix D’Court?”

            PC King spoke. “Didn’t get his name, madam. That would’ve been handled at the station. He’s in custody, though, so there’s no worry he’ll be coming after her again.” He smiled, but it was a smile without warmth. “They’ll know who he is soon enough. They’ll have his details and everything he’s done for the last twenty years. No worries on that score.”

            “He lives here,” Kendra said. “With me. With us. He went looking for her. I asked him. I was looking for her as well, but Fabia wanted to see me, so I came home. Ness, didn’t you tell them it was Dix?”

            “She wasn’t in condition to tell anyone anything,” PC Anyworth said.

            “But you can’t hold Dix. Not for doing what I asked him—”

            “If that’s the case, madam, it’ll all be sorted out in due course.”

            “Due course? He’s in gaol, though? He’s locked up? Being questioned?” Getting banged about if he didn’t answer to their liking was what she didn’t say but thought, as did the rest of them. Such was the reputation of the station. Rough treatment followed by the ritualised excuse: Walked into a door, he did. Slipped on the tiles. Knocked his damn head into the cell door for reasons unknown, but he’s probably a claustrophobe. Kendra said, “My God.” And then, “Oh, Ness,” and nothing more.

            Fabia intervened. She introduced herself and offered her card to the PCs. She was working with the family. She would take Vanessa off the constables’ hands. Mrs. Osborne had told them the truth, by the way. The man who appeared to be assaulting Vanessa was merely trying to bring her home to her aunt. The situation was rather complex, you see. If the constables wished to talk further about it . . . ? Fabia gestured to the table to indicate they were welcome to sit. There, the folders containing the children’s pasts, presents, and futures were laid out and one of them was open. Fabia’s notebook was still on the floor with its paperwork scattered. It was all so offi cial.

PC King turned the business card over in his hands. He was overworked and tired and just as happy to hand the silent teenager over to other responsible adults. He gave PC Anyworth a glance in which they communicated wordlessly. She nodded. He nodded. Further talk would not be necessary, he said. They’d leave the girl with her aunt and the social worker, and if someone wanted to go down to Ladbroke Grove to identify the man who’d been trying to force Ness into his car, that should  take care of matters.

            For Kendra, the emphasis on should  underscored the urgency of getting Dix out of the clutches of the police. She said thank you, thank you to the constables. They left, and the matter seemed fi nished.

Except it wasn’t. The Ladbroke Grove police station may not have received word of the assault upon an adolescent boy in Meanwhile Gardens and the search for the girl who’d carried out the assault, but they would eventually. Even if that had not been the case, and even if no one in Ladbroke Grove ever connected the dots in this matter, Fabia Bender now had a duty that went beyond calming the troubled waters of this household.

            She said, “I’ll have to phone the Harrow Road station,” and she took out her mobile.

            Kendra said, “No. Why? You can’t.”

            Fabia said, the mobile pressed to her ear, “Mrs. Osborne, you know there’s no alternative. Harrow Road know who they’re looking for. They have her name, her address, and her past offences in their records. If I leave her here with you—which I can’t do and you know it—the only result is prolonging the inevitable. My job is to see that Ness moves through the system smoothly at this point. Yours is to get Dix D’Court out of the Ladbroke Grove station.”

            Joel gave an involuntary cry at this, which was when the two women finally noticed him. Kendra, feeling broken, told him harshly to go back to his room and to stay there until further notice. He gave his sister an