What Came Before He Shot Her

police, the police meant the Harrow Road station, and the Harrow Road station meant a chance still existed that what seemed to be part of Ness’s future didn’t necessarily have  to happen. There was still a means of extricating Ness from the quagmire, and Joel had access to that means.

            Thus he saw the road he had to take, and this road was the one that led to becoming the Blade’s man completely. No mere temporary arrangement to acquire a favour, but the real thing: proving himself as signed, sealed, and delivered to the Blade in such a way as to leave no doubt in anyone’s mind where Joel Campbell’s loyalties lay. This meant he had to wait to be called to action, which was not easy.

When the day arrived, he came out of Holland Park School and found Cal Hancock waiting for him at the end of Airlie Gardens, on the route he would take to catch his bus. Cal was leaning against the seat of a black-as-death Triumph motorcycle that Joel thought for a moment belonged to him. He was heavily bundled against the damp February cold; his garb was head to toe a match for the Triumph: black knitted hat, black donkey jacket closed to the throat, black gloves, black jeans, heavy-soled black boots. His expression was sombre, not mellowed by weed and not tanked up by anything else. That and the clothes—so head-to-foot different, so head-to-foot hidden—told Joel the moment had finally arrived.

            “Le’s get goin, mon,” was what Cal said. Not “It’s time,” and certainly not “Fetch the piece,” because Joel had been instructed to have the gun on him at all times, and he’d obeyed that instruction in spite of the risk.

            Joel said automatically, “I got to fetch Toby from his school first, Cal.”

            “No you ain’t. Wha’ you got to do is come wiv me.”

            “He can’t get home on his own, mon.”

            “Dat ain’t my problem, and it sure ain’t yours. He can wait there, innit. Wha’ you’re doin ain’t going to take long anyways.”

            Joel said, “Okay,” and he tried to sound collected. But fear came to him in the palms of his hands where he had the sensation of ice chips being deposited.

            Cal said to him, “Give us the piece,” and Joel set his rucksack onto the pavement. He looked around to make sure there were no watchers to the exchange that was about to be made, and when he saw there were none, he unfastened buckles and rooted to the bottom of the bag where the pistol lay, wrapped in a towel. He handed over the entire package. Cal unwrapped it, checked out the gun, and then put it into the pocket of his jacket. He dropped the towel to the ground and said,

            “Le’s go.” He set off up the street, in the direction of Holland Park Avenue.

            Joel said, “Where?”

            Cal said over his shoulder, “You ain’t got to worry ’bout where.”

            He led Joel up the street, and when they got to Holland Park Avenue, he headed east. This was the direction of Portobello Road, but at the corner where he might have turned to get there, he did not. Instead he went straight, and Joel followed him to the Notting Hill underground station, where Cal descended the stairs and walked along the tunnel to where the tickets were sold. He bought two from a machine. They were returns. Without glancing Joel’s way, Cal headed for the turnstiles that would take them to the trains.

Joel said, “Hey, mon. Hang on.” And when Cal did not, merely moving forward relentlessly, Joel caught him up and said tersely, “I ain’t doin anything on an underground train. No fuckin way, mon.”

            Cal said, “You doin it where you get told, blood,” and he thrust a ticket into the turnstile’s slot, pushed Joel through, and then followed him.

            Had he not deduced it before this moment, Joel would have understood then that he was with a Calvin Hancock whom he did not know. This was no longer the easy, doped-up bloke standing casual guard while the Blade did his business on Arissa. This was the blood that other bloods saw when they overstepped themselves in some way.

            Clearly, Cal, too, had been sorted out by the Blade after the fi asco with the Asian woman in Portobello Road. “He does it right dis time, or I deal wiv you, Cal-vin,” was how the Blade would have likely put it.

            Joel said, “Mon, why you stick wiv him?”

            Cal said nothing. He merely led the way down the tunnels until they emerged onto a platform crowded with commuters and shoppers, with schoolchildren on their way home for the day.

            Joel had no idea in which direction they were travelling when at last they boarded a train. He hadn’t paid attention to the signs posted at the entrance to the platform, and he hadn’t looked to read the destination that flickered on the front of the train as it roared into the station, disgorged passengers, and waited for other passengers to board.

            They sat opposite a pregnant teenage mother with a baby in a pushchair and a toddler who kept trying to shimmy up one of the carriage’s poles. The girl looked no older than Ness, and her face was dully without expression. Joel said to Cal, “You ain’t like him, mon. You c’n go your own way if you want, innit.”

            Cal said, “Shut up.”

            Joel watched the toddler try to scoot up the pole. The train pulled out of the station with a jerk, the child fell and howled, and his mother ignored him. Joel persisted. He said, “Shit, bred. I don’t get you, Cal. Dis go off bad—wha’ever it is—and we both go down. You got to know dat, so why di’n’t you ever tell Mr. Stanley Hynds to do his own fuckin dirty work?”

            Cal said, “You know what shut up  means? You stupid or summick?”

            “You been an artist f ’rever. You’re better’n dis. You c’n get serious if you want and even try—”

            “Shut the bloody fuck up!”

            The toddler looked over at them, wide-eyed. The young mother gazed at them, her face wearing an expression caught somewhere between boredom and despair. They made a tableau of living consequences: wrong decisions made stubbornly, again and again. Cal turned to Joel and said in a low, fierce voice, “You got warned, y’unnerstan? What you had you threw away.”

            Something in Cal gave way then, despite the ferocity of his words.

            Joel could see this: in the way a muscle moved in Cal’s cheek, as if he chewed on additional words to hold them back. In that moment Joel could have sworn that the graffiti artist wanted to be the Cal he really was, but he was afraid to go there.

            Concluding this, Joel decided that in this situation he and Cal were compatriots, and this gave him a modicum of comfort as they hurtled towards an unknown destination while people boarded and debarked from the train when it came into stations and while Joel waited for Cal to rise and move towards the doors. Or to give him a sign that this or that person who boarded and rode with them was the person Joel was meant to mug. Not on the train—he could see that now— but following carefully at a distance when a station was reached and their unknowing target got out and began the short or the long walk home.

            He tried to sort out who it would be: the turbanned bloke in patent leather shoes, his orange beard with its long grey roots making him difficult not to stare at; the two Goths with multiple piercings on their faces, who boarded at High Street Kensington, sat, and immediately began to suck hungrily upon each other’s tongue; the old lady in the dingy pink coat, easing her swollen feet from broken-down shoes. And there were others, many others, whom Joel studied and wondered, Him? Her? Here? Where?

            At last Cal stood when the train began to slow yet another time. He grasped the rail running along just inches beneath the ceiling of the carriage, and he excused himself politely and worked his way along to the door. Joel followed.

            On the platform, they could have been anywhere in London. For here on the walls were the same enormous advertisements for fi lms, the same announcements for gallery exhibitions, the same posters beckoning one to take a sunny holiday on a sunny beach. A set of stairs marked the route to the exit farther along the platform, and above it—indeed, spaced at intervals along the entire length of the platform—hung London’s ubiquitous CCTV cameras, documenting all action within the station.

            Cal moved out of the way of the other commuters. He took something from his pocket. For a crazy sweat-inducing moment, Joel thought Cal meant him to do the deed right on the platform, in full view of the cameras. But instead, Cal pressed something soft into Joel’s hand, saying, “Put dis on. Keep your head down good.” It was a black knitted cap, similar to his own.

            Joel saw the wisdom of this headgear. He pulled it down over his steel-wool mop of ginger hair. He was grateful for it and grateful that the time of year had him wearing a dark anorak that obscured his school