What Came Before He Shot Her

            Even as Joel was thinking all this, his world tilted violently on its axis. At the moment they passed beneath the camera, the ginger head lifted and Joel’s face was framed in the picture. It was still grainy and he was still several yards away from the camera, but as Joel sat transfi xed in front of the television, he learned that “the miracle of computer enhancement” was at that very moment being brought to bear upon the image, and within a few days the video fi lm should be greatly improved by specialists at the Met, at which time Crimewatch  would present it once again to the public. Until that moment, if anyone recognised either of the individuals shown on the film that evening, they were to phone the hotline printed on the bottom of their television screen. They could depend upon the fact that their call and their identity would be held in the strictest confidence.

            In the meantime, the host said in a solemn voice, the victim of the shooting remained on life support, pending the weighty decision that her husband and family had to make about the fate of their unborn child.

Joel heard these last words like something spoken underwater. Unborn child. The woman had been wearing a coat. He hadn’t seen— they  hadn’t seen or known—that she was pregnant. If they had seen, if they had even guessed . . . None of this would have happened. Joel swore this to himself. He clung to the thought of it, as he had nothing else to cling to.

            He pushed himself off the settee and went to the television. He switched it off. He wanted to ask someone what was happening to him and to the world as he knew it. But there was no one to ask and at the moment what constituted his consciousness was what he could hear, which was, from above, the noise of Toby scooting about in the bathtub.

JOEL PLAYED TRUANT from school to find Cal Hancock. He began his search for the Rasta by lurking around the block of flats in which Arissa lived, certain that Cal would turn up there eventually, standing guard for the Blade as always. As Joel did this, he tried not to think of the CCTV pictures. He also tried to drive from his mind other relevant details that boded ill for him: the flood of newspaper stories with that CCTV picture of him on their front pages; the au pair who’d seen him up close; the gun that was lying in someone’s garden along the way from Eaton Terrace to Cadogan Lane; his discarded cap at the base of one of those garden walls; a lady languishing on life support; a baby whose fate had to be decided. He did, on the other hand, think of Neal Wyatt who, along with his entire crew, was certainly making no attempt to harass Joel, Toby, or anything remotely Campbell.

From this, Joel took evidence that Neal indeed had been sorted by the Blade. No longer a supposition, this, no longer a belief he tried to cling to. There would now, he told himself, never again be trouble from Neal. The Blade had performed as promised because he’d been informed by Cal that Joel had performed as promised, and the Blade had no need ever to know that Cal Hancock and not Joel had been the one to pull the trigger on the lady in Eaton Terrace. Cal’s fingerprints weren’t even on the gun should the gun be found, so unless Cal told the Blade the truth, no one on earth would have a suspicion that Cal and not Joel had carried the mission to its conclusion. While there was no cash, handbag, or jewellery to show for it, there was enough notoriety to prove that the Blade’s instruction had been followed to the letter.

            “Real mugging dis time, Jo-ell,” the Blade had told him when he’d handed over the gun. “You mon enough to do it right? Cos it better be right, and then you ’n me, we’ll be done. You scratch my back, I scratch yours. An’ one t’ing more, Jo-ell, listen good. Th’ gun got to be used. I want to hear it been fired. More exciting dat way, y’unnerstan? More like you mean business when you tell some bitch to hand over her money.”

            At first, Joel had thought the target would be a local woman, like the Asian woman he’d tried to mug in Portobello Road. Then he thought—considering the instruction that the gun was to be fired— that the mark was a female who needed sorting. It would be, perhaps, a crackhead fleabag who was turning tricks for a fingernail’s measure of powder. Or perhaps it would be the tart belonging to a dealer who was trying to take over some of the Blade’s patch. It would, in short, be someone who would see the gun and cooperate instantly, and it would happen in a part of town and at a time of day where a gunshot would mean business as usual among the drug dealers, the gangsters, and the general flotsam and jetsam of the population and consequently would probably go unreported at the most and uninvestigated at the least. In any case, it would just be a gunshot, the weapon fired into the air, fired into the wooden frame of a window, fired into a door, fired anywhere but at a real person. Just fired. That was all.

            This ill-founded belief was what Joel had clung to, even as they’d boarded the underground train, even as they’d trotted along through a part of town that, with every step he had taken, declared itself to be some place quite different from the world that he was used to. What he hadn’t expected was what he’d been presented with for the mugging and for the weapon firing: a white lady coming home with her shopping, one who smiled at them and asked if they were lost and looked like someone who believed that there was nothing to fear as long as she stood at her own front door and showed strangers kindness.             Despite what he did to reassure himself, Joel’s thoughts went feverishly among three points as he lurked about and waited for Cal. The first was the actual shooting of the woman who’d turned out to be not only a countess but also the wife of a Scotland Yard detective. The second was that he’d done what he’d been told  to do—even if Cal was ultimately the one to fire the weapon—and no matter the means to get to this end, the end had been reached and that meant Joel had proved himself. The third was that there was a film of him in Cadogan Lane, there was an au pair who’d seen him up close, and there was a gun with his fingerprints on it, and all of that meant something which was not good.

            Ultimately, Joel saw that his only hope lay in the Blade. If Cal did not show up the next time that the Blade chose to do his business on Arissa in her flat, it would mean that Cal was well and truly gone. And if Cal was well and truly gone, it would mean that Cal had been spirited off because it made no sense that the Blade might actually do away with Cal instead of just easing him out of London for as long as it took for the heat of the shooting and its aftermath to run its course. The way Joel looked at the situation—indeed, the only way he could  look at the situation—was to decide that if the Blade could do all that for Cal, he could do it for Joel, and with a photograph of Joel in the process of being enhanced, that was something which had to be done, and soon. He wanted shelter and he needed shelter. As things turned out, he didn’t have to wait long for the moment during which his request for sanctuary went answered . . . before he even made it.

On Portnall Road, he’d hidden himself on the porch of a building near Arissa’s, safely away from view. He’d been there an hour, hoping the Blade would show up to pay a call on his woman. He was shivering in the cold and had cramp in his legs when the Blade’s car finally pulled up. The man himself got out, and Joel stood, preparatory to making his approach. But then Neal Wyatt removed himself from the car as well, and as Joel watched, the Blade disappeared into the building and Neal established himself in what could only be called the Cal Position: bouncing a small rubber ball against one wall of the entrance to the building as he himself lounged against the other.

Joel ducked. He thought, How . . . ?  And then, Why . . . ?  He stared at nothing as he tried to puzzle out what he’d seen, and when he next ventured a look at the entrance to Arissa’s building, it was to see that he’d been noticed despite his efforts: Neal was gazing right back at him. He pocketed the ball he’d been bouncing. He sauntered down the path, crossed the road, and came along the pavement. He stood there, observing Joel in his inadequate place of hiding. He said nothing, but he looked quite different, and it came to Joel that what he looked like didn’t have much to do with having been sorted by anyone for anything.

            Joel remembered in that moment what Hibah had said to him: Neal wants respect. Can’t you show him respect?

            Clearly, Joel saw, Neal had done something to get it. Joel expected the outcome to be an attack— blows, kicks, knives, whatever—delivered by Neal to his own pathetic person. But no attack came.

Instead, Neal spoke, and it was only a single statement that he made, tinged with weary sarcasm. “You are one stupid redskin fuck.” Having said this, he turned and walked back to the entry to Arissa’s building, and there he remained.

            Joel himself was Lot’s wife: the desire to fl ee but eternally absent the ability to do so. Ten minutes passed, and the Blade came outside, Arissa following, dog to master. The Blade said something to Neal, and the three of them moved in the direction of the Blade’s car. He opened the driver’s door as Neal got in on the other side. Arissa remained on the pavement, waiting for something that was soon in coming. The Blade turned to her, jerked her over, cupped one of her buttocks to hold her in place, and kissed her. He released her abruptly. He pinched her breast and said something to her and the girl stood before him, looking devoted, looking like someone