What Came Before He Shot Her

wiped her hands on a towel. The procedure was to give the client a few minutes at the end of the massage to lie on the table and savour the experience. But in this instance, Kendra just wanted to be out of the bedsit. She turned from the table and began to pack up.

            She heard him move behind her and when she swung around, she found him sitting up on the table, his legs dangling over the side, watching her, his body still lightly glistening from the oil she’d used upon him. He said, “She tell you the truth, Mrs. Osborne? You never said and I can’t le’ you out ’f here till I know. The sort you t’ink I am? Not the truth, innit. She ’as down below”— by this he meant the pub—“an’ I go in cos I get a glass of tomato juice from the bar. She dead drunk, and she letting two blokes dance wiv her in a corner and feel her up. She got her blouse open. She hiking her skirt like she means—”

            “All right,” Kendra said. All she could think was fifteen years old, fif-teen years old.

            He said, “No. You got to hear cos you t’ink—”

            “If I say I believe you . . .”

            He shook his head. “Too late for dat, Mrs. Osborne. Too late. I get her out ’f the pub but she t’inks dat means wha’ it don’t. She offer it all, wha’ever I want her to do to me. I say fine, she can blow me—”

            Kendra flashed her eyes at him. He held up a hand.

            “—but we got to get to her place to do it, I tell her. The only way, see, I c’n get her to say where she lives. I drive her there. Dat’s when you show up.”

            Kendra shook her head. “You was . . . No. You were—” She didn’t know how to express it. She gestured to her breasts. She said, “I saw you. Raising up.”

            He turned his head, but she could see he was doing it to think back to that night. He finally said, “Her bag was on the floor. I fetchin  it. Woman, I do not do kids, an’ one t’ing I c’n see is she’s a kid.” He added, “Not like you, not like you at all. Mrs. Osborne. Kendra. C’n you walk over here?” He gestured to the table, to himself. She said, “Why?”

            “Cos you a beauty, an’ I want to kiss you.” He smiled. “See? I don’t lie ’bout nuffink. Not ’bout your niece. Not ’bout me. Not ’bout you.”

            “I told you. This’s my business. ’sF you think I—”

            “I know.  I phone you up cos I see the handout in the gym, dat’s all. I don’t know who shows up an’ I don’t care. I got a competition to get ready for, an’ I need my muscles seen to. Dat’s it.”

            “What sort of competition?”

            “Bodybuilding.” He paused, waiting for her to comment. When she didn’t, he said, “Working towards Mr. Universe. I been lifting since I was thirteen years old.”

            “How long’s that, then?”

            “Ten years,” he told her.

            “You’re twenty-three.”

            “Problem wiv dat?”

            “I’m forty, man.”

            “Problem wiv dat?”

            “Can’t you do maths?”

            “Maths don’t make me wan’ to kiss you less.”

            Kendra stood her ground, without really knowing why she was doing so. She wanted his kiss, no mistake about that. She wanted more as well. The seventeen years between them meant there would be no strings, which was how she liked things. But there was something about him that made her hesitate: He seemed twenty-three in years only. In mind-set and behaviour, he seemed much older, and that spelled danger of a kind she’d avoided for a very long time.

            He slid off the table then. The sheet he’d been wearing slipped to the floor. He came to her and put his hand on her arm. It slid to her wrist and he said, “Truth is truth, Mrs. Osborne. I phoned up f ’r a massage. Money’s over on th’ table. Wiv a tip ’s well. I di’n’t ’spect anyt’ing else. Bu’ I still want it. Question is, do you? Anyways, jus’ a kiss.”

            Kendra wanted to say no because she knew saying yes meant going to a place she ought to avoid. But she didn’t reply. Nor did she walk away. He said, “I don’ jus’ take. You’re meant to answer, Mrs. Osborne.”

            Someone else inside her did the talking. “Yes,” she said. He kissed her. He urged her mouth open, one hand on the back of her neck. She put her hand on his waist and then slid it over his buttocks, which were tight, like the rest of him. And like the rest of him, they filled her with wanting.

            She broke away. “I don’t do this,” she said.

            He knew what she meant. “I c’n tell dat,” he murmured. He drew back and looked at her. “I don’t ’s’pect nuffink. You c’n leave if you want.” With his fingers, he traced the curve of her cheek. With his other hand, he grazed across her breasts.

            The caress finished off what resistance she had. She stepped back to him and lifted her mouth to his as her hands reached for his waist again, this time to remove the only article of clothing that he had on. He said, “My.” And then, “Dat’s my bed. Come ’ere.” He led her to the bed nearest the window and lowered her to it. “You a goddess,” he said.

            He unbuttoned her blouse. He freed her breasts. He gazed on them, then upon her face before he lowered her to the mattress and lowered his mouth to her nipples.

            She gasped because it had been so long, and she needed to have a man’s worship of her body, feigned or not. She wanted him, and in this moment, the fact of the wanting was the only thing that—

            “Fuck it, Dix. Wha’ the hell you doing? We had a bloody ’greement!”

            They separated in a rush, scrambling for sheets, for clothing, for anything at all to cover themselves. It came to Kendra that there was a distinct reason for the room’s three beds. Dix D’Court shared his accommodation, and one of his flatmates had just walked into the room.

            Chapter

      7 On the night Ness saw the Blade come out of the Harrow Road police station, she made a decision. To her it was a simple one, meant to be, but it put her on a path that would forever alter the lives of people she would never meet.

            The Blade was not a pleasant man to look upon. He radiated danger in a manner so pellucid that he might have been wearing fl ashing lights around his neck instead of what he was  wearing, which was a gold Italian charm meant to ward off the evil eye. He also radiated power. The power drew people to him; the danger kept them where he preferred them to be, which was subservient, tentative, and eager. He’d learned to cultivate behaviour most apt to intimidate, both because of his size and because of his physical attributes: At only five feet five inches tall, he could have been marked as someone easy to take down; completely hairless and with a face so sharply pulled back from his nose that the front of his skull looked more like a beak than anything else, he’d also learned early that there were only two ways to survive the environment into which he’d been born. He’d chosen the route of mastery rather than the route of escape. It was easier and he liked things easy.

Close to him, Ness had felt both the power and the danger, but she was in no state to be affected by either. Her encounter with her aunt, followed by her visit to Six on the Mozart Estate, had put her in a place where the last thing she cared about was self-preservation. So when she took in the details of the Blade—from the cowboy boots that gave him additional height to the cobra tattoo that made a statement by curling down from his head and onto his cheek—she saw just what she was looking for, which was someone capable of altering her state of mind.

            What the Blade saw was what she offered superficially, and he was ready for that. He’d spent four hours in the police station—which was two hours more than he had ever agreed to—and while there had never been any question about whether he’d be back on the street as soon as he’d done the song and dance required of him, he hadn’t produced for the police in a manner they liked, so he’d been at their mercy. He hated that, and hate set him on edge. He wanted to remove the sharpness of that edge. There were several ways to do this, and Ness was standing there blatantly promising one of them.