What Came Before He Shot Her

the duck houses, he told him. If he remained quiet and still in the reeds, there was a very good chance that the ducks would come to him and eat the bread right from his hand. Wouldn’t that be better than throwing it at them from the dock and hoping they’d notice?

            Toby had little experience of ducks and consequently didn’t know that bread tossed into the water would attract any duck worth his feathers within a good fifty yards. The plan, as Joel explained it, sounded reasonable to him, so he was happy enough to be ensconced in a roughly fashioned duck blind in the reeds, from which he could watch the birds and patiently wait for them to discover him.

            “You got to stay here,” Joel told him when he had Toby in place.

            “You got dat, innit? I’ll be back direc’ly I get somet’ing over Portobello Road. You wait right here. You do dat for me, Tobe?”

            Toby had positioned himself on his stomach with his chin on the life ring that he’d wriggled higher on his body. He nodded and fastened his eyes on the water, just through the reeds. “Gimme the toast, den,”

            he said. “I bet dem ducks’s hungry.”

            Joel made sure the toast and the bread were within reach. He backed out of the blind and climbed to the path. He was relieved to see that from above the pond, Toby was out of sight. He only hoped his brother would remain there, hidden. He didn’t intend to be gone for more than twenty minutes.

            Heading for the shop in which Toby had shown him the lava lamp required him to make for Portobello Bridge, the viaduct that would take him over the railway tracks and into what remained of the open-air market of Golborne Road. He made the first part of the journey at a trot and, as he went, he wondered how much his little brother remembered about how their birthdays had once been celebrated. If it had been a good spell for their mother, there would have been five of them cramped around the little kitchen table. If it had been one of their mother’s bad times, there would have been only four, but their father would have made up for the absence of their mother by singing the special birthday song deliberately loud and deliberately out of tune, after which he would hand over a birthday present, like a pocketknife or a cosmetics bag, like in-line skates that were secondhand but cleaned up nicely or a special pair of trainers that a child longed for but never mentioned.

            But all that had been before the Campbell children had been relocated to Henchman Street, where Glory did her best to create a celebration—as long as one of them reminded her that a birthday was coming up—but where George Gilbert usually threw a spanner in the works by coming home drunk, or using the birthday as an excuse to become drunk, or otherwise insinuating himself into the centre of what went for the festivities. Joel didn’t know what a birthday would be like at Kendra Osborne’s house, but he intended to make it as special as he could.

            The massive estate of Wornington Green marked one of the turns Joel needed to make, but just along Wornington Road a sunken tarmac football pitch caught his attention. This pitch was lined in brick and fenced in on all four sides with chain link, and an angled top to this boundary was supposed to discourage anyone from using the area when it was not intended to be used. But a set of steps on the west side of the pitch allowed access to it since the gate at the top had long ago been destroyed, and the purpose of the pitch itself—offering a playing area for the children of Wornington Green—had been altered shortly afterwards: Below him, Joel could see one of the neighbourhood’s many graffiti artists in the midst of a project, applying his craft to the fi lthy brick walls in a rainbow of colours.

            He was a Rasta, although his dreadlocks were secured beneath a large knitted cap that drooped with the weight of the hair inside it. The scent of weed drifted upward from him, and Joel could see that a spliff dangled between his lips. He appeared to be putting the fi nishing touches on a masterwork consisting of words and a cartoonlike figure. The words were red, highlighted with white and orange. They said “Question Not” and they served as the base of the figure who rose out of them like a phoenix from the ashes: a black man wielding knives in each hand, offering a suitably fi erce snarl from a tattooed face. This fi nished piece was one of many already decorating the pitch: buxom cartoon women, cigarette or dope-smoking men in various poses, menacing cops with pistols drawn, guitarists bent backwards as they sent their music heavenward. Where there weren’t graffiti of this nature, there was tagging. Initials, names, sobriquets of the streets . . . It was difficult to imagine any child able to play football on the pitch with so many distractions.

            “So wha’ you gawpin at, mon? You never seen artis’ at work?”

            The question came from the Rasta, who’d taken note of Joel peering down through the chain-link fence. Joel took it at face value and not as the challenge it might have been, coming from another sort of man.

            This bloke looked harmless, a conclusion Joel reached based upon the somnolent expression on his face, as if he were being escorted to dreamland by the weed he was smoking.

            “Dis ain’t art,” Joel said. “Art’s in museums.”

            “Yeah? T’ink you could do dis, den? I hand over paint and you make something nice ’s dis?” He gestured with the spliff, pointing out his nearly finished piece.

            “Who is it anyway?” Joel asked the Rasta. “Wha’s it mean ‘Question Not’?”

            The Rasta approached him, leaving his spray paint behind. He came to the side of the pitch, his head cocked. He said, “You jokin, innit?

            You playin Cal Hancock for a fool.”

            Joel frowned. “Wha’ you mean?”

            “Askin’ who dis is? Mean to tell me, you don’ know? How long you been round here, mon?”

            “January.”

            “An’ you don’ know?” Cal shook his head in wonder. He took the spliff from his mouth and generously handed it up to Joel for a toke. Joel put his hands behind his back, the universal sign of refusal.

            “You clean, den?” Cal Hancock asked him. “Dat’s good, mon. Give yourself a future. You got a name?”

            Joel told him.

            Cal said, “Campbell? Got a sister?”

            “Ness, yeah.”

            Cal whistled and took a deep drag on the spliff. “See,” he said. His nod was thoughtful.

            “You know her or summick?”

            “Me, mon? No. I don’ mess with women got mental shit goin on, y’unnerstan.”

            “My sister ain’t . . . ” What “mental” implied, the inescapable connection it offered to Carole Campbell, the future it promised: These were topics Joel dared not veer towards, not even to deny them. He kicked his trainer-shod toe against the low brick wall of the pitch.

            “Maybe she ain’t, bred,” Cal said affably. “But she a bad piece of action have a man ragin long before she rage, lemme tell you dat. She shell-shock a bred, she want to, y’unnerstan? She leave him to wonder what hit him and how in hell he goin to manage gettin hit again.”

            “You sure  you ain’t her man?” Joel asked. Cal chuckled. “Oh las’ time I checked, my bollocks in place, so I pretty sure, blood.” He gave a wink and sauntered back to his artwork.

            “So who is it anyways?” Joel called after him, gesturing to the figure he was working on.

            Cal waved lazily in reply. “You know when it’s time,” he told him. Joel watched him for a moment, saw how he expertly laid on a curve of shading to the Q  in Question. Then he moved off. Some considerable time had passed since Toby had shown Joel the lava lamp he wanted, but when Joel reached the shop in Portobello Road, he was relieved to see that the lamp was still burbling away in the window.

            Joel stepped inside. An automatic buzzer signalled his entry and within three seconds, an Asian man came through a door at the back. He took one look at Joel and his eyes narrowed suspiciously. He said, “Where is your mum, boy? What do you want in my shop, please? Have you someone with you?” The man looked about as he spoke. Joel knew he wasn’t looking for his mother but for the crew of boys he assumed were lurking nearby, ready to do mischief. It was a reflex reaction in this area of town: one part paranoia and two parts experience. Joel said, “I want one of those lava lamps.” He made his English as proper as he could.

            “So you do, boy, but you must pay for it.”

            “I know that, don’t I. I got the money.”

            “You have fifteen pounds and ninety-nine pence?” the man said. “I must see it, please.”

            Joel approached the counter. Swiftly, the man put his hands beneath it. He never put his gaze anywhere but on Joel, and when Joel reached into his pockets and brought out his crumpled five-pound note plus all