bad enough. To be seen by him at night was pure danger. He was accompanied by Arissa—whom he appeared to be holding by the back of her neck— with Cal Hancock trailing them like an officer from the royal protection squad.
Joel said, “Ivan, le’s cross over.”
Ivan, who’d been waiting for Joel to answer his question, took this remark as avoidance on Joel’s part. He said, “I’m being disrespectful? I do apologise for treading where I oughtn’t. But if you ever wish to talk —”
“No. I mean le’s cross over the street. You know.”
But it was actually too late, for the Blade had seen them. He stopped beneath a streetlamp, where the light above cast long shadows on his face. He said, “Eye-van. Eye-van the man. Wha’ you doin out on y’r own? Picking up another ack-o-lite, innit?”
Ivan stopped walking as well, while Joel attempted to digest this information. He would never have considered the Blade to be someone Ivan Weatherall knew. His body went tense with anticipation as his mind sought an answer to the question of what he would do if the Blade decided to get nasty with them. The odds were even, but that didn’t make them good.
“Good evening, Stanley,” Ivan said affably. He sounded like a man who’d just run into an acquaintance for whom he had high regard.
“Good gracious, my man. How long has it been?”
Stanley? Joel thought. He looked from Ivan to the Blade. The Blade’s nostrils widened, but he said nothing.
“Stanley Hynds, Joel Campbell,” Ivan went on. “I’d make further introductions, Stanley, but I’ve not had the honour . . .” He gave a little antique bow towards Arissa and Calvin.
“Full of it like always, Eye-van,” the Blade said.
“Indeed. It appears to be my calling. Have you finished the Nietzsche, by the way? That was intended as a loan, not a gift.”
The Blade snorted. “You been sorted yet, mon?”
Ivan smiled. “Stanley, I continue to walk these streets unscathed. Unarmed and unscathed as ever I was. Am I correct in assuming that’s something of your doing?”
“I ain’t tired of you yet.”
“Long may I continue to entertain. Should I not . . . Well, the Harrow Road gentlemen in blue always know where to find you, I assume.”
This was apparently the limit of what the Blade’s companions were willing to endure. Arissa said, “Le’s go, baby,” as Calvin stepped forward, saying, “You makin threats, mon?” in a distinctly unCalvin-like voice.
Ivan smiled at this and tipped a mock hat in the Blade’s direction.
“By the company he keeps, Stanley,” he said.
“Soon now, Eye-van,” the Blade returned. “Fast losing your power to amuse me, mon.”
“I shall work on the quality of my repartee. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m seeing my young friend to his doorstep. May we pass with your blessing?”
The request was designed to appease and it did so. A smile fl icked around the Blade’s lips and he jerked his head at Calvin, who stepped aside. “Watch your back, Eye-van,” the Blade said as they passed him.
“Never know who’s coming up on you.”
“Words I shall take to my heart and my grave,” was Ivan’s reply. All of this had left Joel astonished. Every moment he’d expected disaster, and he did not know what to do with the fact that nothing resembling disaster had struck. When he looked at Ivan once they were again on their way, it was with new eyes. He didn’t know what first to wonder about the man because there was simply so much to wonder about.
All Joel managed to say was, “Stanley?” That served to embody all the questions that he wanted to ask but for which he could not find the words.
Ivan glanced at him. He guided him onto Portobello Bridge.
“The Blade,” Joel said. “I never heard someone talk to him like that. I never ’spected—”
“One to do so and live to tell the tale?” Ivan chuckled. “Stanley and I go back a number of years, to his pre-Blade days. He’s as clever a man as ever was. He could have gone far. But his curse, poor soul, has always been the need for immediate gratification, which is also, let’s be frank, the curse of our times. And this is odd because the man’s quite an autodidact, which is the least immediately gratifying course of education one might ever embrace. But Stanley doesn’t see it that way. What he sees is that
Joel was silent. They’d reached Elkstone Road, and Trellick Tower loomed over them, shining lights from its myriad flats into the dark night sky. Joel hadn’t the slightest idea what his companion was going on about.
Ivan said, “Are you familiar with the term, by the way? Autodidact? It means someone who educates himself. Our Stanley—as difficult as it may be to believe—is the true embodiment of not being able to ascertain a book’s quality or its contents by examining only its cover. One would assume from his appearance—not to mention from his deliberate and rather charming mangling of our language—that he’s something of an ill-bred and uneducated lout. But that would be selling Mr. Hynds for far less than he’s actually worth. When I met him—he must have been sixteen at the time—he was studying Latin, dabbling in Greek, and had recently turned his attention to the physical sciences and twentieth-century philosophers. Unfortunately, he’d also turned his attention to the various means of fast and easy money available to those who don’t mind shimmying along on the wrong side of the law. And money is always a compelling mistress to boys who’ve never had it.”
“How’d you meet him, then?”
“In Kilburn Lane. I believe his intention was to mug me, but I noticed a suppurating sore in the corner of his mouth. Before he was able to make his demand for whatever he mistakenly thought I had on my person, I hustled him off to the chemist for medication. The poor boy never quite knew what was happening. One moment he’s poised to commit a crime and the next he’s facing the pharmacist with the man he’s just attempted to rob, listening to a recommendation for an unguent. But it all worked out, and he learned an important lesson from it.”
“What kind of lesson?”
“The obvious one: that you mustn’t ignore something strange and oozing upon your body. God only knows where it can lead if you do.”
Joel didn’t know what to make of this. There appeared to be only one logical question. “Why d’you do all this?” he asked.
“All . . . ?”
“The Wield Words t’ing. Talkin to people like you do. Walkin home wiv me, even.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” Ivan enquired. They had made their way along the pavement and now they turned into Edenham Way. “But that’s not much of an answer, is it? Suffice it to say that every man needs to leave his mark upon the society into which he was born. This is mine.”
Joel wanted to ask more, but they’d come to Kendra’s house, and there was no time. At the steps, Ivan tipped his fantasy hat once again, just as he had done to the Blade. He said, “Let’s meet again soon, shall we? I want to see more poetry from you,” before he vanished between two buildings, in the direction of Meanwhile Gardens. Joel heard him whistling as he walked.
AFTER HER ENCOUNTER with Six and Natasha in Queensway, Ness felt the pressure inside again. The high of managing to walk out of the chemist’s with a lipstick in her bag and no one the wiser didn’t so much fade as it actually deflated, punctured by the scorn of her former friends. She was left feeling worse than before, restless and experiencing a building sense of doom.
What she felt was heightened by what she heard. Her makeshift bed on the first-floor sofa was directly beneath Kendra’s second-floor bedroom. Worse, it was directly beneath Kendra’s bed, and the nightly rhythmic movement of that bed was anything but a soporific. And it
