What Came Before He Shot Her

some eight feet below the level of the pavement that passed it, a person couldn’t be seen unless he stood in the middle or unless a pedestrian walking by—of whom there were few enough in the rainy autumn weather—made the effort to peer through the surrounding chain-link fence.

            It seemed to Joel abnormally cold. When he walked to the middle of the pitch, it felt as if a damp fog rose from the ground and settled around his legs. He stamped his feet and tucked his hands into his armpits. At this time of year, there was far less daylight, and what there was was fast fading. The shadows cast by the retaining walls oozed farther and farther into the pitch, creeping among the weeds, which grew from cracks in the tarmac.

            As the minutes passed, the first thing Joel wondered was whether he’d come to the correct place. There was indeed another football pitch—tucked behind Trellick Tower—but it wasn’t sunken below the level of the street, as this one was, and Greve had  said the sunken football pitch. Hadn’t he?

            Joel began to doubt. Twice he heard someone approaching, and his muscles grew tight in readiness. But both times the footsteps passed by, leaving behind their echo and the acrid scent of cigarette smoke.

            Joel paced. He bit the side of his thumb. He tried to think what he was meant to do.

            What he wanted was peace: both of mind and of body. That, in conjunction with his message to the Blade and Neal’s recent lack of interest in him, was why he’d been willing to grasp the word counsel  and do something that he now began to think of as stupid. The truth of the matter was that he’d exposed himself to danger in this place. He was alone, weaponless, and unprotected, so if he remained in this spot and something happened to him, he’d have only himself to blame. All Neal and his crew had to do, really, was to hop the fence and corner him. There’d be no quick escape, and he’d be finished, as they doubtless wanted him to be.

            Joel’s bowels turned liquid. The sound of rough footsteps made things worse. The lid of a dustbin, rattling in the nearby mews, nearly did him in, and he understood that Neal would want him like this: nervous, waiting, and wondering. He saw that having Joel a mass of anxiety would make Neal feel big and in control. It would offer him the opportunity he wanted to—

            Opportunity. That was the thought that did it for Joel. That single word flashed in his mind, brightening his situation until he saw it in an entirely new light. When that occurred, he was out of the pitch like a fox bolting from the hounds. He knew that he’d been worse than stupid. He’d been inattentive. That was how people died.

He shot to the corner and tore around the turn, making for the railway tracks. With Goldfinger’s great tower looming as his landmark, he pounded in the direction of Edenham Estate. He knew at that point what was going on, but he didn’t want to believe it.

He heard the first sirens when he was in Elkstone Road, before he actually saw anything. When at last he did see, it was the lights first, those twirling rooftop lights that told vehicles to clear the way for the fire brigade. The fire engine itself stood on the bridge above the canal. A hose snaked down the stairs, but no water yet cannoned out to douse the fire. This was merrily consuming the abandoned barge. Someone had untied it as well as ignited it, for now it floated in the middle of the canal, and smoke billowed thickly from it, a foetid cloud like a renegade belch.

There were watchers everywhere, lining the bridge above the water and crowding the footpath alongside it. They peered from the skate bowl and even from behind the fence that protected the child drop-in centre.

            Even as he knew  the truth of the matter and continued his approach, Joel looked for Toby. He shouted his brother’s name and pushed through the crowd. He then saw why no firefighter had begun shooting water onto the flames that were consuming the barge.

One fireman held the nozzle of the hose poised while another was up to his chest in the greasy water of the canal. This second man—his protective jacket discarded on the footpath—was working his way to the barge, a rope coiled over his shoulder. He was making for the end opposite the fire. There, a small form cowered.

            “Toby!” Joel shouted. “Toby! Tobe!”

            But there was too much going on for Toby to hear Joel’s cry. Flames crackled old dry wood, people called out encouragement to the fireman, a loud radio on the engine above them spasmodically spat out information, and all around was a babble of voices into which broke the hooting of a police vehicle pulling onto the bridge.

Joel cursed himself for having given Neal Wyatt the opening he’d been looking for: Toby had run for his hiding place as commanded, and it had been transformed by Neal and his crew into a trap. End of story. Joel looked around fruitlessly for his nemesis, even as he knew that Neal and everyone else associated with Neal would be gone by this time, their worst already done. And not done to Joel who could at least fight back, but done to his brother who didn’t and never would understand what marked him out for endless bullying.

In the canal, the fireman reached the barge and heaved himself onto it. From where he cowered, Toby looked up at this apparition rising from the depths. He might have taken him for one of the headhunters he’d been told to fear—or even the incarnation of Maydarc, come to him from the land of Sose—but he sensed that the real danger was from the fire, not from the man with the rope. So he worked his way on his hands and his knees towards his rescuer. The fireman fixed a line to the barge to keep it from floating in a fiery mass along the canal, then he grabbed Toby as the child reached him. Once he had him out of danger, a shout to his fellows above with the engine started the water flowing. A gratified cheer went up in the crowd as water spewed from the hose in a fi erce cascade.

            All could have been well at this point had life been a fade-to-black celluloid fantasy. The presence of the police prevented this. They reached Toby before Joel was able to. One of them had him by the collar of his jacket the moment his rescuer had him on the ground. It was fairly obvious that this was the intimidating moment that presaged interrogation, and Joel shoved his way over to intercede.

            “. . . set that fire, boy?” one of the constables was saying. “Best answer directly and be truthful about it.”

            Joel cried, “He di’n’t!” and reached Toby’s side. “He was hiding,” he said to the police. “I tol’ him to hide there.”

            Toby, wide-eyed and shaking but relieved that Joel was with him at last, gave his reply to his brother instead of to the constable, which wasn’t something guaranteed to be pleasing. “I did like you said. I waited to hear you say to come out.”

            “‘Like you said’ ?” The constable grabbed Joel now, so that he had both boys in his grip. “This is down to you, then. What’s your name?”

            “I heard ’em, Joel,” Toby told him. “They squirted summick on the barge. I could smell it.”

            “Accelerant,” a man’s voice said. Then it barked towards the canal.

            “See if these two’ve left a starter on the barge.”

            “Hey,” Joel cried. “I di’n’t do this. My brother di’n’t neither. He doesn’t even know how to light a match.”

            The cop answered this with an ominous directive. “Come along with me,” and he turned both boys towards the spiral stairs. Toby began to cry. Joel said, “Hey! We di’n’t . . . I wasn’t even here an’ you c’n ask . . . You c’n ask those blokes in the skate bowl, innit. They would’ve seen—”

            “Save it for the station,” the cop said.

            “Joel, I was hiding,” Toby wailed. “Just like you said.”

            They reached the panda car. Its back door stood open. There, however, an elderly Asian man was speaking insistently to a second constable who was climbing behind the wheel of the car. As Joel and Toby were placed inside, he said, “This boy did not set that fire, do you hear me? From my window over there—you see? It is just above the canal?—

            I watched these boys. There were five of them, and they sprayed the boat first with something from a tin. They lit it and untied it. I was witness to all this. My good man, you must listen. These two boys here, they had nothing to do with it.”

            “Make your statement at the station, Gandhi,” was the driver’s reply. He closed his door on the old man’s further protests and put the car into gear as the other constable climbed in and slapped his hand on the roof to indicate they were ready to roll.

            Joel’s thought was that these two men had seen far too many American cop programmes on the television. He said in a low voice to his weeping brother, “Don’t cry, Tobe. We’ll get it sorted.” He was aware of