marks on a wall in the kitchen. You c'n see if you want. Mum marks me first of every month. I grew two inches."
"Sprouting up like that," Nkata said, "make your bones hurt?"
"Yeah! How'd you know? Oh, I 'xpect cos you grew fast as well."
"Tha's right," Nkata said. "Five inches one summer. Ouch."
Daniel laughed. He appeared ready to settle in for a chat, but his mother stopped this by saying his name sharply. Daniel looked from Nkata to her, then back to Nkata.
"Have your cocoa," Nkata said. "See you later."
"Yeah?" The boy's face asked that a promise be made.
Yasmin Edwards didn't allow it, saying, "Daniel, this man's here on business, nothing else." That was enough. The boy scooted back to the kitchen, casting one final look over his shoulder. Yasmin waited till he was gone before she said to Nkata, "Anything else?"
He took a gulp of the cocoa and set the mug on the iron-legged coffee table where the same red high-heel-shaped ashtray still sat, empty now that the German woman who'd used it was gone from Yasmin Edwards' life. He said, "You got to have more of a care right now. With Dan."
Her lips flattened. "You trying to tell me-"
"No," he said. "You the best mum that boy could have in the world, and I mean it, Yasmin." He startled himself with his use of her given name, and he was grateful when she pretended not to notice. He hurried on. "I know you got stuff to do coming out 'f your ears, what with the wig business an' all that. Dan spends time on his own, not cos that's the way you want it but cos that's how it is. All I'm saying is, this bleeder's picking up boys Dan's age and he's killing them, and I don't want that to happen to Dan."
"He's not stupid," Yasmin said curtly, although Nkata could tell this was all bravado. She wasn't stupid, either.
"I know that, Yas. But he's..." Nkata searched for the words. "You c'n tell he needs a man. 'S obvious. An' from what we c'n tell 'bout the boys been killed...They're going with him. They're not fighting it. No one sees anything cos there's nothing to see cos they trust him, okay?"
"Daniel i'n't about to go with some-"
"We think he uses a van," Nkata cut in, persisting in spite of her evident scorn. "We think it's red."
"I'm saying. Daniel doesn't take rides. Not from people he doesn' know." She cast a look in the direction of the kitchen. She lowered her voice. "What're you saying? You think I di'n't teach him that?"
"I know you taught him. Like I said, I c'n see you're a good mum to the boy. But that doesn' change what the fact is inside of him, Yas. And the fact is, he needs a man."
"Thinkin' you're going to be it or something?"
"Yas." Now that he'd begun saying her name, Nkata found he couldn't say it enough. It was an addiction for him, one he knew he had to be rid of in very short order or he would be lost, like a needle freak dossing in a doorway in the Strand. So he tried again. "Missus Edwards, I know Dan spends time on his own cos you're busy. And tha's not good and tha's not bad. It's just how it is. All I want you to unnerstan is wha's going on in your neighbourhood, see?"
"Fine," she said. "I un'erstand now." She moved past him to the door and reached for the knob, saying, "You did what you come for, and now you can-"
"Yas!" Nkata wouldn't be dismissed. He was there to do the woman a service whether she liked it or not, and that service was to impress upon her the danger and urgency of the situation, neither of which she apparently wished to grasp. "There's a bugger out there going after boys just like Daniel," Nkata said rather more hotly than he would have liked. "He's getting them in a van and he's burning their hands till the skin goes black. Then he's strangling them and he's slicing them open." He had her attention now, and that spurred him to continue, as if each word were a way he proved something to her, although what that something was he didn't want to consider at the moment. "Then he marks them up a bit more with their own blood. And then he puts their bodies on display. Boys go with him and we don't