And Justice There Is None

Chapter One Admiral Sir Edward Vernon, with a small fleet of ships from the British Navy, captured the port [of Porto Bello] in 1739 . . . Bonfires were lit in all the major cities to celebrate the victory . . . streets and districts were named after Vernon and Portobello. Whetlor and Bartlett, from Portobello He ran, as so many others ran, the black anorak protecting him from the mist, the reflective patches on his trainers gleaming as he passed under the street lamps. The pattern of the streets was etched in his mind, a living map. Down Portobello, under the motorway, past Oxford Gardens, once the site of Portobello Farm, then back up Ladbroke Grove, past the video shop and the Afro-Caribbean hairdressers, then into Lansdown Road with its whitewashed Victorian austerity. He imagined that the street's curve paralleled the track of the old racecourse that had crowned Notting Hill a hundred and fifty years ago; that his feet fell where the horses hooves had struck. Now, Christmas lights twinkled in front gardens, promising a cheerful comfort he could not share. Other joggers passed him. He acknowledged them with a nod, a raised hand, but he knew there was no real kinship. They thought of their heart rates, of their dinners and their shopping, of home and children and the demands of the holiday on their bank accounts. He ran, as the others ran, but his mind revolved in a rat's wheel of old things, dark things, sores that did not heal. Nor would they, he knew, unless he took the cleansing upon himself: There would be no justice unless he made it. There, the spire of St. John's Church, rising disembodied above the mist-wreathed rooftops. The blood roared in his veins as he neared his destination; his breath came hard with the terror of it. But he could not turn away. All his life he had been moving towards this place, this night; this was who and what he was. A woman with long, dark hair passed by him, her face in shadow. His heart quickened as it always did; it might have been his mother as he saw her in his dreams. Sometimes in his visions her hair twined round him, silken and cool, an elusive comfort. Every night he had brushed it with a silver-backed brush, and she had told him stories. Until she had been taken from him. He ran, as the others ran, but he carried with him something they did not. History, and hatred, honed to a bright and blazing point. Portobello took on a different character once the shops closed for the day, Alex Dunn decided as he turned into the road from the mews where he had his small flat. He paused for a moment, debating whether to go up the road to the Calzone's at Notting Hill Gate for a celebratory pizza, but it wasn't the sort of place one really wanted to go on one's own. Instead, he turned to the right, down the hill, passing the shop fronts barred for the night and the closed gates of the cafErun by St. Peter's Church. Bits of refuse littered the street from the day's traffic, giving it a desolate air. But tomorrow it would be different; by daybreak the stallholders would be set up for Saturday market, and in the arcades, dealers would sell everything from antique silver to Beatles memorabilia. Alex loved the early-morning anticipation, the smell of coffee and cigarettes in the arcade cafes, the sense that this might be the day to make the sale of a lifetime. As he might, he thought with a surge of excitement, because today he'd made the buy of his lifetime. His step quickened as he turned into Elgin Crescent and saw the familiar facade of Otto's Cafe at least that was how the regulars referred to the place; the faded sign read merely Cafe. Otto did a bustling daytime business in coffee, sandwiches, and pastries, but in the evening he provided simple meals much favored by the neighborhood residents. [read more]