“You mustn’t!” she hissed. “I’ll be in enough trouble already!”
We drew back our hand, hypnotised by the unblinking black eyes staring back at us from the little coffins.
“Was there . . . a message?” I stammered. “The night they died, a message . . . something written on a wall? Left on a phone? Something you didn’t expect to see?”
She licked her lips. “You didn’t try to off yourself, did you?”
“No, I was pushed into a cauldron of tea and woke up here, and . . .” we laughed, “there’s no such thing as coincidence. Not in my line of work. Was there a message?”
Nine black eyes looking up from the sides of nine black heads on nine dead feathered bodies. Judith nodded, sucking in air. “There was something painted up on one of the walls. We washed it off. Don’t know how they got it there, not easy, you know, it is a castle! It said . . . someone wrote, ‘give me back my hat’. In big white letters up on the wall where the ravens liked to sit. Just ‘give me back my hat’ . . . Who pushed you?”
“Three ladies. With a cauldron, like I said. I’ve got to go.”
“Go where?”
“Anywhere,” we replied. “Anywhere that isn’t here. Judith, thanks for all your help, and now take a traveller’s good advice, and get out of the city. Get out
now
.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s true,” I answered. “All of it. The ravens in the Tower are dead. That’s a curse, that’s damnation. Someone is out to destroy the city and I have no idea who it is.” I chuckled, “Which is terrific, because I’m the one who is supposed to stop them! So run. Because I have no idea how I’m going to do it.”
I don’t know if she took my advice.
There were other things we had to know.
I nearly ran to Cannon Street station, an iron shed in a street one block up from the river’s edge. Opposite its square mouth was a sports shop, a small plaque nailed to the door. The plaque said: “Within these walls is the London Stone, an ancient Roman altar from which all the distances in Britain were measured. It is said that should the London Stone ever be destroyed, the city will be cursed.”
I went inside the shop. A young man with curly blond hair and a Northern tinge to his voice came up to me and tried to sell me a pair of running shoes for more money than I lived on in a month. We took him by the shoulders so hard he flinched, stared straight into his eyes and said, “We have to see the London Stone.”
“Um,” he mumbled.
“Show us!”
“Uh . . .”
“
Show us!
”
“It’s gone,” he stammered.
“Gone where?”
“Someone, um, someone, um, hit it and . . .”
“Where is it?”
“Broken.”
“When?”
“A few days ago.”
“The London Stone is broken?”
“Um . . .”
“Was there a message? Something written? On the walls, on the windows, was there a message?”
He pointed at a window. “On the . . .”
I hissed in frustration, let him go, pushing him back harder than I’d meant into a pile of badminton rackets, and stormed from the shop. The front had a number of metal shutters that could roll down over the windows. One of them was already closed in preparation for the evening. On it, someone had written in tall white letters:
We thumped it so hard our knuckles bled.
I ran through the London streets, not caring now about my own aching limbs. I was flying on rush-hour magic, the buzz of neon propelling me along with the swish of my trailing coat lightening the weight of my body, feeding on the raw hum of the city streets. Rush hour was a good time for sorcerers, when the streets shimmered with life, so much life pumped up into the air, just waiting to be tapped. Our shoes - that weren’t our shoes - puffed and huffed as we ran, feeling our way by the shape of the paving stones, smelling our way by the thickness of the traffic fumes, guided by the numbers on the buses, weaving through the commuters on the streets like the deer that had once danced here through the forest. It was the same magic; the same enchantment.
The nearest piece of the London Wall I knew of was tucked down to the south of the Barbican, amidst bright tall offices and renovated stone guildhalls. Its red crumbled stones had been incorporated into an excavated garden where the bank workers and clerks of the city ate their sandwiches, all shiny fountain and well-tended geraniums. As I caught sight of the Wall I thought for a naive moment that it would be all right, saw clean stones, well loved, standing along one side of this little dip full of greenery. Then as I descended the wooden steps to the garden, by the light of the windows all above, I could see more of the Wall, and we laughed, cried, shouted, bit our lip, all and none and everything at once.
On the ancient Roman stones of the Wall of London, someone had written, of course someone had written:
I slumped on a bench beneath the wall, and let the pain of my aching body reassert itself over the heady rush of streetside magics. I found my left hand unconsciously rubbing at the sticky bandages of my right. I peeled off my mitten, then unwrapped the tea-stained cotton. Beneath, drawn across my skin, were the two thin crosses, one lodged in the corner of the other, bright red, still a little tender, but otherwise sealed into my flesh, like an old friend left over from my mum’s womb.
We were the Midnight Mayor. Guardian protector of the city. And now the ravens in the Tower were dead; the London Stone was broken; the Wall of London cursed like all the rest. The ancient, blessed, and secret things that had always protected the city. And now someone had destroyed them, defaced them, cursed them, damned them.
Cursed, damned, doomed, burnt, drowned, crushed, crumbled, cracked, fallen, faded, split, splintered - pick one, pick them all.
None of our business.
Not our problem.
What were we supposed to do about it?
I looked down at my shoes.
Swift has the shoes.
GIVE ME BACK MY HAT
END OF THE LINE
I am the Midnight Mayor.
Say it a few times until you get used to the idea.
My city.
I put my head in my hands, squeezed back against the aching in my skull. It didn’t make it better. I raised my head to the orange-black sky, saw the flickering lights of a passing plane, turned down to the earth at my feet, the shoes that weren’t my own, looked up at the wall. The ancient wall, protector of the city, magic and history all muddled up in one and I saw it again, what I should have seen before, plastered in great white letters:
I reached into my satchel. I pulled out the phone with Nair’s sim card in it. I thumbed it on.
I dialled the number for Dudley Sinclair.
Just because I didn’t trust him didn’t mean he couldn’t be useful.
A while passed before a voice answered. It was surly, with a slight lisp. “Yeah? Who’s this?”
I said, “This is Matthew Swift. I need to speak to Sinclair.”
Silence for a second - the kind of second it takes to recognise a name, dislike it, and muster a polite reply. “OK. Hold on.”
I held on. This involved hearing tunes by the Beatles played on what sounded like a reed nose-flute. I held on a little longer, drumming my fingers. It’s hard to stay psyched up for anything in the face of a nose-flute rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”. We nearly hung up.
When Sinclair spoke, his voice boomed out so loud and sudden that I nearly dropped the handset. “Matthew! So good to hear from you! How are you keeping?”
“Mr Sinclair,” I said. “I think you should know that someone has cursed the city.”
Not a beat, not a moment. “Really, dear boy?” he intoned. “How tedious of them. Any idea who?”
“No. But the ravens in the Tower are dead, and the London Stone is broken, and the Wall of London has been painted on in big white paint, and the Midnight Mayor was flayed alive without ever actually being touched, by a man who has no smell and is therefore probably not a man. Someone is systematically destroying all the magical defences that the city has.”
“What a pain,” sighed Sinclair. “And you have no idea who might be indulging in this scheme?”
“No.”
“Pity. I suppose this means that all sorts of nasties are going to get out onto the streets and start tormenting the innocent. Well, so much for the Christmas bonus.”
“Mr Sinclair, there’s something else I think you should know.”
“Of course, dear boy, of course, you know I always enjoy our mutually beneficial working arrangements!”
“Mr Sinclair,” I said, taking a deep breath, “I am the Midnight Mayor.”
“Really? Good grief, when did that happen?”
“About the same moment that the last Midnight Mayor expired down the telephone.”
“Oh, I see. How . . . unexpected. Yes, really, that is . . . that is most unusual and rather remarkable. I suppose it must have come as something of a surprise to you too?”
“I’m a little freaked, yes.”
“Well, naturally, yes, of course, yes, you would be! But naturally. Yes . . .” His voice trailed off. “You know, Matthew, I am very rarely surprised by much I hear these days, and I must admit, in a spirit of frankness and free exchange, your phone call and this somewhat remarkable information concerning your current mythical status is undeniably different. Are you absolutely sure of all this?”
“Yes.”
“Including being the Midnight . . .”
“Yes. It makes a sickening sense. Mr Sinclair - I think I might need your help.”
“Well, naturally, anything for you, dear boy, naturally, naturally!”
“I’ve seen the face of the . . . the creature that killed Nair.”
“Creature? Not a man, then, a creature?”
“Yes.”
“And you say you saw him?”
“Yes.”
“Remarkable! Yes, that is a remarkable thing, I must admit, I was wondering how you might have . . .”
“There was a fox that saw the whole thing. We shared a kebab and a few reminiscences. Mr Sinclair - the creature that killed Nair didn’t even touch him. I’ve never seen anything like it. And we have no reason to believe that, if it killed Nair for being Mayor, then it won’t do exactly the same to us, and we don’t know if we can stop it.”
Silence, a long while. I have almost never known Sinclair to be silent.
“All right,” he said at last. “Let’s meet.”
Purpose.
Purpose meant reason.
Reason meant thought.
Thoughts meant . . .
. . .
dead men not humans just meat dead meat on the slab dead Midnight Mayor ten thousand paper cuts not even touched dead meat lost of all faces and nature and just
. . .
Stop it.
. . .
dead ravens GIVE ME BACK MY HAT dead ravens broken stones shattered wards broken protections GIVE ME BACK MY HAT end of the line end of the line make me a shadow on the wall no smell no smell just killed him dead meat and the fox hid no smell end of the line end of the line I am Midnight Mayor Midnight Mayor dead on a slab kill an idea kill an idea kill a city kill a city idea ward protection something coming make me a shadow
. . .
We didn’t like thoughts.
We tried to muffle them in our walking.
Walking meant rhythm.
Fleet Street. Pinstriped trousers, perfect silk suits, swished-back hair, black leather briefcases. Lawyers and bankers, the common, rich men of the city. Did these men smell? Hard to tell in the exhaust from the buses, the coffee from the open doors, cakes and the smell of yeast from the expensive bakeries, perfect drenched cleanliness from the cafés, stiff cleaning powders from the dry-cleaners. Did their hearts beat, did they breathe, did their throats draw in and out inside the collar of their shirts? To look was to stop walking too fast, to walk slow was to think, to walk slow was to be noticed, and who knew who would be watching? And we saw endless blotchy anonymous faces blurred into pinkish-grey passing shadows moving in and out of the streetlamp glows, sharp polished leather shoes snapping on the paving stones, white shirts and crisp ties, and what colour had the tie of Nair’s killer been? We couldn’t remember, it had been smell and terror and sense and blood. Ten thousand little deaths all at once, every one stinging sharper than the finest razor on the flesh, all at once, ten thousand little deaths from a face . . . just a face in a pinstripe suit. And it didn’t get much more pinstriped than Fleet Street.
This was
my
city.
Royal Courts of Justice. News crews, knobbly stone spikes and bright white lights. Aldwych. St Clement’s Church, ringing out “Oranges and Lemons” above the tree-shaded bus stops, the London School of Economics, all chips, ring-binders and scuttling shoes, a bank, the BBC, statues of big ladies holding burning torches, the Indian embassy, swastikas and curly lettering in stone - and did that kid over there in the hood have a face? Cafés and theatres. Bright lights that drove away shadow and imagination. Cheap sandwiches, packed bus stops. We could taste the magic on the air, bright, hot, red, like strong curry settling over our stomach, filling our veins, pushing us further forward, giving us courage. We couldn’t imagine these lights ever going out, no harm here, too many people, too much brightness, too much we could use.
Drury Lane, one show that had run for ever, one show that would die in a week, five different kinds of restaurant and one warehouse piled full of furniture that no one would ever sit on, and everyone would always admire. I went for the backstreets, wiggling round the back of Covent Garden, watching my back, running my fingers over the railings, round the streetlamps, over the walls, listening with much more than ears, staying smart. I did two whole circuits of Covent Garden before I finally chose to go inside, looping the loop round the back of St Paul’s Church, its yard shut up for the evening, round the cobbled street that threaded its quiet way south of Long Acre, back towards Bow Street, into the Royal Opera House. Glass, steel, marbled pillar and thick red carpet. I rode bright new escalators up past a glasshouse laden with candle-lit restaurant tables. In the bar I ordered a packet of peanuts, a big glass of orange juice and rights to the darkest, tightest corner there was. It cost the price of a small dowry, but we were not in the mood to complain. There we sat and watched.