The Midnight Mayor (25 page)

“You assume we think you’re innocent,” snapped Earle.

“You know I didn’t kill Nair. You’re an arrogant arsehole, but even you,
even
you will have had time now to find the evidence. You’ll have gone to Willesden, you’ll have found my blood on the phone, you’ll have talked to the foxes, talked to the pigeons, done all the things you should have done at the beginning if you hadn’t been so stupid! Stupid blundering stupid bastards who took one look at the dead Mayor and thought, ‘Ah-ha, let’s go beat up a sorcerer. Hey, the apprentice of Bakker is still alive, and he should be dead, because he was last time; let’s go shoot him just to be on the safe side!’ Well up yours with a pineapple, lights out, good night, good luck, good evening, goodbye, good—”

Earle hit me. It was pure anger, pure anger and redness and scalded fire, a backhand swipe like a girl, wearing as many rings as a girl, with the strength of a man. We fell away, pain and fury and indignation burning every part of us, tasted blood in our mouth, wanted to set it on fire, just a little fire, a little blue electric fire and then they’d burn . . . and . . .

Oda said, “As I understand it, you’re hitting your new master. Don’t let me stop you. Tear each other apart.”

I dragged my head up, fighting fire and blue sapphire fury. Something was wrong with my left arm, I could feel hot blood rolling over the pain. “She gets it,” I whispered. “She understands. You kill me, then one of you will have to deal with all this shit. One of you will have to get flayed alive. There’s a lot of you, so it’s fairly good odds, but carry on like this and there’ll be less and less and less of you. The thing that killed the ravens destroyed the Stone and killed the Mayor and it makes sense, if you’re going about killing a city’s defences, it makes sense to take out the Aldermen next. So shoot away - get on killing. It’ll only speed things up. Fire, flood, crumbled, crushed, cracked, splintered, shattered, torn, tumbled - pick one. The city is going to be ripped apart because no one stops it. End of the line.”

Earle’s puffed angry face, Kemsley’s not much better, Anissina behind them, doubt working its way down the arch of her eyebrows. I could feel blood seeping through my shirt. I looked down, saw redness crawling downwards and upwards and all around. I stammered, “You . . . you tore a . . .”

Never finished the rest.

 

She said, “Drink.”

I said, “Uh?”

She repeated, firmer, “Drink.”

I opened my eyes and was dazzled. I closed them again. I put one hand over one eye and risked opening the other a fraction, waited for that to get comfortable, then opened it the rest of the way. The dazzle was just a glow, a bedside lamp by a bed, bulb turned away to the wall. I risked opening my other eye, peering out between my fingers. Dazzle faded to glow. Somewhere distant and close all at once, a train rattled by. Oda sat on the end of the bed. There was a gun in her lap, and a humourless thing that looked stolen from the samurai section of the Victoria and Albert Museum perched by her right knee. She was holding a plastic cup towards me. It had a straw, and was full of a sharpness that could well have been orange juice.

She said, “Drink.”

I took the cup in one hand. The arm that held the hand that held the cup was bare. The arm was joined to my shoulder. The shoulder was tied onto the rest of me by an igloo of fresh bandaging. I stared at it, stared at the orange juice, stared at her. I said, “I tore a stitch.”

“Yeah,” she sighed. “I noticed.”

“You put a gun against my head!”

“You sound surprised,” she said. She did not.

“No, not really. Just a little . . .”

“Disappointed?” She also had a cup of orange juice. She slurped from it through a stripy pink and white straw. “You know, sorcerer,” she said, “I was always planning on killing you one day.”

I did not credit Oda with a sense of humour. “Why haven’t you?” I asked.

“The usual.”

“Which usual?”

“Greater pictures, lesser evils.”

“Oh. That usual.”

“Make no mistake,” she added. “You are the spawn of the Devil and will burn in all eternity for your sins, for your godless, soulless existence as arrogant minion of Beelzebub upon this earth. The fact that you may be useful to the greater good is neither here nor there as regards the inevitable destruction of your warped spirit.”

“Thank you, Oda,” I said, letting my head fall back against the pillows of the bed. “I’m pleased to see you too.”

I drank orange juice, and looked round the room. It was a studio of some sort, bed and sofa and kitchen all sprawled across the same floor, counters keeping them apart. The floor was covered with great white rugs, far too clean to be lived on; a black grand piano was in one corner, a small cluster of chairs round a TV, a low dining room table and of course, the bed, pressed up into a corner by a window with the blinds drawn, into which I had been unceremoniously dumped. A clock on the wall said 16.33. I looked up at Oda and said, “Is the clock right?”

“Yes.”

“Where’d the day go?”

She shrugged. “There was a lot of shouting. A lot of arguing. You will be unsurprised to learn that much of it happened while you were bleeding to death on the grass in Regent’s Park.”

“I was in Regent’s Park?”

“Yes.”

“Oh. I was bleeding to death?”

“Someone,” she said, lips pursing round the straw, “someone might just have happened to have torn a stitch.”

“But I’m not bleeding to death now.”

“No. That was one of the conclusions of all the shouting. I had always imagined Aldermen would be good at holding committee meetings. They’re not.”

Thoughts returned slowly to us. I said, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not thinking I killed Nair.”

She shrugged. “It’s all the same to me. Kill him, don’t kill him - one less freak on the streets.”

“But . . .”

“You’re useful, sorcerer,” she said. “That’s what it boils down to. You killed Bakker and that was a useful thing; you destroyed the Tower, and that was an extremely useful thing. Now you’re on your own. And that” - she let out a long sigh - “is also, potentially, useful. The Aldermen are cowards.”

We nearly laughed. “I guessed.”

“They’re terrified of whatever killed Nair.”

“So am I.”

“They think they’re next.”

“So do I.”

“Do you believe this myth? That the ravens protect the city? That there are . . .
things
, whatever that means, waiting to come gobble up the innocent?”

“I believe in the Thames Barrier,” I answered carefully.

“What does that mean?” she snapped.

“It means that I believe if the Thames Barrier failed, a great tide of floodwater would sweep over the city and sink most of its more fashionable areas beneath many metres of salt, sewage and slime. I have never in my life seen this, nor ever seen the Thames Barrier at work, but I believe it from the bottom of my heart. So, yes. I’m willing to run with the idea that we might all be well and truly buggered.”

Oda slurped the last of her orange juice and put the cup to one side. She leant forward, looking us straight in the eye. “You want to know what was decided?”

“I’ve got a nasty feeling . . .”

“It’s the stitches.”

“That wasn’t the feeling I meant . . . Why should we care what the Aldermen decided?”

“Because they were only two votes short of shooting you.”

“When you put it like that . . .”

“It’s your problem.”

“What is?”

“All this. This imminent destruction thing. You’re the Midnight Mayor. They agreed on that. You’re going to have to sort it out. Your problem.”

“They’re saving on bullets,” I sighed.

“That’s the elegant thing about the Midnight Mayor. Even if you die, there’ll be another sucker along soon.”

“You really don’t care, do you?” I asked. “Why are you here?”

“The Order may not care about your life. But we are naturally concerned when the actions of your clan of freaks may destroy the city that we live in. The innocent must be protected, even if it means cooperation with the guilty.”

“Carry on thinking like that,” I muttered, “and you’ll be heading for sensible, fluffy normality before you know it.”

“Not so fluffy. I’m here to keep an eye on things.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” she sighed, “that if at any moment it looks like you’re not going to sort this out, that you’re going to run, or betray, or double-cross, or generally walk away from this situation, then I’m the one who gets to shoot you.” She added with a crocodile smile, “It’ll be just like old times.”

“Why aren’t the Aldermen doing this?”

“They considered . . .” - she sucked in, choosing her words carefully - “that you might be more amenable to a conversation with an old acquaintance. It was suggested that I handle matters initially, lay out the position, tell it like it is. You’re used to that, aren’t you?”

“Tact and humour are not ideas I associate with you, no.”

“Good. See - their reasoning had something going for it, despite their thrice-damned souls. You’re going to have to work with them. Talk with them, let them help you do the thing you do until it no longer needs to be done.”

“We’re really not,” we replied.

“Oh, I think you are. You see, you may be the Midnight Mayor - which is just another proof of how twisted is this life you lead - but you don’t know what to do about it, do you? You don’t know what it means. They do. They spend their lives learning the answer.”

I said, suddenly suspicious, “Where are they?”

“There’s five of them waiting downstairs in the car.”

“Tell them to stick it up—”

“There’s five of them, all very heavily armed, all annoyed, all trying their very best to be polite despite themselves. I never thought the day would come, sorcerer, when I would be
saving
you from your own withered walnut of a brain, but I have my instructions. They’re going to have a word with you. You’re going to play nice. If you don’t, I will personally unpick those stitches from your skin with a blowtorch. Do we understand each other? I am that good.”

Meekly, to our infuriation, I said, “Yes.”

 

I got dressed. You can’t be Midnight Mayor in your underpants.

Trains rumbled by. Somewhere in South London, I decided. Old brick arches filled in with other buildings under the railway lines; maybe somewhere near Waterloo, where the chaotic street plan had fallen like custard from a trembling spoon.

Someone had given us new stitches. They hurt, a dull throb that came and went with each pulse of our heart. Our face in the bathroom mirror could have frightened a dead horse that had already seen the innards of the glue factory. Our clothes were another bloodstained write-off. Again. Oda gave me new ones. The T-shirt read, “What Would Jesus Do?” and featured a big white cross on front and back, wrapped in thorns.

We said, “We can’t wear this.”

She said, “Will it burn your flesh?”

I put it on. It was that, or shiver and be undignified. More undignified.

Oda made supper. It was grey splodge served with undercooked pasta. Fanatical psycho-bitches clearly had different priorities from the rest of us. We ate it anyway, and tried not to look as grateful as we felt. We let the Aldermen wait. We could do that, at least.

It was 6 p.m. when Oda let the Aldermen in. I sat on the sofa; they stood in a row in front of me. Earle wasn’t there. I wondered which way he’d voted in the should-we-shoot-him ballot. I wondered who’d voted for life.

Unfortunately, Earle’s absence was not a total blessing. Kemsley stepped forwards.

“Mr Swift,” he said through the corner of his slit-mouth.

“Mr Kemsley,” I said.

“I am here as a representative of the Aldermen.”

“I guessed.”

“There are certain things that must be rectified between us. May I say firstly, on behalf of the Aldermen, that we offer an unconditional apology for the treatment you have received. We were acting on the best of intelligence, and I am sure, in time, you will come to see the reason of our ways.”

“That’s not unconditional, but let’s stick with it for the moment.”

His fingers twitched, but he managed to keep his face austere. “We have chosen to accept your appointment as Midnight Mayor.”

“Big of you.”

“It is unconventional.” The word came out between his lips like thin bile when there’s nothing left to vomit.

I folded my arms and waited.

“Mr Swift, I am sure you understand that the situation is complicated.”

“It seems very simple. Someone is trying to destroy the city’s defences, and you’re too scared to stop it by yourselves. You want us to go and fight for you, find out why Nair was interested in the shoes, find out what’s behind ‘give me back my hat’. In short, you want me to be the one to find the guy who can flay people alive without laying a finger on them, and deal with the problem. Have I missed anything?”