He’d met some friends.
At the city farm, of all places. It was part of being young in the city; you got shipped off to do healthy, hearty things in order to make you a better person, until that day comes around the age of thirteen when you suddenly realise that goats
are
horrid, and the city is clean.
She didn’t really know them. They were from the Wembley area. Sometimes he’d come back late at night with them, but they never came in. Always polite - sort of - but never came inside, as if they were embarrassed or afraid of her. And in time, that’s how he seemed to be. Embarrassed.
And then he kept on not coming home.
And the school complained.
And she’d send him to school but what could she do? Her job didn’t let her stand at the school gate all day to watch him, a job meant no time; no job, no money. She knew the others weren’t going either, just knew, without having to be told - what’s there for a kid on his own to do, when the rest are in the classroom? He’d disappear and not say where he’d been. He’d come back stinking of beer and sweat - when he came back. He’d talk about being “down the club”. She didn’t know what club, or where.
Then the police had called.
He’d stolen a bike.
The whole gang had been involved, and he was the youngest, so he got a caution, because they couldn’t really nail anything bigger onto him.
Then they called again.
ASBO, they said. She’d thought it was just a phrase journalists used on the TV. Riotous behaviour, drinking, shouting, threatening behaviour. They’d grabbed an old guy’s shopping and thrown it into the street - not because they wanted anything in it, but just because they could. Just for something to do. You should keep an eye on Mo, they said, this is the start of a downhill path that ends in a very thorny thicket.
Not that the police were big on metaphor.
And then one day, a few weeks ago, he’d come home, and he was hiding something. Something in his bag, something he didn’t want her to see, and he banned her from his room and didn’t talk to her and just spoke to his friends and there was something . . . shameful. Something shameful had happened, had been done, he had done it, something shameful. And then he went away and didn’t come back, his friends didn’t come back, and she’d spoken to the police and it wasn’t just Mo. The patrols up in Willesden, where they used to hang, had noticed it, an absence. The whole gang, however many there were, had just stopped. No more hanging outside the pub, no more skating beneath the overpass, no more spitting in the off-licence, no more stealing old guys’ shopping, no more doing, just because it could be done. All at once, they had just vanished.
They’d done something shameful.
A gang of kids, bored, arrogant, cocksure, cock-up kids, who liked to go to a club in Willesden, just vanished.
I could have told her I thought they were still alive.
It would have been a lie, and one that she would probably have come to hate.
So I just told her nothing, just the same tune as before.
I’ll look, I promise. I’ll find Mo.
We went to see Earle.
Harlun and Phelps were trust fund managers.
I wasn’t entirely sure what this meant. I associated it with suits, shiny shoes, gleaming teeth, polished hair, questionable moralities and big glass foyers. I wasn’t disappointed.
The sunlight falling on Aldermanbury Square was promising a glorious spring and a scorching golden summer, just as soon as this part of the planet could get on and lean closer to the sun. The sky was the glorious blue, with clouds of fluffy whiteness, that you find in a child’s drawing. Trees, spindly half-grown afterthoughts, lined the space between the buildings of the square; and the old guildhouses nearby competed with the giant glass growths of modern offices. Overhead, concrete walkways from the heady 1960s, when everyone believed the Future To Be Today, jutted across the slim gaps between constructions.
The foyer of Harlun and Phelps was three storeys high of itself, a great swimming-pool expanse of slippery white marble in which a small forest of potted plants and trees had been installed. Water ran down one wall behind reception, into a small pond of zen pebbles designed to create an impression of serene, expensive tranquillity; and even the receptionists, sitting behind desks adorned with artfully twisted metals including labels (to assure you that they really were art), had the most expensive, modern headsets plugged into their ears. The future is here, and it wears pinstripe.
“The majority of employees here are civilians,” explained my Alderman guide/protector/companion/would-be-executioner as we strode without a word to the security guards through the foyer towards the lifts. “They conduct themselves within perfectly standard financial services and regulations. There is one specialist sub-operational department catering to the financing of more . . . unusual extra-capital ventures, and the executive assets who operate it have to undergo a rigorous level of training, psyche evaluation, personality assessment and team operational analyses.”
We stared at him, and said, “We barely understood the little words.”
“No,” he replied. “I didn’t think you would.”
The lift was all in green glass, even the floor. It crawled up the side of the building, faced outwards to the falling city below. Aldermanbury Square became just a blob within a maze of streets, alleys, bus-clogged roads, cranes, building works, Victorian offices and gleaming new towers, and then lost amid the snake of the river and the sprawl of the city, the familiar floodlit landmarks of London, the sun fading into evening towards Richmond, the early winter gloom spreading in from the estuary.
Earle’s office was on the very top floor. From there, presumably, he could stare down and survey all his little people toiling below, from his nest of triumphant endeavour.
The office itself was in the same stylised, soulless vein as the rest of the building. It took ten seconds to walk from his door to his desk. Ten seconds is an eternity, when it’s just you and another guy in a room that could have hosted the Olympic curling championship.
He wasn’t dressed like an Alderman. His black coat was hung on a deliberately old-fashioned coat stand behind his black marble desk. He wore a suit, dark, dark blue with a matching navy-blue tie, and cufflinks on which were engraved a pair of ebony keys on a background of pearl. As I approached across the endless floor, he smiled. It was done for good manners’ sake, not that that was a cause for which he had much time.
“Mr Mayor.” He waved me at a chair designed to give you good posture and a bad temper.
“Mr Earle.”
“Have you slept well?”
“I slept. What news?”
“We have been working on finding the boy, Mo.”
“And?”
“There is some progress. CCTV cameras in the Kilburn area saw the boy being removed two nights ago from Raleigh Court and loaded into a van. He appeared to be unconscious but alive. We are attempting to trace the men who moved him, but most likely they were just hired help.”
“Was Mr Pinner there?”
“No. We do, however, have his face on CCTV from your encounter, and are circulating it to all relevant areas. We were unable to find further information on Anissina. The smog obscured all imaging.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It isn’t immediately relevant,” he replied with a shrug. “The focus of our investigation must be on the boy, as he appears to be the strongest link we have to this Mr Pinner, this death of cities. So far we have tracked the vehicle entering and leaving the congestion charge zone on the same night. It appeared to be heading in a southwards direction, leaving the congestion charge zone after crossing Waterloo Bridge.”
“You can access the congestion charge database?”
“Of course.”
“And where is the vehicle now?”
“There are teams working on it.”
“Teams?”
“Human Resources allocated us some appropriate assistance.”
“When will you have an answer?”
“Mr Swift,” he said, fingers whitening on the edge of the table, “do you know
why
Big Brother isn’t watching you?”
“Because he has my death certificate on file and a literal mind?”
“Because, Mr Swift,
because
, in this city there are anywhere between eight and nine million other people to watch. In a single day, tens of thousands of people will pass through one Underground station alone; in a single week, hundreds of thousands, all moving, all turning. Millions of vehicles every month will pass in and out of the congestion charge zone,
millions
, and at any given moment you can be certain a train is breaking down or a pipe is bursting under the strain or a police car has been called to clean up the blood or a window has been smashed or a bomb threat has been issued or a fire alarm has been sounded or an ambulance has been caught up in traffic behind a stalled pair of traffic lights and a confused learner driver. Big Brother isn’t watching you, Mr Swift, because there’s just too much for Big Brother to keep an eye on. You are . . . not important.”
“You’re breaking my heart.”
“Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes. I understand. You mean that I should be patient a little while longer and let you people find Mo in your own time, right?”
“Essentially. Yes.”
“You want us to wait.”
“Yes. Besides, there are other matters.”
“What other matters?”
“Inauguration.”
I sighed. “Oh, yes. This pineappleless, cocktail sausageless party of an inauguration.”
“There’s more to it than you think.”
“There usually is.”
“All the Midnight Mayors have to do it.”
“Of course.”
“It can be dangerous.”
“I was waiting with baited breath for you to say that.”
“You were?”
“It seemed like you were building up to something - ‘dangerous’ made a certain inevitable sense. What do I need to know to live - you do want me to live, don’t you?”
He took just a moment, just a
moment
, too long to answer. “Of course. We’ve made the investment in you now. We need to see it come to maturity.”
“Then tell me.”
He sighed, swivelled slightly in his chair. “Do you know,” he said at last, “how the Aldermen are chosen?”
“Nepotism. And the old boys’ club.”
“You might be thinking of our more mundane counterparts . . .”
“Perhaps. I don’t know much about them.”
“It is not nepotism,” he said. “It is about dedication. To an idea; to a cause bigger than any individual. To become an Alderman requires a lifetime of study, work and commitment, and most of all, it requires an understanding of the smallness of man within this great machine of the city. London is an antheap, Mr Swift. It is a great, sprawling, beautiful nest, built by two thousand years of man, so deep and so dark that its people can never see or know it all, but live their lives rather in this or that complex of the city, burrowing deeper and deeper into their little caves, because to know the full extent of the nest is to realise that you are nothing. An insect crawling down tunnels which only exist because two thousand years ago, a thousand, thousand other insects also crawled this way, each one as unimportant as you, each one a stranger. There is nothing that binds these ants together, that stops them from ripping each other apart, save that they share the same structure, the same city, the same physical structure that only exists because, for two thousand years, the ants have carved. We are tiny, Mr Swift. We are insignificant, living in a world of life and wonder and miraculous existence and excitement, not because of who we are, or whom we know, but because the construction around us, the bricks and stones of London, shapes and guides us, and gives unity to the millions of strangers who inhabit its caves, so we can all say, ‘I live in the city’. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Then this is what the Aldermen are. We are the ants who climbed to the top of their hill, who looked down from the highest tower of the maze and saw the darkness and the time and the caverns, and realised the smallness of man within this heaving world. We are the ones who saw this, and were not afraid. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“I have been told that for sorcerers, magic is life, that to live is to be magical. The same is true for Aldermen. We find our magic in being nothing. Ants on top of a heap. Do you understand?”
I smiled. I tangled my fingers together between my knees. “Yes,” I said. “I understand what the Aldermen are.”
“Then you understand why the Midnight Mayor has always - usually - come from the Aldermen’s ranks.”
“Maybe.”
“It is the city, Swift. The city is so old, now. So many millions of dead men and dead women buried beneath it. They all scuttled through the streets and made the city what it is, and now they are forgotten. Millions of wandering forgotten ghosts; but the city! It is so alive. The Midnight Mayor must protect the city. Do you understand what this means?”
“I understand what you think it means.”
“Swift . . .”
“I have a theory as to why Nair made us Midnight Mayor.”
“Well?”
“I think he knew the Midnight Mayor couldn’t fight Mr Pinner. Of course he knew it, he was dying as he made the phone call. But I think it was something more, something earlier.”
“Go on.”
“I think Nair understood that cities change.”
Earle was silent as he contemplated this. Then he shook his head, almost sadly. “Would you like to hear my theory?” he asked. “I’ve been thinking about it too, of course. We all have, all the Aldermen, all the ones who seemed more qualified.”
I shrugged.
“I think . . .” He took a deep breath, as if perhaps this was too important to bungle. “I think that Nair made you Midnight Mayor in order to eliminate a threat.”