I said, “‘Give me back my hat’.”
Earle said, “This had better be good, Swift.”
“Didn’t it strike you that it was a strange thing to appear with the arrival of the death of cities? The ravens are killed and there it is; the Wall is defaced and the writing says ‘give me back my hat’. The London Stone is smashed and there it is, always, ‘give me back my hat’. I mean, I know that mystics tend to be obscure; it’s the only way they can stay in business in this litigious age. But surely this phrase, occurring endlessly across the city streets, is about as unlikely a harbinger of the end as Abba at Armageddon? It has to have a meaning, it has to have . . . something more than just random words to it, otherwise why would it appear? That’s the first thing.
“Second! The death of cities. Why is he in London, here, now? Look at the patterns of his appearances . . . Hiroshima when the bomb fell, Rome when the Vandals came, Babylon when the walls fell, London when the fire burnt, Pompeii when the volcano blew, New Orleans when the levees broke. Are we to assume that he
created
all these events? If so, then why hasn’t he just obliterated London already? The death of cities is not the creator of these disasters - he’s
summoned
by them. Sure, his presence might exacerbate them, might make them worse; he might fan the flames or shine a light in the dark to guide the bombers to their targets. But always he’s there because something is going to happen. He’s
feeding
off the death of cities, he is not the cause.
“So what has brought him to London? Why now? What could be so catastrophic that he has come to our city and interests himself in the activities of a kid who likes to hang around in Willesden, and goes out of his way to kill the Midnight Mayor, to poison the ravens in the Tower? What summons him to our city, when there is no war and the Thames Barrier still rises and falls? I think we can safely assume that his presence bodes a disaster of a mystical nature - if we’re talking a bomb in Westminster then I suspect Mr Pinner would be far too busy killing MI5 officers to bother with us. This is about magic, straight and thorough.
“In other words: something magical has summoned him to London.
“Are we happy with this so far?”
I looked at the faces in the room.
They looked unhappy, but no one wanted to say anything, so I ploughed right on.
“Mo said before he died, before Mr Pinner went out of his way to make sure that Mo died, having hurt him, punished him, inflicted on him . . . terrible things . . . Mo said, ‘the traffic warden’s hat’. He took a traffic warden’s hat, and for this he has been punished. The death of cities - and I think we can be fairly sure that’s what he is - doesn’t bother with individuals. He’s about bricks and stones and streets, about ideas bigger than you or me. So why bother with Mo? He was punishing him, very deliberately, very cruelly. He got Boom Boom to lift him, and him alone from the club floor, specified the kid must be alive. Alive, in order to hurt him, throw him out with the garbage, turn his blood to ink. Mo took a hat, a traffic warden’s hat, and on the walls the writing now says, ‘give me back my hat’.
“And Mr Pinner said -
I
made his life easier. By destroying Bakker. That . . . that by bringing Bakker down, I gave him a way into the city. Now, the Tower was powerful, but I don’t think even Mr Bakker was up to keeping out Mr Pinner if he wanted to come. But what Mr Bakker did do, did so brilliantly and without even a thought that he was doing it, was kill sorcerers.
“When Nair died, you assumed I killed him, because I am the last trained sorcerer left in the city. You dislike sorcerers, Mr Earle. You regard us as dangerous, unstable, running the constant risk of madness. You think that most of all about
us
. You are wrong; but just this once, that’s not the question. When I killed Mr Bakker, I stopped the systematic murdering of sorcerers, but not before we had nearly all been wiped out. There is no one left to train new apprentices. And if anyone would go mad, an untrained sorcerer is a loony job waiting to happen.
“So here’s how I think it goes.
“I think that ‘give me back my hat’ is a warning. Not from Mr Pinner, but from the city. The London Stone, the Midnight Mayor, the ravens; these are all part of the city’s defences, and while even one of them is alive, the magical defences still stand. I think it’s a warning, trying to tell us what’s happened.
“I think when Mo stole the traffic warden’s hat, he stole something from someone who has enough anger, enough vengeance, enough fury and enough power in them to summon the death of cities. Mr Pinner was summoned here by the traffic warden. I stole her hat, Mo said. That’s why Mo was left to die in the scrapyard; it was a punishment, vengeance on a kid who was scornful and contemptful enough of strangers to steal from them, just for a laugh. So, for revenge, a stranger poisoned him and left him to die as agonising a death as they could manage. ‘Give me back my hat’; that’s what it says on the walls. Think about the geography - Mo hangs around in Willesden, Mo is kept in Kilburn, Nair dies in Kilburn, the hat is stolen in Dollis Hill, in all these places just a few miles apart. Think about the writing on the wall, think about the timing of when Mr Pinner came, about what happened to the kid, about why Nair died, about the nature of all that has happened so far. There is no profession in the city more hated than traffic warden - not even the police get as much abuse or assault or common cruelty. Think about what that would do to an untrained sorcerer, who knows that the city is screaming to them, who can taste the life and the magic on the air, and finds in it nothing but hostility. Think about why you suspected me. A sorcerer could do it, a sorcerer is perhaps the only person in the city who could do it, who could summon something as powerful and vengeful as the death of cities. The traffic warden is the mystical disaster that is going to happen. She is going to destroy us, the death of cities is
her
vengeance on the contempt of a stranger.
“Of course, all of this is 99 per cent hypothesis.
“But unless you’ve got anything better to go on, I think we should find this traffic warden whose hat was stolen.
“Stop her, stop the death of cities.
“I think we should kill her, before it’s too late.”
Part 4: GIVE ME BACK MY HAT
In which a damnation is discussed, a hat is found, and the nature of strangers gets a thorough going-over on London Bridge.
Legwork.
Someone else’s leg, someone else’s work.
There’s pros to being management.
I sprawled across an ornate curly sofa at the back of an office just
below Mr Earle’s and waited.
Occasionally people came in. The office doctor who came to check on my stitches, take my blood pressure; the office caterer who came in with cups of coffee and biscuits of such quality and expense that our taste buds, accustomed to custard creams and jammy dodgers, found them slightly unease-making. Once or twice Oda. She seemed to have something to say, and then not, and would just look at us, nod as if to say, “still here, good, don’t try leaving” and walk out again.
Once - just once - Earle.
He came in with a big white box, put it down on the table in front of me.
“Open it,” he said.
I did carefully, expecting snakes.
It was a big black coat.
I said, “Umm . . .?”
“It’s for you.”
“Uh . . .”
“An Alderman’s coat. The symbol of our office.”
“But I’m not an Alderman.”
“No. But you are Midnight Mayor, and the relationship between our two offices has always been close. And your current coat is in sad need of replacement. There’s a card in there for a tailor, to make you a suit. You don’t own a suit, do you?”
I felt the comfort of my bleached and bleached again old coat, felt the little sticky enchantments stitched into the lining and did my best to smile. “No - but thanks,” I said. “I appreciate the coat. If it’s OK, I’ll keep this one on a little longer, just because . . . you know . . . there’s spells and stuff that’ll take time to sew. I’m sure you understand.”
He smiled a smile the width of a tapeworm’s eye, and walked out, leaving the damn white box with its damn black coat sitting in front of me.
Legs worked.
Afternoon drifted towards evening.
Evening turned the lights on in the great glass faces of the offices, sketching out mad mathematical patterns of light and dark across the towers of the city.
Somewhere in an office on another floor, someone who didn’t know why they had been given this task and didn’t understand what it was meant to achieve got their slightly grubby hands on a police report from Dollis Hill.
Somewhere else, another person who didn’t know why they were doing what they did but understood promotion lay in combining plenty of dutiful obedience with just enough initiative to be noticed found a piece of CCTV footage from a camera in north-west London.
A few minutes later, the same person would call someone in Brent Council, name a few names, offer a few figures and make a polite enquiry about traffic regulations in Kilburn.
Their promotion was looking up.
I stared at the ceiling.
It was one of those panelled things, white boards laid on a metal frame, with a strip light embedded in the middle. It looked like the sort of thing Bruce Willis would crawl through in a sweaty vest.
Rush hour.
Didn’t need to look at the clock to feel it; just close my eyes and it was there on the edge of perception: a rising heat in my skin, a brushing prickly feeling in my stomach, an itching at the end of my toes. A city that big: even to begin to comprehend the scale of it was to risk madness; and here it was, rush hour, elbow pressed into elbow on the Underground, head bumping against head with each swaying of the train, thigh rubbing thigh, close as lovers on a cold night, bags bumping and newspapers being tossed aside, rubbish bouncing in the streets, buses crawling under the weight of bottoms sitting and legs shuffling towards the exit,
beepbeepbeep
for the doors to open, not enough room to breathe, windows misted up with bright steam, a thousand strangers’ faces on the platforms, pushing towards that deadly yellow line; the live rail. Engines whining into life, cafés steaming, coffee and frothy milk, lights coming on in the streets, feet clacking on wet pavements, umbrellas turning inside out in the rushing wind funnelled down the streets. The live rail.
So easy to go mad, if you just let it. That’s why there were sorcerers, and sorcerers’ apprentices, and kindly old men who found you in your teenage years and took you to one side and said, “Now, Matthew, let me explain about the health and safety procedures you must follow in your use of magic.” Because if you looked close enough and began to understand the size and the beauty of it, you’d forget that somewhere there was a you at all.
And when he should have been going home, somewhere in the offices of Harlun and Phelps a young employee with a bright career ahead of him, so long as he didn’t ask too many questions, was reading a complaint filed by a traffic warden assaulted on her duties in Dollis Hill, some few weeks before, and slowly coming to realise that this was
exactly
what Mr Earle had asked for.
It even had a name and address on it.
Oda opened the door, stuck her head round, said, “They’ve found her.”
I blinked my eyes open blearily and said, “Uh?”
“The traffic warden. The Aldermen have found her.”
Not so hard, if you know how.
All praise be unto the Metropolitan Police and their effective data entry systems.
We met in a conference room - Earle, me, Oda, those Aldermen who hadn’t already fallen at the mark. Even Sinclair, who sat some seats away from me and didn’t meet my eye.
Afraid of us.
Judging by the number of Aldermen who were no longer meeting our eye, not even to glare, they were afraid too.
Still not dead.
Surprise!
Earle had a neat file on his desk. Someone had taken the time to print out multiple copies and staple the sheets together.
He said, “I shall be brief, as I cannot abide long meetings. Ms McGuiness is taking the minutes, and I would like to welcome Mr Sinclair, a . . . concerned citizen . . . whom I’m sure we all recall from previous dealings. Ms . . .” He hesitated.
“Oda will do fine,” said Oda calmly.
“Ms Oda, representing the Order, and of course, Mr Swift, our new Midnight Mayor. The agenda is brief and to the purpose; you should all have copies.”
We did, on a neat, “Harlun and Phelps”-headed piece of white paper. The items were:
1. Outstanding Matters, and Apologies.
2. The Death of Cities.
I wondered which secretary had typed it up.
“Mr Kemsley is, as I am sure you are aware, currently undergoing medical treatment. His condition remains stable but critical. Flowers have been sent, and a card is being circulated round the office; I would appreciate it if you could all sign.
“The second matter arising is the issue we have come to label ‘the death of cities’. I appreciate that this is a rather more grandiose and melodramatic term than we usually like to use at such meetings, but I fear it may fit the occasion perfectly. For those who require clarification on the matter, I refer you to the minutes of our last meeting. In the meantime, Mr Swift has come up with a rather unusual suggestion.”
He turned to me. So did everyone else. I shrugged and said, “Yeah, right. I think the traffic warden did it. I think she summoned him, the death of cities. He’s her tool for vengeance, destruction, retribution, whatever. She’s going to be the thing that pops. Anything else?”
Mr Earle gave me the kind of smile I imagined he reserved for that special category of employee who came to his office at 1 p.m. on a Friday afternoon to announce there was nothing else to do so could they, like, go home, yeah? It was the kind of smile that guaranteed you a plywood coffin.