The Minority Council (32 page)

“Matthew—”

We slammed our fist on the table hard enough to make the sugar jump from its bowl.

“Is this the fight you want to pick?” we demanded. “We don’t know what else you’ve been doing, but there’s going to be much, much more that you’ve been hiding. Of all the things we are going to tear down, is this the one you want to defend?”

He sighed loudly, a reasonable man confronted with the intractability of the insane. “Do I take it then that, when this is done, we can have a conversation—a measured, open conversation—about the Minority Council’s future? One that is open to the merits of our work?”

“Find me a merit, and I’ll let it stand.”

“We did it to help you, Matthew. Someone has to take responsibility.”

A thought hit, and was on the end of my tongue before I could stop it. “You can’t save everyone.”

“Indeed,” murmured Templeman, an empty sound to meet empty sounds as he turned towards the waiter. “The bill, please.”

A voice that might have been mine added, “You can’t save those who don’t want to be saved.”

He wasn’t listening. “We should also, at some point, discuss the dusthouses.”

“Is that another one of the Minority Council’s pet projects?” I demanded. “Bring down the dusthouses and if I get topped in the process then hell, two birds, one stone, hurrah.”

“Please be assured, we never intended harm to you personally. The benefits of having a suitably… radical figure… are known even to those among us who can hardly
be counted as your greatest fans. And no, since you ask. The Minority Council do not approve of aggressive action against the dusthouses. Such action, they believe, would risk upsetting the delicate balance we currently have with the fairy godmother and must, at the end of the day, prove futile. The assistance I gave you was entirely mine. I… somewhat compromised myself… with my actions.”

“Wow, you went out on a limb, how sweet.”

“I can still help you, Matthew. If you’ll let me.”

Templeman paid.

We went down to the street together.

Caughey didn’t spot us immediately. When he rose, face flushing, he proved a large man, with a big voice to match. But what nature had gifted him physically, it had taken away in other regards.

“Templeman, what the hell…?”

“Mr Swift and I have discussed the situation,” replied Templeman. “And I believe we have it under control.”

“I take it you think you’re in charge,” I said.

“I am the Chairman of the Minority Council,” Caughey replied, looking at me as a crocodile might consider a lame mouse. “Templeman, for all we value his excellent work and service, is a sub-chairman.”

“It’s the way you say you’re Chairman of the Minority Council as if it was a good thing. How do you do it?”

Before he could answer, Templeman cut in.

“Mr Caughey,” he said, “the Midnight Mayor and I have had a productive discussion and I will fill you in as soon as is feasible. But right now, I’m afraid Mr Swift must insist on moving on quickly, as there is a lot of work to be done.”

As we strode away, Caughey didn’t exactly yield.

He just couldn’t quite keep up.

Templeman’s car was parked round the corner. He’d got the worst of the sewer stench out of it from our last expedition, and now it smelt of lemons and aloe vera. I strapped myself in, flinching at the pressure of the belt across my ribs. Templeman didn’t seem to notice, but he said, with his eyes on the street as we pulled away, “Have you seen a doctor?”

“Yes.”

“Is it serious?”

“She prescribed bed rest.” I added, “I’m surprised you care.”

“I hold you no personal animosity. There is no room for personal feelings in our positions. Yet who you are, and what you are—they remain two separate entities.”

“That’s very pat. Where are we going?”

“To see the man responsible for the culicidae.”

“There’s one specific guy?”

“Perhaps I should say, responsible for the technical aspects of the culicidae. The realisation, if you will.”

We headed south, towards Waterloo Bridge. For a moment, above the river, the pale blue sky was open and bright, with here and there a layer of high wispy clouds. Then the city reasserted itself, as we drove past the glassy side of Waterloo station and the clipped grass framing the Imperial War Museum. I got out my phone, called Penny.

There was the sound of tinned pop music in the background. “Hey Matthew,” she said. “Not dead yet?”

“Penny, where are you?” Templeman glanced at me from the corner of his eye as I talked, but said nothing.

“Look, it was all going fine with you and these Council
guys, wasn’t it? I mean, you’re cool, yeah, it’s not like they’re killing you or nothing? We saw you get into a car and you didn’t look like you were being held at gunpoint or nothing.”

There was giggling somewhere beyond the other end of the phone. I took a deep breath and said, “Penny, are you shopping with Nabeela?”

Silence. Then, “I have no idea, yeah, how you can have, like, so little faith in me.”

“I’m going to go.”

“It’s not like I get to go to Covent Garden every day anyway…”

“Hanging up now.”

“… and we’re not buying, we’re just looking…”

I moved to hang up but, God, she could be loud when she wanted to; even Templeman heard her shout down the phone, “Hey, Matthew?!”

I held it a little away from my ear and mumbled, “Yeah?”

“You call me if you get, like, shot or shit?”

“I’ll do that. Have fun.”

Distances changed meaning south of the river: stations were further apart, the trains faster, the journeys longer, the streets smaller, the buses slower, the boundaries between rich and poor, business and pleasure, thinner. Transport hubs south of the river were fewer and further between, but what they lacked in regularity they made up for in scale. Few rail passengers heading south could long avoid Clapham Junction; no dedicated bus user would ever truly steer clear of Brixton; and, for the motorist, there was Elephant and Castle, God’s dire warning to man in roundabout form, framed on all sides by architecture the
UN ought to have banned as a crime against aesthetics. The area had a vibrancy of its own, a magic of its own, but it was a power of survival, a hot, bright burning taste to the air that urged all travellers to pass straight on through, not to linger.

We made for a quiet side street in Kennington, another sly corner of town where good intentions had been raised up in brick and stone, and bad circumstances had knocked over the trash can on the doorstep outside. One of these good intentions was an estate made of shiny varnished red brick beneath a black sloping roof, with the sign of the Corporation of London stamped on the outside, and a noticeboard informing you that you were arriving at the Fryer Estate, a Peabody Trust property built by good men with nice ideas and not a huge deal of foresight.

An inner courtyard contained five parking spaces for the fifty flats that looked down on it, doors on shared balconies, and stairwells garnished with damp litter. On some balconies, metal grilles marked off
this
flat from
that
, behind which were children’s bicycles, empty washing racks, long-dead potted plants and the obligatory broken plastic water pistol in a sand bucket by the door.

At ground level, there was one door to each apartment block, a thing of wrought iron painted pinkish-orange and baby blue. Templeman buzzed flat twelve, and waited.

The voice that answered through the intercom was deep, gruff and bored. It said, “Yeah?”

“Good morning,” sang out Templeman. “I’m from Harlun and Phelps, and I’m here to…”

“Come in,” grunted the voice. The door was buzzed open.

The chipped front door to flat twelve was standing ajar.
Templeman knocked politely and pushed it wide. We stepped into a hall that smelt of cigarette smoke. The walls were pale green, the floor was linoleum, coming up at the edges, and from the end of a narrow corridor there was the sound of a TV. A man appeared, one arm half into a black uniform jacket, flies undone and tie hanging loose around his neck. He saw me and grunted, saw Templeman and grunted again, with what might have been recognition.

“I’m late, okay, so you’ll see yourself out when you’re done?”

“Of course,” replied Templeman, with a half-nod that in quainter times might have become a bow.

The man vanished into the room from which the sound of TV came, slamming the door behind him. Templeman smiled thinly at my expression. He turned to another door, painted a stronger shade of green, which bore a large sign in red crayon:

If you come in here without my permission you will get warts.

Seriously i mean i know you think you won’t but you will.

And they won’t be like verruca warts or shit theyll be, big and black and everyone will look at them and say ‘wow, he’s got warts uck’ so don’t fucking do it, even if you think your doing the right thing or something because your not and im serious.

Beneath this someone else had written in pencil.

I’ll leave your washing on the machine.

Templeman knocked…

He knocked again, louder, and called out, “Alan?”

A muffled voice exclaimed, “Go away!”

“Alan, it’s Mr Templeman.”

Silence from inside. Then, “Hold on!”

Sounds. Maybe the creak of a bed. A bare foot on a wooden floor. A wardrobe opening. Clothes hangers rattling. A drawer slamming. A thudding that might have been someone hopping about into a pair of too-tight trousers. A shirt, perhaps, was being pulled off the back of a chair. Then, “Just one more minute!”

A scurrying as of things being pulled off the floor and thrown into a corner. A sliding noise as of a window being opened, perhaps to let out smells that had no name. A scraping as of other things being pushed under the bed. A rattle, as of a chain being pulled back from the door, and then the door itself was opened and I gazed upon the face of the man responsible for the culicidae.

And the face had acne.

We sat gingerly on the edge of a single bed.

Behind us, the duvet rose like a camel’s hump, hiding beneath it we dared not speculate what. A poster showed various species of dinosaur; nearby was a hobbit-sized cardboard cut-out of Frodo Baggins, complete with ring of power, looking like he’d just had an unnameable accident after a dodgy meal.

On the one chair of the little room, in front of a desk sagging with the weight of overpowered computer and computing equipment, was the greatest summoner in the world.

I knew he was the greatest summoner in the world because a large sign had been stuck up above his bed that read “!!!!Greatest Summoner in the World!!!!,” complete with a picture of this same individual posing proudly in front of a spray-painted summoning circle with trapped troll
inside to prove he’d done it. I knew he was the greatest summoner in the world because, as I’d shuffled dubiously into his bedroom, Templeman had said, “Matthew, may I introduce you to Alan. Alan did the technical work on the creation of the culicidae, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest summoners of the age, by people whom I trust to know about such things. Alan, this is the Midnight Mayor.”

To which Alan had replied, “Yo dude, you look kinda shit.”

I looked at him, he looked at me. He was maybe seventeen years old, with peroxide-blond hair greasily slicked back, crumpled grey T-shirt and pale skin glowing with unfulfilled hormonal stress. At some stage in his life he’d decided that having piercings was cool, and slotted a bolt into his lower lip to prove the point. When he moved, he trailed elbow and knee like the tail of a meteorite; and he sprawled across the bedroom chair with the discretion of a hand grenade.

We blurted, “
This
child summoned the culicidae?”

Alan was in there first with an indignant cry of, “Yeah, man! What, you saying you don’t think I look up to it, or what?”

“Alan is… very talented,” murmured Templeman.

Alan pointed with both index fingers at Templeman, nodding vigorously in agreement.

“So,” I mumbled, “you… picked up summoning at school or what?”

“Uh, yeah, I like totally attend after-school classes,
not
.”

“Matthew
is
the Midnight Mayor,” crooned Templeman, flinching. “I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the office, but…”

“
You’re
supposed to be the protector of the fucking city? No fucking way!” exclaimed Alan. “I mean, like, no disrespect or nothing man, but you look like, you know…” A gesture encapsulated what words could not express.

“The culicidae,” I groaned, trying not to be distracted by the thought of painkillers. “Big, bad, brain-sucking monster, let’s talk about that, shall we?”

He brightened. “Did you like it?” he asked, spinning in his chair. “I mean, it was, like, a total mind-fuck to create or whatever; I had to spend, like, hours planning and stuff and when it actually came together at the end I was, like, whoa, this is the shit, this is where the money’s at, this is like, this is like King Kong on the Eiffel fucking Tower, you know what I’m saying?”