“She went with Mr Bakker.”
“Why?”
“I said. He was kind. You… shall we skip ‘died’ and go to ‘disappeared’?”
“Where’s Dana?”
“He’s like you. He said he was your teacher.”
“He was.”
“Well, is it bad?” she asked sharply. “He taught you, you taught Dana, she didn’t seem to become anything that I feared, any sort of…” She caught herself, then smiled, a pained twitch of the mouth. “She’s fine.”
“But you don’t know where?”
“He gives her money for travel, her own things. She moves around a lot. You never provided money, Mr Swift. I know that’s not what it’s about but you have to understand… why’s he successful?”
“What?”
“Mr Bakker? He came up to me at the funeral and offered me a lift, said he knew that my daughter was… well… gave me a lift home to talk about what happened next. Said she was half-trained, still needed help, but spoke highly of you. Big black car, seats made of leather.”
“He’s a good businessman.”
“Good sorcerer?” she asked, so sharp it was almost angry.
“Yes,” I said, taken aback. “Very… capable.”
She snorted. “Good man?”
I didn’t answer.
“Why’d you want to see Dana?”
“She was my apprentice!”
“So?”
“It’s important.”
“But you’re not saying why.”
“It’s just… it
“Come on, come on,” she said, waving a hand impatiently in a circle through the air. “Get on with it!”
I took a deep breath. “She might be in danger.”
“Good!”
“Good?”
“Good that you’ve told me; not good that it is. Why is she in danger?”
“I said might be.”
“You said might be because you think I am a stupid old woman who can’t cope or understand. Come on! Why is she in danger?”
“It’s… to do with Mr Bakker.”
“Ah. I thought it might be.”
“Why?”
“She doesn’t come home any more. She calls sometimes, but then won’t talk; she says that the phones listen. She’s lost a lot of weight – how can a girl who eats that much lose so much weight? Is he a good man, your Mr Bakker?”
“He was.”
“But isn’t any more?”
“It’s…”
“… complicated? Always was, Mr Swift. What do you want?”
“I… think I wanted to apologise.”
“OK. You’ve apologised. Anything else?”
I shook my head, then hesitated. Mrs Mikeda waited. I said, “If you can contact her, if you can find her, tell her I’m sorry. And tell her to get out while she can.”
“Why?”
“Shit and fans.”
“Have you put her in danger?”
“No!”
“Will you?”
I said nothing. She smiled and asked, politely, “Vodka?”
“No thanks. Not really our thing.”
“Trust me, Mr Swift?”
“Yes.”
“Then tell me everything.”
To my surprise, I did.
This is how I met Dana Mikeda.
Late spring in central London; it is almost impossible to feel depressed. The trees are sprouting green leaves on every street, the sky is blue, dotted with thin white clouds, the sunlight reflects watery colours off the windows of offices and divides the street between cold shadows and burning bright rooftops. The air smells clean in the morning after it rains, and the people, who make a city what it is, start sporting bare shoulders and sunglasses almost as soon as the temperature hits double figures. It is pleasantly warm in the sun, with a breeze that isn’t quite cool enough for goose bumps.
On the morning I met Dana, I was walking along the Holborn Viaduct above the busy Farringdon Road, not paying much attention to where I was going, enjoying the stroll. It was that time of the mid-afternoon when the streets in the centre of town weren’t too busy, and the usual buzz of magic and urgency on the air that to a large degree dictated my daily routine was at a gentle, soft ebb.
In Smithfield I bought a sausage roll from a shop by the meat market, and sat on a bench outside the faded classical façade of Barts hospital, eating and watching people go by: young businessmen in smart suits, butchers in huge aprons and fat rubber gloves, builders in hard hats, and trendy people looking like they were designers, in fashionably torn jeans.
It was while sitting there that I became aware of being watched. I looked round; and eventually I saw the source of my unease. The rat stood on its hind legs, in a patch of shadow obscuring a narrow street that led towards the church of St Bartholomew the Great. He was quite unconcerned at the passers-by, and just staring. I was used to unusual behaviour, but even the unusual things in my life tended to have an explanation, and I couldn’t muster a valid one for this, so I finished my sausage roll, brushed the crumbs off my jeans, stood up, and wandered towards the rat.
I got about halfway, when its nose twitched, its tail wiggled and it turned and scuttled away, something so normal and boringly predictable that I was startled by the fact it had happened at all. Faced with a choice between accepting normal behaviour for what it seemed to be or looking for a reason why things weren’t normal at all, I did as I had been taught, and accepted the latter. Normal is unusual in this line of work, my teacher had always said. If you expect something to happen and it does, it’s usually time to start looking out for the higher powers creeping your way, or the man with the knife. Sooner or later, something dangerous will happen to you, and you can never be too sure – particularly when it comes to the little things.
So I stood in the middle of the square outside the hospital, and looked for something unusual. What I found sat in a neat silent line above the row of stone urns, and the brightly coloured heraldic dragons, that ornamented the roof of the meat market. They weren’t moving: not twitching, nor even hopping from one withered orange foot to the other. I shouted, “Boo!” at the top of my voice and they didn’t even flap. I guessed there were over a hundred pigeons sitting there, and when I crossed through the market by the covered road, past the war memorial and the plaques detailing the history of the area, I wasn’t entirely surprised to see that the birds had sat only on one side of the roof.
I crossed back the way I’d come and looked in the direction that everyone of the pigeons was gazing: towards a group of shops including a pub whose sign showed a lecherous bishop, a day nursery, a launderette and a couple of sandwich bars. I picked one of the sandwich shops at random and wandered in. There weren’t any
