way, swaggered onto the northbound platform, found a bench, sat on it, legs stretched out to occupy two seats with one movement, waited. The shoes hated waiting, tapped and fidgeted, but it was the Northern Line — waiting was what you did.
Train to King’s Cross; there we changed, going west to Baker Street; there we got out, and bought some kind of pasty that burnt through the paper that held it, ate it, crumbs across the seats, and rode the Jubilee Line north to Dollis Hill.
Dollis Hill. The area round the station felt not so much built as dropped down in a game of Monopoly. White houses too small for the floors they contained, streets too narrow for the cars that crawled through them.
Tired. It is tiring, sharing the journeys of a stranger. Late, now, late and no supper. I forced myself to walk like a human being when I came to the first pizza parlour that was open, ordered food, devoured it. It was past eleven when I finished, and my feet in my borrowed shoes felt like soggy prunes.
I walked again. Swaggered to get back into the feel of it, bobbed my head, twisted my hips, let the rhythm of the movement restore my confidence. We walked . . . miles. I don’t know how many. There were . . . things. Strangenesses. We would come to places and just stop and stare, and our feet would itch and we would see things, that . . . that made us uneasy.
A length of wall beside a quiet pub, where drunken youth should have sat, guffawing at passers-by and scaring the old ladies, and where now there was nothing. Just shadow and empty beer cans.
A skater park beneath a railway bridge, the wooden slopes empty, and on the walls, old graffiti.
Δοσ μου πισο το Καπελο μου
Or:
HMT GMO 2
Or:
FREE PALESTINE
There should have been something more. A “Mo was ’ere” wouldn’t have gone amiss. There was . . . a strangeness. A bite in the air, like the distant taste of the street from inside the tree-sheltered stretches of an urban cemetery. A sense of something that should have been, but wasn’t any more.
So we kept on walking, our swagger losing some of its confidence as the hours rolled by and all the places where there should have been something — the pub showing the football, the empty skater park, the closed off- licence, the houses with their lights turned down — there was nothing.
And then a telephone rang.
It was the small hours of the morning by then, and we were still walking, just walking and walking and the shoes wanted to go further, but a telephone rang, somewhere near Dudden Hill Lane.
And it was . . .
. . . of course we were going to answer but . . .
. . . it is our nature . . .
I had no reason.
We just had to.
“Well. You know the rest.
A telephone rang in Willesden, between Dollis Hill and Dudden Hill Lane. It rang at 2.25 in the morning, and I, despite having Mo’s shoes on my feet, I went and answered it. I answered the telephone and after that . . .
. . . I guess my priorities changed.
I thought he was just some missing kid. We had no reason to think of it as anything else. I went looking for him in order to help a friend. Then the phone rang and we answered and all this began: the Midnight Mayor, the spectres, the dead ravens, the broken Stone, Nair, Vera, the Aldermen. It all happened and we were caught in it and didn’t think, didn’t stop to think that Loren would be . . .
. . . didn’t stop.
I think that’s all I can really say on the matter.”
I finished talking.
Sinclair was eating something that looked like a miniature version of Table Mountain, carved out of yellow goo and black grain. He took a careful sliver, and ate it. He put his fork down. He dabbed at his round lips with the end of a napkin. Charlie’s food sat uneaten on the plate in front of him. We scraped something that might have been gravy on the end of our fork, and licked. The restaurant was emptier, people gone on to a sexy midnight time, or maybe just to bed, only a few tables still inhabited in the gloom.
At last he said, “Well . . .” And then stopped. Then tried again. “Well, what times you have been living. You know, saturates are . . .”
“Rare. Yes. I know.”
“Saturates and spectres.”
“Both rare.”
“And you seem to walk into both — unfortunate, so very unfortunate.”
“We’re rare too.”
He smiled, a knife-thin flash of teeth in a great stretch of mouth. “So,” he said at last, “what do you propose to do about all this?”
I hesitated. “Well, there’s some choices.”
“Such as, Matthew, such as?”
“One — run away.”
“A somewhat ignoble suggestion, perhaps, in light of your otherwise gentlemanly conduct so far.”
“Two — find the creature that killed Nair.”
“That would make some sense.”
“No it wouldn’t. If it could flay him alive without trying I have no reason to believe it wouldn’t do the same to me. It would be madness. Pointless. Suicide by pinstripe suit. Besides, I have every confidence that if I stick around long enough, trouble and abuse can find me out just fine on their own terms. Which leaves option three — find the kid.”
“You’re not interested in this . . . this curious writing on the wall? This ‘give me back my hat’?”
“I am interested. But I don’t know what I can do about it. If Nair was looking for Mo, then he must be more important than I thought. He said — Swift has the shoes. Their only use is finding the kid. Nair was killed only a few miles from where I was when I let the shoes carry me walkies. And we promised . . . I promised to help her. Loren. What else can I do?”
“So you’re going to, as it were, carry on as normal? Continue doing what you were doing, regardless of the fact that you are now Midnight Mayor, last defender of the city, protector of the magicians and midnight magics of the streets, saviour and general all-purpose valorous champion and so on and so forth?”
“Yes. Pretty much.”
“I imagine the Aldermen won’t be entirely pleased about that.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I don’t want the Aldermen involved. I don’t want anything to do with them. I know you have . . . connections.”
Sinclair sighed, long and low. “Yes,” he said at last. “I have connections. It is my business, my pension, if you will, to have connections. To keep a keen interest on matters such as these — tiresome though it can be. But you have to understand, Matthew, having connections is about much, much more than being a messenger boy. I can inform the Aldermen that you are the Midnight Mayor, ask them to help you or, if you really feel it is necessary, to leave you alone. Of course I can do this, of course.
“But then how will they feel about me, who let you walk away into an almost certain — as certain as these things can be for yourself — almost certain death, without clarifying what is going on, what the brand on your hand means, what
It wasn’t just the way he said it.
We reached for the nearest knife.
“Bang,” said a voice. “Bang.”
