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,
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
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.
He said, eyes on me and voice for the rest of the room, “If I may refer you to the files on your table. Three
