by Kate Griffin
“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.
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 weeks ago, a
traffic warden on duty in Dollis Hill walked into her local police station to report that a gang of youths on bikes had stolen her hat and cycled off, in her words, ‘laughing and calling me racist names’. The police report says she was extremely distressed, which may be understandable in light of the fact that this was her third visit to the police station in three months. Two weeks before she had been spat at in the street. A month before that, and the driver of a Corsa parked illegally on a double yellow line had beaten her so badly she had required stitches, and treatment for two days in the local hospital. It was the opinion of the writer of the police report that having her hat stolen by a boy who laughed at her as he cycled away was the last straw. An act of random, careless cruelty by a stranger to a stranger; the kind of thing that, to the right mind, in the right place, with the right . . . disposition . . . could push you to do unwise deeds.
“The day after her hat was stolen, she quit her job as a traffic warden.
“I should also add further that our credit-check service reported a bad rating on her financial situation. Her family were immigrants; she was granted leave to stay by grace of being born in the UK, but her parents quickly abandoned her and ran back off to wherever it was they came from, leaving the state to handle matters in their usual way.
“Gentlemen, may I be bold to say that this is the kind of extremely flawed and volatile individual who could well, if circumstances were right, be so reckless — perhaps without even knowing what she did — as to cause extreme harm to our city. If we were the Samaritans then I would suggest a nice cup of hot soup and a gentle talk with the counsellor; but this situation is far beyond that. The facts are in front of you to see. If this woman is indeed the reason why Mr Pinner has come to our city — as circumstance suggests she is — then I move immediately to vote on the course of action suggested by our Midnight Mayor. That this woman — this traffic warden whose hat was so unfortunately stolen — be considered a threat intolerable to the safety of the city, and be eliminated before the death that Mr Pinner is clearly seeking comes to London. If there is no objection, let us take this vote now.”
There was no objection.
They took the vote.
Not a hand went against it.
Mr Earle said, “Mr Swift? You haven’t voted for the motion.”
“I didn’t realise I was meant to.”
“You are a member of this board.”
“I am?”
“Yes. This was your idea, your deduction, your motion.”
“Oh. I see.”
“Well? How do you vote?”
“I . . . we . . . I mean, I . . .”
I lowered my head.
“What’s her name?” I said.
“Is it relevant?”
“Just curiosity.”
“Her name is Penny Ngwenya. How do you vote, Mr Swift?”
We studied our feet.
What would the Midnight Mayor do?
I raised my hand.
Penny Ngwenya.
Spat at, assaulted, her hat stolen.
Give me back my hat.
Dollis Hill.
Too much coincidence.
Mo had stolen a traffic warden’s hat in Dollis Hill and was punished for the crime.
GIVE ME BACK MY HAT
And Penny Ngwenya, refugee stuck in the system, no money, spat at, assaulted, robbed, had filed a report, on which no action had been taken.
And Mr Pinner had come to the city.
Penny Ngwenya.
Poor little Penny Ngwenya; she probably didn’t even know what she had done, or what had to be done in reply. I hoped she did. Then it would be easier. Then I could tell Loren.
We drove.
* * *
Not that far, as it turned out.
St Pancras International. Some wisecracker had announced in the 1830s that, what with the Houses of Parliament having burnt down, there should be a competition to build the replacement. St Pancras was one of the entries. If British MPs wore sweeping cloaks and cackled at the moon, it would have been the perfect place for government. Red towers with spikes on; a clock that could never quite agree with its neighbour on the tower of King’s Cross; a long, pale blue-grey arch that you could see from on top of Pentonville Hill, or from the tower blocks of Camden. Tiled steps, marbled pillars, red bricks hiding a decayed interior of exposed cables and pipes just locked out of the public’s sight. It was not a delicate building. Nor was there anywhere to park. There are downsides to putting international terminals on main roads.
I said, “You sure . . .?”
“She works here.”
“Doing . . .?”
“Cleaner.”
I looked up at the bright clock on the tallest tower, at the heaving traffic stop-starting down the numberless traffic lights of the Euston Road, at the people waiting for taxis under the metal overhang of King’s Cross. “Let me out here,” I said. “You find a place to park.”
“Where are you going?”
“If this Penny Ngwenya is the cause of all this, I’ll know. Seriously. You find someone better qualified to look, and I’ll give back the coat.”
Oda came with me. No point in saying no. They let us out just past the British Library, pulling, illegally, into the bus lane so I could duck into the shelter of the great beige stone buildings that kept their backs turned to the traffic, their faces towards the quieter streets of Bloomsbury. The wind was nose-bite icy, ear-dropping cold. I pulled my coat up tighter around my neck and hurried towards the traffic lights, while the Aldermen in their big cars that deserved every penny of congestion charge they had to pay went in search of a place to park.
“We’re not doing anything without the Aldermen,” said Oda.
“Sure. Just looking.”
“Sorcerer . . .” Warning in her voice.
“Just making sure. You wouldn’t want an innocent to get blasted, would you?”
“You misunderstand my cause. Bigger pictures.”
“Of course. Silly me.”
The station was divided into three parts: Underground, international and overland. It seemed easier to find our way in through the low sculptured doorways to the Underground at pavement level, than through the high arches above street level leading to the mainline station. Glass and bright lights; beeping gates, whirring ticket machines, men and women in blue uniform: police. Of course — police. An international terminal, where else?
“You know,” I murmured, “if this Ngwenya is the one responsible, St Pancras may not be the best place to . . .”
“There are ways.”
“Really? You mean you can . . .”
“If I told you my methods,” she said calmly, “then I might not be able to use them again.”
We looked away.
The mainline station combined trains to Glasgow with services to Paris, Brussels, Lille and, for the truly masochistic, Disneyland. It was built to impress. The roof was higher than the average winter cloud on the city, the platform longer than the distance between most bus stops. Everywhere was the same pale, cold blue light, shining down on glass and steel, built one into the other like they were elements of the same nature, modern simplicity melted into Gothic grandeur. The effect should have been an uncomfortable clash of old and new, but both periods were united by the drive to achieve splendour and space, to make it clear to anyone who hadn’t guessed as they stepped off the train, that this was London, capital city, and you’d better hold on to your wallets.
The sound was the constant rumbling of the Eurostar engines, which sat right next to the main foyer, separated only by a thin glass sheet, some unsympathetic coppers and international law. Tourists about to travel could buy champagne at £70 a throw from the leather-sofa champagne bar that sat by the nearest long platform. Shoppers with space left in their bags could nip downstairs to where passport control kept its booths and, from the shops huddled around the X-ray machines and metal detectors, purchase anything from a trashy novel to an exploding bubble bath. Cafés off
ered travellers from Paris croissants and thick dark coffee, to cushion them against the baked-beans-based culture shock they were about to receive; off-licences offered cut-price booze to bring your family, whose present you’d failed to buy on holiday; luggage shops offered businessmen the best leatherware, and everything shone with commerce.
And everything shone, because someone was there to clean it. Oda and I stood above the escalator leading down to the main shopping hall, and watched. The station was buzzing with people, arriving, or heading for the last train to the Continent; bags and coppers and immigration control, shoppers and sellers elbowed each other for room.
Oda said, “Do we know what this woman looks like?”
“We’ll know.”
“Because of your Jedi nature?” she snapped.
“Because you can’t just summon the death of cities and not have something peculiar going on. Doesn’t your bigger picture involve using me for my essential and potent grasp of these things?”
“You haven’t been very potent so far,” she grumbled.
“We saved your life.”
Silence.
“I didn’t expect it to . . .” I stopped. “Sorry,” I said finally.
“Sorry? You’re saying this as though there’s some meaning. As in, repentant, remorseful, regretful?”
“Don’t know. Just seemed like the thing you wanted to hear.”
“I should hit you.”
“There’s a queue. You still need me.”
“Even less than you could possibly comprehend. We do have your theories.”
I shrugged. “Just theories. And if I’m wrong, you still need the Midnight Mayor. Why do you think Nair lumbered me with this?” I asked, genuinely interested.
She shrugged. “What does it matter?”
“Plenty. He seemed like a sharp guy. Smart enough to find Raleigh Court; smart enough to have a good address book in his mobile phone. Earle thinks he did it in order to tame us. To make us get involved.”
“There is a logic to it.”
“It could have just been a good combination. A complete and utter accident. A stranger dials a random number on the phone, and you can guarantee that sooner or later, they’ll call us. Your fingers must twitch at the thought. You hate the idea of sorcerers per se; you despise the blue electric angels, you fear the Midnight Mayor. Wrap them up in one bundle . . . I’m impressed you aren’t even hitting.”
