A Madness of Angels: Or the Resurrection of Matthew Swift (15 page)

 

I left by the fire escape, sauntering out onto Moorgate just as the first police vans started to arrive.

 

 

The bus shelters in London are, more often than not, badly designed. Roofed with thin plastic sheets that sag under any weight, curving downwards to form a slight bowl, they collect pools of rainwater on their tops, which can remain there for days. Most of these shelters are below tree height, so that fallen leaves can rot down in these pools, creating the odd muddy pond with its own fungal subculture that nothing can erase, short of a burning August drought.

 

The flatness of these shelters allows other things to be left on top of them. A single, decomposing sock is a common feature, or a laceless left-foot plimsoll. Half a shopping trolley has been known, or a bicycle handlebar, as have Ikea catalogues and plastic bags full of broken bananas. However, above everything else, on the top of every other bus shelter in London there is almost invariably a rotting copy of the Yellow Pages.

 

People tend not to ask what a copy of the Yellow Pages is doing on the roof of a bus shelter, nor how it got there, and this is probably a good thing – a poor reflection on the curiosity of the human spirit, perhaps, but an excessively useful defect for the struggling sorcerer, for inside every Yellow Pages left on the top of the shelter, and those pages only, are the exclusive listings.

 

I found my own copy of the fat book, with its thin, mouldering pages, on top of a shelter opposite Liverpool Street station, and sat down on the bench beneath to flick through its unique content. I ignored Witches-for-hire, Alchemists, Abjurers, Seers, Prophets, Fortune-Tellers, Magical Suppliers, Hunters, Questing Adventurers, Crusaders, Mages, Mediums, Mystic Scholars and all the other members of the magical community who sell their often suspect wares to each other through the adverts and listings in the bus-stop pages, and eventually found my way to Exorcists. I picked the biggest advert – “Evil at work? Being sent curses to your inbox? Haunted by the spirits of the deceased? Call Exorminator, guaranteed 100% success in cleansing your local magical environment!!!” – wrote the number down on my hand, tossed the Pages back onto the top of the bus stop for the next magician who might be passing, and went to find a phone box.

 

The man who answered sounded very cheerful for the time of night and greeted me with, “Exorminator, how can we help?”

 

“Hi, I’m phoning about an exorcism.”

 

“Can I take your name?”

 

“I’d rather not say.”

 

“Sure, fine, we understand. May I ask as to the nature of your problem?”

 

“There’s a curse going round.”

 

“Uh-huh, sure, no problem, we can handle that. Do you have any details on what kind of curse?”

 

“A shadow on the wall.”

 

“Nasty. Anything more?”

 

“A curse of the stones of a building, of the bricks in its walls, of the earth that shelters it, the water that feeds it and the sky that guards it.”

 

“That’s a pretty solid curse, man. Haven’t seen shit like that for a while. You sure of it?”

 

“I wrote it, I’m fairly sure of it.”

 

“OK, you wrote it?” The exorcist had a slightly Australian tinge to his voice, and the laid-back, whatever-comes-next attitude of a man who had suddenly realised two degrees short of sunstroke that exorcism was the perfect career choice he’d never been offered at school.

 

“Yes.”

 

“OK… uh… not usual we get people writing their own curses and then getting them exorcised. Some kinda accident with the spray-

 

paint?”

 

“No.”

 

“No. Uh… OK. But I’m guessing you want it removed.”

 

“Oh, no, not at all,” I said quickly. “I’m phoning to tell you that probably tomorrow morning, you or one of your associates will get a call from someone else wanting it removed, and I’m asking you not to.”

 

“I see. Look, sorry to say this, but it’s our job. We exorcise things. You know. Exorminator… no exorcism too big? Gotta pay the rent, man.”

 

“Yes, but you’ll have difficulty exorcising this one.”

 

“Uh… we will?”

 

“You have to understand – this is a fundamental curse inscribed for revenge. It’s more than just a bit of spray-paint. When I drew the curse, I thought of every second of pain and suffering that I’d endured and of my undying thirst for vengeance. We’re way out of the holy water and garlic league. Sorry about that, by the way, it’s nothing personal against
you
, it’s just how it had to be done.”

 

“Look, Mr…”

 

“Also,” we added quietly, “if you undo the curse, then we’ll come after you next.”

 

Silence from the end of the line. “Uh…” said the man at last, “you know, mate, I’d love to help you with this, but it sounds like you’ve got some serious issues…”

 

“I’m just giving you a heads-up,” I burst in. “These things are going to appear all over town, and Amiltech is going to come to exorcists to clear it up. And I’m asking you nicely not to.”

 

“Because…”

 

“Amiltech is going to burn,” we replied cordially. “We are going to shred them from top to toes and leave nothing but a shadow on the wall behind. And I figured… it’d be a shame for you guys to get hurt on the way.”

 

“Are you for real?”

 

“Good night, Mr Exorminator.”

 

“Jeez,
whatever
.”

 

I hung up and walked away, feeling, all in all, that things were going rather well.

*

 

 

Between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon, I broke into a total of six offices, one penthouse suite and a small bank, and cursed them all. I cursed the stones they were built on, the bricks in their walls, the paint on their ceilings, the carpets on their floors. I cursed the nylon chairs to give their owners little electric shocks, I cursed the markers to squeak on the whiteboard, the hinges to rust, the glass to run, the windows to stick, the fans to whir, the chairs to break, the computers to crash, the paper to crease, the pens to smear; I cursed the pipes to leak, the cooler to drip, the pictures to sag, the phones to crackle and the wires to spark. And we enjoyed it. We enjoyed all the magic, the shaping of it at our fingers, the tiniest cantrip up to the most profound curse; we enjoyed the edge of danger. It made us feel alive.

 

Not that this was a random venting of my general dissatisfaction with life, fate and all the things it had done wrong in the last few days, months, years. I chose my targets very carefully, from Sinclair’s immaculately maintained and only slightly blood-spattered list of Amiltech’s favourite clients.

 

On Monday morning I dialled the
Financial Times
from a telephone near the Blackwall Tunnel, and politely told the receptionist to have someone check up on a spate of break-ins and look for an Amiltech connection. It was not the subtle kind of call from which journalistic myths were made, but it had its use. On Tuesday morning the
Financial Times
ran with a headline on page three reporting a damaging series of attacks on offices and properties either owned by, insured by or protected by various divisions of Amiltech Securities. By Tuesday evening the headline in much smaller form was hitting the freebie City rags, and by Wednesday morning the broadsheets had picked up on it too. Amiltech responded that it was being victimised by a systematic campaign of hatred, and that it would bring the perpetrators to justice. On the unusual painted signs left behind at all the scenes of crime, they made no comment.

 

On Monday afternoon I moved out of my small hotel room on the Cromwell Road, and migrated under a new name to a larger, more expensive hotel off the Strand. It seemed only a matter of time before reprisals headed my way, if they were not already en route, and I wanted to stem any more significant encounters until I felt sure of my abilities, and our readiness. We were not yet certain that we could stop Hunger, should he come for us again; and we knew that he desired our blood. Not only was Hunger an ugly creature, offensive to all our senses; he was, perhaps, equal to all that we could be.

 

That frightened us.

 

On the Monday evening that I called the
Financial Times
, I also hit two more companies and a storage facility. The latter turned out to be housing organs in vacuum-packed bags. Some were human; some were not. In the deepest darkest corner of the basement, behind a false wall I found while looking for something to burn the place to the ground, I discovered a vault containing the relatively recently dead body of a man whose foul nails, pin-pricked veins and overgrown beard proclaimed him to be a stolen soul from the street. His skin was white and splotchy grey, not a drop of blood left in his body. Someone had cracked open his ribcage, pulled out his heart and tried to replace it with a replica of carved London clay. An experiment in necromancy; one that had gone wrong.

 

This time I took a waste-paper basket from upstairs, a cigarette lighter out of a desk drawer, and a bundle of old newspaper, and set the place on fire. It took three hours for the flames to catch properly and start gouting black clouds through the building’s broken windows. We stood in the crowd with the other onlookers as the firemen scuttled to contain the blaze, and felt its warmth on our face and the burning intensity of it in our eyes, and that too, was beautiful.

 

On Thursday evening my efforts made
Watchdog
on BBC1, where the sincere, if overly groomed and sexy, presenter made an appeal in a husky, seductive voice for the unknown arsonist to come forward. I almost felt a stir of guilt as the programme unfolded, particularly for the well-meaning sergeant in his white shirt and constabulary tie who sat uncomfortably on the studio’s low stool and announced, “We believe this individual could be a threat to society, and himself…” Hearing the comforting tones of his voice, I could imagine the police counsellor waiting for me down at the station, with a cup of tea and the soft-spoken phrase “So tell me about this sorcery of yours…”

 

On Friday, riding through the City on the 23 bus, I picked up a dropped copy of
City A.M.
, the guide to all things going on in the bankers’ district, and flicked through it to see how Amiltech was doing.

 

Surprisingly well, was the answer. Too many people whose wealth should have taught them better were too afraid of Amiltech to kick up the ruckus I had been hoping for.

 

That night I went to Amiltech’s office. There were three security guards in the front foyer, a towering glass thing full of potted plants and some full-grown trees, as well as a waterfall cascading down from the first-floor platform into a pool of artfully arranged pebbles. One of the guards had a whiff of magic about him, despite the identical nature of his straight black suit. He sat with nonchalant confidence by the entrance to the lift bank, one leg hooked over the other, and had the look of a man not about to be fooled by the simple cantrips I habitually spun into my coat.

 

Since my usual enchantments of anonymity didn’t look likely to work, I adopted a different tack. At 9.30 p.m. I walked into the Amiltech foyer, went up to the reception desk and with a flick of my wrist flashed my Oyster card at the receptionist. I did this just fast enough for him to see a card being waved but too quickly for his brain to register anything but the most officious-looking credentials he’d seen in his life.

 

He blinked up at me, and hesitated. I jumped in before the tangles of gentle, sleepy magic woven around his head could be shaken away by full alertness, and said, “I’m here to see Adam Reiley.”

 

“What?”

 

“Adam Reiley, Amiltech? He’s expecting me – you should have my name.”

 

“Uh… give me a moment.”

 

The man tapped away at his computer. The human mind, when it works, is a marvellous thing. With all its attention diverted onto the task at hand, it becomes an abstract other, performing beyond the usual realms of self-awareness. When humans work, they frequently become unaware of their own body, their own senses, are surprised to find that their wrists ache or their backs are sore or their friend has left the building. It’s as close to an out-of-body experience as can be achieved short of fifty volts, a circle of warding, a pigeon’s claw cut from an albino female of purest white feathers, or a lot of mushrooms. In such a state, not only does the process of their thoughts play across their face, but the observant listener can also trace the sense of their feeling in their mind. More than just the flicker of an eye, the mind, usually such an insensitive object, opens itself, drifts, even while the conscious, controlled aspect – a tiny part of the human brain at any moment – is focused.

 

So it was with the receptionist, tapping through his computer; and so it was that we could almost hear the buzz of his thoughts, their deepest undercurrents, see the rich purple veins of his suppressed desires, feel the heat of his passions, locked away beneath the professionalism of the day, taste the sharp edge of his envy, a drop of vinegar on the tip of our tongue, resentments and jealousies that he himself probably didn’t know he had, but which drifted in his unconsciousness, shaping how he spoke even while he didn’t know why he said the words he did. The mind, so exposed, fascinated us, as we perceived the thick longing strains of his thoughts, the black oily surface of his disdain for the job, and glimpsed, just for a second, the fiery images of his dreams.

 

So I pulled just a little, just a tiny sliver, of magic across his eyes, blurring his vision for a moment, spinning the fatigue of his day into his nerves, so that for a second he didn’t care that he had to check all people coming in and out, didn’t care that his boss was insistent on security, didn’t care that he hadn’t really seen this guy’s credentials, not really, not properly – for a moment, all he cared about was that he was in a shit job and just wanted to be left alone.

 

He said, “Uh… sure, right, yeah, whatever. You know the way?”

 

“Uh-huh. Thanks.”

 

“No problem.”

 

He gave me a paper badge in a plastic holder. I took it with a grateful smile, pinned it to the front of my coat, and walked towards the lift.