A Madness of Angels: Or the Resurrection of Matthew Swift (58 page)

“You know, the Old Testament…” she began.

 

“I’m really, really not dead,” I said. “In fact, it’s starting to get a bit of a pain having to explain it all.”

 

“Dana thinks you’re dead. Explain it to her – leave me out of it. As far as I’m concerned what happens in your world stays in your world.”

 

“I’m sorry to come here like this…”

 

“Get on with it, Mr Swift. Bad news should at least be honest about what it wants.”

 

“Where’s Dana?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

“Don’t know or won’t tell?”

 

“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
is
important.”

 

“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.

 

 

***

Second Interlude: The Sorcerer's Apprentice

In which the cost of sorcery is remembered over takeaway fish and chips.

 

 

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 customers, and neither was there any staff, but the fridge showed enough gaps in its display to suggest that this was just a mid-afternoon lull, rather than a symptom of terminal decline. I leant on the glass counter above the bowls of chicken, and tuna, and sweetcorn salad and waited.

 

There was a buzzing from the glass-fronted fridge, a nasty, unhealthy electric sound like a wasp trapped in a bottle, or the crack of flies hitting an electric lamp. I watched as sparks snapped out of the cabling at its back and the lights faltered along the displays of neatly packed sandwiches. Then, with a hiss, the fridge died. The bulb above my head flickered on and off a few times, and the power points in the corners of the walls spat angry electric sparks from behind the switches. After a few minutes, this too died. During this time I heard a raised voice from somewhere behind a bead curtain: the incoherent sound of a woman shouting at someone whose response was too quiet for me to hear.

 

My curiosity now completely engaged, I stepped round the counter, and through the bead curtain. Beyond it was a stainless-steel kitchen, and it was a mess. Pots and pans were strewn across the floor, remnants of viscous liquids were splashed up the walls, glass from shattered bulbs crunched underfoot. On the knife rack, the blades were all twisted out of shape.

 

I moved carefully through the wreckage towards a door at the back; as I did, the voices became louder. The woman’s, shrill and frightened, babbled in a language I didn’t understand but which, by its thick quality and the richness of the sound, I guessed to be eastern European. Another voice answered in the same language: male, quieter, but no less scared. I pushed open the door, onto a crooked flight of stairs. Climbing them, I emerged into a narrow corridor of scuffed paint on cracked plaster. At the far end, outside a closed door with a poster of some anonymous boy band and a sign saying “KEEP OUT!!!” in big red pen, were the owners of the voices: a short woman who seemed far too large for the space she stood in, and a man in the dark shapeless clothes of a priest, with a big black beard. In one limp hand, the priest held a crucifix; and by his gestures he was trying to pacify the woman, and failing. The place buzzed with a sparking, yellow-golden sheen that hissed like fizzy drink on my tongue as I drew it in; wild, rich, and dangerous power, emanating, I guessed, from behind the closed door.

 

I said, “Excuse me?”

 

The woman paused, looked at me, said, “We’re shut,” and in an instant was back to shouting at the man.

 

I waited a few moments; then, since she didn’t seem to have any further interest in talking to me, I raised my voice and bellowed, “
Sorcery!
”

 

They both fell silent, more caught by surprise, I suspected, than ready to listen. “Thank you,” I said quickly. “Now, may I have a black coffee, strong, no sugar, and is a member of your family or your household acting peculiar bordering on mystical?”

 

 

In the kitchen, with trembling hands the woman gave me a plastic cup of vodka. She watched me down it while she clung to her own drink and said, “You police?”

 

“This isn’t your business…” began the man in priest’s clothes.

 

“Stuff you,” I replied, and for her benefit I added, “No, I’m not. My name’s Matthew Swift.”

 

Mrs Mikeda introduced herself.

 

“A pleasure to meet you,” I responded. “And this gentleman with the beard is…?”

 

“What do you want here?” he snapped.

 

“A priest,” replied Mrs Mikeda in a cowed voice.

 

“More than a priest, I’m guessing,” I said, looking him over and finding myself unimpressed. “Exorcist, yes? Demonic possession, Satanic vibes, all that kind of thing?”

 

“Who are you?” asked Mrs Mikeda.

 

“You can just call me Matthew. Now, let’s throw out the beardy, and why don’t you tell me about your daughter?”

 

“How do you know about my daughter?” she demanded, her knuckles turning white around the plastic cup.

 

“It’s the choice of boy band poster on her bedroom door,” I replied. “That tells me that she’s a girl. The presence of the exorcist guy tells me you haven’t got a clue what’s going on, and the sense of uncontrolled and raging magic tells me it’s more than just hormones that gives your daughter bad period pains. So why don’t you tell me what’s happening here?”

 

Mrs Mikeda downed the vodka, scrunched up the plastic cup without thinking and dropped it in the sink. She looked from me to the priest and back again and said, “Mr Swift, I don’t know why I should trust you.”

 

“My honest face, my charming, open expression, and the fact that in the end, I’m just so damn
right
, aren’t I? Nothing like a grasp of the situation to give a guy some cred.”

 

“Can you help her?”

 

I thought about it. “Yes,” I replied, feeling as I said it that this was absolutely the correct answer. “I think I can.”

 

 

When I knocked on her door there was no answer. I called out, “Dana? You all right in there?”

 

No reply.

 

I tried the handle. The door was locked.

 

“Key?” I said to Mrs Mikeda.

 

She gave me a small brass key. I turned it in the lock and opened the door. Filthy didn’t begin to cover the room beyond. It had served as bedroom, living room, kitchen and bathroom for what smelt like weeks; the heat and intensity of it slammed into my face and left no room for compromise or forgiveness. The curtains were half drawn, and at the base of the window were pigeon feathers strewn in dirty heaps. Dana Mikeda lay on the bed, her back turned to me, breathing slowly and steadily. I went over and reached out to touch her. But before I did, the hairs on the back of my hands stood up, at the same time that Mrs Mikeda gave a warning gasp.

 

I pulled a plug from the wall with a popping of sparks, and cut it at the top and the bottom with my penknife, exposing the metal strands beneath. Holding it by the rubber insulation I touched one end of the wire to the floor, and let the other drop onto the girl’s shoulder. A white spark crawled into the carpet. When I moved my hand again over Dana, there was no longer that feel of buzzing static in the air.

 

I took hold of her shoulder, and rolled her over. Her eyes were shut, but when I lifted the lids they glowed underneath with the bright orange of a pigeon’s iris; and as she exhaled, every breath carried with it a snort of thick black smoke and the smell of car exhaust, rattling over her lungs like a loose engine on the back of an old truck. Her skin burnt to the touch, and when I lifted up her fingers, they trailed neon scars through the air, like her nails were about to dig a hole in space itself.