A Madness of Angels: Or the Resurrection of Matthew Swift (7 page)

 

“Alfred bloody Khan,” I snapped. “Seer of the bloody future. Something, may I add, which you are not.”

 

There was a flash of anger behind her eyes. She stood up, gathering her skirts in a single sweeping, practised gesture, and exclaimed, “Be careful. You were not invited here.”

 

Then, to our surprise, she stepped right up close to us, and stared at our eyes. She drew in a long breath between her teeth and whispered, “Well then…”

 

She reached up to touch my face, and instinctively I caught her wrist, the metal across it cold and uncomfortable. “Tell me” – I struggled to keep our voice tame – “where Khan is.”

 

She hesitated, then smiled a thin, humourless smile. “Alfred Khan died two years ago,” she said flatly. “You are behind with the news. Anything else I can do for you, sir – aura cleansing, mystic divination, unfolding of the sacred secrets? No?”

 

I let go of her wrist, before I could forget that I held it. We were not entirely surprised; nevertheless I didn’t know what to do, what to say, how, exactly, I should behave. So we did nothing, but waited to see if an emotion would strike, curious to know how we responded to such news, whether we cried or shouted or became angry or felt nothing at all. We hoped we would cry; it was the most human response. My eyes remained firmly dry, my mouth empty of any words.

 

The woman was staring at us, waiting to see how we reacted. We sat down on a padded stool covered in silk. In that close space, she towered over us, a proud tilt to her chin. I guessed she was in her mid-thirties, that the yellowish colour of her eyes came from a pair of tinted contact lenses, and that somewhere underneath that headdress the roots of her hair were blond. She waited for the news to settle, and the flat waters of incomprehension to start bubbling into a sea of embarrassing self-pity, before she said, “You knew Khan well?”

 

“Sort of.”

 

“Former client?”

 

“He once read me my future in the flight of a plastic bag,” I replied with a shrug. “He derived the secrets of time in the patterns of vapour trails in the sky, or the drifting of scum on the surface of the canal. Sounded like a load of pretentious balls at the time, but I guess, in retrospect…”

 

“What did he tell you?” she asked.

 

I smiled despite myself, ran my hands nervously through my drying hair. “He said, ‘Hey man, you’re like, totally going to die.’”

 

“That sounds like him,” she conceded. “Tact is not part of the service.”

 

“He was right,” I scowled. “He was bloody right.”

 

Silence a while.

 

Then she said, “You really didn’t know? That’s he’s dead?”

 

“No. I’ve been away.”

 

“It was two years ago,” she repeated. “I run this place now.”

 

“You’re not a seer,” I snapped. “How can you even breathe in all this bloody incense?”

 

She shrugged. “I understand what people want to hear, I have a good enough brain to see things, an excellent manner and a husky, sensual voice.”

 

“Is that the qualification, these days?” I asked.

 

“And I know things,” she added, firmer.

 

“Any useful things?”

 

“I know how to spot a magician.”

 

I looked up sharply, found her staring straight back down at me. “Yeah,” I said at last. “I bet you can. But you’re still not quite hitting the money, are you?”

 

“You come here to have your fortune read, magician, or is it something else you’re looking for?”

 

I found myself forcing a smile. “I was never a believer in having your fortune read, even by Khan. It was all too fatalistic.”

 

“Even the best-told fortunes can be evaded,” she said with a shrug and a jangling of metal. “I don’t take kindly to anyone barging in, by the way, magician or not. It’s rude, and it’s unprofessional.”

 

“It’s not been a good day.”

 

“A poor excuse. Stand up, I want to look at you.”

 

“Why?”

 

“You have interesting eyes.”

 

“I do?”

 

“Very blue.”

 

We were surprised she had noticed; not a total fool, then. Perhaps she could see in our eyes a signal, to all who dared look, of our true nature. “That interests you?” I asked, for want of anything more intelligent to say, and to buy time.

 

“I am interested in all unusual things.”

 

Then, and I was too numb by now to resist, she grabbed my wrists with the same forceful gesture by which I’d grabbed hers, and turned my hands over. She studied my palms, my fingers, my knuckles, my nails, the veins in my wrists. Having turned my hands this way and that, she then tossed them aside like rotten potatoes. She took hold of my face, with the same unsympathetic grip the doctor uses when examining a swelling, and turned it this way and that, scrutinised the colour of my eyes, the shape of my ears, even the condition of my teeth, smelt my breath.

 

Suddenly her fingers were at my throat, digging in, pushing my chin up as the tips of her nails drew half-moon rims of blood. We half-choked, reached instinctively to find the electric fires that always burnt inside. But her fingers went no deeper, and I held back, uncertain.

 

She hissed, her face an inch from mine, “
Sorcerer
.”

 

“How’d you tell?” I asked through the pressure of her fingers on my neck.

 

“I told you – I know things. I know the smell of magics; and you don’t just dabble, you swim in it, you
breathe
it. An urban sorcerer, in my shop? Who are you?” When I didn’t answer, her grip tightened, sending a wave of heat into my head as the blood strained in its arteries. “I am not defenceless,” she added. “As I’m sure you can imagine.”

 

“Very much so,” I croaked. “Are you like this with everyone you meet?”

 

“Your name!”

 

“Swift,” I said, and was pleased at how easily the remembrance of it came to me. “My name is Matthew Swift.”

 

Her grip relaxed for a moment; surprise, not intent. “Matthew Swift?” she echoed flatly.

 

“That’s me. Ta-da!”

 

“You want to tell me that you’re Matthew Swift.”

 

“Is this a bad thing?”

 

“You are a dead man, Matthew Swift.”

 

“You must have customers flocking to hear your predictions.”

 

“It was a statement of fact, of
history
.”

 

“It pays for prophets to be cryptic, particularly in this litigious age,” I wheezed.

 

“You misunderstand,” she said gently, her breath tickling my skin. “Now, right now, as we are talking, your corpse is rotting in the earth.”

 

I shrugged weakly. “Clearly, it isn’t.”

 

“Matthew Swift,” she said, slowly, “the sorcerer called Matthew Swift, died two years ago.”

 

“Question!” I said, raising one meek hand. “Did you actually see the body?”

 

She hesitated.

 

“Well, there you go.”

 

“Nothing bleeds that much and lives.”

 

We wound our fingers carefully around hers, started unpicking them from our throat. “Then consider this. If, hypothetically, I am the same Matthew Swift who was attacked two years ago and who lay expiring in his own blood while his killer walked away, happy with the thought that no doctor nor hospital in the world could repair such a hole in the heart, such a tear in the lung, such a rip in the chest – if, say, I happen to be the kind of man who can survive that to stand here now, shouldn’t you be more concerned about threatening me?”

 

We detached her last finger from our neck, pushed her hand carefully back to her side. She stood in front of us, jingling faintly with the weight of breath she drew. Finally: “How would Swift survive?”

 

“Precariously.”

 

“It’s not possible to…”

 

“No,” I said firmly. “It isn’t. Now will you tell me what happened to Khan?”

 

Silence.

 

I smiled my most beatific smile. A kind of serenity was settled over me. I knew now, standing in that stench of incense and beneath that endless nasal drone, that things had got just about as bad as they could conceivably get. Therefore it stood to reason that things could get no worse; therefore I was finally almost calm.

 

“His throat was cut,” she said flatly, after a pause. “He saw it coming, and couldn’t stop it. That’s power – to kill a man even when he knows every detail of his own demise – that’s truly a cruel death. If you are Swift, where have you been for two years?”

 

“Around.”

 

“I deal in cryptic answers every day, Mr Swift; don’t try and distract me with my own devices.”

 

“Fair enough. I will not play with you and invent some story; I will simply not tell you where I went or how I got there. Is that satisfactory?”

 

“No.”

 

“Well, shucks.”

 

“Can you prove you’re who you say?”

 

I thought about this. “No.”

 

“No,” she repeated with a nasty twist to her lip. “Of course you can’t.”

 

“I can’t prove it,” I growled through my teeth, “because I own nothing that was my own. Everything that I thought I had, everyone I knew… no, I can’t prove anything.” I added, “You are a
terrible
prophet.”

 

“My opinion of you is hardly in the stratosphere,” she retorted. “Why did you want to see Khan?”

 

“That’s my business.”

 

“You… wanted his help?”

 

“That’s not important.”

 

“Then what do you
want
?”

 

When we answered, we spoke without my noticing, with a word that slipped out as naturally as breath.

 

“Revenge.” Once spoken, it seemed so right, so honest and comforting, that I was amazed I hadn’t said it before. “I want revenge.”

 

“Against…?”

 

“The one who attacked me. Who left me to die. And… And against the one who brought us back.”

 

She hesitated, her narrow eyes flicking to and fro, her fingers dancing a tiny rhythm at her side, their jewellery jangling like wind chimes. “Where have you been?” she murmured. I had the feeling it wasn’t a question intended for me. Then, clearer, “Do you have a plan?”

 

“Not yet.”

 

“Does anyone know that you’re… that you claim to be Swift?”

 

“No. And if you tell anyone…”

 

“If I tell?” she snapped, defiant.

 

“We will kill you,” we said gently. “You are nothing before us. We can stamp you out like a whisper of static in the wire. We
will
kill you. I’m sorry about it, but that’s just how it is.”

 

She didn’t seem frightened by this, more curious. She put her head on one side and breathed, “Interesting.”

 

“Really?”

 

“You keep on saying ‘we’.”

 

I shrugged.

 

“I may be able to help you, possibly – Matthew Swift.”

 

“How?”

 

“I have… friends. People who share a common interest.”

 

“Why would you help me?”

 

She smiled. “Even if you aren’t Matthew Swift, you could be of use.”

 

“I thought you were helping me.”

 

“There could be mutual benefits.”

 

“I’m not really interested.” I turned to go, seizing the curtain. She reached out and grabbed my arm, her fingers digging into my skin. Instinctively we shied back, flexing our fingers for the feel of the power, ready to strike; but, sensing our fear, she snatched her hand back. “Matthew Swift and Alfred Khan are not the only ones who died these last years. Do you know that? Have you asked? If you want to know who else is dead, and why, go to the Eye tonight, at nine. Things have changed; perhaps you do not know. There are new rules, new… dangers.”

 

“I’ll work it out.”

 

“Do you know Robert James Bakker?” I was halfway out of the door and her words stopped me dead. “I think you do.”

 

“What is your interest in Bakker?”

 

“If you want to know more about Bakker, what he has done, what he has become, we are the ones to talk to. We can be of great use to you.”

 

I forced a smile. “And I to you, yes?” Her cold expression was answer enough. I said, “I’ll think about it. Good afternoon, miss. Remember what we said.”

 

And walked away.

 

 

Whether or not I had any interest in the fortune-teller’s proposition, a few things she said had got my thoughts moving.

 

Without really knowing why, I found myself going towards the river. I walked through Middle Temple Inn, a place of old trees, high brick buildings, sash windows, cobbled streets, enclosed courtyards, lawyers, and film actors, in costumes from roughly 1580 to the present day, at work on some new historical drama (usually Dickens). I made my way towards Blackfriars Bridge, and into the gloomy concrete zone of wiggling, covered alleys, traffic-filled streets, tunnels and pedestrian walkways that link Blackfriars and London Bridges on the north side of the river. I wandered under dull yellow neon lights, watching my shadow stretch across the walls as I walked, listening to the distant rumble of cars passing through the maze of one-way systems and underpasses that had sprung up after the Blitz between what was left of the area’s history and the new, ugly, squared-off buildings compressing the winding byways of the city into ever more unlikely shapes. The Circle line sent up a hum through the pavement as it rattled towards Monument and, overhead, the train to Farringdon wheezed its way through a tunnel of nail-tight buildings pressed up against the railway.

 

I came to the tiny yard of flagstones and half-hearted container shrubs that jutted out between a giant converted warehouse and an office with walls of black-green glass, and sat down on a bench looking out past a row of iron railings to the river. At low tide, the water lapped against a wide beach of pebbles and brown sand embedded with plastic bags and dropped bottles. Within a few hours, the tide could rise up the tall stone wall on which my courtyard sat, where a green line of weed defined the high-tide mark, a metre or so below my feet.

 

A part of me was disappointed at how unchanged the place seemed, now that I sat and contemplated my situation while I watched the tide rise. There wasn’t a plaque of remembrance, nor a bunch of wilting flowers tied to the railing, nor even a lurid stain on the flagstones where so much of my blood had been spilled. Even the telephone box hiding in a corner, as if embarrassed to be seen in the mobile phone age, didn’t have a sign inside saying in childish script, “i was ere”. Instead it had the usual cards, advertising sex and, this being the City with a definite article and its own coat of arms, yoga stress support groups for the harried banker, probably at a slightly higher rate than the cruder alternative.