The Minority Council (15 page)

“No, Mr Mayor. Suspected. That is all. The dusthouses keep tight secrecy for a reason, but in time you have to ask—where does it all come from? Where does the fairy dust come from and why does no one know? Suspected, that is all.”

“They’re killing people deliberately!” The sound of my voice bounced round the walls, was rolled up in the hum of traffic.

Templeman paused, then said, “Yes. They are. But we could not prove it.” He added, “The science is poorly
understood, if you can call it science. From what we do understand, the body metabolises fairy dust in two parts. The first, the quick hit, shall we say, can rush through the system in less than twenty-four hours, leaving a relatively harmless chemical trace that is removed from the body by its own natural defences.

“The second part, the part that kills, is never truly broken down by the body but builds up in the blood. It’s responsible for the yellow you see in the eyes, and we believe the dusthouse dealers monitor all their clients for signs of degeneration, in order to ensure that they are ready for transportation to the dusthouse when the moment comes. A pinch of dust too far, a taste too many, and the body reaches saturation point, a level of dust in the blood which the human frame can no longer sustain and,” he snapped his fingers, “conversion. Disintegration, we might say. No one really knows the exact chemical processes involved but, from dust to dust, the host becomes quite literally, what they sniffed.”

“Murder,” I said. “You’ll talk to me about the greater good?”

He shrugged. “The addicts—fairies, if you will—are willing participants. They choose to take the dust, they choose to keep on taking the dust even as their bodies begin to show the first signs. It’s no greater or lesser a crime than that perpetrated by the cigarette companies.”

“The corpses of smokers aren’t chopped down to make more cigarettes!” I snarled.

“So your problem is the processing, rather than the deed?”

“She’s dead!” The traffic ate up some of the sound of our voice, but even the little yappy dog stopped and
looked up, from behind its master’s heels. Templeman stood, stared us in the eye, then kept on walking.

“Yes,” he said at length. “I am sorry for your friend. But try to understand: any attempt by the Aldermen merely to shut down the dusthouses without consideration of the full picture simply escalates the situation. We take as our case study the metropolitan police: if it shuts down drug dealers who carry knives, they are replaced by those who carry guns. If they arrest the ones with guns, they are replaced by ones with guns and body armour, and so it deteriorates. While there is a demand, there will be a supply; the only guaranteed way to stop the production and distribution of fairy dust in the future is to remove one or the other.”

“And how do you suggest I do that?”

“I don’t know yet. Your intervention was, I admit, unexpected, if fortuitous. I have long been a minority voice among the Aldermen, advocating against the opposition of my peers. So when you arrived last night, full of rage and ready to strike, I’m afraid I acted with… rather embarrassing alacrity. Now you may be in danger—for that, I apologise.”

“Don’t.”

He smiled at some private thought. “For now, I suggest you keep your head down. I will talk with a few other sympathetic individuals and sound out the situation with the rest of the Aldermen. If the fairy godmother does move against you, a decision will have to be taken whether to follow the path you have set, or…”

“Bugger off and let him use my bits for stir fry?”

“Words to that effect.”

“We aren’t good at staying still.”

“I didn’t think you would be. If, however, you must engage in acts of monumental power and destruction, may I please urge you to carry on your person an emergency contact number in a flame-proof container, just in case.”

“You’re taking the mick,” I said.

His deadpan face was nothing if not remarkable. “I really do not see how you can think that.” He smiled, an expression at odds with his pale features. “I don’t yet have a solid plan for you, Mr Mayor—I apologise for that. The secret will be in thinking like a businessman, in analysing weakness of supply and demand. Hitting the dusthouses themselves merely attracts attention. But, as you perhaps learnt last night, even that can be an advantage. The name of the Midnight Mayor is intimidating, even if the reality is…” He just managed to stop himself.

“A little underwhelming?”

“More complicated.”

We were nearing the gate back out onto a public area of cobblestones and the Temple’s little shut-off streets. He held it open for me like a hotel porter, and closed it carefully behind us; the little dog waited obediently at his feet for the metal catch to clacker shut.

He said, “I will be in touch as soon as I have news to give you. In the meantime…”

“I know. Keep my head down, don’t blow anything up, don’t accept lifts from strangers, don’t get caught by the godmother. On it.”

As we were parting he hesitated. “Mr Mayor,” he said, “I regret that we haven’t had a chance to cooperate until now.”

“Well… thanks.”

“Good luck,” he added, and walked away.

As I headed back to the hotel, I reached for my phone.

She said, “Yo! Matthew! What’s up, dude?”

I said, “Penny, you know how I promised I’d be open and honest with you, and never ask you to do something stupid without explaining it properly?”

She said, “Oh man, you are totally in the shit, aren’t you?”

My apprentice talked like this. We’d learnt to tune it out. “Penny,” I said, “I want you to be calm and mature about this, and not shout or anything, but I may have accidentally destroyed a dusthouse last night, and it could just be that a mafia boss who trades in narcotic substances for the magically inclined is going to try and kill me and everyone I’ve ever loved. Happily, everyone I’ve ever loved is either dead or absent at the moment, but, when he realises that, he may just go after everyone else in a fit of pique, and that, Penny, includes you.”

Silence.

My Penny Ngwenya, sorceress, ex-traffic warden, presently muddling along by doing shifts at a temp agency while looking for “the dream kick-ass job for a dream kick-ass girl,” rarely fell silent, and when she did, it was an ear-shattering din.

Finally she said, “You total tit.”

“Hey, I’m just letting you know…”

“I’ve got
plans
,” she exclaimed. “I’ve got things a girl’s gotta do. I’ve got…” her voice dropped to ear-withering scorn, “… I’ve got a
date
tonight. With a guy called Femi. And he’s really nice. I mean, he’s stable, and reliable, and really nice, and we’re going to have tapas and you know
I’ve got a thing for tapas, and he said it wasn’t just physical, although of course he thinks I’m beautiful and, like, awesome in every way, but he likes me for my mind, you know, it’s this whole deep fucking soul-to-soul shit I’m talking about here. How the fuck am I meant to explain to him that I’ve gotta skip out on the date tonight because my magic teacher has gone and pissed off a mafia boss?”

“Washing your hair?” I suggested meekly.

“Piss off!”

“Sorry.”

“Couldn’t you just go say sorry or something?”

“I’m not sure he’s that kinda gangster.”

“Matthew…”

“Penny, I’m just letting you know, in an affectionate, responsible way. How you choose to deal with this information is up to you, but may I suggest that the one thing which would really blow your date with this Femi guy would be having the tapas restaurant raided by a pack of angry mobsters just as he’s about to order another round of garlic sausage.”

Penny had never produced such a fluently sullen silence.

At length she grunted, “Fine. I’ll just rearrange my life now, okay?”

“You’re a star.”

“Hey—if you get all like, beaten up and shit, don’t expect me to come and rescue your sorry ass.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Aw Matthew,” she sighed, “you’re sweet when you tell the truth, and kinda crappy when you lie.”

I went back to the hotel.

A uniformed man in a red cap and brass buttons was arguing at the front door with a beggar. “… I’ll call the police if you don’t…”

The doors closed behind me on that debate, and for the moment I thought no more of it.

As I took the service stairs up to my room, my phone rang. The number was unknown, but the voice was Kelly’s.

“Hi, Mr Mayor!” she chimed, bright as a lighthouse on a foggy night.

“Hi, Kelly.”

“I hope I haven’t caught you at a bad time,” she sang. “But I’ve got a few things I need to run by you…”

I fumbled for the key to my hotel door as she talked.

“… there’s been a complaint of ensorcelment in Queensbury, a young woman claims her mind was stripped from her and her body ensnared in a web of enchantment by a local coven…”

The door beeped, swung open.

“… and I was hoping we could maybe look into the grave-robbing incidents only it seems that the corpses have been getting up by themselves before heading over to the dissection room and you know how this sort of thing bothers the council…”

Grey half-light was sneaking through the window. The bed was still unmade, my breakfast tray where I’d left it.

“… we do really need a final answer on the dinner for the Worshipful Company of Magi…”

In the bathroom the air was hot and steamy. It took me a moment to work out what felt wrong. My eyes wandered across the small white sink, the small white toilet, the
small white shower, the white tiled floor, the white tiled walls and finally settled on the perfectly polished mirror set in its white tile frame.

“… and finally we’ve had a little problem with the dusthouses…”

And there it was. In the thick condensation clinging to the glass, far too much and far too thick for the time that had elapsed since the shower was last turned off, someone had written with their fingertip:

YOU CAN’T SAVE EVERYONE

I stared at it, my own reflection staring back from within the clear outlines of the letters. Then I wiped it away with my hand.

Kelly was saying, “Mr Mayor? Mr Mayor, sorry are you still there? Hello? Hello!”

I was already out in the corridor, door slamming shut behind me, heading for the nearest stair. “Yeah, I’m still here… Sorry, right, bad reception. What were you saying?”

“Well, we’ve had a, um… a minor incident with a dusthouse in Soho and I was wondering, seeing as how you were asking about fairy dust last night, if you maybe had heard something about what happened?”

“I don’t know, what happened?”

“Someone, um… someone destroyed it. The dusthouse, I mean.”

“I didn’t think that was possible,” I replied, swinging down round the corner of the stairs and accelerating, taking them two at a time. “I’ve heard all sorts of stuff about armed bastards, about secrets and wards and protection.”

“Well, it seems, Mr Mayor, that whoever did this got somehow inside the dusthouse and undermined their
defences, because he—or she, I mean, it could have been a she too, I don’t know why we let these patriarchal prejudices colour our opinions even now, do you?—but anyway, he or she cracked the floor beneath the house and brought it down like a stack of playing cards and, um, Mr Mayor, I was just wondering if maybe you’d, maybe, heard something.”

“Sounds like an inside job,” I intoned, pushing back a door that led past steam-filled kitchens.

Another door, marked “Alarmed—Do Not Open.” I opened it; no alarm went. A narrow street, where lorries delivered fresh towels and little pots of jam.

“The fairy godmother is said to be a little annoyed…”

“Well, that’s a shame.”

“Mr Mayor,”—a hint of desperation was breaking through even Kelly’s chipperness—“you are okay, aren’t you? Only I know it’s none of my business but I really do worry about you; I’m sure you’re not eating enough…”

“My God, Kelly, we’ve known each other for maybe twelve hours and you’re only two words away from asking me if I’ve been to the toilet.” I was at the end of the street, smell of the river close by, not sure where I was going but determined to get there fast.

“I’m sorry, Mr Mayor!” she nearly wailed down the phone, “but it is my job to be concerned and I really don’t want to step on your toes and if you need a little space, then of course I’ll give it to you, but we really must…”

I turned the corner, and saw her. Young, but face eaten up by more than time, pasty skin threaded with blue, thin mousy hair, thick faded duffel coat, heavy rucksack, sleeping bag stained with dirt and, even in the thick biting
cold that ate away the city’s other smells, even here, she had the beggar stink of doorways, ash and sweat. And she was waiting for me.

“Call you back, Kelly,” I said.

The beggar looked at me, unimpressed. I looked at her, waiting. Then she said, “Domine dirige nos.”

I held out my hand, the scars hidden beneath the fingerless glove, and we shook. “Sorry I missed your call,” I said. “I was out.”