The Minority Council (16 page)

Her eyes were pale and serious. “The Beggar King needs to talk. He’s been looking for you.”

“Sorry about that. It’s all been a bit… you know.”

“He’ll be at Tottenham Court Road for lunch.”

“I can do that.”

She turned to go, then hesitated. “Hey—you really the Midnight Mayor?”

“I’ve got one of those faces, haven’t I? Everyone seems surprised.”

“We liked what you did to the dusthouse. Fucking stupid, mind, but doesn’t mean we didn’t like it.” And before I could open my mouth to reply, she walked away.

I had some time to kill, before time came round to try and kill me.

Templeman had said to keep my head down.

The manner of doing so was left up to us.

And somehow, without quite knowing why, we found ourselves heading for the Underground, and the train out west.

Back to Westbourne Park.

Back to the football pitch with its wall of graffiti where, some nights ago, one kid had died and four had done nothing about it, and a shadow with claws had stretched
itself thin across the watching eye of a post office CCTV camera, before vanishing without a trace.

Back to that all-white eye with its staring black pupil, painted onto the wall.

By daylight, the eye seemed brighter, too clean and clear. The brickwork showed through the rest of the paint on the wall, but not this. The painted-on eye had an unhealthy sheen to it, and where I’d written the words
IT HAS CLAWS
across its surface, they’d already been cleared away, leaving only the tip of the ‘I’ and the end of the ‘s’ on either side of the eye. No local council moved that fast, or targeted any one bit of painting so specifically.

That was good; that was something we could use.

I looked around at the nearest houses, searching for a helpful pigeon or roaming rat whose eyes I might borrow for a moment, and was surprised to find someone looking back. A curtain twitched in a window of one of the better-kept-up houses. I went up to the front door, which was almost mirror-bright with fresh paint, and thumped with its polished knocker. Eventually the door opened, on a new brass chain, and a woman’s voice said, “Yes? Who are you?”

It was a voice taught from an early age that what was said wasn’t nearly as important as being heard. A pair of well-manicured magenta nails was visible, above the toe of a white fluffy slipper.

“Good morning, ma’am,” I called out. “My name is Matthew, I’m from the local council; may I come in?”

“Do you have ID?” she asked, in a tone expecting the answer to be no.

“Of course, ma’am. Can’t be too careful, can we?”

In my wallet I found a library card, and flashed it with
one finger over the ‘library’ part. As she looked, we pushed gently against the fog of her suspicion, whispering to her to look away. The human mind is not an easy tool to work with; too many things are waiting to go wrong. But when it’s focused on the one thing you want to affect, manipulation becomes easier.

I smiled as she waved me into the hall, and kept on smiling as I followed her into a living room with shiny pink wallpaper bearing a floral pattern, and thick swagged curtains. There were prints of nineteenth-century hunting scenes, and a coffee table freighted with magazines on the perfect home. We sat down in lettuce-green armchairs opposite a vast TV. The place was saturated with the stench of air freshener. She said, “Is this about the complaint?”

“Your complaint?”

She was in her early fifties, with hair dyed to blonde so often it now looked stiff as brushwood. Her skin was freckled under a fading tan, and her watery blue eyes were framed by lashes longer and darker than a murderer’s walk to death row. She wore a white towelling robe over a cream silk nightdress cut too low for comfort.

She said, “So it’s not about the complaint?” I glanced around for salvation, and saw that one of the magazines, dedicated to sporting gear for the country gentleman, was still in its plastic wrapper and addressed to one Mr S. P. Dixon. I took a deep breath and said,

“Mrs Dixon…”

Seeing no doubt or anger, I plunged on.

“… I’m afraid I’m not here about your complaint, although obviously we take these things very seriously. I’m here about the incident a few weeks ago just across the street from here—you remember the one?”

“You mean the one I complained about?”

“Perhaps if you could tell me the nature of your complaint…”

“Which branch of the council are you from?” she asked, eyes narrowing.

“Special resources. About that complaint…”

“I blame the parents!” she exclaimed. “The ones who don’t do their job properly. I mean, I’m sympathetic to their situation, I understand that not everyone can be born to do everything, but if you aren’t going to look after your children, if you don’t feel able to provide that level of attention, then you shouldn’t do it.”

My smile was locked and loaded. “So… you complained about the local kids?”

“Well of course. I mean, someone has to step up and take responsibility. They’d come round here at all hours shouting and drinking and intimidating passersby. Do you know, one of them actually asked me if I’d go into the shop and buy him cigarettes?”

“Really?”

If she’d had any suspicions of me, she was now swept up by the sheer momentum of her indignation. “Naturally I informed the police, but they didn’t bother, they never do. And the council—I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but I feel very strongly on this point—the council never respond to a situation until it’s too late.”

“So the local kids had been… antisocial?”

“That’s how it starts, isn’t it?” she said. “I mean first it’s drinking, and shouting at strangers, and before you know it you’ve got people being mugged and windows being smashed. There’s an atmosphere of fear these days, and what are they afraid of? They’re afraid of young, unem
ployed teenage men. Who are often black,” she added. “I mean, I know it’s horribly politically incorrect to say it, but I really do feel that until we face up to a few harsh truths in our society, we will never be able to cure it.”

“The kids… mugged people?”

She hesitated before giving a triumphant cry of, “No, but it was clearly going to be their next step!”

Unable to make better sense of what she said, I demanded, “What can you tell me about the night of the murder?”

“A murder?” she echoed sharply. “I didn’t think the police were calling it that.”

“A boy died,” I replied. “It was, by all accounts, not pretty.”

She shifted in her seat, knees together, back straight. “One of them must have done it. I mean, of course one of them must have done it; even the police should know that.”

“You think the boys… killed their friend? And they’re just pretending to be… whatever it is they’ve become… damaged… in order to get away with it?”

“Yes,” she said. “That’s what I think. Logically, I mean.”

We stared at her long and hard. Hers was the flat, spaced-out speech of someone behaving perfectly reasonably. The pattern of her thought had been laid out in paths which could only be followed in one direction. You couldn’t argue with that.

“Did you hear anything?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Whatever they did, they did it very quietly. Cold-blooded, I’d call that.”

“See anything? Something… out of the ordinary? Anything that perhaps you might not have told the police, because it seemed… too unlikely?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“But you were in, the night they died?”

“Oh yes! I was the one who called the Neighbourhood Eye, in fact.”

I paused, then sat forward. “The Neighbourhood Eye?” I asked.

“Yes. I’d seen those boys come down here before, and I knew their being here meant trouble, so I called the eye.”

“Mrs Dixon,” I said, taking it one word at a time, “I need you to tell me about this Neighbourhood Eye.”

“It’s a new thing,” she explained. She reached over to where a fake crocodile-skin handbag sat on a table beneath a curling steel lamp. “I was part of the Neighbourhood Watch of course, but you really need the entire community to pull together to make those schemes work and, of course, these days no one’s really heard of community, have they? So when I heard about the eye, it seemed so much more appropriate. Ah—”

She pulled out a card from her wallet, and passed it to me.

It said:

Neighbourhood Eye
The community support group for citizens
concerned about crime.

At the bottom it gave a telephone number.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

“Oh,” a tone of seeming surprise, the innocent discovering that the world itself isn’t as innocent as they’d hoped. “From a friend.”

“Which friend?”

“Rumina.”

“What does Rumina do; who is this Rumina?”

“She’s the wife of one of my husband’s business partners. My husband works in development—have you ever had one of the protein drinks that they sell at gyms? They’re trying to expand the market, make it more…”

“And what does Rumina do?”

“Finance, of some kind. She explains it sometimes, but not very well. I must admit I thought she was a bit of a trophy wife, so young, but actually she’s surprisingly bright.”

“Does the company she work for have a name?”

“Yes, but…” a huff of irritation, “is this really relevant? Neighbourhood Eye provides an excellent service—a service, I think, which the council should be providing itself, otherwise what is the point of us paying our council taxes?”

“Mrs Dixon,” I cut in, “if I was to say to you, ‘witchcraft,’ what would you think?”

“I don’t know. I’d hope you wouldn’t, as I can’t really see…” Her expression was one of confusion, as she wondered exactly what manner of fruitcake she’d invited into her home. I changed tack, hoping the moment would pass too fast to register. “So on the night that the boys… on the night whatever happened happened, you rang the Neighbourhood Eye?”

“Yes, I did. They were extremely supportive.”

“So what did they do?”

“They said they’d talk to the police. They have connections, you see.”

“And did they?”

“Well…” she shuffled her chair, “I don’t know. I assume they did. But all that… the trouble… clearly happened before the police arrived.”

“What time did you call the Neighbourhood Eye?”

“I think around seven-thirty.”

“And when did the first police cars arrive?”

“Around half past ten.”

“But this was after the death?”

“Yes.”

“How soon after?”

“I don’t know. The first I knew of it was when the police cars arrived. I thought it was them, the Neighbourhood Eye, responding to my call. I didn’t realise until they started taping off the area what had happened.”

We sat pondering her words. “May I keep this?” we asked, indicating the card she’d handed to me.

“If you must.”

“Rumina,” we added.

“What?”

“We’d like to know what company Rumina worked for.”

“I’ll… phone my husband,” she stammered, moving towards the door.

“Good,” we said, standing up. “We’ll come with you.”

She made the call.

We stood behind her as she did. It doesn’t take a knife or a gun, or a promise of either, to make others afraid. When it’s you and a stranger in an empty house on a quiet day, every floorboard is suddenly a blunt weapon, every kitchen fork destined for your eye.

She had called a switchboard, rather than her husband’s direct phone, and asked to be put through to Mr Dixon. The receptionist didn’t smell the rat that Mrs Dixon was trying to feed.

When she got through she said, “I’m very sorry to bother you in a meeting…”

His voice was clear enough for both of us to hear. “I’m not in a meeting.”

“Aren’t you? I must have made a mistake.”

Mr Dixon’s voice was important and uninterested as he said, yes, she probably had.

She said there was a man who claimed to be from the council.

He said to tell this man to do something about the bins.

She said the man wanted to know which company Rumina worked for.

He said who the fuck is Rumina, what does this man care anyway?

She said, you remember dear, Rumina, Jeremy’s wife, you remember Rumina?

He gave a too-big exclamation of realisation and said yes, of course, funny little woman. I watched the back of Mrs Dixon’s ears burning as she stammered, well yes, Rumina, who does she work for, it’s really important, perhaps her husband should come home and talk to this council man in person, yes?

He said don’t play silly buggers I’ve got work to do I’m sure you’ll handle it all perfectly fine wait a second…

A pause on the line while he hollered at someone in the distant unknown of his office. We waited. Mrs Dixon smiled at me, the crooked, terrible smile of the mortally afraid.