The Minority Council (22 page)

I looked at the email long and hard.

Didn’t bother to reply.

I shut the computer down, picked up my bag, and went in search of an exit before we hurt somebody.

The sun was down. Not the thick blackness of night-time down, but winter down, when office lights were still on and people still moved about inside, above the busy street. It was drizzling, in wisps of water too light for gravity to make much effort. Outside my office the police cars were gone; so too the van in which I’d reported a fictitious bomb.

Meanwhile, given such dubious calls on my old number, along with what I’d just read in Harlun and Phelps, I needed a new phone. I pulled up my collar, shrugged my shoulders forward against the cold wind, and headed for Cheapside.

Thirty pounds bought me what I wanted from one of the glass-fronted shops that gleamed along this bus-crawling street. As the man at the counter activated the sim card, I looked at reflections in the glass cabinets nearby that held the most expensive phones, the ones which told you how to look and what to wear, and regarded sending messages as a demeaning secondary function. I also watched the other customers in the store, and the people passing in the street. Waiting, I looked for patterns. If the fairy godmother was all he was supposed to be, a team of his watchers could easily avoid being exposed—what I needed was to force their hand. As the salesman laboriously printed a succession of receipts and failed to convince me I wanted a warranty, I slipped out my old phone from my pocket, and wiggled first the battery, then the sim card, free, just in case I needed them again. I slipped my new phone, still in its packaging, into my bag, turned to face the world again, and went in search of trouble.

I started in the Underground.

St Paul’s station was only a few minutes’ walk away, a shy subway beneath a cobbler’s shop rattling with the noise of a key-cutting machine. The station itself was all dirty tile and curving underground concourse, crowds pushing their way towards the down escalators, all black shoes and drizzle-stained overcoats, beeping oyster cards on yellow readers, and the odd lost tourist wondering which way was out.

I went down to the Central Line.

Everyone, no matter how insensitive to such things, who commutes on the Underground has felt its magic. A thick, hot, dirty magic, a power that slaps you in the face like the winds carried ahead of the trains, or pulls you off
your feet like suction down a tunnel. A magic that gets under your nails like the grime on the handles of the emergency stairways, that buzzes in your head like the hum of the PA system, that wriggles and twists around your feet like the lines on the Underground map. It waxes and wanes with the hour of the day, but always, and without fail, the Underground is burning with it. Here, more than anywhere else, we were safe.

The eastbound platform was heaving, the trains coming every two to three minutes, bursting at the doors. The trains couldn’t take every passenger on the platform at once, so, like ocean waves, the crowds would surge forward and break against the passing trains as they came and went, only to be immediately resupplied from the passages feeding in from behind. Two great fans behind vents were chugging away, labouring to move air around and, though it was cold outside, the warmth on the platforms caused an instant prickling burst of heat. I sat on a bench and let three trains pass, looking out for any and all who weren’t fighting their way to the front.

A girl in a woollen hat stood some way off, listening to music on a pair of oversized headphones and, as I looked her way, she finally boarded the train. The second the doors had closed I headed over to the westbound platform; it too was packed, with people heading towards Acton and the furthest, darkest reaches of West Ruislip. A man in a blue shirt and torn jeans followed me and, when I turned to look his way, changed course without a beat, heading for the nearest Tube map like one lost and suddenly aware of it. I waited for the train, got on, stood by the door and, as the alert began to beep, hopped straight back off. The man with the blue shirt was in the carriage
behind. As the train pulled away he kept his eyes fixed on the map running above the doors, but there was a flash of irritation in his eyes.

I walked to the furthest end of the platform, and caught the next train heading west. At Oxford Circus I changed, and took the unmarked route between the Victoria and Central Line platforms, moving the wrong way, against the crowd through a one-way system. Here too I was followed, by a boy not fifteen years old, in a big green hoodie and a baseball cap. As I caught sight of him in a concave mirror above the steps down to the train, he lowered his eyes, and swerved onto the opposite platform from mine.

Paranoia and security are only ever a thin line apart.

King’s Cross Underground was a mess of old and new, where leaving at the wrong end of a platform could involve walking for what felt like miles of white-tiled passageway. But a more knowing escape, usually by an exit barely marked with a friendly arrow, could, by one escalator and a quick turn to the left, take you where you wanted in an instant. Years of renovation, for the introduction of Eurostar next door at shining renovated St Pancras, had created a mass of shut-off tunnels and half-forgotten walkways that anyone in the know could dive into, in the sure hope that they would not be followed.

My chosen escape route brought me to a high chipboard wall, thrown up across a corridor of yellowing tile and posters advertising films three years out of date. A heavy padlock fastened a makeshift wooden door cut into this permanently temporary wall. I turned my back to the platform and the eyes of the crowd, and ran my finger over the lock, slipping thick, dirt-smelling underground magic,
the black magics of the tunnels, into its core; then I twisted, and felt it snap open.

A metal staircase that stank of rat droppings led up through a metal door into a corridor linking the main terminal of King’s Cross to its Thameslink neighbour, from which trains ran to such exurban spots as Luton Parkway and Milton Keynes. In the concourse at King’s Cross I made my way out past a gold-plated coffee shop offering liquid caffeine in small cups for big prices, and turned east, heading up Pentonville Road towards Islington.

As I walked, I pulled out my new phone and dialled Penny.

“So yeah,” she said, the sound of traffic loud behind her raised voice. “I just wanna check a few things with you, yeah, not because I’m not totally on it or anything, but because you know, you’re my fucking teacher yeah so you should be like taking a proactive interest in this, right?”

“Hit me.”

There was the sound of the phone changing hands, and we imagined Penny Ngwenya, list in one palm, phone in the other, checking off her inventory of goods. “So it’s a can of petrol, yeah, a six-pack of beer, a couple of bottles of like, cheap cider or something, or like those alcopop things or whatever, two packets of fags, a can of spray paint, a switchblade knife and like, an abandoned car, right?”

“And some police tape.”

“Yeah, I mean,
obviously
.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“Yeah—you know how hard it was to, like, get the guys at the impound to just
give
me some shitty abandoned car?”

“You’re an ex-traffic warden; I thought you’d be up on this kind of thing.”

“I just don’t want you taking my total awesomeness for granted, yeah? How long until you reckon you’re getting here, only I’m freezing and getting these weird looks, right.”

“I’m heading your way now, just making sure I’m not being trailed by any mystic mobsters.”

“Would these be the mystic mobsters you made me cancel my date for?” she asked sourly, as I turned a corner past a child’s giant painted sign proclaiming “Say No To Drugs and Bullying.” A picture showed a happy family all holding hands against a backdrop of crossed-out needles and pipes. Someone had drawn a pirate’s moustache and eye patch onto the father, and blacked out two of the mother’s teeth.

“That’s them!” I sang out.

“You’re supposed to sound way more majorly contrite and shit about that,” she grumbled.

“Imagine my face.”

“Yeah—that’s the problem, innit.”

“Look, Penny, there’s someone coming to join us tonight…”

“Someone dishy and datable?”

“It depends on your point of view, I suppose. Her name’s Nabeela, she’s a social worker, and if you could try and be extra-polite and sweet-natured and not swear or curse or—or in fact curse in any way until I’m there—then that’d be lovely.”

“Are you saying I’m fucking rude?” she shrilled.

I turned past a rack of locked bicycles, heading towards the local police station, blue light shining outside, doorway
full of faces you wouldn’t want to meet anywhere else. “I just don’t want her to be overawed by your awesomeness,” I explained.

“Uh-huh. You know, Matthew, you are so full of shit sometimes it’s just like…”

“Gotta go now!”

“Course you have!… Bye!”

I hung up before she could melt the phone. Rounding another corner, by a shopping mall, I glanced in a plate glass window, to see

mother, two daughters, waiting for the bus

boyfriend, girlfriend, bags of shopping going home

one old lady with a shopping buggy

one kid in a blue baseball cap, baggy black trousers, grey jumper and, bugger me, he was looking right at us

Could just be paranoia.

I went into the mall.

As such places went, it wasn’t American in scale. It was a mall in that it had samey shops with samey lighting and samey music, and TV screens in the ceiling showing out-of-sync music videos. I went into a clothes shop at random, picked up a grey jumper and a black hat, went into a fitting room, and waited two minutes. In an out-of-sight corner I then put the grey jumper and hat onto a rejects pile, and picked up a blue jacket and a green jumper instead, bundling them inside my bag. The security guard wasn’t paying attention, neither was the fitting room attendant. It was easier to set off the alarm by the main door than it was to disarm it, so I loitered nearby, twitching enough erratic current into the system to set it wailing a couple of times, before making my exit. By then the security guard had given up after stopping several
perfectly innocent clients and was on the phone for a repairman.

From within a crowd waiting at the nearest bus stop I checked the people in the street and saw

Big Issue
vendor, crutch under one arm, stopping a man with a beard

two women in suits trying to find a taxi

five schoolgirls bickering about the bus

cyclist in black skin-tight leggings unlocking his bike

kid in blue baseball cap, baggy black trousers and, of course, grey jumper, this time being far too careful to be caught looking directly my way, but no getting round it, he’d made me as well as I’d made him and the relationship could only go downhill from here.

I was beginning to understand the urgency in Templeman’s voice when he’d warned me about the fairy godmother.

There was just one place, I hoped, where no tracker, however good, could follow.

I caught the bus to the Barbican.

The Barbican Centre was built after World War Two as a massive experiment in communal living. Here, so the theory went, was everything you could want, not merely to survive, but to live in a cultured and educated way. The original buildings had been bombed to obliteration, and out of this ruin had sprung an artificial lake, a theatre, two cinemas, a concert hall, a library, a music school, a secondary school, a conservatory, a gym complete with swimming pool, and an art gallery, all raised up into a complex of towers and walkways designed to give a sense that the Future Was Here Today.

With no fewer than four Underground stations within
easy striking distance, the Barbican is a bastion of pedestrianised tunnels and passages, both exposed and interior, surrounded by a sea of busy streets that straddle the join between the studios of Clerkenwell and the financial edifices of the city.

It is also, as any urban magician could tell you, or anyone hurrying to find their way between Barbican and Moorgate, a place where the laws of space and time are put through the wringer.

Its origins did not bode well. Built on top of the old London Wall, it was a place where ley lines met: the stones far beneath still seethed with old magics that crawled out into the shadows at night, and played games with perception. During a time of plague, bodies had been dumped by the thousand in nearby pits, and while all sorcerers know that life is magic, all necromancers would be quick to point out that the cessation of life in vast quantities can often pull off the same effect. The resident population should have brought stability, but there was also a continual influx of people to see shows, plays and concerts, which never allowed the power of the Barbican to settle into one distinct form. It was a fuzzing, unpredictable environment for enchantment, like cold and hot air meeting on a storm front.

It was quiet now, up here on the main pedestrianised level, where the wind spun in sideways and the lights were coming on in the Barbican’s three high towers. The scars on my hand itched as I crossed the invisible line of the old city wall, felt it jolt beneath my feet like a live wire. A lot more had been built into the London Wall than just bricks and stones, and just because the bricks and stones were gone, it didn’t mean the magic had faded.