The Minority Council (26 page)

In the middle of this had-been courtyard, someone had parked a car.

It was not a happy car.

At some point a head-on collision had collapsed half the bonnet, an incident that had probably convinced the owner to let the wheels rust, the paint flake, the windscreen and two of the windows to stay cracked, and the stuffing to burst out of the seats. The air bag in the driver’s seat was still hanging down, a wilting white rag.

Sat on the boot of this car, sharing coffee and, from the sound of it, having altogether too much fun, were two women. One wore a purple headscarf. The other wore a bright pink woolly hat with a bobble on top, from under which a mass of black hair had erupted like pyroclastic flow from a volcano. Nabeela Hirj and Penny Ngwenya were laughing while drinking coffee from a thermos flask
and eating take-away chow mein from foil tubs, as I rounded the car, resisting the urge to moan piteously.

Their laughter should have stopped at the sight of me, but somehow whatever joke they’d been telling was only enhanced by my appearance and it was a full fifteen seconds before my apprentice managed to say, “Hey, Matthew!”

Nabeela managed a little self-control as well, and added, “You look really bad.”

I grunted, “You got any more of that coffee?”

Penny shook the flask. “Uh-uh. Sorry.” Then, as I limped closer, she reeled back in horror and added, “You
stink
!”

I moaned and leant against the car as the two women shuffled up to make room on the boot. “Garam masala,” I explained.

“Yeah, and why are you, like, wearing it as fucking aftershave or whatever?” demanded my apprentice.

I told her what Dr Seah had told me. There was a stunned silence. “Wow, that is totally… wow,” Penny murmured at last. Nabeela’s chopsticks had frozen in mid-air.

“I’m sorry,” I spluttered, “Can we try this again? How about ‘Hey, Matthew, you’re being chased by bloodhounds, you’ve been kicked in the head and cracked some ribs, you’re having a really stressful day, sorry we drank all the coffee, anything we can do for you to alleviate your pain and misery in this hour of need?’ ”

Penny nudged Nabeela. “Told you.”

“How long’ve you been his apprentice?” hissed Nabeela back.

“Oh God, feels like for-fucking-ever.”

“And he’s never…”

“No!”

“What
never
…”

“Not once, ever.”

“Well.”

“I know.”

“Shame.”

“Totally.”

The two having shared this moment of sisterly understanding, Penny turned back to me and fired up her best radiant smile. We cringed. Penny Ngwenya, sorceress and ex-traffic warden, who once got a little upset and accidentally summoned the death of cities: my apprentice. She had skin the colour of deep-roast coffee beans, purple-varnished nails that could have lacerated diamond and an attitude towards the rest of the world that made Genghis Khan look shy. In roughly equal parts, she was my student, saviour, and punishment by a darkly comic celestial power for sins unknown and unforgiven. And worst of all, in Nabeela Hirj, herself hardly a wilting flower, Penny seemed to have made a friend. “So you and the fairy godmother not so pally, huh?”

“Who’s the fairy godmother?” asked Nabeela.

“Bloke in a dress,” replied Penny.

“Drug dealer,” I explained.

“And you pissed him off… trying to find out what happened to the kids in the playground?” Nabeela asked.

“Well, no…”

“You just piss people off professionally?”

“Well, sorta…”

“Because,” she went on, “you’re the Midnight Mayor?”

There was a shuffling silence. Nabeela wore an expression of polite interest.

“Um. Yeah,” I mumbled. Then, when that didn’t quite seem to do it, added, “Sorry.”

“I don’t see why you didn’t just
tell
me you were the Mayor.” Nabeela didn’t sound angry… just disappointed. Much much worse.

“Well, if you recall the occasion of our first chat, you had just been thrown bodily out of the Aldermen’s office screaming ‘Fascist pig’ and it didn’t seem like you were exactly on the Midnight Mayor’s fan list or anything, and you know how it is when someone says their name at a party but you don’t quite catch it but then they’re talking about something else and they got your name fine and by the time you’ve got the guts to ask for their name again, you’ve been talking for an hour already and offering to share a taxi back and…” I saw their expressions, and trailed off. “… okay, so when that moment comes, let me know.”

“It’s cool,” said Nabeela. “I mean, I get it. Midnight Mayor is a really pompous title for a guy to have, and the whole dressed-up-as-garbage look you’ve got going is probably a really good disguise, helpful, I’m guessing, in your work, yeah?”

“Well, I wouldn’t go so…”

“Matthew,” said Penny, “you’re wearing garam masala and a lot of bandage; think about it.”

“Yeah… But… Sorry…”

Before I could embarrass myself further, Penny stood up, thrust her empty tub of chow mein into a plastic bag and exclaimed, “Well, now that’s all cleared up, why don’t we get on with what we came here to do?”

My apprentice had come prepared.

The abandoned car they had been eating their supper
on, she’d managed to convince a very nice young man to deliver based on her, like, charms like, you know?

The can of petrol we duly threw over the car.

The bottles of cider and alcopops we spilt around the car in a wide circle, before smashing the bottles against the ground in great snow-bursts of thinly sprayed glass.

One of the packets of cigarettes we lit, and let burn down, leaving four of them as markers at roughly where we considered north, south, east and west to be on the compass of our alcoholic circle.

Another two cigarettes we lit, and put into two more empty bottles, quickly taping over the tops to trap the swirling smoke, just in case.

Then Penny took the cans of spray paint and, very carefully, drew an eye on the wall opposite the petrol-soaked car. The outer edge was white, the inner pupil was black, and there was no colour in the entire thing.

“And this will help us find out what happened to the kids in my borough?” asked Nabeela sceptically as Penny put the finishing touches to her handiwork.

“With any luck,” I groaned from my perch propped against a clearish bit of wall. “Take this, will you?”

Nabeela took the proffered roll of blue and white crime-scene tape gingerly, as if afraid the handling of it might of itself be a criminal offence. The last ingredient of the spell was a six-pack of Polish beer, the cheapest in the shop. Penny handed us one can each, cracked hers open and took a long swig.

Nabeela hesitated. “My religion…”

I added, “I’m a bit whacked out on painkillers.”

Penny rolled her eyes. “Oh, I see, like that, is it? It’s all ‘Penny do this, Penny do that, Penny make it happen’ and
you two just lounge back there. I mean, no offence to your religion or whatever, you know; I’m just saying, that’s completely cool and I respect that; I mean, it’s not like getting pissed is fun or cheap these days, but seriously, Matthew, when are you not whacked out on painkillers or something?”

She snatched the beer cans back, opened them and took several more slurps, then threw each one overarm at the petrol-soaked car and barked, “Okay then, let’s do it!”

Ten minutes later we stood on the balcony of an abandoned flat, looking towards where the car was burning. The blaze by now was bright enough to make us squint, and if I turned away I could feel its heat on the back of my neck.

And there were figures around it.

They’d drifted in one at a time, out of nowhere. They wore grey tracksuit trousers and baggy sweatshirts, with hoods pulled up around their heads. White headphone leads ran down into the front pouch of their tops, and their hands were slouched deep into their pockets or wore logo-marked sports gloves to match their trainers. Moving slowly, they circled the fire, basking in its heat. And when they raised their heads, it was briefly possible to see…

… that they had no faces. Nothing at all, nothing but darkness and vacancy inside their hoods, nothing but what they were: spectres, walking shadows drawn to the summoning circle of burning alcohol and petrol, shattered glass and melting cans. Like life, magic too has its parasites.

Nabeela said, “Are they… safe?”

“Totally!” lied Penny.

“Not really,” I admitted.

“But are they going to try and hurt
us
?” demanded Nabeela, keeping her voice steady through an exercise of will.

“Probably not.”

“And if they did, we’ve got, like, the Midnight fucking Mayor to fucking defend us!” Penny declared, gesturing at me like a circus master presenting its lion.

Nabeela’s brow furrowed deeper. “Yessss… but aren’t you off your head on painkillers?”

“Oh, that’s a good thing!” exclaimed Penny. “Matthew only gets truly mega-mystic once someone’s stabbed him or shit.”

“What Penny means is that I save my best tricks for when the situation is really bad. Which this isn’t.” I scrutinised the scene below for a few moments longer, then said, “I think I should make a call now. Penny—can I borrow your phone?”

Her mobile was pink.

“Don’t give me that look; it was a present, okay?”

The number I needed was written on a card.

The white card I’d taken from Mrs Dixon.

A phone rang.

A woman’s voice answered.

“Good evening. Neighbourhood Eye: how may I help you?”

“Hi there,” I sang out, watching the spectres from the corner of my eye as they moved round the burning car. “I don’t know if this is the right time or place, but I was given this number by a friend. Are you the community watch service?”

“We are, sir; how may we assist you?”

“I was wondering, do you have any legal powers?”

“I’m afraid not, sir; but we can expedite matters through our local outreach officers with both the police and the magistrate, and hope to provide a free, public service for any and all who are concerned about social issues presently affecting their community. In this day and age we have to look out for each other, don’t we sir?”

“Well, yes, absolutely!”

“So how may I help you, sir?”

“The thing is,” I sighed, pumping old-fashioned English embarrassment into every word, “there are these kids down on my local neighbourhood and they’re really causing a ruckus. I mean, they’ve been drinking, and I know young people drink, of course young people drink, but I do think they’re just working each other up into some sort of frenzy, what with not having a responsible adult there to defuse them and of course it’s not a police matter, I mean, the police can never do anything until the crime has already been committed, can they? But that’s too late for the victim, that’s always too late…”

The woman’s voice cut me off. “I think I see what you’re saying, sir, and I completely understand. Why don’t you give me your address, and we’ll send someone down to investigate the situation; see if we can convince these kids to move on.”

“Oh, I don’t know if…”

“Truly, sir. We’ll handle it.”

I gave her the address.

When it was done, Penny took the phone. Nabeela was looking at me with an expression somewhere between surprise and, just possibly, respect. “You know, when you need, you’re almost slimy. I mean, in some totally hidden, nice way.”

“What now?” demanded Penny.

“Now? We wait for the Neighbourhood Eye.”

It was a gamble.

No reason to think it would come. Whatever
it
would turn out to be.

No way to know if what we had prepared would be enough.

Spectres circling a burnt-out car, the smell of beer and broken glass, paint on the wall, a phone call. But no way to know if what we had prepared would be enough.

Penny said at last, “Fucking freezing.”

“You’re not good at uncomfortable silences, are you?” I said.

“I cook, I sew, I do my own DIY, I pay my taxes, I look after my nieces and nephews when my aunt’s away, I can ask for the bill in French and order paella in Spanish, and can summon spectres like a fucking taxi cab, what do you want here: perfection?”

“We could play I-spy,” suggested Nabeela. We stared at her. “I’m just saying.”

“You don’t think,” remarked Penny, “that would undermine this amazing aura of impending doom that we’ve got going here?”

I was scanning the low courtyard, half listening to them both.

“Okay—I spy with my little eye, something beginning with ‘s.’ ”

Watching the hoodied creatures circle the fire.

“Spectres?”

“I’m not gonna play with you if you’re like that,” grumbled Penny.

“Look, you chose ‘s,’ okay, and… You hear that?” I glanced up at Nabeela, curious; heard nothing but the popping of flames and the slow groan of heated metal. “It’s like…”

She stopped mid-sentence, clapping her hands over her ears. Penny was flinching too, turning her head this way and that, as if trying to shake off a wasp. Nabeela’s face was scrunched in pain, her body bending in on itself.