The Minority Council (59 page)

Penny stood holding the teabag over the mug, mouth hanging open.

She said, “Oh my fucking God.”

I shrugged, putting the pan in the drying rack.

“No, but seriously,” she said. “Oh my fucking God. You’re fucking insane.”

She was quivering with the effort of suppressed vehemence. “You’ve summoned the culicidae 2.0. You’ve given life to something that should be dead. And dead is dead and it’s shit, it’s shit and it hurts and it hurts to die and it hurts to live when you’ve seen someone who’s dead when you’ve seen your friend… it hurts. But Jesus fucking Christ, Matthew. Would Meera want this? To be… sucked back, not herself, not human, just some fucking part of some fucking bigger plan with you in charge of it going ‘Hey, you ain’t got no life, no hope, no nothing now,
just dust and more fucking dust, so off you fucking go.’ Didn’t you see? The Minority Council went ‘Let’s make a big fucking easy solution,’ but there are some things—there are some fucking stupid, fucking painful fucking fucked-up things and they make you feel… like nothing matters any more, ever again. What have you done?”

I stared down at the dirty water and had nothing to say.

“Can you control it?” she asked. “This thing?”

“I… don’t know.”

“Can you destroy it?”

“I… think so.”

Penny sat down with a quiet groan. I pulled off the washing-up gloves, and looked properly at my apprentice. Who looked away. Finally I asked, “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“No.”

“I’m… sorry.”

“Don’t be. Don’t… I don’t blame you. You get that, right? It wasn’t your fault.”

She sighed, stretching out her legs slowly under the table, letting her head roll back. With her eyes half closed towards the ceiling she murmured, “What you gonna do about Templeman? And don’t say something as fucked up as what you just told me.”

I scratched the end of my nose with the rough cotton of a bandage, and thought hard. “Don’t know,” I said. “It’s… difficult. There’s no courts of law for these situations, no prison service, no friendly super-charged coppers.”

“There’s the Aldermen,” she replied. “I thought they were all, like ‘We make the law, we enforce the law, we are the fucking law’ or whatever.”

“Yes…” I dragged out the word. “But… Alderman justice is hard, fast and absolute. Their only guiding principle is: what’s best for the greater good? And sure, that’s supposed to be the guiding principle of law, but it doesn’t leave much room for redemption or understanding. Templeman has believed himself to be acting for the ‘greater good.’ ”

“You sound almost sorry for him.” Penny’s voice was unforgiving.

“No—no I’m not,” I exclaimed. “He did things to people, to me, to you, to… Nabeela.” Then, “Do you want him dead?” we asked, so quickly I was surprised to hear our voice.

Penny’s knuckles whitened around the tea mug.

“Would you do it?” we murmured. “Would you look him in the eye and make him die?”

“Yes.”

Something thick and heavy flattened the breakfast in my stomach, turned the taste of bacon to the raw bite of meat in my mouth. But we reached across the table, wrapped our hand around hers, and didn’t know why. “Don’t,” we said. “Dead is dead and it hurts until all you can do is hollow out the place where there’s pain. But don’t. Don’t do it.”

“Is that it?” she asked, not meeting our eyes.

“Yes,” I replied. “Pretty much.”

“Okay,” she breathed. A smile. Perhaps the first I’d seen on her face for a while, faint, but true. “Let’s go to the office and do that Midnight Mayor thing that you do.”

Walking, after all that sitting, was a mistake. I felt my pulse throb in the eroded skin of my hands, and forced myself to breathe regardless of the shooting pain in my chest.

At St Paul’s Underground, riding the long creaking escalator to the surface felt as much effort as if it’d been an ordinary staircase. The steps themselves moved slower than the rubber handrail, causing delight in a child who was leaning on it and found his body being perpetually stretched by the discrepancy and fury to a pensioner with a thick walking stick who cursed London Transport under his breath, loud enough for all to hear.

At Harlun and Phelps, out of instinct I headed for the goods entrance, looking round, as I went, for bloodhounds, gangsters, murderers, and medusas who had an angry agenda and strong feelings about local council politics.

Kelly was waiting at the bottom of the stairs. She sprang to her feet with a welcoming grin. A magazine offering the true secrets to avoiding wrinkles disappeared under her briefcase as she exclaimed, “Mr Mayor! How lucky I happened to be sitting here enjoying my morning break when you turned up, isn’t that a coincidence? Please do come upstairs,” she babbled, the chinchilla in her soul bounding to the fore. “We’ve got the lunch of your choice and there’s a medic on call to have another look at those bandages and an acupuncturist as well if you need one and I don’t know how you feel about chiropody but actually it turns out the whole body is this great interconnected mass of nerve endings…”

“That much I’d figured.”

“… and there’s some people who’d really like to talk to you…”

“Oh God, who?”

“Well, there’s a representative from a group of individuals calling themselves Magicals Anonymous who are looking to set up a support agency…”

“Seriously?”

“… and there’s a goblin shaman who keeps on insisting that the earth is burning all around and we just can’t see it…”

“Should have stayed in Osterley!” sang out Penny.

“And of course your senior staff want to see you to talk about recent events.”

“Great. Because that’s not going to end in blood and tears, is it? Are any of them armed?”

“All weaponry within the building is kept under strict lock and key,” recited Kelly. “Access to the armoury is fully logged, and the issuing of any weapons likely to cause structural damage in excess of £50,000 must be countersigned by a senior watch officer.”

“How about a bed?” I asked as the goods lift rose up through the floors. “We’ve got a chiropodist, an acupuncturist, an armoury; do we have a bed anywhere?”

“No. But I’ll look into it at once, Mr Mayor!”

“How about a snooker table?” added Penny. She saw my expression and shrugged.

Sure enough, Kelly gave a cry of, “What a fabulous idea! Obviously I’m all for the team away-day, but they come so rarely; a snooker table on the premises could really help the departments bond with each other.”

The doors swished open at the top floor. We stepped out into a service corridor, past bags of recycling waiting to be taken down. “You have team away-days?” I asked faintly.

“Of course. Chocolate making was my favourite, although we also do the more traditional away-day sports—paintballing, rowing, ukulele playing…”

I stopped so hard that Penny walked straight into me. “No bloody way.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Mayor…”

“No bloody way, ukulele playing.”

“It’s an excellent team-bonding activity…”

I laughed, and it hurt, and I laughed anyway.

Kelly had prepared a meeting room.

Prepared in that there were extra cushions on the chair, extra sandwiches on the table and no one to watch me flinch as I eased my way into a seat.

Words were whispered at the door.

The door was too big, the room too wide, the ceiling too high, the table too long. Someone had laid out green leather mats in front of each chair. It made no sense to us. They looked far more expensive than the table on which they sat, so what was the point?

“Now, we’re going to do this gently,” explained Kelly. “I decided that you probably didn’t want to observe the usual protocols of the workplace, so had the agenda put aside until next week. And obviously, owing to the sensitive nature of the meeting, no one will be taking minutes.

“So, if you’re ready, Mr Mayor…?”

Kelly opened the door one more time.

Aldermen came in.

They wore their formal black, and entered with heads bowed, hands folded in front of them. I could have been forgiven for expecting a coffin. They lined up, first five, then ten, then thirty, then too many for me to see, pressing in around the room until it wore them as wallpaper. Penny’s fingers tightened on the back of my chair. Kelly waited until the last were inside, then closed the door quietly, walked to the opposite end of the table, put her
briefcase down on it flat, looked me in the eye and said, “Domine dirige nos.”

“Domine dirige nos,” intoned the Aldermen, men and women, old and young, one voice, eyes still fixed downwards.

“Ladies, gentlemen,” she declared, “we are here to say farewell to some of our brethren. I wish us to thank Rumina Rathnayake for all her hard work as Minority Council Treasurer, a post she is giving up after tireless labour in order to retreat into the countryside and seek a cure for the irrevocable curse of the Beggar King. She will, I am sorry to say, experience sorrow, loss, regret, disease and, above all else, loneliness over the coming years as the King’s curse slowly blinds all the world to her passing, until she dies cold and alone, a frozen shadow on the earth. We thank her for all her service, and if you could all sign her farewell card on your way out, it would be appreciated.”

“Lord lead us,” intoned the Aldermen.

“Domine dirige nos,” confirmed Kelly. “I’m sure you’d all like to contribute to the flower and fruit package that we will be sending to Cecil Caughey, President, Minority Council. He’s currently confined in an asylum, on suicide watch after his overexposure to a burning heart of rage and fury of his own making, so please, if you do send him any gifts other than the fruit basket for which we will be accepting donations, I’d ask you to make sure they aren’t sharp. Lord lead us.”

“Domine dirige nos,” they repeated.

“After due consideration, our colleagues Ms Holta, Mr Fadhil and Mr Kwan are all standing down for personal reasons. We are getting them all cufflinks to commemo
rate their years of service, but must buy them as quickly as possible as these are likely to be confiscated upon the start of their prison sentences for murder in the second degree. So please, again, if you wish to contribute to these gifts do make your donation by the end of the working day.”

“Lord lead us.”

“Finally,” she informed us, voice light as a rising lark, “I’m sure we all hear with great regret about the actions of Mr Templeman. It is always a sad reflection on us when one of our own turns out to be a murderer, a traitor, a torturer of innocents, a manipulator of men, a dust addict, a madman and a danger to us all.

“I will be requesting a management review in the near future to discuss just how we managed to let ourselves be so utterly manipulated by a man who represents so much that is evil. Forgive the strong language, but I reiterate: evil. We have all been touched by it, we have all been used by it and so, in our ways, we have all been party to it, if only because we did not stand up and say no. Why, ladies, gentlemen? Why could not one of us, not one, say no?

“Our motto, the words that are burnt into the stones of this city, is Domine dirige nos, Lord lead us. We here gathered who do not believe in a god, we use these words of power to invoke something far more. We ask the city for guidance, for strength from its streets and its walls, its secrets and its shadows. We draw our power, our authority and our righteousness from all that is around us, and in that process we forget that the city is no more and no less than those who move within it. We are not greater than other men. We are not wiser, we are not smarter, we are
not worthy of more or less than those whose air we breathe, whose water we share. This truth is universal, but never more important than within a city. Ladies, gentlemen, I propose that we have failed in our oaths. Our oaths to the city, to the people, and to the Midnight Mayor.”

She held up her right hand, and then took her left across to it. Her nails were tinted silver, a silver sheen around her palm, a reddish glow to her eyes as they met ours. A wisp of blackness curled round her nostrils; her hair wore a metallic sheen. She unfurled a thickening, curling nail that was, perhaps, growing closer to a claw, and in two swift cuts dragged it across the palm of her hand, top to bottom, left to right. The blood rose slowly, then didn’t seem to stop, trickling down over her wrist. “Domine dirige nos,” she breathed, showing no sign of pain, eyes locked on ours.

The Aldermen likewise raised their hands, and for a moment I anticipated blood and cleaning bills. “Domine dirige nos,” they repeated, and there was a power in those words, as there had always been power: not god-power, not spell-power, but city-power etched in with time built on time. We all felt it. Penny’s breathing was short and shallow, and the Aldermen as they stood round the table had a hint of crimson in their eyes, the fever-red of the mad-eyed silver city dragon that guarded the old London Wall, and their skins were stained with its metal taint, and the smog of the old city unfurled in the air as they repeated, “Domine dirige nos.”

Blood rolled down Kelly’s sleeve.

I could feel something thin and hot trickling over the palm of my right hand: blood was oozing through the bandages, seeping out in the shape of the twin crosses. I
stood up, leaning on the table for support, then raised my right hand to them.