“‘Give me back my hat’,” whispered Oda, and for a moment there was almost a kind woman there, leaning over a dying kid. “What does it mean?”
“‘Give me back . . .’”
“What does it mean?” she hissed, shaking him gently by the shoulders. “What does it mean?!”
“I took it,” he whispered. “I took her hat. I’m sorry, I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so sorry Mum? I’m sorry I’m sorry Mum! Fuck shit please God fuck!”
“Whose hat? Whose hat did you take? His? Mr Pinner’s? Did you take his hat, is that why this has happened? Whose hat did you take, Mo?!”
“Mum! I’m sorry I’m sorry I’ll never again honest please you fucking help me fucking shit please help bitch help me sorry so sorry please . . .!”
I looked up sharply, there was something happening at the far end of the platform, a shadow in the corridor.
“Whose hat did you take?!” screamed Oda, shaking him now, not gentle at all. “Tell me!”
A light went out at the end of the platform, then another, and another, the long neon strips dying around us. And there was someone moving in the darkness, a man moving in it, the twin red crosses painted on the floor burning now with thick angry smoke, popping and spitting in rage. I dropped the spray can, backing away from the smell of it. One minute, said the indicator, just one little minute and then it’d all be OK, the train would come and we would go and Mo would live and Loren wouldn’t cry and we’d live ohgodohgodohgodohgod just let us live please just live a little longer just a little live and see and smell and
“Whose hat?!” shrieked Oda’s voice as the darkness spread.
“Hers,” whispered Mo. “Hers. The traffic warden’s hat.”
“Oda,” I whispered, as the light went out from the twin red crosses and the last neon tube died. “Oda, get away . . .”
“Which traffic warden, what traffic warden . . .”
“Dollis Hill,” he whispered, “the traffic warden’s hat.”
“Oda! Get away from him!”
She staggered back just as he started to scream. I grabbed her, turned her head away, turned my face away, heard him scream and scream, heard his skin tear and part, saw in the dying neon glow the blood tumble black across his flesh, spill black into the platform, roll black down into the trench for the trains to run in, spitting and sparking when it struck the tracks, and he just screamed and screamed and screamed until there was no breath left to scream with, no mouth left to scream with, no human left to scream, just a piece of dead, flayed meat lying on the platform and Oda was holding us, she was holding us as if we were going to be any use in the buried darkness of that place.
And that was it.
Polite silent death.
A drip, drip, drip of black, ink-stained blood rolling down off the platform’s edge. The rapid breathing of Oda, her face pressed against my shoulder, my head turned into her hair. The only light came from the indicator board, orange letters scrawling across the thin rectangular screen.
1. High Barnet via Bank - 1 mins
2. Edgware via Bank - 7 mins
3. Edgware via CharingX - 13 minsGIVE ME BACK MY HAT GIVE ME BACK MY HAT GIVE ME BACK MY HAT GIVE ME
A pair of footsteps, leather soles, walking down the platform, a smiling face half-lit up in reflected orange glow. Mr Pinner, not a mark on him, examining the burnt-out twin crosses I had painted onto the concrete.
“Domine dirige nos,” he said at last. “The blessing of the city.”
I couldn’t speak, we couldn’t breathe.
He looked up slowly, considered first me, then Oda, then me again. Then he started to smile. “Oh,” he breathed. “How unlikely! Not just a sorcerer and some Aldermen. The Midnight Mayor made a phone call before he died.”
I held up my right hand, trembling with fear, and cold from the rain. The twin crosses ached across my skin. “Domine dirige nos,” I whispered. “Keep back.”
“You!” breathed Mr Pinner. “Well . . . I have to admit I’m surprised! Considering that it was you who killed Bakker, you who brought down the Tower, you who destroyed the only institution that might have kept your city safe from my revenge . . . and Nair made you Midnight Mayor?”
“Believe me, it’s as inexplicable to me as it is to you.”