so let’s assume I’m running on a bit of a clock here. Mo stole a traffic warden’s hat, and she, God knows how, has summoned the death of cities. I don’t think she meant to, not really; I’m still hazy on the details, but there it goes. And so it is. Where’s the traffic warden’s hat?”
“I don’t know anything about a hat!”
“You wouldn’t be lying to me, would you? Only it seems to me that you’re a guy inside what could well be an airtight jar dependent on a whole host of fluids being fed in from the outside and that really the Gestapo couldn’t have done better if they’d tried . . .”
“I don’t know anything!” he wailed.
“Would you lie to us?”
“I swear, I swear, I swear . . .”
“Righto,” I sighed. “Well, I’ll admit it’s a bit of a disappointment. City going to burn because of an untrained sorceress’s rage and all that. Skin torn from flesh and so on, death by ten thousand paper cuts. You know. Good news is, state you’re in, you’ll probably be dead first. So is there anything you can tell me that might just stop London from being obliterated in a blast of untamed magical fury?”
“The . . . the woman,” he stammered.
“Which woman? The traffic warden?”
“The contact. There was a woman, I dealt with a woman to arrange it. To get the boy. I dealt with a woman, working on his behalf. Someone else helping Mr Pinner.”
I folded my arms on the top of the casing, pressed my nose against
it, smiled. “Which woman?” I asked, softer than warm honey on a summer’s day.
“I was told to contact a woman, by Mr Pinner, if anything happened,
this woman . . .”
“A contact? An associate of Mr Pinner? She did notice that he’s the living death of cities, the harbinger of destruction, the feast in the fire and so on and so forth?”
“I was just told to contact her.”
“Did you?”
“No. There wasn’t any need, he said. Emergencies only. He said I’d be spared, if I helped him, that I’d be spared and could live and rebuild and survive and have a new heart and . . .”
“He said everything you wanted to hear and you just thought the silver lining was a cliché,” I sighed. “Great. Tell me how I can contact this woman.”
“There’s a number.”
“Which number?”
“In my organiser.”
“Seen it, stole it, got it. What name?”
“Smith - Ms Smith.”
“How inspired. You’re really not very good at this, are you? Just a fat guy with a cardiac problem. If you weren’t such a pustulent testicle with it, I’d almost feel sorry for electrocuting you. But whaddaya know!” I was rummaging through his organiser, flicking through and there it was, under “S” for Smith, written in the same neat hand, just a name and a telephone number. “You know if this doesn’t work, or if we die in the attempt, you’ll die, right?”
“I’m telling you everything . . .”
“Not our meaning,” we sighed. “But keep up the moral revival!”
And once again, we walked away.
The number was for a mobile. That was good; that could help us.
We went to North Acton station, sat down on the nearest platform bench, thumbed on our mobile phone, and started to compose a text. It’s easier to lie briefly than to invent lies at great length.
We wrote:IT’S BOOM BOOM, SERIOUS PROBLEM NEED HELP DANGER MEET?
Predictive texting might lend itself to good spelling, but it can’t fill in the punctuation. I entered the mobile number for “Ms Smith” and sent the text.
The reply came back in less than five minutes.
WHAT PROBLEM, WHAT DANGER, HE WILL BE ANGRY.
I replied:MIDNIGHT MAYOR ALDERMEN HELP ME MEET?
This time, the response took nearly ten minutes. I watched the trains go by, counting down towards midnight and the last train.
Then it came:HACKNEY MARSHES; NAVY CADETS BUILDING, TWO HOURS.
This, we could do.
I caught the first train heading east.
We could taste the beginning of the end.
I just felt tired.
Disrupted sleep patterns?
Too much of too much.
Ta-da!
Still not dead.
Still alive.
Watch us burn.
Central Line, heading east. North Acton, East Acton, White City, the beginning of the descent into tunnels, Shepherd’s Bush, Holland Park. The stretch that ran beneath Oxford Street and I could still feel it overhead, its vibrancy, brightness, tacky, gaudy glee making me feel more tired by comparison, a great fire raging just overhead and me down in the cold, empty carriages of the tunnels. Holborn, Chancery Lane, our hand ached, how it ached as we passed beneath the Square Mile,