of London fulfils his duties, promoting the financial district of the city, and making deals with names like KPMG, Merrill Lynch, Price Waterhouse Coopers and other megaliths lurking within their glass towers. He attends meetings with Governors, Committees, Secretaries, Aldermen; he shakes no less than a hundred new hands a week, goes abroad on expenses to promote the wonders of London, snarls quietly at the Greater London Authority and its Mayor, who regard the Corporation of London as something of a historical blip in the history of local councils, and perhaps in his vainer moments remembers that Magna Carta permits him, technically, to ban the Queen from visiting the city within the old London walls. He opens museums, attends parties, networks on behalf of the city and every now and then is invited to a wedding at St Paul’s or tea at the Palace and all things considered, has a good time and does an OK thing.
So a year passes; so another Lord Mayor is chosen by the arcane reasonings of the Guildhall and Corporation staff, with no small interest expressed by the great financial giants of the city.
It is only after the Lord Mayor is in bed that the Midnight Mayor comes onto the streets. He too, like his daylight counterpart, must have his procession. Crawling out of the shadows, he carries around his neck the great black key of his office, an iron monster that once used to lock the gates of the wall of London. In his hand he carries a black staff whose thumping upon the cobbled stones can call rioters to order, on his back he wears a black cloak sewn together out of soot and the shrouds of the plague victims. When he walks past St Paul’s Cathedral, they say the statues turn to watch him go. When he stands by the Monument, the great golden flame on its head flickers and spins with burning fire. When he processes around the old wall of London, the shadows follow him wherever he goes. He too, like the Lord Mayor, has his duties. Like the ravens in the Tower, the London Stone, even the river itself, he protects the city, watches over it and keeps it safe from . . . who knows what? It is in the nature of his duty that we never find out what he has protected us from, since to keep us safe, he ensured that it never happened. Some theorists say that he isn’t a man at all, but a creature grown out of stones, a statue come alive from old cobbles and river mud. Others say it’s just a title, just a title as if titles didn’t have power, passed down from one old scrounger to another, generation after generation. Some say that the Midnight Mayor is a man, whose soul has become so consumed by the city that he often forgets he has feet at all, but sees with the eyes of the pigeons and breathes the thick fumes of the double-decker bus and finds in them ambrosia. The Aldermen are his servants - not the mundane, attend-a-few-parties, shake-a-few-hands aldermen of the Lord Mayor, but the other Aldermen, the hat-wearing, gun-toting arseholes of the magical community. And so while the city sleeps, the Midnight Mayor wanders, keeping us safe from all the nasties at the door.
That is, if you believe a word of it. Which under normal conditions, I didn’t.
But these were interesting times.
All of which left me with two major problems:1. What could possibly be so bad that even the Midnight Mayor (if he was real) took an interest?
2. What could possibly be so bad that the Midnight Mayor was killed by it?
My watch had stopped at 2.25 a.m. and the Mayor died at 2.26.
I wanted to find out why.
Mr Earle had said “by the coroner’s report”.
Say what you will for the Aldermen, they were bureaucratic to an extreme. Of course they’d have a coroner’s report on the death of their boss, the Midnight Mayor, of course they would. A coroner’s report and a receipt for the funeral, if there was anything left to bury, and all of it tax deductible, thanking you kindly.
And in the Corporation of London, I had a fairly good idea where to find a coroner.
Just west of Moorgate and south of Old Street is a great grey vastness where a lot of bombs once fell. Street names reveal more about the city’s past than any lingering hints from architecture or archaeology: London