Wall (where the old city defences ran), Bishopsgate (the gate for the bishops), Cheapside (a shopping street), Poultry (a street where chickens were driven to market), and so on. The name of this area is the Barbican, referring to another gateway into the old city of London; and, as any magician, tourist or lost wanderer will tell you, it is a space-time vortex, all in gritty concrete.
Someone had clearly intended it to be a self-contained utopia, and in many ways, this was what it was. At its heart lay a shallow, slightly scummy lake in which the occasional optimistic heron sometimes waded, and from which there extended a maze of flats, cafés, restaurants, theatres, cinemas, conference halls, art galleries, schools, churches, gyms, libraries and gardens, connected to each other by walkways, bridges and tunnels, and mystic yellow lines that invariably led to the roof, even if they claimed to be leading you towards the underground car parks. A music school squatted behind a theatre whose billboards advertised Japanese mime artists and Cuban street bands, a piece of the city’s old Roman wall crumbled mutely in a private garden for local residents, and on every other balcony dangled half-dead geraniums in flowerpots, maintained to the lowest standard the council could tolerate. A single, slightly grungy food and supplies shop loitered beneath a flight of slippery stairs, and among the high towers and tiled walkways, mini-tornados swished and tugged, and tore at even the best-tended haircuts. And because this was a place that had everything for an artistic, well-ordered, middle-class life, it also had the equipment for a quiet, tidy death, so that, wedged on one corner at the end of a bridge across a street some thirty feet below was the coroner’s office.
Quite how the local residents felt about this was hard to judge. Our suspected conclusion was that they simply regarded it in the same way the average punter regarded a beggar: seen, noted, and then carefully, politely and deliberately ignored and forgotten. In many ways, it was hard to believe the sign declaring “coroner” wasn’t a malign trick, pasted up by some local wit with a morbid sense of humour.
So, the wind dragging at my coat, and my right hand throbbing inside its bandage, I walked up to the small blue door tucked away round the side of the Barbican, and rang the bell.
Nothing happened.
I rang again.
A security guard appeared behind the wire-meshed glass. He looked like so many guards in the city: mid- to late forties, tightly cut hair turning greyish, dark uniform, black radio, shiny shoes, skin the colour of deep-roasted coffee. He opened the door, but didn’t stand aside for me. When you look like the Michelin man on a famine diet, trust is not so easy to inspire.
“You looking for someone?” he asked.
I looked him up and down. He seemed like a principled man, the last thing I needed to see.
“Was a body brought here last night,” I asked, “sometime after two in the morning?”
“I’d have to check the records. You family?”
“Yes” was the easy answer, but it led inevitably to the question “what name are you looking for?”. I had no idea. In all the confusion, I only knew of the Midnight Mayor as the Midnight Mayor, nothing more specific.
“No,” I said.
“Can I ask why you’re interested?”
“Journalist” was the next most obvious answer, but unlikely to make me any friends. “Police” would require identification, “friend” would be politely told to go home. We said, “Someone attacked us last night, a minute before the man in your mortuary died. We don’t know of any connection, but other people think there is one and until we find out what it is and why this man died, we are going to be hunted and assaulted and quite possibly die, and however hideous this world is, we would not for all the fire in the wire die and leave it. Please - will you let me see the body?”
The security man blinked at me. “What?” he said numbly.
“I only need a few minutes.”
“You what?”
So much for the power of honesty.
“You could call your colleague,” I added.
“I don’t have a colleague . . .” he mumbled, and realised his mistake. I reached forward and grabbed the back of his neck with my right hand, pushed the palm of my left into the gap between his eyebrows and squeezed. The magic of sleep was easy at this hour, the night so quiet, footsteps so loud and lonely; the people of