before a bonfire got accidentally out of control. Dudley Sinclair and his friends were very good at losing information that they didn’t want to be found. Bureaucracy seems so innocent until it eats you up; but then this mess was pure embarrassment and mayhem written in sparkling mystic letters. Someone had to have seen it.
As it happened, someone had. I found a half-eaten kebab in the spilt litter billowing over the cobbles and, a bit below, a thrown-away end of pizza, nibbled to tatters except for the crusts. The guilty kebab shop was only round the corner, twenty-four hours a day of pulverised cardboard cooked on a spike. I bought two kebabs: one for me, one for my witness. Then I went back to Raleigh Court and sat down on the charred, wobbling remains of a bench, ate my kebab and left the second one open, salad and all, on the ground at my feet.
My witness had clearly been freaked by the night’s activities; he came out reluctantly, not at his usual jaunty trot. I waited patiently, wiping ketchup and suspicious white goo from my chin, stuffing a tattered grey watery vegetable into my mouth that the shopkeeper had claimed was lettuce. We liked all foods, even the kinds that didn’t like us, and at four in the morning, kebab in a bun is food the gods would eat.
My witness snuffled closer. I held my hand out to him, fingers stained in dubious sauce, and cooed, “Hello, come to Uncle Matthew. Come talk to us.”
He was the size of a small dog, not too small to yap infuriatingly, not large enough to bark with any great power. His fur in the lamplight was dark orange heading for auburn, his nose a black wetness with a pair of whiskers sticking out above jaws that looked fit for biting arms off. His tail might once have been bushy, but wars with others of his kind, plus feral cats and traffic, had left it a tatty stump. Personal hygiene was not high among his priorities, and he stank of wet mud, old oils and frustrated alpha-male animal. He looked up at us, we looked at him. He started to eat the kebab at our feet, and we patted him gently on the head.
There’s a long tradition of magicians keeping pet familiars. Once upon a time, an owl or wolf was the companion of choice; but magic, above all else, has to move with the times. For as long as I could remember, you couldn’t do much better than to find yourself a fox.
I scratched the creature behind its ears and said, “Mind if I call you Mr Fox?”
It wasn’t an imaginative name, but he didn’t object.
I let him eat the kebab. He was not an underfed animal, and clearly choosy enough in his diet to avoid the limp salad. When he was done, I patted the wobbly planks of the bench where I sat, and he leapt up, regarding me curiously. I kept stroking the rough, sticky fur on the top of his head, all matted together with slime from the rubbish bins, and dried blood. After a while, my fingers were used to the texture, and the more relaxed my companion grew, the easier it was to . . .
meat scraped off plate brown sauce sharp sharp on tongue air rot growing and smell of
Overhead, a pigeon flapped in the darkness. I could feel the claws of the rats in the drains beneath me, their noses itching with mine. I kept on stroking the fox, which nuzzled its damp nose into my ribs, and I got a taste of . . .exhaust from bus car motorbike scooter van truck lorry settled always settled
background brown stench fog on the streets invisible fog weighing down air
lavatory freshener window left open chemical bite in lungs
detergent bubbling in drainpipe
shower gel soaps at overflow
rubber boots on tarmac floor
old blood
new blood
“Come on, Mr Fox,” we crooned. “Show us what you smelt last night.”
taste of scraped-out meat fats and drippings thin meaty blood from frozen meat chicken fluids pale and left on the plate sunflower oil in soggy chips tossed aside peas turning brown yesterday’s mash black mould growing on the top maggot maggot in the bins maggot in the meat maggot sleepy in the cold always maggot worming into the meat fat white body pop
“Come on, Mr Fox,” we heard a voice say that might have been ours. “Come on, come on . . .”