the Maid said, “Shucks. You ain’t gonna live long, sunshine.”
“Well, now, you see, that’s an interesting one,” murmured the Mother.
“If you care about these things,” snapped the Hag.
“But you’re three ladies with a cauldron,” we said, managing another bow. “You’d know without needing to care.”
“Hey, sunshine!” snapped the Maid. “It wasn’t a fucking man! You said it like - blokes what breathe and piss and eat don’t fucking not smell.”
“And of course the question is,” added the Mother thoughtfully, “did the man kill the Mayor, or the man’s maker?”
“He’ll be after you now,” concluded the Hag. “It doesn’t matter whose skin it is, it’s the brand on the hand. You could be any little wormy maggot crawling up from the biscuit plate and he’d still come to squish you down. Thought about running away?”
I bit my lip, pulled my hand tighter into my chest. “All right,” I muttered. “OK. Cryptic I can deal with. Sure. Whatever. Statement: you said . . . the man or his maker.”
“That’s conversation skills he’s got there,” chuckled the Hag.
“Statement: ergo - the man who killed Nair wasn’t in fact a man. Something else. The possibilities are endless!”
“Pity you’ve only got so much time, then, isn’t it?”
I wiped my forehead with my sleeve. I felt hot. The stitches in my chest ached and throbbed, my hand burnt. The world seemed a mirage away. I stammered, “Question: in Nair’s house there was a file, and in the file there was a note, and the note said, ‘Swift has the shoes.’ What does this mean?”
“Trendy pair of trainers,” said the Maid appreciatively, nodding at my feet.
“Very clever of him to notice, really,” added the Mother.
“You’re wearing the boy’s shoes,” concluded the Hag. “Or didn’t you think it would be important?”
I looked down at my shoes. “These?”
“Was that a . . .”
“No, no, it wasn’t a question. It was more . . . thinking aloud. It would be fair to allow me to get a little clarification before I blow my next question.”
“Fair!” laughed the Maid.
“Well . . .” sighed the Mother.
“Huh!” grunted the Hag.
“It would be moving with the times . . .” I added. “Education being what it is.”
“I got an A at Art.”
“All right then.”
“Clarify away.”
“Statement: these shoes” - I twitched my toes inside the flashy trainers - “aren’t mine. I took them from a boy’s room in Wembley. They belong to a kid called Mo. I was using them to find him, for his mum’s sake. He’s been missing. He’s got nothing to do with magic, as far as I can tell, and she certainly hasn’t. Just a favour for a friend. But - still statement - the Mayor’s files mentioned these shoes. Nair thought they were important. So here’s my clarification question: was Nair also looking for the kid who owned these shoes?”
To which, simply and flatly, the Hag said, “Yes.”
We wanted out. We knew it with a sudden and absolute certainty. We wanted a ticket to somewhere foggy, a nice thick green haze to get ourselves lost in, deep tunnels and obedient lights. We wanted out and down and gone, it was nothing to do with us, none of this was anything to do with us and we weren’t prepared to die for it.
So I said: “Question: what the bloody hell is going on?”
The three women exchanged looks.
“Is that fair?” asked the Mother.
“Kinda total disrespect!” added the Maid. “I like your balls, bozo!”
“It’s not about fair,” retorted the Hag. “If it was about fair, none of this would happen.”
I raised a polite hand. “Answer, please?”
The Hag sighed, and put down the small plate of biscuits. She moved carefully round the side of the cauldron towards me. So did the others. Tough guys aren’t supposed to be intimidated by ladies. I guess I wasn’t so tough. She looked us in the eye and said, “City’s damned.”
“Beg pardon?”
“Damned. Cursed. Buggered. Totally and utterly fucked, to use the crude vernacular. It’s going to burn. It’s going to sink. It’s going to crash and splinter and shatter and everything will be dust. Pick one. The ravens are dead. The Stone is broken. The Wall is defaced. The Midnight Mayor is killed and his replacement” - a chuckle like the last gasp of a throttled chicken - “didn’t even know he was in the job. Cursed. Damned. Run away, little electric angels. Run, if you can.”
They were next to me, around me, behind me. Three little ladies who’d been around ever since the first village midwife decided