“I believe in the Thames Barrier,” I answered carefully.
“What does that mean?” she snapped.
“It means that I believe if the Thames Barrier failed, a great tide of floodwater would sweep over the city and sink most of its more fashionable areas beneath many metres of salt, sewage and slime. I have never in my life seen this, nor ever seen the Thames Barrier at work, but I believe it from the bottom of my heart. So, yes. I’m willing to run with the idea that we might all be well and truly buggered.”
Oda slurped the last of her orange juice and put the cup to one side. She leant forward, looking us straight in the eye. “You want to know what was decided?”
“I’ve got a nasty feeling . . .”
“It’s the stitches.”
“That wasn’t the feeling I meant . . . Why should we care what the Aldermen decided?”
“Because they were only two votes short of shooting you.”
“When you put it like that . . .”
“It’s your problem.”
“What is?”
“All this. This imminent destruction thing. You’re the Midnight Mayor. They agreed on that. You’re going to have to sort it out. Your problem.”
“They’re saving on bullets,” I sighed.
“That’s the elegant thing about the Midnight Mayor. Even if you die, there’ll be another sucker along soon.”
“You really don’t care, do you?” I asked. “Why are you here?”
“The Order may not care about your life. But we are naturally concerned when the actions of your clan of freaks may destroy the city that we live in. The innocent must be protected, even if it means cooperation with the guilty.”
“Carry on thinking like that,” I muttered, “and you’ll be heading for sensible, fluffy normality before you know it.”
“Not so fluffy. I’m here to keep an eye on things.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” she sighed, “that if at any moment it looks like you’re not going to sort this out, that you’re going to run, or betray, or double-cross, or generally walk away from this situation, then I’m the one who gets to shoot you.” She added with a crocodile smile, “It’ll be just like old times.”
“Why aren’t the Aldermen doing this?”
“They considered . . .” - she sucked in, choosing her words carefully - “that you might be more amenable to a conversation with an old acquaintance. It was suggested that I handle matters initially, lay out the position, tell it like it is. You’re used to that, aren’t you?”
“Tact and humour are not ideas I associate with you, no.”
“Good. See - their reasoning had something going for it, despite their thrice-damned souls. You’re going to have to work with them. Talk with them, let them help you do the thing you do until it no longer needs to be done.”
“We’re really not,” we replied.
“Oh, I think you are. You see, you may be the Midnight Mayor - which is just another proof of how twisted is this life you lead - but you don’t know what to do about it, do you? You don’t know what it means. They do. They spend their lives learning the answer.”
I said, suddenly suspicious, “Where are they?”
“There’s five of them waiting downstairs in the car.”
“Tell them to stick it up—”
“There’s five of them, all very heavily armed, all annoyed, all trying their very best to be polite despite themselves. I never thought the day would come, sorcerer, when I would be saving you from your own withered walnut of a brain, but I have my instructions. They’re going to have a word with you. You’re going to play nice. If you don’t, I will personally unpick those stitches from your skin with a blowtorch. Do we understand each other? I am that good.”
Meekly, to our infuriation, I said, “Yes.”
I got dressed. You can’t be Midnight Mayor in your underpants.
Trains rumbled by. Somewhere in South London, I decided. Old brick arches filled in with other buildings under the railway lines; maybe somewhere near Waterloo, where the chaotic street plan had fallen like custard from a trembling spoon.
Someone had given us new stitches. They hurt, a dull throb that came and went with each pulse of our heart. Our face in the bathroom mirror could have frightened a dead horse that had already seen the innards of the glue factory. Our clothes were another bloodstained write-off. Again. Oda gave me new ones. The T-shirt read, “What Would Jesus Do?” and featured a big white cross on front and back, wrapped in thorns.