The Neon Court (40 page)

I said, “I’m looking for someone.”

“Yeah?”

“Will you help me?”

He chuckled. “And why’d I help you, squire?”

“Fond sentiment?” I suggested meekly.

He ground to a slow halt, then turned, leaning back on the handlebar of the trolley, and examined us again. One hand reached up behind his ear and removed a knuckle’s length of cigarette. He stuck it in his mouth, patted his pockets, didn’t find what he was looking for.

“Got a light?” he asked.

We cupped our hands together, huffed a shimmer of fire in between our fingertips. The magic was slow here, sluggish, and we had not realised how tired we were. Our hands shook as we pressed the fire to the end of the stub of cigarette. The man took a deep breath, held, and puffed out a blue-grey cloud. He took the cigarette between two fingers and waggled it at me.

“So,” he said. “You made Midnight Mayor, huh?”

“Got made,” I replied. “In the passive sense.”

“You don’t seem very passive now.”

“Midnight Mayor is sorta like having a sign saying ‘kick me’ on your back. You may not have stuck it there, but someone’s going to take up the offer sooner or later.” I stuck my hands in my pockets to hide the shaking. “What about you? I didn’t know the Beggar King hung out in places like this.”

He grinned, yellow teeth flecked with black. “In between the cracks, the place in the city where all the forgotten things go? Where else would you expect to find the Beggar King?”

“I heard a rumour you’d got yourself a pad underneath the Westway bypass.”

He shrugged, smile fading. “Gotta move with the times. My kingdom’s got big these days – too big. Too many people just slipping between the cracks, and damn all use it is trying to get them back.” He raised one great curling eyebrow. “You got a way out?”

“Sure.”

“Yeah. Can’t see a guy like you coming to a place like this without a way out.”

“Will you help me?” I repeated. “I don’t know if the Midnight Mayor is supposed to go around begging …”

“He’s not,” said the Beggar King, flicking ash away with the ends of his fingers.

“I will.”

Now both eyebrows did their thing. “You sure you’re the right man for the job, Mr Swift? The Midnight Mayor isn’t without his power, or his pride. An institution, is the Midnight Mayor, that’s always got to think of the big picture, not of little people lost somewhere in the dust.”

“An institution,” I replied, “that’s been run by arseholes.”

“And you’re running things differently, now?” he asked with a knowing grin.

“Muddling by.”

“Going well?”

I looked down.

He patted me companionably on the back. His nails were ragged yellow stumps of bark. “Try the fifth floor, room right at the end.”

“Thank you,” I breathed, touching my hands together in a mimicry of grateful prayer. “Thank you.”

He shrugged, turning his back. “You mind your business, I’ll mind mine …”

The trolley rattled off down the hall.

I climbed the stairs upwards.

Fifth floor, much like all the others. A mug, handle knocked off, half proclaiming
I LOVE
… before time had erased the secret of its heart. A broken umbrella, the joints bent backwards, a pair of child’s pyjamas stained with some fading sauce, shoes with the sole coming away, a handbag, its contents of half-used lipstick and dirty tissues spilling out across the way. Dust.

A door open at the end of the corridor. I could hear dull voices coming out from inside.

One said, “Then who’s the father?”

Another said, “Oh babe, oh babe I wanted to tell you so much …”

The first one said, “But if Tom’s not the father then …”

The second one said, “Babe, don’t be mad at me!”

I knocked on the door, and when there was no answer, eased it open.

The room was empty of furniture, just a television on the floor, its
aerial sticking up like a pair of comical ears. In the screen the grainy image of a man and a woman bickered in front of an electric fire. The dust was thicker here than anywhere, the floor almost felt. On the walls it formed a thin brown layer. Someone had written in the dust with the end of their finger, over and over and over again, a thousand times, criss-crossing across its own words,

Help me

Let me out

Help me

Let me out

HELP ME

HELP ME

HELP ME!

There was a girl sat in front of the T V, utterly focused. Her legs were crossed, back bent, chin stuck towards the screen as if pulled by invisible string. Her fingers were loose, open. Her hair was black, and had been shining before the dust settled on it, artificially straight and done in a ponytail round to one side of her head, sticking out behind her right ear. She wore gold hoop earrings wider than a wrestler’s wrist, baby-pink shining lipstick and thick green eyeliner. Her skin was the colour of milky espresso, but her eyes were the same dark brown that Oda’s had been, when Oda had eyes. Spittle hung in the corner of her lips, and her eyes, as she stared at the screen, did not flicker, twitch nor blink.

I sat down next to her, watched her; watched the T V.

On screen another man was shouting, “How could you lie to me, you slut, how could you make me think the baby was mine, I loved him, how could you do this to me? To us?”

I said, “Excuse me, miss?”

Her eyes didn’t leave the TV, but the fingers of her right hand seemed to twitch, curl in a little on themselves.

I looked back at the TV screen.

“Oh, don’t you take the high ground with me, Jimmy,” screamed the woman. “I know what you got up to with Debs last week, I heard all about your sordid little affair …”

“I don’t watch much telly,” I said as we sat there, dust slowly settling across our shoulders. “I’d like to say it’s because I get out lots, you know,
go to the pics and the theatre and stuff. But I don’t. Bit behind the times, really.”

Nothing.

“You like this programme?” I asked.

Nothing.

On screen, man two had hit woman one. She was now sitting sobbing uncontrollably while man one comforted her. Man two was saying, “You know I only do it ‘cause I love you, babe, I love you so much …”

“There’s a lot of rubbish made,” I confided, nudging the girl next to me conspiratorially. “I mean, everyone says how quality’s declined – you know, Shakespeare to Dickens to
X Factor
and all that, but I don’t think so. I just think that there’s so much stuff made these days that of course ninety-nine per cent of it’s going to be shite, and you’ve just gotta weed out that one per cent that takes your breath away. That’s what I think. It’s just a theory, though.”

Nothing.

I could hear footsteps walking overhead.

A pair of fingers dipped in liquid nitrogen walked the walk down the back of my spine.

“You wouldn’t know a girl by the name of JG, would you?” I asked.

A twitch, just in her fingers, no more, but it was there, real, a response.

“Only thing is,” I went on quickly, “I’m looking for her. Not in a bad way or anything, but I think she might be in a bit of trouble and I was kinda hoping I could lend her a hand, you know?”

Nothing.

The footsteps upstairs had stopped, hard and sharp.

“My name’s Matthew,” I added, holding out my hand to her. “What’s yours?”

Nothing.

I heard the footsteps move again, heading away, towards the stairs.

On the TV screen, the story had now cut to the interior of a grubby pub, where two completely different women were discussing the infidelities of their husbands and the demands of being both old and loyal at the same time.

One said, “Yeah, I know, it’s like terrible.”

The other replied, “You don’t say, and I have such a hard time with him. He’s only ever interested in the footie these days.”

I stood up, walked round and stood directly in front of the girl. She couldn’t have been out of her teenage years, seventeen at a guess. She craned round me, mouth still hanging open, to see the TV.

“Look,” I said, every bit the enforcer, “I’m really sorry about this and I understand that it might be a difficult thing but time is a factor here …”

She kept craning. I turned round, knelt down in front of the TV, fumbled down its side and, with a sharp electric snap, turned it off.

Behind me the girl screamed. Before I had a chance to turn she was on me, beating at my back with her fists, kicking, scratching, long nails dressed in red paint trying to tear at my ears, my neck, my face. I rolled over, and she came with me, flopping onto the floor in a mess of earring and rage, and went straight back onto the attack. I managed to get a grip on her wrists and still she kept on screaming, teeth bared and white, trying to get in close enough to bite. I pushed her back and in the moment that she was off me threw up my hands and caught her in a fist of thick shimmering air. It picked her off her feet and pinned her back against the wall, destroying the scramble of words underneath.

“Enough!” we snarled and the dust trembled and trickled at our voice. Her struggles grew less, but her eyes were wide and frightened, looking everywhere all at once. She licked her lips, tried to speak, then licked them again and managed a shriek of

“You fucking arsehole I’ll fucking kill you I’ll fucking kill you who the fuck do you think you are who do you think you fucking are I’ll fucking kill you!”

She drew in more air ready for round two, and I let my spell go, dropping her onto the floor on her hands and knees, pushing the air out of her. Before she could speak again I caught her by the wrists, dragged her upright and hissed, “Where do you think you are? Tell me that! Where do you think you are?”

Her eyes danced around the room, and some of the strength began to leave her. “I … I …” she began.

“Look around!” I hissed. “Tell me where you are!”

“I don’t … you don’t fucking touch me, you hear, if you fucking touch me don’t fucking touch me!”

She pulled free, staggered back a few steps, seemed to curl in on herself, hugging herself, quivering with too many things to name any one distinctly. We watched her, a creature not much more than a child, too frightened to be anything more than what it was. I said softly, “My name’s Matthew. I’m here to help.”

“Piss off.”

“Look around. My name’s Matthew. What’s your name?”

“You think … you think you can just … just fucking come in here and be like ‘I’m Matthew’ or whatever and that’s like I’m fucking going to trust you?” she snarled. “You come one step closer and I swear I’ll rip your eyes out.”

I backed away a pace, raising my hands in a gesture of surrender. “Fine, fine. Look. I’m not coming any closer. Just tell me your name.”

She wiped the end of her nose with her sleeve, straightened up, forced her shaking hands onto her hips in an expression of defiance. “I’m JG,” she snapped, and then faltered, too much to say, unable to say any of it.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. Something harsh and static was buzzing at the end of the corridor outside. I couldn’t hear the Beggar King’s trolley, or any footsteps any more. “JG, hi,” I said. “Nice to meet you. We’ve got to go.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you!”

“Look around. You want to stay here?”

She looked, and for the first time seemed to see. She curled in tighter on herself and in a little voice asked, “Where is this?”

“Bad place. I think it’s starting to make some sort of sense but it’s a bad place, and there are bad things happening here tonight, and I’ve really, really got to get you out of here.”

Her eyes flickered back to me and for the first time she seemed to see me too. “You’ve got blood on your face,” she said, backing away. “My God what kind of freak are you? You’re a fucking freak keep away from me!”

“There was a fire, wasn’t there?” Her eyes were burning, but they were at least looking at me. “A tower block in Sidcup, a place scheduled to be demolished, everyone else had cleared out, but not you. You liked it there, you wrote on the walls and hung around there with your mates and then there was a fire. It spread too fast, and it was below you,
and there were people. You ran and ran until you didn’t know where you were running to and you felt like there was this hole opening up beneath you and then you were here. Wherever here is. In all the dust. And you couldn’t find a way out. Am I right?”

“You’re one of them,” she whispered.

“One of who?”

“One of them that’s been watching me. I told the priest but he said I was imagining it. They laughed at me, cops said I was trying to get attention and I shouldn’t waste their time, come back when there’s an actual crime to report. You’re one of them.”

“No.”

“You are! How d’you know all this unless you’re one of them!”

“I … I know this woman …” I stammered. “Look, now is not the best time …”

“What woman?”

“This woman, a … a friend of mine, I …”

“What’s her name?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

JG suddenly sat down, legs tucked into her chest, arms folded around her knees, glaring at me. “Fine! If it doesn’t matter then it doesn’t matter what I fucking do does it so I’m going to sit here and it won’t fucking matter and you can just fuck off!”

“You’re not making my life any easier …”

“Her name!”

I flinched as she shouted the words, waited for the dust to billow and resettle around us. Looked down at her. Knelt down in front of her, closer now. “My friend’s name was Oda,” I said. “Do you know her?”

JG licked her lips. Then she said, “What d’you want?”

“To get out of here.”

“No way out of here,” she replied. “I looked. No way out.”

“I can get us out of here, but we have to find my friend.”

“What friend?”

“Her name is Dees, she came here with me looking for you.”

“Why’d you look for me?”

“Because … because Oda said ‘find the girl’. She asked me to do it.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You’re lying,” she said. “You’re lying, you’re going to try and use me or something, you’re like all the rest.”

“Please! I’ve risked a lot to come here! Please! Trust me? For now?”