The Neon Court (51 page)

“It’s the new me,” I explained, waving my hands jazz-style in greeting. “Matthew Swift, Midnight fucking Mayor – I’ve got multicoloured highlighters and everything.”

He sighed, putting his hands up behind his head and leaning back to study the ceiling. “And what now?” he asked. “Kill me? You have great roads of corpses behind you, Mr Mayor, but very rarely do you have the courage to push the knife in yourself.”

“I thought about it,” I admitted. “I mean, I don’t think anyone would really care, in the grand scheme of things. And when you shot JG … we could have killed you then. We wouldn’t have thought twice about it, and there wouldn’t have been a body left to bury when we were done. That was, I think, your most despicable act. You shot a girl, a kid, in the back at Seven Dials not because she was a threat to you, or because it was going to change anything, but because your carefully laid plans were unravelling and you didn’t know what to do. You had no better idea. My God. The righteousness of the terrified. Yeah. We would have killed you, if we could.

“But then I realised, I’ve still got this whole messy Tribe–Court thing to deal with! I mean, Lady Neon and Toxik, they’re both dead, and I’ve got a gathering of very angry daimyos and very angry shamans who I’ve got to convince that actually, ripping up Shaftesbury Avenue in their attempt to obliterate each other is not the best course of action. So, in case you’re wondering, the reason it’s taken me all this time to get round to you is because I have been locked at a negotiating table in a kebab shop in Willesden trying to get these two sides to understand that there never was a chosen one, and that this war is just a thing invented by a greater enemy, a worse enemy. Two weeks it took to
convince them. And oh boy, the Court and the Tribe aren’t very happy with you. Amazing, really, the power of hate. They hate you so much that they’re practically buddies on the subject.”

He didn’t speak, didn’t move.

I stood up, pulling my coat off the back of the chair and slinging it over my shoulder. “You know, it was futile,” I said. “There will be another Lady Neon. A woman so beautiful it hurts to look at her, a vision of things you never can be, a world you can never have. And there will always be a Tribe too, the ones who can’t have so badly that they decide to have nothing at all because that’ll show them. Your war … was nothing new. There’ll be others again, and other truces. The fact that Lady Neon and Toxik are dead merely sped up the peace. All that blood, all that talking about bigger pictures, all that scheming, and for what? The temporary gratification of an ageing man worried about his blood sugar levels and the final destination of his immortal soul.”

“I don’t fear death, you know,” he replied softly. “Not that.”

I walked to the door, pushing it open and letting the light spill in from the corridor outside. “You heard of the night bus?” I asked. “You heard about how it gets its driver? Chained to the wheel, they say, every night, never sleeping, just driving for ever and ever through the streets of the city. They say it’s a curse, bestowed upon the bitterest enemies of Lady Neon. Nothing can break those chains, once they’re forged. If death is the best your imagination can run to, then I’d say you’re in for a bit of a shock. Good night, Mr Chaigneau. I’ll show myself out.”

I closed the door behind me, leaving him alone in the gloom.

There was one more funeral to attend.

I stood at the back with Penny. A handful of Aldermen had turned out, but not enough. There was a contingent of financial advisers, muffled in black hats and coats. A gaggle of smartly dressed women from the local tennis club. A group of governors from the school. An uncle and aunt. A husband and a daughter. Neither of them cried: he didn’t cry, for her sake, and she didn’t cry, for his. As services went, the priest kept it short, accurate, and as true as manners would allow. Mr Dees, a man barely taller than his departed wife, asked who we were. Business
associates, we said. He invited us to the local tennis club, where drink would be drunk, memories shared and Leslie Dees, who was after all twice women’s lawn champion, would be honoured in a brighter spirit than that celebrated in those endless neat rows of neat gravestones in the cemetery.

We smiled, said it was kind, said no more, didn’t go.

When all the others had left, Penny and I stood by the grave of Leslie Dees.

Finally Penny said, “I didn’t really know her, you know?”

“Me neither.”

“Yeah but you … you know … you knew her more, right?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know … stuff. Friends, family, background. No idea where she went to school, college, how she became an Alderman, what she did for fun, where she went on holiday, favourite food … you know. Stuff. The stuff you’re supposed to know. I guess I figured we’d work it out as we went along.”

We stood a while longer.

Then Penny said, “I didn’t know her, right, but I figured … she seemed like the kinda lady who wouldn’t do nothing she didn’t mean to.”

“Yeah. You may just be right about that.”

Time stretched by.

“I am a disgrace to the office of Midnight Mayor.”

I hadn’t been aware that I’d spoken. But looking round, I didn’t see any other likely candidates.

Penny said nothing, stared at me, waiting for the rest.

So, since she seemed to be expecting something, I went on. “All those dead. Dees, Oda, JG, Theydon, Lady Neon, Toxik, all those dead, all that blood in the city streets. What is the point of me if I don’t stop it? What’s the point of this” – I waved my scarred hand, crosses aching – “of this” – we tapped our forehead, just above our bright blue eyes – “of this” – I stretched out my fingers through the air and let the sparks flicker and flash between the gaps, “of us, what is the point of all that we are, if we could not stop this?”

Silence.

Then Penny said, “You know, yeah, it seems to me like there are two kinds of chosen one. There’s the kind who gets chosen for a thing
without any say, like someone who gets picked – kings and queens and shit. Then there’s the other kind of chosen one; the guy who stands up when everyone else is afraid, when no one else can decide. Guy who chooses to fight, or do the thing that no one else will, ‘cause it has to be done, yeah? I mean, most times, that guy’s a total shit. And sometimes he’s the hero. Seems to me that you’re a bit of both.”

My shoulders shook, which I guessed meant I was trying to laugh. “That’s me,” I sighed. “Bit-of-both Matthew. Bit of both, bit of everything, bit of nothing really whole.”

Silence again. Then, “Right!” she blurted. “Come on you!” She grabbed me by the arm and began to march me down the gravel path.

“Where we going?”

“You’re buying me supper.”

“I am?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my mate and that’s what you do.”

“But I …”

“Nope! No arguments!”

“But we should …”

“Nope! Only thing is …” She stopped so sharply I nearly walked into her, her index finger flailing with righteous certainty. “Thing is,” she repeated carefully, like one testing out an idea for size, “you’re not a very good Midnight Mayor, yeah, and you’re not exactly great at being human, yeah, and you’re like, way off with being an electric angel, yeah, so all that’s really left, all that you’ve really got, is buying someone like me a curry.”

“That’s what I’ve got,” I echoed numbly. “Buying you curry.”

“Yep.”

“I’ve got to tell you, Penny, as life-changing bits of philosophy go, it’s not exactly a winner.”

“Matthew,” she said firmly, “there are men who would eat their left foot to buy a girl as totally kick-ass awesome as me a poppadom, let alone a whole fucking curry, you see what I’m saying?”

I thought about it.

We began to see what she was saying.

“Oh,” we said, finally, seeing as she seemed to want us to say
something at all. Then, as we thought about it a little more, “OK,” we added. “When you put it like that.”

She beamed. “You know,” she began, as we turned towards the exit of the cemetery, “I was thinking, this being Midnight Mayor shit … does it come with expenses?”

We walked away, between the neat lines of grey stone.

We had supper.

When it was done, we walked, and talked, about nothing much, to nowhere in particular.

A little before midnight, Penny blurted something about catching the last train to Lewisham.

We walked her to the station. Because it seemed like the right thing.

The last train was a dull yellow-white worm on a background of upside-down tungsten stars spread across the earth, as far as the eyes could see. We watched it from the bridge above the line, listened to it with our toes, tasted the flash of blue-white electricity from its metal wheels.

Then we started to walk.

We walked north, without map or clear direction, but almost never veering from our course. We walked through the streets of the sleepy and the sleeping, down roads humming with trucks and cars, past windows in which voices could be heard arguing or laughing or in low earnest talk, restaurants smelling of garlic and cumin, kebab shops dripping grease, amusement arcades clattering with the sound of artificial gunfire. We walked down slumbering residential streets of houses, windows flickering with the blue-grey glow of late-night TV, past great grey schools, windows full of posters about Tudor history, the nitrogen cycle and tectonic plate movement, past the noticeboards of churches offering lessons in truth, God, judo and advanced yoga, round the back door of the late-night cinema where zombies and ninjas were tonight’s midnight offering. We ran our fingers over the rough wooden tops of the pub benches, chained to the streets, the cold metal of the lampposts and pedestrian railings, scratchy red brick and cut grey stone. We wove our way down great fat shopping streets and little suburban paths, between concrete estates and detached mansions. We thought we could hear behind us …

… but it was just our imagination.

For a while, a lone urban fox, wondering what we were, walked beside us, nose turned up, curious at our passage. As we crossed Clapham, a family of rats tracked us in the sewers below our feet, scuttling with every footstep we made. The pigeons bustled as we passed, the shadows turned to watch. After a while, even they left us alone.

We walked until the shallow spread of South London gave way to the taller buildings that clustered the river, until we could see the chimney of Tate Modern, the floodlit glow of St Paul’s, the ever-burning lights of Guy’s Hospital, the pinnacled tower of Southwark Cathedral. The traffic was a thin nothing as we crossed onto London Bridge, the waters of the river flowing out to sea, a great busy churning beneath us. We could just make out the dark round shape of Greenwich Hill to the east and, upriver, the red letters of the Oxo Tower. We leant on the cold balustrade of London Bridge and looked towards the sea.

“All right,” I said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s been a ball. But you – out.”

Bakker sighed, reclining back against the edge of the bridge, face turned up to the sky. “It’s probably about time,” he admitted.

“About time?” I echoed. “When I agreed to this, I thought the words ‘temporary experience’ meant a few hours, a day at most. Do you know how disconcerting it is to wake up to find you in bed next to me?”

“Judging by the fact that you fell out of the bed on the first occasion, I would hazard that it is very?”

“I’m not ungrateful, mind. Strip out the psychopathic stuff, and you’ve come in handy at the odd moment.”

He half bowed in acknowledgment.

“But,” I added, “time to move on. Both of us.”

He sighed, stared into space. “I find at times like these that the inspiring words I’ve been mentally preparing for such an eventuality utterly fail me. It is rather compromising for a man of my stature to be reduced to empty banalities.”

“You’ll live with it.”

“No,” he replied, almost sad. “No, I won’t.” Then he straightened up, slapped his hands together. “Bye, then, Matthew. Be good and all that. Try not to murder anyone unnecessarily, keep a sense of perspective, if you have one; don’t get consumed in your own electrical glory and so on.”

“Bye, Mr Bakker.”

“Be seeing you.”

“Until then.”

He turned and looked out towards the river, spread his arms wide and closed his eyes. I took in a deep breath, turned my eyes towards the sky and let it go. The breath ran out from the tips of my toes, shivered up my legs, curled the inside of my stomach, ached out of my chest, crawled from my fingertips and out from behind my eyes. It was warm and tasted faintly of dust and earth. It spread out from me, filling the air with its quiet busy shimmer.

Then the breeze off the river caught even that, and whisked it away.

And Bakker, too, was gone.

We stayed a while longer, watching the river.

After a while, pale and discreet, as if embarrassed to be caught stirring at this delicate time, the sun began to rise.

We watched for a while, until the sun was too high and bright to look at.

Then we watched a little bit more.