The Minority Council (53 page)

“ ‘Yes,’ breathed Nabeela. ‘I understand.’

“I didn’t know if she was lying. I hoped she was, because he was talking psycho-shit and I wanted to say it. But there was madness in his eye and belief in his voice, and if I know one thing from bitching with my aunt, it’s that you don’t never reason with true believers.

“I think I knew the other thing then too.

“He was gonna kill us.

“He was talking to keep us quiet, keep us sweet, but when you were done, even if you did it, he’d kill us.

“Were you gonna top the fairy godmother?

“I didn’t think so.

“You’d come storming in here first.

“But that didn’t mean I was gonna wait for it to happen.

“When he was gone, I turned back to Nabeela.

“She said, ‘Perhaps we should…’

“ ‘He’s gonna do it,’ I replied. ‘You know he’s gonna. He’s gonna kill us.’

“ ‘But he said it himself, if he wants to control Matthew then he needs us alive.’

“ ‘Babes,’ I explained, ‘there’s only two things you do with Matthew. You get on board with him or you get out of his way. You and me are on board. That means Templeman is in his way, and we do not want to be round here when that shit goes down.’

“ ‘Will Matthew kill the godmother? Will he do it?’

“ ‘I don’t know. I don’t think it matters. Moment he does it, we’re dead. And if he doesn’t do it… then he’s not gonna change his mind just because Templeman goes “Hey, it’s okay, I’ve still got these two bitches alive.” And even if he does try that, he’ll probably try to scare Matthew, try the whole frightening thing, and I’m buggered if I’m gonna sit around and let some psychopath cut off my toes or pull out my fingernails or shit. I’m gonna get out and find this really hot guy called Femi, and you’re gonna get out and, like, kick local council ass, and we are
not
gonna let this happen, okay?’

“ ‘Okay.’

“ ‘Come on, I think I was getting somewhere with this fucking tape.’

“She shuffled back down and I felt around her head, blind, looking for the tape. I could feel her hair moving restlessly, feel it jerk whenever I tugged at the gaffer tape holding it down. Some wanker had really done a number on it; it didn’t want to come and, in the dark, it was hard, slow progress. I found an end and pulled and at once she shouted out in pain and I said, ‘I’m sorry babes, I’m sorry; you okay?’

“ ‘Yeah,’ she answered in that little voice that tells you they’re not okay at all but are way too brave to make you stop. ‘Just… be quick.’

“I started ripping the tape away, and I realised that, in this place, in the dark, I might be just one bad look from turning into a concrete statue myself, if I could get her free. There were more sounds outside, voices. I tried to move faster, to pick at the tape with my hands, but it was round her chin and she was nearly choking, trying not to cry out; I could feel her shaking with it.

“Footsteps at the door, a brighter light, a torch, flashed under it, and then I heard a key in the lock and I was only halfway there but some of her hair was coming free, I could feel it pushing up but the door was opening and there was this one guy in the light and he had a bottle of water in one hand and a little plastic box in the other and I didn’t need to be bloody Einstein to guess what kinda needles a guy might carry in a box like that.

“He shone the torch right in my eyes and then saw Nabeela behind me and the tape I’d already pulled off on the floor and he opened his mouth to shout and I just charged at him. I mean, there wasn’t much there, there wasn’t anything solid to cling to, but there was that light in his torch and it was all I had, so I grabbed at it with everything I had and heard a pop as the light-bulb went and in that moment of surprise I guess he must have panicked because he dropped the torch.

“And my hands were still tied but I went at him head first, kinda jumping like a jack-in-the-box, and knocked into his belly as hard as I could and used my weight to push him down; the thing was to keep on biting and twisting and not give him a chance to realise how fucked I was. He went staggering back and tripped right over his own feet, falling on his arse, legs flying, me on top of him. I was going to headbutt him; I pulled my head back and, I knew, the trick was to go straight for his nose but he shouted out and got one of his hands under my chin, pushing it back.

“I tried to find something to hit him with, electricity, fire, light, anything, but we were in like this field, we were in a fucking field and I could see the lights of a motorway at the end of a distant hill and I guessed it was the M25
because there was this big blue sign with an aeroplane symbol on it and because the traffic was really slow, but then he rolled, got himself on top of me, legs out either side, and he was shouting for help and calling me a stupid bitch, and he clenched his fingers into this ugly fist, the bones all standing out at the knuckles like troll hills in rocky country, swung his arm up high and then…

“ ‘Close your eyes.’

“It was Nabeela who spoke and there was this shadow behind him and I didn’t need to be told twice. I mean, I was going to close my eyes anyway, because there was this fist heading for my face, but I closed my eyes proper now and I could hear the sound of tape tearing and felt his head turning and heard the beginning of a gasp, but it didn’t have time to finish. He started to breathe and it was like the breath got stuck somewhere in his throat, didn’t even make it to the lungs. And then I felt the rest of it.

“He’d been turning, the weight on one leg, but there was still his weight on me and suddenly it went from really fucking heavy to crushing; I mean, I couldn’t move my chest, couldn’t breathe in, just lay there gasping these thin little wheezes of air, and his legs, which had been warm, grew cold really fast, and hard, and where his thigh had bumped against my wrist, I felt fabric turn rough, ragged, grainy—like concrete.

“I just lay there, eyes squeezed shut, until Nabeela said, ‘Okay, I’m going to turn my back.’

“I waited.

“ ‘I’ve turned my back,’ she called, and her voice was shaking. I opened my eyes.

“The guy was just frozen there, one hand still raised in a fist, his head turned towards where Nabeela stood with
her back to me, his eyes open wide. Her hair was writhing like it was angry, dancing on the end of its silver wires, bits of tape still hanging off and the ends of the lenses pushing at it like they were annoyed, trying to pick each other clean. I crawled out from under the guy and there were more footsteps running towards us. The keys to the handcuffs had been in his bloody pocket, bloody turned to stone, and as the footsteps approached Nabeela said, ‘Duck!’

“I wasn’t arguing. I got down with my head on the ground and heard the footsteps round the corner, and that same sound—that beginning of air to shout or warn or threaten or whatever—then that sound just stopped. If a medusa turns you to stone, does everything turn? Blood, bone, blood, air, electricity in your brain, sense in your spine? It’d be shit if you kept on thinking as you died.

“Whatever happened, the footsteps stopped.

“ ‘Okay,’ said Nabeela. ‘You can look again.’

“I looked up. She had her back to me, facing out towards the motorway. Two more guys were stone. I looked at them. One of them was an Alderman; I mean, the full, proper bloody Alderman get-up. I guess that was the moment I realised the other thing, the thing that was probably scarier than Templeman being a psycho. I realised that the fucking Aldermen were involved, that nothing and no one could be trusted.

“I looked round at where we were, taking it in properly.

“It was one of those commercial estates; you know, the flat-roofed buildings, the empty car parks, the old metal chutes that carry nothing from nowhere to a place where a lorry should have been. Everything was rusting up. A
sign on our shed said, ‘Gleeson’s Printers—Digital Design for the Digital Age’ and was covered in pigeon shit. There was another shed across the way that was for importing Turkish wines, and all the windows had been smashed in. Looking back behind us I saw a hill, and I guessed, if that motorway was the M25, the city had to be somewhere on the other side of it. There was just one road heading up, no street lights, but there was that city-orange glow beyond it, and I knew, I just knew, it was London.

“Then I saw a car moving on the road on the hill, coming towards us. I wondered how long it’d be before Templeman worked out what had happened, so I hopped up onto my knees and said, ‘We gotta get out of here.’

“Nabeela just nodded.

“ ‘Hey, if I close my eyes, do you think you can do something about this tape around my feet?’

“ ‘I’ll try,’ she said.

“So I closed my eyes, and it was hard. I mean, when your heart races and your head is pounding and you’re still breathless and scared and waiting for something to move, it’s hard. But then, looking: that would have been harder; that would have been death. And she kinda wriggled round behind me and started scratching at the tape around my legs until it tore and my feet came proper free. We still had these fucking handcuffs but, with all the guys turned to concrete, I guessed there wasn’t anything we could do about that and at least we could walk now, so I nodded towards the road and said, ‘We gotta get going before they come looking for us.’

“ ‘Perhaps you should leave me.’

“ ‘Fuck that, babes, no offence.’

“ ‘I mean it. If you look at me…’

“ ‘I won’t look.’

“ ‘If you look at me…’

“ ‘Babes, I love you, seriously, you’re really sweet and that, but in case you haven’t worked it out I am one shit-stubborn bitch and I’m telling you, either you fucking come with me right now or I don’t move an inch, okay?’

“I thought she might say no, and then how fucked would we be?

“But she whispered, ‘Okay.’

“ ‘Great! Probably safest thing, yeah, is if I walk, like, ten yards in front or something. And I won’t look back, and you won’t say boo, and we’ll be fine. Can’t be too far from here to somewhere with proper civilised magic, right?’

“ ‘Right.’

“So we went, past these three frozen statues, eyes staring at nothing, while Nabeela’s hair writhed on her head, and made a noise like metal rustling against metal. I wished I knew something about stars, could find north and work out if we were outside Barnet or Croydon, Upminster or Uxbridge. But the sky was a fuzzy orange-pink on black, and there was nothing to focus on, except the tug of the city.

“I could hear Nabeela walking behind me. It made me stiff, my head locked on my shoulders, like I didn’t dare turn it, like my own body wouldn’t let me turn it, and the more I didn’t look the harder it became. Your mind plays tricks, you start thinking maybe you can’t hear Nabeela behind you, maybe it’s someone else coming up behind, someone else gonna grab you by the neck and stick a knife in your ribs; that there’s something there in the dark, watching you, laughing.

“I tried, like, a dozen different things to calm me down. I tried breathing slow and deep, but that just made me breathless because the deeper I breathed in the faster I had to breathe out, like too much time was wasted getting air into the corner of my lungs. I tried counting, one two three four, one two three four, but the numbers just got faster and faster, like my thoughts were out of control. I looked at my own feet and broke up my steps into rhythms, into groups of eight, but then I was scared of looking up, and then, when I looked up, I was scared because I wasn’t looking down again. I mean, everyone says how you shouldn’t be afraid but I’m, like, fuck that, you should be afraid, everyone should be fucking afraid, bravery is all about being scared and carrying on despite it. So yeah, I was scared. And proud of it.

“The road from the estate led up this hill. There were trees either side, not thick forest-like, but close enough that the light stopped way too fast. At one point I heard an engine start and I went to hide, and Nabeela did too, and we crouched, the pair of us, behind the trees, mud up to our ankles, squatting like we were having a really difficult piss.

“And this van went by. I watched it go down the hill, to where the sheds were. I saw tiny men moving against a little light, and then they saw the statues, and they moved faster, and the engine of that van didn’t stop running, and then, I wasn’t afraid. When it’s all about staying alive, you don’t have time to be scared.

“We ran.

“It was hard, keeping our balance with our hands behind our backs, but we ran. Every car that went by I shouted at, trying to get them to stop. The first two just
sped up, I guess they thought we were having a prank, but the third slowed down in front of us. I could see this woman inside, turning her head back to look at us better, and she was getting out a mobile phone. Then, as we approached, she sped up again, drove away. We must have frightened her, and then I realised—Nabeela’s hair. It was out, free, and that woman in the car was only one stupid fucking glance away from being frozen by it, one blink off being turned to concrete.

“And if she was calling the police, then how’d I know that the Aldermen wouldn’t be listening, because that’s what they do. They listen to the police, they use the cops, and now Templeman would be looking for us.

“We had to get off the road.

“I didn’t know what time it was.

“I guessed by how quiet everything stood that it had to be early-late, the little hours of the morning. There was this muddy path between the trees, with a green sign saying ‘Parkland Trail’ and a bin for people to put dog muck in. We ran down it, and there wasn’t any light, none at all; we slipped and stumbled on leaf mould and dirt. Eventually Nabeela held onto the back of my shirt and I tried to summon light.