The Neon Court (11 page)

I stood and waited, facing the exit from the tunnel.

Behind, yellow sodium lamps burnt steadily above the neat park benches and between the growing plane trees. The river sounded like thick yogurt being slurped up through a straw. A few cool drops of drizzle fell, promising more rain. No one came.

I stayed there for a good five minutes, waiting as the rain began to thicken from a tickle to a patter, from a patter to a splatter, from a splatter to a downpour, and still, no one came. So at last, feeling every part a fool, and turning as I walked to keep the tunnel exit in my sight until the last possible moment, I let the magic between my fingers go, and scurried away.

The night bus from the Isle of Dogs to Mile End took twenty minutes to come. I now began to miss my coat, huddling under the bus shelter, arms wrapped around me and chin tucked into my chest as though this could somehow protect me from the gathering downpour. Water churned in the gutter, tumbling down into the grates too fast for the drainage system to cope, and forming great pools of water which flew up in sheets whenever the few scant cars drove by. When my bus came, it was a low single-decker, inhabited by a group of three young women dressed for a party, silent, their eyes low, their faces grey, reflected water distorting the make-up on their pale, pasty faces. We swished north without bothering to slow for the empty bus stops, the corners or the rainwater filling the new tarmac streets before us, past fresh green public parks and dully glowing twenty-four-hour convenience stores, past estate agents with little lights still burning in their windows, nurseries with placards all in cheerful red, yellow and blue, past the closed glass arches of the DLR stops raised on their grassy banks, and sixth-form colleges promising to change your life for ever with a diploma in Business Studies with Marketing.

Canary Wharf grew and grew in front of us until the tops of the towers were no longer visible from inside the bus. I leant back against
my seat and remembered to breathe, forced myself to take it one steady gasp at a time as the magic of the place, silver, glass, light, razored edges, a buzz at the back of the eyes, an ice that ran to the end of the fingertips and turned them blue, washed over me. Every part of the city had its own magic, and the magic of Canary Wharf, of endless towers and shops and steel and clear running water, though still young, was bursting to make itself felt. We pressed our fingers into the glass of the bus and felt frost form beneath our fingertips, the power bursting out of us whether we liked it or not. The bus slowed as it crossed the security checkpoint into the area, and what little sky there had been became lost, a tiny pinpoint between the tops of the buildings, and what few people there had been became none, empty streets and huge glass doors within which were sleeping reception desks, foyers of bronze and silver, palm trees grown indoors, and shopping centres whose lights never went out.

When the bus finally spun its way out of the area and back across the water towards Billingsgate, I let the magic out with a shudder of breath that condensed on the window in front of me. It steamed unevenly across the glass, forming shapes and patterns where grease was thicker or thinner. I turned my face away from it and, as I did, caught the glimpse of something in the fading pattern of condensation from my breath. It looked a lot like a cross, with a smaller cross that might even have been a sword wedged in its top left-hand corner. I swore, and found my left hand unconsciously curling around the palm of my right, biting into the twin scars burnt into my skin, and bundled off the bus at the next stop.

I was close to Mile End, and quickly too wet to care about getting any wetter. I slung my bag across my chest and shoulder, wiped the worst of the rainwater from my eyes, and went in search of a prophet.

Mile End was a confused part of the city.

At one time, as its name suggested, it had been the end of London, the absolute full stop; but then, the history of the city was one of endless ends, of Field Lanes and Gate Roads marking the places where the city had stopped until, with a great geographical shrug, it had decided to expand. So, over time, Mile End had become not so much the end of the city as the beginning of the end, the place where inner met outer
London, full of terraced houses and council estates, grand royal parks and scrubby little bits of wasteland, overground railway lines leading to Norfolk, Essex and the eastern seaside and little pootling buses that terminated in Aldgate and Liverpool Street. From Mile End it was more than theoretically possible to walk in a straight line into the heart of the city, past Bethnal Green to Liverpool Street. It was equally possible to pick up the end of the Lee River valley and walk with it past canal barges and scrubland until city ended and fields began. It would be a long walk, but a not unpleasant one.

I scampered beneath railway bridges, past stately halls and tumbling semi-detached houses, through grey council estates and down roads of politely austere Victorian terraced houses. My eye wandered over street signs proclaiming:

Slow Down School

and

Residential Parking Zone M – No Parking Without a Permit

and the somewhat vague

Watch Children

and finally came to a pause on the edge of Roman Road, by an off-licence advertising six pints of Polish beer for £4, and red wine at £3.99 a bottle. I checked the address scrawled on the back of my hand in fading biro, fumbled in my satchel for the A–Z, and double-checked my direction on the map. No one can know all of London, all the time.

The rain showed no sign of easing when I neared my destination, a small house with a red triangular roof and net curtains across its small square windows, nestled in between a cobbler’s shop and a Polish deli. A tiny front garden containing three flagstones leading up to the door and a tiny patch of grass with a gnome on it was the only thing to mark the house out. The gnome was making a marginally obscene gesture with his left hand, but his face remained merrily benign. There was one light on, on the upstairs floor, behind a frosted window which suggested a bathroom. I rang the buzzer and waited. The light went out upstairs. I rang again. A light came on behind the two thin frosted panels in the front door, and a figure briefly blanked them out. There was the rattling of a chain and the door opened a few inches.

A single watery grey eye pressed itself to the gap and a low, brisk voice said, “Yes?”

“Um … I’m here to see a seer?” I mumbled.

“Appointments only,” was the reply, and the door began to close again.

I planted my foot in what was left of the gap and said, “It’s very important.”

“Who are you?” demanded the voice indignantly.

“Um … Midnight Mayor?” I suggested.

“Bollocks to that, never believed in the Midnight Mayor and don’t bloody believe you’re him even if he wasn’t a bloody fairy tale, now get your foot out of my door.” He tried to push the door shut, squashing my foot.

I put my shoulder against the door and babbled, “Look, mate, but if the job came with a name badge it’d probably lose some of the mystique.”

“Piss off!”

For a brief, undignified moment we fought each other for control of the door, before I managed to push him back, driving the door open until it caught on its chain. While he was off balance I reached round inside, fumbled for the chain and managed to manoeuvre it free with only moderate loss of circulation to my wrist. I burst inside and found myself in a hall smelling heavily of cigarette smoke, painted a vibrant sunflower yellow, and lined with ancient caricatures of Indians in various unlikely and questionable poses. The man I’d pushed away was in his fifties at least, with straight, uneven grey hair going thin round the temples, a poorly shaven lumpy chin, worn hands and wearing a blue towelling dressing gown and corduroy slippers. He flapped at me as I closed the door behind me, shouting, “Get out! Get out! I’ll call the police …”

As he stormed through a door into what I guessed to be the sitting room I followed. He reached out for a phone, and I tapped him on the shoulder. He spun, hands coming up into fists. As he did, we caught him round the throat with our scarred hand. Sapphire fire flared behind our eyes, we felt the hair stand up on the back of our neck. The light flickered in the hall, electricity snapped in the sockets, blue sparks crawled around the handset of the telephone, the TV flickered on and
mad static danced over its screen. He wheezed and pawed at our hands as the electrical fire built inside our soul and, for a moment, he met our eyes, and was afraid.

“Hi,” we said. “Let us make our position clear. We are the Midnight Mayor, protector of this city, carrier of its secrets and bearer of its shadows. The shadows watch us as we pass, the pigeons turn away at our passage, the rats scurry beneath our feet and shudder at the sound of our footsteps on the stones. We are the blue electric angels, the telephones sing at the passage of our voice, our blood is blue fire, our soul carries a pair of angel wings. We are the killer of Robert Bakker, sorcerer, master of the Tower; we destroyed the death of cities; we came back from the dead, Swift and the angels, two minds become one, two souls in one flesh, in one form, in one voice. We are me and I am we. And we’re frustrated.”

It was ten minutes later.

We sat on a stool in the kitchen, watching the man in the dressing gown make tea. The kitchen was avocado green, with a single light burning in the middle of the ceiling and surfaces of dirty daisy-yellow. It, like everything else, smelt of cigarettes.

“Biscuit?” he asked.

“What kind have you got?”

“Custard creams.”

“Cheers.”

A mug proclaiming ‘
I’M NO MUG – ASK ME ABOUT E- LEARNING!
‘ was deposited in front of me, along with a half-eaten packet of economy-brand custard creams. We dunked; we ate.

He said, “I got into the prophecy business about thirty years ago. Started out in Enfield, doing just local stuff, you know: relationships, business investments, the dogs. Then that whole business with the Tower happened and it suddenly wasn’t safe to be in this city doing magic. There were stories of a shadow that came out of the paving stones, tore out the heart of anyone who could throw a half-decent spell. The sorcerers died. The most powerful magicians in the city, the ones who heard the magic, felt it in their blood, and they all died. All except Bakker, of course. Khan – you heard of him?”

“Yes, I knew Khan,” I sighed, taking a slurp of tea.

“Best seer in town, and he still died. I was just a low bit player, but I knew when the heat was too much, so I cleared out. Moved in with my daughter in Belfast for a few years, waited for the trouble to pass. We were O’Rourke and co., seers, prophets and wedding dress makers.”

“Wedding dress …?”

“My daughter,” he explained quickly. “Makes wedding dresses, as well as … other things.”

“Right.”

He sat down on the stool opposite mine, a cup of fruity tea stewing between his pale, hairy hands. His eyebrows were long and white, rolled up and out like an elephant’s eyelashes from his grey face. “Then I got a call from a friend of mine – Robert Bakker was dead, the shadow was gone, the Tower had fallen. And you know, I love my daughter, but she had her own family to look after and I didn’t really bring in much money so … I moved back here.”

“The only surviving prophet in all of London,” I said. “Must be good business.”

He shrugged. “I get by. There’s competition moving in, though. New prophets arise, and the Australians, of course, are always coming over here to get work.”

“The Australians?”

“Aussie gits,” he added with conviction. “Coming over here and they’re all like, ‘we can tell you the future and give you a sensual massage at cut-price rates’; amateur bastards.”

“Fascinating stuff,” I sighed, “but you’re the only seer listed in the Yellow Pages.”

“Well, I’m the only one who doesn’t need a work permit,” he said huffily. “It’s not like we don’t have laws, you know.” He stared down into his teacup and then demanded, “How’d you survive?”

“What?”

“You’re a sorcerer. How’d you survive Bakker, the Tower?”

I smiled and found another custard cream had made its way inexplicably into my fingers. “I didn’t.” I saw his raised eyebrows, shrugged. “It’s complicated.”

“And you’re Midnight Mayor too?”

“Yep.”

“How’d that happen?”

“Oh, the usual. Someone summons the death of cities, death of cities takes on physical indestructible form, kills the previous incumbent, previous incumbent makes a telephone call with his dying breath, telephone call finds us, we get lumbered with the job, destroy the death of cities et cetera et cetera et cetera. It’s your fairly standard story of cock-up and disaster, really. Which is, incidentally, what I’m hoping this latest escapade isn’t going to be.”

“Ah, yes.” He pushed the cup aside and leant forward with his professional face fixed for battle. “And what exactly is the problem?”

“Well,” I said, also pushing my mug aside and leaning in close, “some total tit has gone and told the Neon Court that there’s a ‘chosen one’ wandering round the city. Care to comment?”

A look of pain flickered over his face. “Ah,” he said. “You’re here about
that
.”

“Wouldn’t have been you, by any chance?”

“Perhaps we should go through to the living room,” he replied, and before I could answer was on his feet, tea in hand.

I followed him through to the living room, another painted adventure all in rose pink and winter-sky blue. A small round table was set in the middle, two chairs on either side. In the middle of the table was a cardboard box held together mostly by Sellotape, containing within it a Monopoly set. Mr O’Rourke sat down on one side of the table, and gestured at me to sit opposite. He put the teacup on the floor and pulled the lid off the Monopoly box.

“Yes,” he said, as he began to set up the board between us, counting out money and laying out cards, “I told the Neon Court about the chosen one. The daimyo – a man called Minjae San – was a regular customer of mine. He came to me for a reading, and I do not lie about what I see. A girl; a chosen golden child, who has the power to end the war between the Court and the Tribe.” He held out the chance cards to me. “Cut?”