by Kate Griffin
“I’ll work it out.”
“Do you know Robert James Bakker?” I was halfway out of the door and her words stopped me dead. “I think you do.”
“What is your interest in Bakker?”
“If you want to know more about Bakker, what he has done, what he has become, we are the ones to talk to. We can be of great use to you.”
I forced a smile. “And I to you, yes?” Her cold expression was answer enough. I said, “I’ll think about it. Good afternoon, miss. Remember what we said.”
And walked away.
Whether or not I had any interest in the fortune-teller’s proposition, a few things she said had got my thoughts moving.
Without really knowing why, I found myself going towards the river. I walked through Middle Temple Inn, a place of old trees, high brick buildings, sash windows, cobbled streets, enclosed courtyards, lawyers, and film actors, in costumes from roughly 1580 to the present day, at work on some new historical drama (usually Dickens). I made my way towards Blackfriars Bridge, and into the gloomy concrete zone of wiggling, covered alleys, traffic-filled streets, tunnels and pedestrian walkways that link Blackfriars and London Bridges on the north side of the river. I wandered under dull yellow neon lights, watching my shadow stretch across the walls as I walked, listening to the distant rumble of cars passing through the maze of one-way systems and underpasses that had sprung up after the Blitz between what was left of the area’s history and the new, ugly, squared-off buildings compressing the winding byways of the city into ever more unlikely shapes. The Circle line sent up a hum through the pavement as it rattled towards Monument and, overhead, the train to Farringdon wheezed its way through a tunnel of nail-tight buildings pressed up against the railway.
I came to the tiny yard of flagstones and half-hearted container shrubs that jutted out between a giant converted warehouse and an office with walls of black-green glass, and sat down on a bench looking out past a row of iron railings to the river. At low tide, the water lapped against a wide beach of pebbles and brown sand embedded with plastic bags and dropped bottles. Within a few hours, the tide could rise up the tall stone wall on which my courtyard sat, where a green line of weed defined the high-tide mark, a metre or so below my feet.
A part of me was disappointed at how unchanged the place seemed, now that I sat and contemplated my situation while I watched the tide rise. There wasn’t a plaque of remembrance, nor a bunch of wilting flowers tied to the railing, nor even a lurid stain on the flagstones where so much of my blood had been spilled. Even the telephone box hiding in a corner, as if embarrassed to be seen in the mobile phone age, didn’t have a sign inside saying in childish script, “i was ere”. Instead it had the usual cards, advertising sex and, this being the City with a definite article and its own coat of arms, yoga stress support groups for the harried banker, probably at a slightly higher rate than the cruder alternative.
Out of curiosity I picked up the receiver. There wasn’t even a dialling tone, let alone the sounds I’d heard last time I was here. The booth smelled of pee and neglect. I was disappointed that my fingers, scrabbling up its side in desperation as I had tried to dial, hadn’t left scratch marks for posterity. I kicked the telephone with the heel of my foot until it reluctantly gave up £2.40 worth of change into the returned-coins slot. Returning to my bench I contemplated what this could buy me. In this city, I decided, not much.
The tide rose, and the shadows changed direction. I only got up and left when it started drizzling again, the cold raising goosebumps across my skin. I didn’t know if visiting the place of my previous demise had been a good idea; probably it had to be done sooner or later, if only to experience the full reality of my own absence. Here, all unremembered, was where Matthew Swift crawled across the wet paving stones to the telephone booth, dragging most of his exposed organs with him, and where in the morning they found only bloody clothes and pieces of skin.
There could, we decided, be advantages to my former self having been forgotten, even though it seemed that the sorcerer I used to be still had a name worth remembering. Certainly, seeing the place where I had died made what we wanted to do that bit easier.
I spent the rest of the day in the local library, reading newspapers. The world had changed in some ways that I found almost impossible to grasp: regimes different, governments fallen, icons dead, new stars, new soaps, new orders, new ideas. Phones were smaller, computers faster, lives more packed, worlds more messed in together. In other ways it remained constant. The temperature was still rising, and the complaints – tax, the NHS, transport, scandal – were still the same.
And at 9 p.m. I found myself at the London Eye.
At no point had I decided that this was where I wanted to be. Perhaps I simply had nowhere better to go.
I paid for a ride and queued with all the tourists curious to see the city at night. The crowd was dense – the day’s drizzle had cleaned the air so that tonight, at the summit of the giant, white-and-silver ferris wheel, you could see all the way to the North Downs in one direction, and to Alexandra Palace in the other.
I didn’t bother looking for whoever might want to speak to me. If they were worth any conversation, they’d find me. Meanwhile, I would not have been there were it not for the crowds. There is a protection of sorts in numbers – so long as the other bugger is playing by the rules.
I found myself in a capsule with a small flock of Japanese tourists who exclaimed as the floodlit Houses of Parliament dropped away beneath us, marvelled at the watery reflection of the lights on Victoria Embankment, photographed the pools of light sprawling out northwards to the dark splotch of Primrose Hill, ogled the purple and green lit-up walls of the National Theatre, pointed at Tower Bridge and pushed past each other to see the BT Tower sticking up from the West End; there was also a family from, judging by the accent, somewhere in south-east England, whose youngest child was only now discovering her fear of heights.
As for us, we sat on the bench in the middle of the capsule and watched our city expand beneath us, and felt like God. We had never seen anything so beautiful, and could not conceive of more magic in the world.
By the time the ride had started its descent, the staff below were already closing up the capsules ahead of us and turning away the public for the night. On our arrival at the embarkation platform, while the tourists shuffled out through the door, I didn’t move; nor did anyone ask me to.
I heard footsteps on the capsule floor and the swish of the door closing behind me. The river began to drop away again, the capsule making another trip skywards.
Behind me a voice said, “Lovely night, isn’t it? Enough to move a sentimental man to verse, I find.”
I shrugged, wrapping my coat tighter around myself and watching the patterns of neon spread out underneath me once more. By the sound of their steps, there were two of them. The one who spoke had a heavy, breathless voice like the deep snorts of a walrus. It was a cultured voice, well-educated to the point of being overly so. Knowledge so intense it drowns out all common sense. The man also brought with him a smell. It tingled on the edge of my senses: a deep, subtle shade of magic that tasted of cream crackers and the colour of shining oil. However, it wasn’t coming from him, I realised, but from his companion, whose reflection I saw in the glass of the capsule against the night outside – a young Asian man in a smart suit, hands folded in front of him, who stood by the shut door like it was the gateway to a treasury, eyeing me up in my own reflection even as I watched him.
The man who’d spoken sat down on the bench beside me; so I figured that, whatever strange aromas the younger man gave off, he was merely the sidekick to this man’s central act.
He said, “I hope you haven’t minded the delay.”
“No.”
“It is intolerably rude to make someone wait for an appointment. But I fear these are not such civilised times, Mr Swift. I blame the mobile phone, naturally.”
I turned to look at him properly. He was fat – there wa
s no other way to describe it – a belly contained by a shiny waistcoat like a straining bulkhead, any second about to explode a shrapnel of buttons. His suit was a subtle pinstripe, finely cut to disguise the sheer scale of his form. His face, emerging out of the rolling slope of his neck, was friendly, with bright eyes peering from under gigantic eyebrows, the only hair on an otherwise polished pale head. He had a ring on his wedding finger and a pair of black leather shoes, but otherwise no possessions with him worth the name. He studied me as I studied him, and at roughly the same instant I was reaching my conclusions about him, he said, “My, yes, but the resemblance is extraordinary, isn’t it?”
“Resemblance?”
“To our sadly departed dead sorcerer, Matthew Swift.”
“Ah.”
“Although as far as I know, he had no brothers.”
“I don’t.”
“Of course, of course,” he said. “You don’t. In fact, if I recall correctly, you have no living relatives?”
“I have a grandmother in a nursing home.” A sudden pang of guilt that I hadn’t even thought of her until now; alive, dead?
“Do you?”
“I did when I last checked.”
“See her often?”
“She only likes talking to the pigeons,” I replied, honestly enough.
“I see. Such a shame.”
“The pigeons let her fly with them. They bring her all the news. It is not sad.”
He smiled again, but this time the smile was tighter: less friendly but somehow more honest for it. “Indeed, indeed,” he mumbled. “But forgive me; I’m going about this terribly rudely. We should introduce ourselves before digressing to personal matters.”
“You know who I am.”
“I know who you say you are. And I know what you appear to be, which is quite different. But for the now let me say that I am Dudley Sinclair, and that it is my honour to make your acquaintance.”
He held out his hand. I shook it, after only a moment’s doubt. The cold clamminess of his grip clenched hard around my fingers and lingered a second longer than politeness required. We pulled our fingers away.
“You know the fortune-teller?”
“Dear boy, I know everybody. It’s my business, you see?”
I didn’t have anything to say to that, so resumed my quiet study of the two men’s reflection against the glory of the city.
“Yes, yes,” he muttered, not particularly for my attention. “Of course.” The smile reasserted itself, broad, but somehow not revealing any teeth as it ran from ear to ear. “Well, yes, this is a remarkably fortuitous encounter. Indeed. Shall we dispense with the boring questions for now and say that yes, indeed, you are Matthew Swift, a sorcerer in every form, way, and guise. Yes, I think this is best, don’t you?”
I shrugged.
“A man of few words; I can respect that, although personally I find you can discover a lot about a fellow even in the meaningless detritus with which he may litter his speech, an unconscious, perhaps, symptom of who he really may be, beneath his conscious mind. But you, sir, seem to play a close game – well, good. Yes, very good.”
“There was talk of mutual benefit,” I said. “The fortune-teller said… there were people who can help me.”
“And, I believe, there was talk of revenge, yes?”
“I can manage my own affairs.”
“Of course you can, yes! A very capable gentleman, certainly – indeed, to be Matthew Swift and to have survived when so many others have died would suggest quite how capable you may indeed be!”
“Who died?”
A flicker in the eyes, a tiny movement around the corners of his mouth. “I take it you are unfamiliar with current events.”
“I’ve read some newspapers.”
“I was thinking of events within that… special area in which you and I both happen to dabble.”
“You dabble, but he” – I nodded at the silent young man by the door – “does a bit more than that, I think.”
A moment’s hesitation; hard to tell whether the tightening around his eyes was surprise, or pleasure, or both. The young man showed no feeling – we could have been talking about a dead stranger as far as he seemed to care. “A man of insight, sir,” murmured Dudley Sinclair finally, his voice quieter and deeper than before. “I can see why she thought you curious.”
“Who died?” I repeated. “I tried calling some… who died?”“A list? Crude, certainly crude, but perhaps necessary. Very well – as far as I’m aware, you – I mean Matthew Swift – were the first, although we do not entirely know whether your death fits the pattern since, as of course you know, no body was ever found. Alfred Khan died shortly after – the theory goes he had visions of your death, and of his, and knew what was coming for him, but could not stop it. Imagine that, if you will; imagine that.”
I said nothing.
“Patel went missing, but they assumed he was dead when they identified his thumb and part of his left hand by its fingerprint. Awan was found partially flayed – thankfully, I believe, the shock killed him first; Koshdel had been strangled with his own intestines; Akute’s head was discovered on her bedroom floor, we’re not entirely sure where the rest of the body went; Pensley was set on fire. Ah, now Dhawan managed to put up a bit of a fight, which unfortunately collapsed the entire building he was in, making identification a tricky process – dental records, eventually. Did you know Foster? A young sorceress, perhaps not really in your circle, but her death was by…”
“Did the same person kill them all?” I asked breathlessly, the words running like sand between my fingers.
“We assume so.”
“Why?”
“Oh, the violence of the crime, the focus on practitioners of the art, the ritualistic nature of the death, the prolonged …”
“I meant why kill them?”
“We don’t know. We have theories.”
“Who’s ‘we’?”
His eyes shifted away to the city, his right hand twitched. “We are… concerned citizens.”
“Urban magicians?”
“Some of us, yes.”
“Why do you think they were all killed?”
“Now that’s really very tricky to say.”
“Try.”
His eyes flashed for a moment, glancing at me and away. If he’d felt anger, though, he hid it well. “You must have views yourself. You were one of them – until today.”
“I have an idea of who may have had motive.”
“Then you must have an idea who sent the litterbug after you this morning.”
That surprised me – that he could have known, and so soon. I tried to hide it, but I’m sure he saw through my half-hearted grunt and tight expression to my unease.
“We found the burnt core,” he explained, almost nicely, “and the local council was inundated with complaints about rubbish on the streets near one of its stations. I’m sure you understand why we made the leap of judgement – there are only so many practitioners of our unique profession who understand the summoning of such a creature, or indeed know the best way to break such a powerful spell.”
When I didn’t say anything he shifted his weight slightly and said, “May I suggest something to you? I don’t wish to influence your own personal views in any way, or even imply a course of action. I merely wish to throw an idea out, sir, and see if you find it in any way conducive.”
“Well?”
He leant in close until his breath almost tickled my ear and whispered, “Robert James Bakker,” and leant back with a smile to see how I reacted.
I rocked the sole of my left shoe idly across the floor of the capsule. I ran the index finger of my right hand in and out of the dips between the knuckles of my left. I watched the city. I said not a word.
Not a word seemed ample, for Mr Sinclair. “Very good,” he said, “very good. You are a man who does not wish to be too forward with his own views – I respect that, it is an admirable quality; you wish to gather all informa
tion first, yes, of course, naturally. Perhaps, then, it would be of interest to you to know that Patel was one of Khan’s closest confidants, and that if Khan revealed anything about his impending death, it would have been to that young gentleman? Awan, of course, was linked to Mr Guy Lee, who I’m sure you know of, a close associate of Mr Bakker’s. Koshdel was a gentleman who had very strong, perhaps too strong, views about the appropriate use of power, and liked to get involved. Pensley, one of my closest associates, yes, indeed, a tragedy for Pensley considering he was only doing as asked – Dhawan, a sorcerer like you, I’m sure you must have met him on occasion, and of course, he too knew Bakker. Akute… remains something of a mystery, but I suspect once we’ve had more time to research the nature of her demise, a link of sorts will transpire. Nothing provable, of course, nothing solid, there were never any witnesses, naturally, naturally! – and you always need more than motive. Theory, you understand, conjecture, nothing more, and Bakker is, after all, such an outstanding citizen.”
I raised my head slowly, for fear that if I rushed anything, I’d lose control. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “Are you hoping I’m going to say that Bakker attacked me?”
“No, no, I do not wish to impute any such suppositions to you!”
“He didn’t.”
“Of course not, no, I never thought…”
“I saw no one attack me.”
“But you have an idea who might have…”
“Yes.”
“May I be so bold as to enquire…”
“You can enquire; I don’t think I’ll answer yet. I don’t think I know enough. I don’t know you.”
He let out a little tired-uncle-left-with-the-children sigh. “I take it then, you have no interest in these other deaths.”
“They interest me very much. I knew some of them. And the manner of their deaths is disturbing.”
He let out an impatient sigh. “Do you know, sir, why I mentioned Robert James Bakker?”
“I take it you see some connection between him and these deaths.”