have appalled us, but the flesh of Mr Nair was nothing more than the slabs of meat hanging from the butcher’s hook, hardly a thing human any more. His skin hadn’t been sliced off, but sliced into , a thousand, ten thousand times, with a tiny, thin blade that made the skin stand up from the flesh in little white tufts, like snowy mountain ridges seen from the window of a passing plane. The muscles exposed below looked like something out of a medical textbook, all fibre, but grey now, blood tumbled out of them so they looked for all the world like stringy chicken meat, or pork that had been boiled first and then sandpapered down. Every inch of his body had suffered from this effect, so extensive I thought it might have been a disease, if I hadn’t known better. Beneath the black clinging threads of his hair, the scalp was a churned-up mess of sliced skin and flesh; the cuts went inside his belly button and beneath his fingernails, going under the thin nail though it seemed not even slightly disturbed.
In films, the people with a moral compass throw up at these sorts of things. I didn’t. There was nothing there, no human left. Just dry organic matter. It would have been like being sick at the sight of tofu. I pulled the lid back over the thing that had once pushed air out from between lips and so declared by its vibrations and humming, “I am Mr Nair”, and went in search of personal belongings. They were in a box, each one bagged and wrapped neatly at the back of the coroner’s office. I sat in a big revolving chair designed to give you good posture, and went through his things.
No staff, chain or cloak of office. So much for fairy-tale stories.
All his clothes were drenched in blood, every inch turned red. Not a cut on them. Nair’s fate had befallen him either while he was naked, or regardless of the things he wore. No keys; I wondered if the Aldermen had taken them. No spray cans, no mystic artefacts - travelcards, obscure tickets, penknife, albino pigeon feathers or tail of rat - nothing I would have naturally identified as useful to a magician in their trade. Perhaps the Midnight Mayor was above such things. There was a mobile phone, which didn’t turn on. A bloody fingerprint was pressed onto the screen, and scorch marks stained the otherwise shining, futuristic polish of the little machine. I put it to one side and pulled out Mr Nair’s wallet.
A driving licence declared that this was the property of Nair, Anu; born 07-08-53, United Kingdom; resident at 137A New Court, Lincoln’s Inn, London. The face that stared sombrely out at me from the licence photo had warm chocolate skin, protruding cheekbones and a tiny mouth, beneath straight, cropped greying hair. I tried to imagine it as belonging to a Midnight Mayor, and failed. I flicked through the rest of the wallet. A single credit card given by a bank whose name I couldn’t even recognise, but which was pleased to give an Exclusive Gold Membership to Nair, A., and which seemed the heart and soul of his finances. No loyalty cards to any shops or supermarkets - perhaps this was a man who didn’t do his own shopping. No money either, no receipts, no video or library cards or any of the usual detritus of human existence that tended to pile up inside a wallet. There was only one business card. I read the name with a sinking feeling that went right down through my belly and into my knees: D.B. Sinclair. Plus a telephone number.
Dudley Sinclair. “Concerned citizens.” A man who made the older Orson Welles look trim and cockney. I respected him in the same way I respected the jaws of a lion - from a very long way off. He had been of use to me, in bringing down Bakker and the Tower. I had been of immense use to him. In retrospect, he’d done two parts filing to my ten parts bleeding. But that just made him all the smarter. He knew how to get others to do his dirty work.
I put the wallet to one side.
There was a police report, short, brisk, badly spelt
In films, the people with a moral compass throw up at these sorts of things. I didn’t. There was nothing there, no human left. Just dry organic matter. It would have been like being sick at the sight of tofu. I pulled the lid back over the thing that had once pushed air out from between lips and so declared by its vibrations and humming, “I am Mr Nair”, and went in search of personal belongings. They were in a box, each one bagged and wrapped neatly at the back of the coroner’s office. I sat in a big revolving chair designed to give you good posture, and went through his things.
No staff, chain or cloak of office. So much for fairy-tale stories.
All his clothes were drenched in blood, every inch turned red. Not a cut on them. Nair’s fate had befallen him either while he was naked, or regardless of the things he wore. No keys; I wondered if the Aldermen had taken them. No spray cans, no mystic artefacts - travelcards, obscure tickets, penknife, albino pigeon feathers or tail of rat - nothing I would have naturally identified as useful to a magician in their trade. Perhaps the Midnight Mayor was above such things. There was a mobile phone, which didn’t turn on. A bloody fingerprint was pressed onto the screen, and scorch marks stained the otherwise shining, futuristic polish of the little machine. I put it to one side and pulled out Mr Nair’s wallet.
A driving licence declared that this was the property of Nair, Anu; born 07-08-53, United Kingdom; resident at 137A New Court, Lincoln’s Inn, London. The face that stared sombrely out at me from the licence photo had warm chocolate skin, protruding cheekbones and a tiny mouth, beneath straight, cropped greying hair. I tried to imagine it as belonging to a Midnight Mayor, and failed. I flicked through the rest of the wallet. A single credit card given by a bank whose name I couldn’t even recognise, but which was pleased to give an Exclusive Gold Membership to Nair, A., and which seemed the heart and soul of his finances. No loyalty cards to any shops or supermarkets - perhaps this was a man who didn’t do his own shopping. No money either, no receipts, no video or library cards or any of the usual detritus of human existence that tended to pile up inside a wallet. There was only one business card. I read the name with a sinking feeling that went right down through my belly and into my knees: D.B. Sinclair. Plus a telephone number.
Dudley Sinclair. “Concerned citizens.” A man who made the older Orson Welles look trim and cockney. I respected him in the same way I respected the jaws of a lion - from a very long way off. He had been of use to me, in bringing down Bakker and the Tower. I had been of immense use to him. In retrospect, he’d done two parts filing to my ten parts bleeding. But that just made him all the smarter. He knew how to get others to do his dirty work.
I put the wallet to one side.
There was a police report, short, brisk, badly spelt
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