Play could have stopped about an hour ago. An explosion on Regent Street, and the subsequent wrath of owner Charlie, have kept things going. The excuse given ('Come on, it was only anti-commercialist terrorism at the Top Shop flagship') didn't cut it. Bomber Danielle and bombmaker Moran needed to suffer. Jim had both eyes on Marylebone and happy to stay in.
But eventually, when the beginning of the round comes, and Moran is actually going to have to get up and switch a light on for play to continue, "No." He puts up his hands, showing the idle dice, "No, no. No. Can't, no more. Headache. This is the longest day's work I've ever done. I'm not having it. I'm having pizza and a drink and I don't even want to hear argument."
"Agreed," says Mies. No surprise there, seeing they're the two under fire. A night for Charlie to cool off, yeah, that's just exactly what they would want. Well, if they think they're getting off that lightly, they've got another thing coming.
And Charlie hears himself thinking like that over a board game and says, "Agreed."
So there's only Jim to convince. No one can go anywhere until all four are satisfied to step off. That's in the rules. But all of a sudden the others are noticing just how far gone he is. He hasn't realized that dark has fallen outside, that they're even discussing this. There is only one thought in his head and that is how many bloody fecking stupid bloody times he's been round this fecking board and never, not once, not even with all the craft and engineering he has (and that is a bloody lot of craft and a tonne of fecking engineering) can't even get himself that one, stupid little train station just down the road from Baker Street.
Moran looks to Mies. Charlie resents it, but he does it too. So she rolls her eyes and straightens her back and pretends to be the fearless bitch they think she is. Softly, like coaxing a feral stray, "Jim?"
"Take your intervention voice off."
"It's just, we have been talking up here in the real world, and you seem to have missed it. I'm just wondering what's on your mind?"
He points. Stabs a finger into the crease of the board that runs through Marylebone. "This means something. That this won't come to me, that I can't have it, this means-"
"Fuck all, love. It's a square inch of cardboard." She moves to sit gingerly on the arm of his chair. He is now, and has been for the last twenty minutes, holding that much desired deed card. She clamps it between thumb and forefinger and pulls. It's not moving. It won't even wiggle side-to-side. "Jim, it's not as if some fairy is going to sweep in and buy it out from under you in the night." No response. Nothing, absolutely nothing. "Seb, get over here."
He lingers by the lightswitch, "What for?"
"You know that thing I do sometimes and sometimes he overreacts? Be here to get between us."
She positions herself carefully behind Jim's chair. Moran, thinking no one is watching, crosses himself. Then, once he's close enough to protect her, she cranks back her hand and slaps hard across the back of Jim's head. She scrambles back, and Moran steps in.
All that happens is that Jim lifts his head, blinking like a sleepwalker at the night outside the window. "God, is it late? Break for dinner?"
In grateful chorus, the others reply, "Agreed."
The dice go on the fireplace, under the wet glass from Mies' earlier drink – the ring it leaves on the wood should be undisturbed when they come back in the morning. Money piles are meticulously counted and protected; Charlie leaves his cufflinks on top, each pointing in a very specific direction, Mies ties hers down with one long dark hair from her head. The all-powerful folder is stowed beneath the coffee table, defended only by the tenuous, hanging trust.
The living room is locked. The key goes into the small wall-safe in the entrance hall, with all the car keys. The combination is four digits long and they each turn one tumbler to lock it.
(Four digits… Charlie rolls his eyes. Even Moran can crack four digits. And all of it, Mies thinks, suggesting that I even need a key. But it's the effort that counts.)
In effect, this is a good place to leave it. They've all done well for themselves, these early, struggling days of empire-building. The new map of London is all but complete. The boundary lines have been drawn.
Every good warlord knows, the property battles are the bloody ones. Machiavelli sits out the first few rounds and comes in when the dust has settled.
New London is quiet tonight. There's very little still to do. None of these players are the sort for elaborate dreams, but it doesn't take much imagination. The glaziers are at work refronting the shops of Regent Street. The bank at the Angel Islington will reopen in the morning, after the robbery and all those dead staff. The politicians at Whitehall and brave SIS arseholes at Pall Mall are at home, drinking themselves into stupors, holding their heads because they know that Jim Moriarty owns them now. The cops too, patrolling the streets in his name. What Moriarty lacks in property value he's more than made up for in resources. He's got two outposts full of support staff. One at Euston Road, one at Mayfair; protecting those few odd spots that silly, quiet Moran grabbed, like rags from the sale rack.
There's only one spot on the board that no one has laid claim to.
Well, there's Marylebone, but that's… hardly worth mentioning… No, aside from that.
Because, as everybody knows, in Monopoly you can't start building on a patch until you own the whole run. This is one of the rules that their private version still observes, and observes religiously. You can do very little with the land you own, until you own it all.
And up there in the top left is a very contentious little spot. Those reds… those reds will run red, before it's all done. There's Charlie at the Strand, sitting comfortably on the blackmail rights to a pair of movie stars good for a tap anytime he falls short on cash. Then, next door, Fleet Street. And the Bitch took that from him. Took it gleefully and goes everywhere now with her personal journalist, just waiting to catch him out and all the while hiding behind the poor sod. "Mail or Telegraph?" Moriarty asked her. "Guardian, darling," she purred in reply.
Then, no man's land. Trafalgar. Golden, delightful Trafalgar. Packed full of tourists – packed pockets to pick, every scam in the book waiting to be run day after day afresh and oh the scandal should something brutal happen there. There's work for anyone at Trafalgar Square. What a money-spinner. What a useful little plot.
Look ahead. Look deep into the night, after takeaway and drinks. Look to the spare rooms upstairs. Look, if you want to, and see Mies clawing at the sheet. She will be deep in a dream, and picking up rich red earth from the centre of Trafalgar Square. Mumbling to herself in her sleep, Even if I have to lie, or cheat, or steal, I'll never go hungry again…
Milverton, meanwhile, will tell a dream full of devoted sailors how England expects that every man will do his duty, with one closed fist held over his heart, against his blue uniform, amongst all the medals and ribbons of his high naval office. The sky behind his rousing speeches is bloody with promising dawn.
Of course, neither will ever remember it. At least, they won't admit as much.
But that's still a long way off. There are a few hours between now and then.
For now, we have nothing but Moran rolling the crackle out of his spine against one of the kitchen chairs. "Jim, can I sit in the armchair tomorrow?" And he tells himself, Good, that was a good gambit, much better bet than asking Charlie for his seat, before he remembers to snap out of that frame of mind.
Charlie is thinking, If Jim says no, I'll offer, before giving himself the same dressing-down.
Jim says right out loud, "I'm not going to get Italian-Jobbed while I'm moving the bank, am I? Dani, I'm vetoing all armoured car robberies here and now." He hears the echo of himself and joins the shamefaced silence. Mies hears his veto through her hopeful glances at Moran (she'd need his Battleship, after all) and is the last to fall.
It just takes a while to readjust, that's all.
Some have suggested that you never really snap out of it. And if you could only look ahead, deep into the night, you might concur. You would see Jim's sleepy little smile. Perhaps you would even guess, from his mutterings and twitches, that in a dream he is sitting cross-legged, at a low table like a child, playing with all twelve tokens and the tokens made from frozen blood. Then you might concur.
For those of you who are interested, Moran's dream is red too. This, however, is only because it's Cup Season. He dreams of Liverpool pummelling Chelsea twelve-nil, and nothing more immediately threatening than this. Then again, there must be an exception to prove the rule.
