KING rat

"A genuine
contribution
to London's

subterranean mythology .. . It's humane and
delinquent. And it bites"


IAIN SINCLAIR


"Full of the rank energy of Jungle rhythms, China
Mieville's rat's nest of a book gives a new meaning
to the term 'alternative London', a kingdom we
didn't know we'd inherited. KING RAT goes down
as sweetly as week-old garbage, to leave the
reader eyeing speculatively the manhole covers
of Soho and Battersea. A knotted, toothy, thought
provoking read."


M.JOHN HARRISON


"China Mieville is an intriguing new voice in British
fantasy. He's inventing a language for Jungle London
that's both ancient and part of the city's future."


CHRISTOPHER FOWLER


"A story so compelling you almost haven't time to
notice how fine the writing is: a dark myth reinvented
for our time and for London in particular with great
wit, style and imagination"


RAMSEY CAMPBELL


"KING RAT takes us out of the high courts of fairy
tale, away from the romanticised city streets of many
current fantasies, down into the sewers . . . And his
characters are fabulous, even the bit players .. .
This is a riveting, brilliant novel. The language
sings, the concepts are original and engrossing ... an
utter delight"


CHARLES DE LINT
CHINA MIEVILLE


KING RAT


PAN BOOKS
fts


First published 1998 by Macmillan


This edition published 1999 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan Ltd

Pan MacmilUn, 20 New Wharf Road, London I'll 9RR

Basingstoke and Oxford

Associated companies throughout the world

www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 0 330 37098 7
Copyright  China Mieville 1998

Tin; right of China Mieville to be identified -is the

aiuhoi of this work has been asserted b> him in .Kaini.inee

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.


All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written

permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized

act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal

prosecution and civil claims for damages.


57986


A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library.


Phototypeset by Intype London Ltd

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Mackays of Chatham pic, Chatham, Kent


This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,

by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out,

or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent

in any form of binding or cover other than that in which

it is published and without a similar condition including this

condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
TO MAX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS


Thank you to everyone who read this in the early
stages. All my love and gratitude go to my mother,
Claudia, for all her support, always: and to my sister,
Jemima, for her advice and feedback.

Deep love and thanks to Emma, of course, for
everything.

My heartfelt thanks to Max Schaefer, who gave me
invaluable criticisms, hours of word-processing help,
and great friendship during a generally rubbish year.

I can never thank Mic Cheetham enough. I am
incredibly lucky to have her on my side. And thanks
to all at Macmillan, particularly my editor Peter
Lavery.

I owe too many writers and artists to mention, but
respect is especially due to Two Fingers and James The.
Kirk for their novel Junglist. They blazed a trail. Many
thanks also to Iain Sinclair for generously letting me
keep the metaphor I accidently stole from him. Jake
Pilikian introduced me to Drum and Bass music and
changed my life. Big up to all the DJs and Crews who
provided a soundtrack. Awe and gratitude especially
to A Guy Called Gerald for the sublime Gloc: old,
now, but still the most terrifying slab of guerrilla bass
ever committed to vinyl. Rewind.
A London Sometin'...
Tek9
KING RAT
I can squeeze between buildings through spaces you
can't even see. I can walk behind you so close my
breath raises gooseflesh on your neck and you won't
hear me. I can hear the muscles in your eyes contract
when your pupils dilate. I can feed off your filth and
live in your house and sleep under your bed and you
will never know unless I want you to.

I climb above the streets. All the dimensions of the city
are open to me. Your walls are my walls and my ceilings
and my floors.

The wind whips my overcoat with a sound like
washing on a line. A thousand scratches on my arms
tingle like electricity as I scale roofs and move through
squat copses of chimneys. I have business tonight.

I spill like mercury over the lip of a building and
slither down drainpipes to the alley fifty feet below.
I slide silently through piles of rubbish in the sepia



lamplight and crack the seal on the sewers, pulling the
metal cover out of the street without a sound.

Now I am in darkness but I can still see. I can hear
the growling of water through the tunnels. I am up to
my waist in your shit, I can feel it tugging at me, I can
smell it. I know my way through these passages.


I am heading north, submerged in the current,
wading, clinging to walls and ceiling. Live things
scuttle and slither to get out of my way. I weave
without hesitation through the dank corridors. The
rain has been fitful and hesitant but all the water in
London seems eager to reach its destination tonight.
The brick rivers of the underground are swollen. I dive
under the surface and swim in the cloying dark until
the time has come to emerge and I rise from the
deeps, dripping. I pass noiselessly again through the
pavement.

Towering above me is the red brick of my destination.
A great dark mass broken with squares of
irrelevant light. One glimmering in the shadow of the
eaves holds my attention. I straddle the corner of
the building and ease my way up. I am slower now.
The sound of television and the smell of food seep out
of the window, which I am reaching towards now,
which I am rattling now with my long nails, scratching,
a sound like a pigeon or a twig, an intriguing
sound, bait.
PART ONE


GLASS
CHAPTERONE


The trains that enter London arrive like ships sailing
across the roofs. They pass between towers jutting
into the sky like long-necked sea beasts and the great
gas-cylinders wallowing in dirty scrub like whales. In
the depths below are lines of small shops and obscure
franchises, cafes with peeling paint and businesses
tucked into the arches over which the trains pass. The
colours and curves of graffiti mark every wall. Top
floor windows pass by so close that passengers can
peer inside, into small bare offices and store cupboards.
They can make out the contours of trade
calendars and pin-ups on the walls.

The rhythms of London are played out here, in the
sprawling flat zone between suburbs and centre.

Gradually the streets widen and the names of the
shops and cafes become more familiar; the main roads
are more salubrious; the traffic is denser; and the city
rises to meet the tracks.

At the end of a day in October a train made this
journey towards King's Cross. Flanked by air, it



progressed over the outlands of North London, the
city building up below it as it neared the Holloway
Road. The people beneath ignored its passage. Only
children looked up as it clattered overhead, and some
of the very young pointed. As the train drew closer to
the station, it slipped below the level of the roofs.

There were few people in the carriage to watch the
bricks rise around them. The sky disappeared above
the windows. A cloud of pigeons rose from a hiding
place beside the tracks and wheeled off to the east.

The flurry of wings and bodies distracted a thickset
young man at the rear of the compartment. He had
been trying not to stare openly at the woman sitting
opposite him. Thick with relaxer, her hair had been
teased from its tight curls and was coiled like snakes
on her head. The man broke off his furtive scrutiny as
the birds passed by, and he ran his hands through his
own cropped hair.

The train was now below the houses. It wound
through a deep groove in the city, as if the years of
passage had worn down the concrete under the tracks.
Saul Garamond glanced again at the woman sitting in
front of him, and turned his attention to the windows.
The light in the carriage had made them mirrors, and
he stared at himself, his heavy face. Beyond his face
was a layer of brick, dimly visible, and beyond that
the cellars of the houses that rose like cliffs on either
side.

It was days since Saul had been in the city.



Every rattle of the tracks took him closer to his
home. He closed his eyes.

Outside, the gash through which the tracks passed
had widened as the station approached. The walls on
either side were punctuated by dark alcoves, small
caves full of rubbish a few feet from the track. The
silhouettes of cranes arched over the skyline. The
walls around the train parted. Tracks fanned away on
either side as the train slowed and edged its way into
King's Cross.

The passengers rose. Saul swung his bag over his
shoulder and shuffled out of the carriage. Freezing air
stretched up to the great vaulted ceilings. The cold
shocked him. Saul hurried through the buildings,
through the crowds, threading his way between knots
of people. He still had a way to go. He headed underground.

He could feel the presence of the population
around him. After days in a tent on the Suffolk coast,
the weight of ten million people so close to him
seemed to make the air vibrate. The tube was full of
garish colours and bare flesh, as people headed to
clubs and parties.

His father would probably be waiting for him. He
knew Saul was coming back, and he would surely
make an effort to be welcoming, forfeiting his usual
evening in the pub to greet his son. Saul already
resented him for that. He felt gauche and uncharitable,
but he despised his father's faltering attempts to



communicate. He was happier when the two of them
avoided each other. Being surly was easy, and felt
more honest.


By the time his tube train burst out of the tunnels of
the Jubilee Line it was dark. Saul knew the route.
The darkness transformed the rubble behind Finchley
Road into a dimly glimpsed no-man's-land, but he
was able to fill in the details he could not see, even
down to the tags and the graffiti. Burner. Nax. Coma.
He knew the names of the intrepid little rebels
clutching their magic markers, and he knew where
they had been.

The grandiose tower of the Gaumont State cinema
jutted into the sky on his left, a bizarre totalitarian
monument among the budget groceries and hoardings
of Kilburn High Road. Saul could feel the cold
through the windows and he wrapped his coat around
him as the train neared Willesden station. The passengers
had thinned. Saul left only a very few behind
him as he got out of the carriage.

Outside the station he huddled against the chill.
The air smelt faintly of smoke from some local
bonfire, someone clearing his allotment. Saul set off
down the hill towards the library.

He stopped at a takeaway and ate as he walked,
moving slowly to avoid spilling soy sauce and vegetables
down himself. Saul was sorry the sun had gone


10



down. Willesden lent itself to spectacular sunsets. On
a day like today, when there were few clouds, its low
skyline let the light flood the streets, pouring into the
strangest crevices; the windows that faced each other
bounced the rays endlessly back and forth between
themselves and sent it hurtling in unpredictable directions;
the rows and rows of brick glowed as if lit from
within.

Saul turned into the backstreets. He wound
through the cold until his father's house rose before
him. Terragon Mansions was an ugly Victorian block,
squat and mean-looking for all its size. It was fronted
by the garden: a strip of dirty vegetation frequented
only by dogs. His father lived on the top floor. Saul
looked up and saw that the lights were on. He climbed
the steps and let himself in, glancing into the darkness
of the bushes and scrub on either side.

He ignored the huge lift with its steel-mesh door,
not wanting its groans to announce him. Instead he
crept up the flights of stairs and gently unlocked his
father's door.

The flat was freezing.

Saul stood in the hall and listened. He could hear
the sound of the television from behind the sitting
room door. He waited, but his father was silent. Saul
shivered and looked around him.

He knew he should go in, should rouse his father
from slumber, and he even got as far as reaching for
the door. But he stopped and looked at his own room.


11



He sneered at himself in disgust, but he crept towards
it anyway.

He could apologize in the morning. I thought you
were asleep, Dad. I heard you snoring. I came in drunk
and fell into bed. I was so knackered I wouldn't have
been any kind of company anyway. He cocked an
ear, heard only the voices of one of the late-night
discussion programmes his father so loved, muffled
and pompous. Saul turned away and slipped into his
room.


Sleep came easily. Saul dreamed of being cold, and
woke once in the night to pull his duvet closer. He
dreamed of slamming, a heavy beating noise, so loud
it pulled him out of sleep and he realized it was real, it
was there. Adrenaline surged through him, making
him tremble. His heart quivered and lurched as he
swung out of bed.

It was icy in the flat.
Someone was pounding on the front door.

The noise would not stop, it was frightening him.
He was shaking, disorientated. It was not yet light.
Saul glanced at his clock. It was a little after six. He
stumbled into the hall. The horrible bang bang bang was incessant, and now he could hear shouting as well,
distorted and unintelligible.

He fought into a shin and shouted: 'Who is it?'


12



The slamming did not stop. He called out again,
and this time a voice was raised above the din.

'Police!'

Saul struggled to clear his head. With a sudden
panic he thought of the small stash of dope in his
drawer, but that was absurd. He was no drugs kingpin,
no one would waste a dawn raid on him. He was
reaching out to open the door, his heart still tearing,
when he suddenly remembered to check that they
were who they claimed, but it was too late now, the
door flew back and knocked him down as a torrent of
bodies streamed into the flat.

Blue trousers and big shoes all around him. Saul
was yanked to his feet. He started to flail at the
intruders. Anger waxed with his fear. He tried to yell
but someone smacked him in the stomach and he
doubled up. Voices were reverberating everywhere
around him, making no sense.

'... cold like a bastard ...'

'... cocky little cunt...'

'. .. fucking glass, watch yourself..."

'... his son, or what? High as a fucking kite, must
be ...'

And above all these voices he could hear a weather
forecast, the cheery tones of a breakfast television presenter.
Saul struggled to turn and face the men who
were holding him so tight.

'What the fuck's going on?' he gasped. Without


13



speaking, the men propelled him into the sitting
room.

The room was full of police, but Saul saw straight
through them. He saw the television first: the woman
in the bright suit was warning him it would be chilly
again today. On the sofa was a plate of congealed
pasta, and a half-drunk glass of beer sat on the floor.
Cold gusts of air caught at him and he looked up
at the window, out over houses. The curtains were
billowing dramatically. He saw that jags of glass littered
the floor. There was almost no glass left in the
window-frame, only a few shards around the edges.

Saul sagged with terror and tried to pull himself to
the window.

A thin man in civilian clothes turned and saw him.

'Down the station now,' he shouted at Saul's captors.

Saul was spun on his heels. The room turned
around him like a funfair ride, the rows of books
and his father's small pictures rushing past him. He
struggled to turn back.

'Dad!'he shouted.'Dad!'

He was pulled effortlessly out of the flat. The dark
of the corridor was pierced by slivers of light spilling
out of doors. Saul saw uncomprehending faces and
hands clutching at dressing-gowns, as he was hauled
towards the lift. Neighbours in pyjamas were staring
at him. He bellowed at them as he passed.

He still could not see the men holding him. He


14



shouted at them, begging to know what was going on,
pleading, threatening and railing.

'Where's my dad? What's going on?'

'Shut up.'

'What's going on?'

Something slammed into his kidneys, not hard but
with the threat of greater force. 'Shut up.' The lift
door closed behind them.

'What's happened to my fucking dad!'

As soon as he had seen the broken window a voice
inside Saul had spoken quietly. He had not been able
to hear it clearly until now. Inside the flat the brutal
crunch of boots and the swearing had drowned it out.
But here where he had been dragged, in the relative
silence of the lift, he could hear it whispering.

Dead, it said. Dad's dead.

Saul's knees buckled. The men behind him held him
upright, but he was utterly weak in their arms. He
moaned.

'Where's my dad?' he pleaded.

The light outside was the colour of the clouds. Blue
strobes swirled on a mass of police cars, staining the
drab buildings. The frozen air cleared Saul's head. He
tugged desperately at the arms holding him as he
struggled to see over the hedges that ringed Terragon
Mansions. He saw faces staring down from the hole
that was his father's window. He saw the glint of a
million splinters of glass covering the dying grass. He
saw a mass of uniformed police frozen in a threatening


15



diorama. All their faces were turned to him. One held
a roll of tape covered in crime scene warnings, a tape
he was stretching around stakes in the ground, circumscribing
a piece of the earth. Inside the chosen
area he saw one man kneeling before a dark shape on
the lawn. The man was staring at him like all the
others. His body obscured the untidy thing. Saul was
swept past before he could see any more.

He was pushed into one of the cars, lightheaded
now, hardly able to feel a thing. His breath came very
fast. Somewhere along the line handcuffs had been
snapped onto his wrists. He shouted again at the men
in front, but they ignored him.

The streets rolled by.


They put him in a cell, gave him a cup of tea and warmer clothes: a grey cardigan and corduroy
trousers that stank of alcohol. Saul sat huddled in a
stranger's clothes. He waited for a long time.

He lay on the bed, draped the thin blanket around
him.

Sometimes he heard the voice inside him. Suicide, it
said. Dad's committed suicide.

Sometimes he would argue with it. It was a ridiculous
idea, something his father could never do. Then it
would convince him and he might start to hyperventilate,
to panic. He closed his ears to it. He kept it quiet.


16



He would not listen to rumours, even if they came
from inside himself.

No one had told him why he was there. Whenever
footsteps went by outside he would shout, sometimes
swearing, demanding to know what was happening.
Sometimes the footsteps would stop and the grille
would be lifted on the door. 'We're sorry for the
delay,' a voice would say. 'We'll be with you as soon as
we can,' or 'Shut the fuck up.'

'You can't keep me here,' he yelled at one point.
'What's going on?' His voice echoed around empty
corridors.

Saul sat on the bed and stared at the ceiling.

A fine network of cracks spread out from one
corner. Saul followed them with his eyes, allowing
himself to be mesmerized.

Why are you here? the voice inside whispered to
him nervously. Why do they want you? Why won't
they speak to you?

Saul sat and stared at the cracks and ignored the
voice.

After a long time he heard the key in the lock. Two
uniformed policemen entered, followed by the thin
man Saul had seen in his father's flat. The man was
dressed in the same brown suit and ugly tan raincoat.
He stared at Saul, who returned his gaze from beneath
the dirty blanket, forlorn and pathetic and aggressive.
When the thin man spoke his voice was much softer
than Saul would have imagined.


17



'Mr Garamond,' he said. 'I'm sorry to have to tell
you that your father is dead.'

Saul gazed at him. That much was obvious surely,
he felt like shouting, but tears stopped him. He tried
to speak through his streaming eyes and nose, but
could issue nothing but a sob. He wept noisily for a
minute, then struggled to control himself. He sniffed
back tears like a baby and wiped his snotty nose on
his sleeve. The three policemen stood and watched
him impassively until he had controlled himself a little
more.

'What's going on?' he croaked.

'I was hoping you might be able to tell us that,
Saul,' said the thin man. His voice remained quite
impassive. "I'm Detective Inspector Crowley, Saul.
Now, I'm going to ask you a few questions ...'

'What happened to Dad?' Saul interrupted. There
was a pause.

'He fell from the window, Saul,' Crowley said. 'It's
a long way up. I don't think he suffered any.' There was a pause. 'Did you not realize what had happened
to your dad, Saul?'

'I thought maybe something... I saw in the
garden ... Why am I here? Saul was shaking.

Crowley pursed his lips and moved a little closer.
'Well, Saul, first let me apologize for how long you've
been waiting. It's been very hectic out here. I had
hoped someone might come and take care of you, but


18



it seems no one has. I'm sorry about that. I'll be
having a few words.

'As to why you're here, well, it was all a bit confused
back there. We get a call from a neighbour
saying there's someone lying out front of the building,
we go in, there you are, we don't know who you
are ... you can see how it all gets out of hand.
Anyway, you're here, long and short of it, in the hope
that you can tell us your side of the story.'

Saul stared at Crowley. 'My side? he shouted. 'My
side of what? I've got home and my dad's ...'

Crowley shushed him, his hands up, placating,
nodding.

'I know, I know, Saul. We've just got to understand
what happened. I want you to come with me.' He
gave a sad little smile as he said this. He looked down
at Saul sitting on the bed; dirty, smelly, in strange
clothes, confused, pugnacious, tear-stained and
orphaned. Crowley's face creased with what looked
like concern.

'I want to ask you some questions.'


19
CHAPTERTWO


Once, when he was three, Saul was sitting on his
father's shoulders, coming home from the park. They
had passed a group of workmen repairing a road,
and Saul had tangled his hands in his father's hair and
leaned over and gazed at the bubbling pot of tar his
father pointed out: the pot heating on the van, and the
big metal stick they used to stir it. His nose was filled
with the thick smell of tar, and as Saul gazed into the
simmering glop he remembered the witch's cauldron
in Hansel and Gretel and he was seized with the
sudden terror that he would fall into the tar and be
cooked alive. And Saul had squirmed backwards and
his father had stopped and asked him what was the
matter. When he understood he had taken Saul off his
shoulders and walked with him over to the workmen,
who had leaned on their shovels and grinned quizzically
at the anxious child. Saul's father had leaned
down and whispered encouragement into his ear, and
Saul had asked the men what the tar was. The men had
told him about how they would spread it thin and put


20



it on the road, and they had stirred it for him as his
father held him. He did not fall in. And he was still
afraid, but not as much as he had been, and he knew
why his father had made him find out about the tar,
and he had been brave.


A mug of milky tea coagulated slowly in front of him.
A bored-looking constable stood by the door
of the bare room. A rhythmic metallic wheeze issued
from the tape-recorder on the table. Crowley sat
opposite him, his arms folded, his face impassive.
'Tell me about your father.'


Saul's father had been racked with a desperate embarrassment
whenever his son came home with girls. It
was very important to him that he should not seem
distant or old-fashioned, and in a ghastly miscalculation
he had tried to put Saul's guests at their ease.
He was terrified that he would say the wrong thing.
The struggle not to bolt for his own room stiffened
him. He would stand uneasily in the doorway, a
grim smile clamped to his face, his voice firm and
serious as he asked the terrified fifteen-year-olds
what they were doing at school and whether they
enjoyed it. Saul would gaze at his father and will
him to leave. He would stare furiously at the floor as


21



his father stolidly discussed the weather and GCSE
English.


'I've heard that sometimes you argued. Is that true,
Saul? Tell me about that.'


When Saul was ten, the time he liked most was in the
mornings. Saul's father left for work on the railways
early, and Saul had half an hour to himself in the flat.
He would wander around and stare at the titles of the
books his father left lying on all the surfaces: books
about money and politics and history. His father
would always pay close attention to what Saul was
doing in history at school, asking what the teachers
had said. He would lean over his chair, urging Saul not
to believe everything his history teacher told him. He
would thrust books at his son, stare at them, become
distracted, take them back, flick through the pages,
murmur that Saul was perhaps too young. He would
ask his son what he thought about the issues they
discussed. He took Saul's opinions very seriously.
Sometimes these discussions bored Saul. More often
they made him feel uneasy at the sudden welter of
ideas, but inspired.


22

'Did your father ever make you feel guilty, Saul?'


Something had been poisoned between the two of
them when Saul was about sixteen. He had been sure
this was an awkwardness that would pass, but once it
had taken root the bitterness would not go. Saul's
father forgot how to talk to him. He had nothing
more to teach and nothing more to say. Saul was angry
with his father's disappointment. His father was disappointed
at his laziness and his lack of political
fervour. Saul could not make his father feel at ease,
and his father was disappointed at that. Saul had
stopped going on the marches and the demonstrations,
and his father had stopped asking him. Every
once in a while there would be an argument. Doors
would slam. More usually there was nothing.

Saul's father was bad at accepting presents. He
never took women to the flat when his son was there.
Once when the twelve-year-old Saul was being
bullied, his father came into the school unannounced
and harangued the teachers, to Saul's profound embarrassment.


'Do you miss your mother, Saul? Are you sorry you
never knew her?'


23


Saul's father was a short man with powerful shoulders
and a body like a thick pillar. He had thinning grey
hair and grey eyes.

The previous Christmas he had given Saul a book
by Lenin. Saul's friends had laughed at how little the
ageing man knew his son, but Saul had not felt any
scorn -- only loss. He understood what his father was
trying to offer him.

His father was trying to resolve a paradox. He was
trying to make sense of his bright, educated son letting
life come to him rather than wresting what he wanted
from it. He understood only that his son was dissatisfied.
That much was true. In Saul's teenage years he
had been a living cliche, sulky and adrift in ennui. To
his father this could only mean that Saul was paralysed
in the face of a terrifying and vast future, the whole of
his life, the whole of the. world. Saul had emerged,
passed twenty unscathed, but his father and he would
never really be able to talk together again.

That Christmas, Saul had sat on his bed and turned
the little book over and over in his hands. It was a
leather-bound edition illustrated with stark woodcuts
of toiling workers, a beautiful little commodity. What
Is To Be Done? demanded the title. What is to be done
with you, Saul?

He read the book. He read Lenin's exhortations
that the future must be grasped, struggled for,
moulded, and he knew that his father was trying to
explain the world to him, trying to help him. His


24



father wanted to be his vanguard. What paralyses is
fear, his father believed, and what makes fear is ignorance.
When we learn, we no longer fear. This is tar,
and this is what it does, and this is the world, and this
is what it does, and this is what we can do to it.


There was a long time of gentle questions and monosyllabic
answers. Almost imperceptibly, the pace of
the interrogation built up. / was out of London, Saul
tried to explain, / was camping. I got in late, about
eleven, I went straight to bed, I didn't see Dad.

Crowley was insistent. He ignored Saul's plaintive
evasions. He grew gradually more aggressive. He
asked Saul about the previous night.

Crowley relentlessly reconstructed Saul's route
home. Saul felt as if he had been slapped. He was curt,
struggling to control the adrenaline which rushed
through him. Crowley piled meat on the skeletal
answers Saul offered him, threading through Willesden
with such detail that Saul once more stalked its
dark streets.

'What did you do when you saw your father?'
Crowley asked.

/ did not see my father, Saul wanted to say, he died
without me seeing him, but instead he heard himself
whine something inaudible like a petulant child.

'Did he make you angry when you found him
waiting for you?' Crowley said, and Saul felt fear


25



spread through him from the groin outwards. He
shook his head.

'Did he make you angry, Saul? Did you argue?'

'I didn't see him!'

'Did you fight, Saul?' A shaken head, no. 'Did you
fight?'No.'Did you?'

Crowley waited a long time for an answer. Eventually
he pursed his lips and scribbled something in a
notebook. He looked up and met Saul's eyes, dared
him to speak.

'I didn't see him! I don't know what you want... I
wasn't there!' Saul was afraid. When, he begged to
know, would they let him go? But Crowley would not
say.

Crowley and the constable led him back to the cell.
There would be further interviews, they warned him.
They offered him food which, in a fit of righteous
petulance, he refused. He did not know if he was
hungry. He felt as if he had forgotten how to tell.
'I want to make a phone call!' Saul called as the
men's footsteps died away, but they did not return and
he did not shout again.

Saul lay on the bench and covered his eyes.

He was acutely aware of every sound. He could
hear the tattoo of feet in the corridor long before they
passed his door. Muffled conversations of men and
women welled up and died as they walked by;
laughter sounded suddenly from another part of the


26



building; cars were moving some way off, their mutterings
filtered by trees and walls.

For a long time Saul lay listening. Was he allowed a
phone call? he wondered. Who would he call? Was he
under arrest? But these thoughts seemed to take up
very little of his mind. For the most part he just lay
and listened.

A long time passed.


Saul opened his eyes with a start. For a moment he
was uncertain what had happened.

The sounds were changing.

The depth seemed to be bleeding out of all the
noises in the world.

Saul could still make out everything he had heard
before, but it was ebbing away into two dimensions.
The change was swift and inexorable. Like the curious
echoes of shrieks which fill swimming pools, the
sounds were clear and audible, but empty.

Saul sat up. A loud scratching startled him: the
noise of his chest against the rough blanket. He could
hear the thump of his heart. The sounds of his body
were as full as ever, unaffected by the strange sonic
vampirism. They seemed unnaturally clear. Saul felt
like a cut-out pasted ineptly onto the world. He
moved his head slowly from side to side, touched his
ears.

A faint patter of boots sounded in the corridor, wan


27



and ineffectual. A policeman walked past the cell,
steps unconvincing. Saul stood tentatively and looke
up at the ceiling. The network of cracks and lines ir
the paint seemed to shift uneasily, the shadows
moving imperceptibly, as if a faint light were being
moved about the room.

Saul's breath came fast and shallow. The air fehi
stretched out taut and tasted of dust.

Saul moved, reeled, made diz/y by the cacophonj
of his own body.

Above the stripped-down murmurings, slow foot|
steps became audible. Like the sounds Saul made
these steps cut through the surrounding whisper
effortlessly, deliberately. Other steps passed them hur- *
riedly in both directions, but the pace of these feet didl
not change. They moved steadily towards his door^
Saul could feel vibrations in the desiccated air.

Without thought, he backed into a corner of the
room and stared at the door. The feet stopped. Saw
heard no key in his lock, but the handle turned anc
the door swung open.

The motion seemed to take a long long time, the
door fighting its way through air suddenly glutinousjj
The complaints of the hinges, emaciated with malaise
stretched out long after the door had stopped moving.!

The light in the corridor was bright. Saul could nolf
make out the figure who stepped into his cell anc
gently closed the door.

The figure stood motionless, regarding Saul.


28



The light in the cell performed only a rudimentary
job on the man.

Like moonlight it sketched out nothing but an
edge. Two eyes full of dark, a sharp nose and pinched
mouth.

Shadows were draped over the face like cobwebs.
He was tall but not very tall; his shoulders were
bunched up tight as if against the wind, a defensive
posture. The vague face was thin and lined; the long
dark hair was lank and uncombed, falling over those
tight shoulders in untidy clots. A shapeless coat of
indiscriminate grey was draped over dark clothes. The
man plunged his hands into his pockets. His face was
turned slightly down. He was looking at Saul from
beneath his brows.

A smell of rubbish and wet animals filled the room.
The man stood motionless, watching Saul from across
the floor.

'You're safe.'

Saul started. He had only dimly seen the man's
mouth move, but the harsh whisper echoed in his head as if those lips were an inch from his ear. It took a
moment for him to understand what had been said.

'What do you mean?' he said. 'Who are you?'

'You're safe now. No one can get to you now.' A
strong London accent, an aggressive, secretive snarl
whispered right in Saul's ear. 'I want you to know
why you're here.'

Saul felt dizzy, swallowed spit made thick with


29



phlegm by the atmosphere. He did not, he did nc
understand what was happening.

'Who are you?' Saul hissed. 'Are you police|
Where's Crowley?'

The man jerked his head in what might have bee|
dismissal, shock, or a laugh.

'How did you get in?' demanded Saul.

'I crept past all the little boys in blue on tippy-toe.!
slid hugger-mugger under the counter and I sneake^ my way to your little queer ken. Do you know whjj
you're here?'

Saul nodded dumbly.

'They think ...'

'The constables think you killed your daddy, but
you didn't, I know that. Granted, you'll have a fine;
time getting them to Adam and Eve that... but I do.',

Saul was shaking. He sank onto the bunk. The
stench which had entered with the man was over!
powering. The voice continued, relentless. 'I've bee
watching you carefully, you know. Keeping tabs
We've a lot to talk about, you know. I can ... do yofi
a favour.'

Saul was utterly bewildered. Was this some casualt
off the streets? Someone ill in his head, too full
alcohol or voices to make any sense? The air was stil
taut like a bowstring. What did this man know aboul his father?

'I don't know who the fuck you are,' he star
slowly. 'And I don't know how you got in ...'


30



'You don't understand.' The whisper became a little
harsher. 'Listen, matey. We're out of that world now.
Tsfo more people and no more people things, get it? look at you,' the voice harsh with disgust. 'Sitting
there in your borrowed duds like a fool, waiting
patiently to get took before the Barnaby. Think they'll
take kindly to your whids? They'll bang you up till
you rot, foolish boy.' There was a long pause. 'And
then I appear, like a bloody angel of mercy. I spring
your jigger, no problem. This is where I live, get it?
This is the city where I live. It shares all the points of
yours and theirs, but none of its properties. I go where
I want. And I'm here to tell you how it is with you.
Welcome to my home.'

The voice filled the small room, it would not give
Saul space or time to think.

The shadowy face bore down on Saul. The man was
coming nearer. He moved in little spurts, his chest
and shoulders still tight, he approached from the side,
zigzagged a little, came a little closer from another
direction, his demeanour at once furtive and aggressive.

Saul swallowed. His head was light, his mouth dry.
He fought for spit. The air was arid and so full of
tension he could almost hear it, a faint keening as if
the sound of the door hinge had never died away. He
could not think, he could only listen.

The stinking apparition before him moved a little
out of the shadows. The filthy trenchcoat was open,


31



and Saul caught sudden sight of a lighter grey shirtf
underneath, decorated with rows of black arrowsf
pointing up, convict chic.

The angle of the man's head was proud, thel
shoulders skulking.

'There's nothing I don't know about RomevillJ
you see. Nor Gay Paree, nor Cairo, nor Berlin, nor nc
city, but London's special to me, has been for a long
time. Stop looking at me and wondering, boy. You're
not going to get it. I've crept through these brick
when they were barns, then mills, then factories and
banks. You're not looking at people, boy. You should!
count yourself lucky I'm interested in you. Because
I'm doing you a big favour.' The man's snarling monologue
paused theatrically.

This was madness, Saul knew. His head spun. Nonea
of this meant anything; it was meaningless words,|
ludicrous, he should laugh, but something in the
curdled air held his tongue. He could not speak, he
could not mock. He realized he was crying, or perhaps
his eyes were just watering in the stagnant atmosphere
of the room.

His tears seemed to annoy the intruder.

'Stop moaning on about your fat dad,' he spat
'That's all over, and you've more important things to
worry about.'

He paused again.

'Shall we go?'

Saul looked up sharply. He reached his voice at last.1


32



'What are you talking about? What do you mean?'
He was whispering.

'Shall we go? I said. It's time to scarper, it's time to
split, to quit, to take our leave.' The man looked about
him conspiratorially, and hid his mouth behind the
back of his hand in a melodramatic stage whisper. 'I'm
Breaking you out.' He straightened up a little and
nodded his head, that indistinct face bobbing enthusiastically.
'Let's just say your path and mine cross at
this point. It's darkmans outside already, I can smell it,
and it looks like they've forgot about you. No Tommy
Tucker for you, it seems, so let's bow out gracefully.
You and I've got business together, and this is no place
to conduct it. And if we wait much longer they'll have
banged you up as a member of the parenticide club
and eaten the key. There's no justice there, I know. So
let me ask you one more time ... shall we go?'

He could do it, Saul realized. With a terrified amazement he realized he was going to go with this
creature, was going to follow this man whose face he
could not see into the police station, and the two of
them would escape.

'Who ... what... are you?'

'I'll tell you that.'

The voice filled Saul up and made him faint. The
thin face was inches from his, silhouetted by the bare
bulb. He tried to see through the obfuscating darkness
and discern clear features, but the shadows were


33



stubborn and subtle. The words mesmerized him like,,
a spell, as hypnotic as dance music.

'You're in the presence of royalty, mate. I go where j
my subjects go, and my subjects are everywhere. And]
here in the cities there're a million crevices for irrjH
kingdom. I fill all the spaces in-between.

'Let me tell you about me.

'I can hear the things left unsaid.

'I know the secret life of houses and the social life ] of things. I can read the writing on the wall.

'I live in old London town.

'Let me tell you who I am.

'I'm the big-time crime boss. I'm the one that >
stinks. I'm the scavenger chief, I live where you don't
want me. I'm the intruder. I killed the usurper, I take^
you to safekeeping. I killed half your continent one { time. I know when your ships are sinking. I can break]
your traps across my knee and eat the cheese in yourj
face and make you blind with my piss. I'm the one!
with the hardest teeth in the world, I'm the whiskered']
boy. I'm the Duce of the sewers, I run the under-1
ground. I'm the king.'

In one sudden movement he turned to face the doori
and sloughed the coat from his shoulders, unveiling
the name stencilled crudely in black on the back of 1
shirt, between the rows of arrows.

'I'm King Rat.'


34
CHAPTERTHREE


A long way off to the south, somewhere in the heart
of the city, a siren sounded mournfully. The smell of
smoke still clung faintly to the air. It mingled with
exhaust fumes and the whiff of rubbish, all made chill
and even refreshing by the night.

Above the black bags and deserted streets rose the
walls of North London; above the walls the slate
roofs; and, above the slates, two figures: one standing
astride the apex of the police station roof like a mountain
climber, the other crouching in the shadow of the
aerials.

Saul wrapped his arms tightly around himself. The
unlikely figure of his saviour loomed above him. He
was sore. His borrowed clothes had rubbed against
concrete many times during his escape, till his skin
was scraped raw and bleeding, imprinted with a has
relief of cotton weave.

Somewhere in the guts of the building under his
feet was the cell he had recently vacated. He supposed
that the police had discovered him missing by now.


35


He imagined them scurrying about frantically, searching
for him, looking out of windows and filling the
area with cars.

Back in that cell, the grotesque figure calling itself \ King Rat had impaled Saul with his grandiloquent and!
preposterous declamations, taking his breath awayl
and rendering him dumb. Then he had paused again,Jj
and hunched those bony shoulders defensively. And/
again that invitation, as casual as from a bored lover at jj
a party.

'Shall we go?'

Saul had hovered, his heart shaking his body, eager |
to follow instructions. King Rat had sidled up to the!
door and gently tugged it open, silent this time. In a
sudden movement he had poked his head into the^
tight crack between door and frame, and twisted his
head exaggeratedly in both directions, then reached
hand behind him without looking back and beckoned
to Saul. Something magic had come to take him away
and Saul had crept forward with guilt and hope and
excitement.

King Rat had briefly turned as he approached anc
without warning, swept him up over his shoulder in i
fireman's lift. Saul had let out a bark of surprise befor
King Rat crushed his body against him, driving the ;
from him and hissing: 'Shut it.'

Saul lay still as King Rat stalked forward with easel He jounced up and down as the stinking figure pace
out of the room. Saul listened.


36



His head was flat against the other's back. The smell
of dirt and animal suffused him. He heard a very faint
whine as the door was pushed further open. He closed
his eyes. The light of the police-station corridor shone
red through his eyelids.

King Rat's thin shoulder dug into Saul's stomach.

Through the flesh of his belly he felt King Rat
pause, then pad forward without the slightest sound.
Saul kept his eyes shut tight. His breath came in starts.
He could hear the low hubbub of people nearby. He
felt the wall press into him. King Rat was hugging the
shadows.

From somewhere in front of them came footsteps,
brisk and inexorable. The wall scraped along Saul's
side as King Rat swiftly sank into a crouch and froze.
Saul held his breath. The footsteps came closer and
closer. Saul wanted to shriek his guilt, his presence,
anything to break the unbearable tension.

With a tiny breeze and a moment of warmth, the
footsteps passed by.

The grey shape moved on, one arm coiled tight
around Saul's legs. King Rat was weighed down under
Saul's motionless body like a grave-robber.

King Rat and his cargo passed silently through the
halls. Again and again footsteps approached, voices,
laughing. Each time Saul held his breath, King Rat
was still, as people passed by impossibly close, near
enough to touch, without seeing him or his burden.

Saul kept his eyes closed. Through his lids he could


37



see changes in darkness and light. Unbidden, his mir
drew a map of the station, rendering it a land of thes
stark and sudden oppositions. Here be monsters, thought, and felt ridiculously close to giggling. Hf
became acutely aware of sounds. The echoes he hea
aided his helpless cartography, waxing and waning ;
the rooms and corridors through which he was carrie
grew and shrank. Another door creaked open, and
Saul was held still.

The echoes hollowed out, changed direction. Th
bobbing of his body increased. He felt himself born!
upwards.

Saul opened his eyes. They were on a narrow flighl
of grey stairs, musty and sterile and badly lit. Muffled*
sounds came from above and below. His rescue
carried him up several flights, past floor after floor i
filthy windows and doors, eventually coming to res
and ducking his body for Saul to dismount. Saw
struggled off the bony shoulder and looked about
him.

They had reached the top of the building. On his)
left was a white door through which the tapping of :
keyboard could be heard. There was nowhere else to
go. On all other sides was dirty wall.

Saul turned to his companion. 'What now?' he
whispered.

King Rat turned back to face the stairs. Directly ir
front of him was a big greasy window, high above the
little entresol where the stairs had changed direction.1


38



As Saul stared, the grey figure cocked his head, sniffed
the expanse of air between himself and the window
ten feet away. In a burst of feverish motion he locked nis hands onto the banister and sprang astride it, right
foot planted below the left, perfectly still and poised
on the sloping plastic. He seemed to bunch up his
shoulders, contracting muscles and sinews relentlessly
one by one. He paused for a moment, the sharp,
obscure face contorted in a grin or a grimace, then he
burst forward in a silent flurry of limbs, for a moment
filling the gap between mezzanine and ceiling. He flew
through the air, grasped the handles of the window
and set his feet on the edge of the tiny sill. And as
suddenly as he had moved he was quite still, a bizarre
shape spreadeagled on the glass. His trenchcoat was
the only thing in motion, swinging gently.

Saul gasped, clapped his hand over his mouth,
glanced fearfully over his shoulder at the nearby door.

King Rat was sinuously unwinding. His long limbs
disentangled and his left hand scrabbled quietly at
the window lock. With a click and a gust of cold, the
window opened. His right hand still poised on the sill,
the weird apparition twisted his body, pulling it bit by bit out of the narrow opening. He made himself
impossibly thin as he squeezed through the vertical
strip of darkness that was all the window was built to
admit. His passage was as enchanted as that of a genie
from a lamp, clinging as tight to the outside frame as
he had within, poised on a few centimetres of wood


39



five stories above the earth, until those unclear eyes
were staring at Saul from beyond the filthy glass.

Only King Rat's right hand remained inside the
police station. It beckoned to Saul. Outside the dark
figure breathed mist onto the pane, then wrote with
the index finger of his left hand. He wrote in looking
glass script so the words appeared the right way round
to Saul.

now you he wrote, and waited.

Saul tried to clamber onto the banister. He scrabbled
ineffectually as his legs slid towards the floor. He
clung desperately and started to haul himself up again,
but the weight of his body tugged at him. He was
beginning to pant.

He stared up at the thin figure in the window. That
bony hand still stretched out towards him. Saul
descended to the mezzanine. Flattening his body as
low as it would go on the window-ledge, the other
swung his hand down, following Saul, reaching
towards the floor. Saul looked up at the tiny opening ;
under the window-frame: it was no more than nine
inches wide. He looked down at himself. He was
broad, a little fleshy. He spread his hands about his
girth, looked up at the window again, looked at the
thing waiting for him outside, shook his head.

The hand stretched towards him clawed the air
impatiently, clutched fitfully at nothing. It would not '
take no for an answer. Somewhere below them in the
building, a door slammed and two voices entered


40



the stairwell. Saul stared over the banister, saw feet
and the tops of heads two floors below. He jumped
back out of sight. The men were rising towards him.
The hand still clutched at him; outside, that shady face
was twisted.

Saul positioned himself underneath the hand,
stretched his arms up and leapt.

Strong fingers caught him around his left wrist,
locked tight, dug into his flesh. He opened his mouth
to cry out, caught himself, hissed. He was hauled silently
through the air, all thirteen stone of blood and
flesh and clothes. Another hand slid around his body,
a booted foot locked efficiently underneath him. How
was his sinewy benefactor holding on? Saul twisted
through the air, saw the window approach him. He turned his head to one side, felt his shoulders and
chest lock in the tight space. Hands slid over his body,
finding purchase, easing his passage into the outside
world. He was slipping through the window now, his
stomach pressing painfully against the lock fixed on
the frame, but moving much too smoothly through
that narrow gash and out into the shock of cold air.

Impossibly, he was delivered.

Wind buffeted him. Warm breath tickled his neck.

'Cling on,' came the hissed order, as Saul was pulled
into the air. Saul clung. He wrapped his legs around
King Rat's thin waist and threw his arms over those
bony shoulders.

King Rat stood on the tiny ledge, his boots clinging


41



precariously to the paint. Saul, who was much the
bigger, perched on his back, frosty with terror. King
Rat's right hand held the window-frame; his left hand
was locked into an absurdly tiny crack above his head.
Over them rose an expanse of sheer brickwork four or
five feet high crowned with a strip of plastic guttering.
Above that the roof, its slates too steep to be seen.

Saul turned his head. His stomach pitched like an
anchor. Five floors below him was the rubbish-strewn
concrete of a freezing alley. The shock of vertigo made
Saul feel sick. His mind shrieked at him to put his feet
on ground. He can't possibly bold on! he thought. He
can't possibly hold on! He felt the lithe body shift
under him and he nearly screamed.

Dimly Saul heard the voices from the stairwell
approach the window, but they suddenly receded as
he felt himself moving again.

King Rat lifted his right hand from the window
frame, and reached up to wrap his fingers around a
nail rusted into the wall, its purpose long forgotten.
His left hand moved now, creeping swiftly along
invisible paths in the brick and mortar to stop suddenly
and grip at a seemingly arbitrary spot in the
surface. Those fingers were acute to unseen clues and
potentials in the architecture.

The booted feet stepped free of the ledge. Saul was
twisted to one side as King Rat swung his right foot
up above his shoulder, suspending himself and his
burden from only clenched white knuckles. His feet


42



scraped at the wall, investigating like octopus tentacles,
till they found purchase and locked on some
minor aberration, some imperfection of the brick.

King Rat reached up with his right hand, grasping;
then his left, then his right, this time gripping the rim
of the black plastic gutter that marked the border
between brick and slate. It creaked dolefully but, unperturbed,
he tugged at it with both hands. He pulled
his knees up into his stomach, his feet planted firmly
against the brick, hung poised for a moment, then
pushed out with his thighs like a swimmer.

Saul and King Rat somersaulted through the air.
Saul heard himself wail as the wall, the alley below, the
lights of buildings, streetlamps and stars spun around
his head. The guttering cracked as King Rat clung to
it, his hands the centre of the circle his body described.
He released his grip, his feet met the sloping roof
slates, he bent low to muffle the sound and, twisting
his body, flung himself flat on the roof itself. Hardly
pausing, he scrambled on up the tiles like a spider,
with Saul holding so tight to him it felt as if he would
never come loose.

King Rat scampered on all fours up the slate incline,
his heavy boots making no sound. Like a tightrope
walker the surreal figure then crept swiftly along the
apex of the roof towards the chimneys, and a looming
tower block beyond. Terror had cemented Saul to his
body, his fingers twisted into the fabric of the stinking
trenchcoat with the tenacity of rigor mortis. But King


43



Rat prised him loose with ease and swung him off his
shoulders, depositing him shivering in the shadow of
the chimney.

And there Saul lay.

He shivered there for several minutes, with the
unclear shape of the thin man who did impossible
things standing above him, ignoring him. Saul could
feel a part of himself going into shock, shaking with a
terrible cold out of all proportion to the night wind.

But the spasm passed., the threat receded.

Something in the insanity of the night calmed him.
What was the point of being afraid? he wondered. He J||
had suspended all common sense half an hour before ^B
and, with that gone, he was free simply to immerse
himself in the charged night.

Gradually Saul stopped gasping. He unfolded. He
looked up at King Rat, who stood staring at the vast
tower block above them.

Saul braced himself with his hands, then, holding
his breath, he rose to his feet, one planted each side of
the building's vertex, wobbling with gusts of vertigo.
He steadied himself with his left hand against the
chimney stack and relaxed a little. King Rat twitched
his eyes over him momentarily, then sauntered a few
feet further away, balancing on the apex of the roof.

Saul looked out over the London skyline. A swell


44



of euphoria gathered in him and crescendoed, he
swayed and yelped with incredulous laughter.

'It's unbelievahlel What the fuck am I doing up
here?' He swivelled his head to stare at King Rat, who
again stood regarding him with those imprecise eyes.
King Rat gestured briefly over the chimney's bulk,
and Saul turned, realizing that those eyes had not been
fixed on him at all. The side of the tower block beyond
was studded with lights.

'Look at them,' King Rat said. 'In the windows.'

Saul looked and saw, here and there, minuscule
figures bustling past, each reduced to a snatch of
colour and motion. In the centre of the building one
patch of shade remained still: someone leaning out of
their flat window, looking over the hillocks and knolls
of slate on which Saul and King Rat stood, brazen in
their night-time camouflage.

'Say goodbye to that now,' King Rat said.

Saul turned his head to face him, quizzical.

'That geezer there, stopping and staring, that's as
close as you ever got to this before now. The place he's
looking at now - no, he's not looking at it, he's caught
a glimpse, a hint, it's teasing him out of the corner of
his eye - that's your gaff now, me old son.' Emotion
was disguised in King Rat's bass snarl, but he seemed
satisfied, as if with a job well done. 'The rest of it,
that's just in-between for you now. All the main
streets, the front rooms and the rest of it, that's just
filler, that's just chaff, that ain't the real city. You get to


45



that by the back door. I seen you in the windows,
at night, at the close of the lightmans. Staring out,
playing look-but-don't-touch. Well, you've touched it
now. All the vacant lots and all - that's your stomping
ground now, your pad, your burrow, Saul. That's
London.

'You can't go back now, can you? You stick with
me, boy. I'll see you're alright.'
'Why me?' said Saul slowly. 'What do you want
from me?' he stopped, remembering, for what seemed
the first time in hours, why he had been in the police
station. 'What do you know about my father?'

King Rat turned and stared at Saul, those features,
already so obscured, now invisible in the moonlight. jjt
Without taking his eyes from Saul, he slowly sank HH
until he sat straddling the roof ridge like a horseman.

'Slide over here, cove, and I'll tell you the story.
You aren't going to like it.'

Saul lowered himself carefully, facing King Rat,
and pulled himself forward until he was only a couple
of feet away from him. If anyone could see them,
Saul realized, they must look like two schoolboys,
ungainly figures from a comic strip, sitting with their
legs swinging. Saul's exhilaration had dissipated with
as little warning as it had arrived. He was swallowing
with anxiety. He was remembering his father. This
was the key to everything, he thought; this was the
catalyst, the legend that would make sense of the sur
reality which had caught him up in its gusts.


46



King Rat spoke, and just as it had in the police cell,
his voice took on a rhythm, a dislocating monotony
like a bagpipe drone. The sense and meaning of what
he said crept into Saul's head as much by insinuation
as by conscious understanding.

'This here Rome-vill, London, that's my manor, but
I been around wherever my little courtiers found
grain and rubbish to Tea Leaf. And they did my bidding, because I'm their king. But I was never alone,
Saul; that's never how it was. Rats believe in their
Godfers, chuck out broods, the more mouths to filch, the better.

'What do you know about your mother, Saul?'

The question took him by surprise. The ... her name
was Eloise ... She was, uh, a health visitor ... She
died when I was born, something went wrong ...'

'Seen any Beechams?'

Saul shook his head in confusion.

'Beechams: pictures, photos ...'

'Of course ... she's short and dark, pretty ...
What's this about? Where are you going?'

'Sometimes, me old China, sometimes there are black sheep, ne'er-do-wells, if you clock me. I'd lay
good money you and your dad were snarling at each
other's throats sometimes, am I right? Didn't get on
like you might have hoped? Well, do you really think
rats aren't the same?

'She was always the gentry mort, your ma. Took to
your daddy a whole lot, and he to her. What a beauty


47



she was, luscious, who'd have passed that up?' King
Rat finished his sentence with a flourish, twisted his
head and looked at Saul from around the corner of
his face.

'Your ma made a choice, Saul. Health visitor! That
was a cheeky little joke. Set a thief to catch a thief,
they say, isn't it, and so, likewise, with her. Walk into
a place, one sniff of the I Suppose, and your ma knew
exactly how many rats was in there, and where.
Recidivist, traitor, they called her, but I suppose that's
the power of love ...'

Saul was incredulous, staring and staring at King
Rat.

'She wasn't built for the likes of you. You bumped
her off on arrival. You're a big strong lad, sonny,
stronger than you probably think. There's a lot you
can do you don't know about. I bet you gawped out
of all those night-time windows longer and harder
than any of your mates. I think you've been scrabbling
to get into this city for real for a long time.

'You want to know who did the deed on your old
man, I know. That's what you call petulance, that is,
that bod smashed out front, in the garden.

'The one who did that... he was after you. Your
old dad just got in the way.

'You're a special boy, Saul, got special blood in
your veins, and there's one in the city who'd like to
see it spilled. Your mum was my sister, Saul.

'Your mum was a rat.'

48


I
CHAPTER FOUR


With that insane allegation hanging in the air, King
Rat rocked back onto the flesh of his arse and fell
silent.

Saul shook his head and struggled between incredulity
and excitement and disgust.

'She was ... what?'

'A ... fucking ... rat.' King Rat spoke slowly. 'She
crept out of the sewers because she fell for your dad.
More tragic than Romeo and Juliet. And her of royal
blood, too, but still she went. Couldn't get shot of
me, though. I used to come see her on the nows and
thens; she'd tell me to sling my hook. Wanted all that
behind her, but with her new nose she stank to
herself. Couldn't shake birthright, you know. Blood's
thicker than water, and rat blood's the thickest of all.'

Somewhere in the tar-black below, a patrol car
lurched out of the pound spewing blue light.

'And since your mum got put in the ground, I've
been keeping a little eye out for you: trying to keep
you out of trouble. What's family for, Saul? But it


49



looks like things have caught up. Can't outrun your
blood, Saul. Looks like you've been rumbled, and
your dad had to take a fall.'

Saul sat still and gazed over King Rat's shoulder.
The words, the deadly understatement delivered with
something like a flourish, unlocked a door inside him.
He could see his father in a hundred images. And,
like a backdrop to all the frozen moments he recalled,
Saul could see a powerful fat body pitching in slow
motion through the night air, the mouth a distended
yawn of shock and terror, eyes rolling in frantic
search for safety, thinning hair flickering like candlelight,
jowls trembling with gravity's sudden shift,
paddling ineffectually with those thick limbs, jagged
scintillas of glass whirling around him as he flew
towards the dark lawn, its soil frost-hardened like
tundra.

Saul's throat caught, and he let out a tiny sound of
grief. His tears amazed him with their speed, flooding
his vision instantly.

'Oh Dad ..." he sobbed.

King Rat was incensed.

'Leave it out now, leave it out, will you give it a
fucking rest?'

His hand snapped out and he slapped Saul lightly
across the face.

'Hey. Hey. Fucking enough.'

'Fuck off!' Saul found a voice between sniffing,
weeping and wiping his nose on the sleeve of the


50



police-issue jumper. 'Just stop for a minute. Just leave
me alone ...'

Saul relapsed into tears for his father. He beat
himself on the head in his loneliness, screwed up his
eyes as if he were being tortured, moaned rhythmically
as he pummelled his forehead.

'I'm sorry Dad I'm sorry I'm sorry ..." he crooned
between his quiet cries. His words were garbled and
confused in isolation and terrible inchoate anger. He
wrapped his arms around his head, desperate and
alone up on the roof.

Through the gap between his arms, he saw that
King Rat was no longer sitting before him, that he had
risen without a sound and had somehow reached the
other end of the roof, where he stood looking out
over London, facing away from Saul whose sadness
angered him so much. Saul's body moved with sobs, as
he stared from behind his hands at the strange figure
perched between two outcroppings of brick, King
Rat. His uncle.

Saul wriggled backwards, still weeping, until he felt
the damp pressure of the chimney on his back. He
looked over his shoulder and saw a place where two
chimney stacks met near the roof edge, leaving a space
between them, a rooftop cubby-hole into which he
crept with a quick contortion. He curled up in this
little space, insulated from the sky and the sickening
drop on all sides, out of the sight of King Rat. He was
so tired, exhaustion had soaked into his bones. He lay


51



on his side in the cramped, sloping chamber he had
found and covered his head with his hands. He cried
some more until his tears became mechanical, like a child who has forgotten what he is weeping for. Saul
lay there on the slate slope under the chimneys,
without food inside him, in someone else's ruined
clothes, lonely and utterly confused, until, amazingly,
he slept.

When he woke, the sky was still dark, with only a
faint fringe of dun in the east. There was no time for
a luxurious morning state for Saul, no slow stretches
or confusion, no slow remembrance of where he was
and why. He opened his eyes onto red brick, and
realized with a shudder of claustrophobia that he was
surrounded, that curled up around him was King Rat.
He started, pulled himself upright out of that passionless,
utilitarian embrace. King Rat's eyes were open.

'Morning, boy. Bit parky in the small hours.
Thought we'd share a bit of warmth to help you kip.'

King Rat uncoiled and rose, stretching each limb
individually. He grabbed the top of the high chimney
and hauled himself up with his arms, his legs dangling. He looked slowly from one side to the other, surveying
the dim urban sprawl, before hawking noisily
and spitting a gob of phlegm down the chimney. Only
then did he relax his arms and lower himself to the


52


1



roof again. Saul struggled to his feet, slipping on
the slope. He wiped rheum and rubbish from his face.

King Rat turned to him. 'We never finished our
little chat. We was ... interrupted last night. You've
an awful lot to learn, matey, and you're looking at
teacher, like it or not. But first off, let's make ourselves
scarce.' He laughed: a filthy, throaty bark that tickled
Saul's ear. 'They were going hell for leather for you
last night. No sirens, mind - didn't want to warn
you off, I reckon, but they were frantic: cars and
constables running around like the blue-arsed proverbials,
in a right old state, and all the time there I am
playing at peek-a-boo over their gables.' He laughed
again, the noise of it, like all he issued, sounding as if it
were just inches from Saul's ear. 'Oh yes, I am a most
accomplished thief.' He said this final line with stilted
gusto, as if delivering lines in a play.

He scampered to the edge of the roof, impossibly
sure-footed on its steep angle. Clinging on to the guttering,
he scouted some distance round the edge, until
he found what he was looking for. He turned and
gestured for Saul to follow him. Saul edged along the
roof ridge on all fours, afraid to expose himself to
the wicked-looking grey slate. He reached the spot
directly above King Rat, and there he waited.

King Rat bared his teeth at him. 'Slide down,' he
whispered.

With both hands, Saul gripped the little concrete
ridge he was straddling, and slowly swung his leg over


53



until his whole body was spreadeagled on the slope
above King Rat. At this point his arms rebelled and
would not release him. He swiftly changed his mind
about his actions, and attempted to haul himself back
across the roof ridge, but his muscles were stiff with
terror. Trapped on the slippery surface, he panicked.
His brittle ringers lost their grip.

For a long, sick-making moment he was sliding
towards his death, until he met King Rat's strong
hand. He was halted sharply, plucked from the roof
and swung up and over in a terrifying hauling motion
before being dropped hard onto a steel fire escape
below.

The noise of his landing was muffled and insubstantial.
Above him grinned King Rat. He still hung
on to the edge of the roof with his left hand, his right
extended over the stairs where he had deposited Saul.
As Saul watched, he released himself, and fell the short
distance to the iron mesh of the platform, his big
rough boots landing without a sound.

Saul's heart was still racing with fear, but his recent
undignified precipitation galled him.

'I... I'm not a fucking sack of potatoes,' he hissed
with spurious bravado.

King Rat grinned. 'You don't even know which
way's up, you little terror. And until you've a bit of
learning in your Loaf, that's exactly what you are.'

The two crept down the steps, past door after door,
descending to the alley.


54



Dawn came fast. King Rat and Saul made their way
through the crepuscular streets. Afraid and excited,
Saul half expected his companion to repeat his escapades
of last night, and he glanced from side to side at
drainpipes and garage roofs, the entrances to rooftop
passageways. But this time they remained earthbound.
King Rat led Saul through deserted building sites and
car parks, down narrow passages masquerading as
culs-de-sac. Their route was chosen with an instinct
Saul did not understand, and they did not pass any
early morning walkers.

The dark dwindled. Daylight, wan and anaemic,
had done what it could by seven o'clock.

Saul leaned against the wall of an alley. King Rat
stood framed by its entrance, his right arm outstretched,
just touching the bricks, the daylight
beyond silhouetting him like the lead in a film noir.

'I'm starving,' said Saul.

The too, sonny, me too. I've been starving for a
long time.' King Rat leaned out of the alley. He was
peering at a nondescript terraced row of red brick.
Each roof was topped with a dragon rampant: little
flurries of clay enthusiasm now broken and crumbled.
Their features were washed out by acid rain.

That morning the city seemed made up of back
streets.

'Alright then,' murmured King Rat. 'Time for
tucker.'

King Rat, a figure skulking like a Victorian villain,


55



stepped carefully from his point of concealment. He
lifted his face to the air. As Saul watched, he sniffed
loudly twice, twitched his nose, turned his face a little
to one side. Gesturing for Saul to follow him, King
Rat scampered down the deserted street and ducked
into a gash between two houses. At the far end was a
wall of black rubbish bags.

'Always follow your I Suppose.' King Rat grinned
briefly. He was crouched at the end of the narrow
alleyway, a hunched shape at the bottom of a brickwork
chasm. The surrounding walls were inscrutable,
unbroken by windows.

Saul approached.

King Rat was tearing at a plastic sack. The rich
smell of rot was released. King Rat plunged his arm
into the hole, and fumbled inside in an unsettling
parody of surgery. He pulled a polystyrene box from
the wound. It dripped with tea-leaves and egg yolk,
but the hamburger logo was still evident. King Rat
placed it on the ground, reached inside the bag again,
and pulled out a damp crust of bread.

He thrust the sack aside and reached for another,
ripped it open. This time his reward was half a fruitcake,
flattened and embedded with sawdust. Chicken
bones and crushed chocolate, the remnants of sweet
corn and rice, fish-heads and stale crisps, the bags
yielded them all, disgorged them into a stinking pile
on the concrete.


56



Saul watched the mound of ruined food grow. He
put his hand over his mouth.

'You have got to be joking,' he said, and swallowed.

King Rat looked up at him.

'Thought you was peckish.'

Saul shook his head in horror, his hand still
clamped firmly over his mouth.

'When was the last time you puked?'

Saul furrowed his brow at the question. King Rat
wiped his wet hand on his trenchcoat, adding to the
camouflage-pattern of stains hidden in its dark grey.
He poked at the food.

'You can't recall,' he said, without looking at Saul.
'You can't recall because you've never done it. Never
spewed nothing. You've been ill, I'll bet, but not like
other Godfers. No colds or sneezing; only some queer
sickness making you shiver for days, once or twice.
But even then, not a sign of puke.' He finally met Saul's eye, and his voice dropped. He hissed at him,
something like victory in his voice. 'Got the notion?
Your belly won't rebel. No sicking up Pig's, no matter
how plastered, no sweet sticky chocolate bile on your pillow the night after Easter, no hurling seafood across
the tiles, no matter bow dodgy the take-away. You've
got rat blood in your veins. There's nothing you can't
stomach.'

There was a long moment of silence as the two
stared at each other.

King Rat continued.


57



'And there's more. There's no grub you don't want. Said you were starving. I should coco; it's been a
while. Well here we go. Sitting comfortably? I'm
going to teach you what it is to be rat. Look at all this
scran your uncle sorted you out with. Said you were
starving. Here's breakfast.'

King Rat picked up the fruitcake without taking his
eyes from Saul. He raised it slowly to his mouth.
Moist chunks dropped from his hand, sultanas made
juicy from their long marinating in black plastic. He
bit into it, crumbs bursting out of his mouth as he exhaled in satisfaction.

He was right. Saul could not remember a time when
he had thrown up. He had always eaten a lot, even for
his frame, and had never been able to sympathize with
people put off their food. Stories about maggots told
over risotto left him unmoved. He had never suffered
after too much sugar or fat or alcohol. This had never
occurred to him before; he sympathized with others
when they complained that something made them feel
sick, never stopping to ask what it meant or if it was
true.

Now he was sloughing off those layers of habit. He
stood watching King Rat eat. The wiry figure would
not take his eyes from him.

It had been hours and hours since Saul had last had
food. He investigated his own hunger.

King Rat continued chewing. The stench of slowly
collapsing food was overwhelming- Saul gazed at the


58



leftovers and remnants heaped in front of the bags,
the flecks of mould, the bite marks, and the dirt.

He began to salivate.

King Rat kept eating.

When he opened his mouth wet chunks of cake
were visible. 'You can eat pigeon-meat scraped off a
car-wheel,' he said. 'This here's good scran.'

Saul's stomach growled. He squatted before the pile
of food. Gingerly, he picked out the unfinished
burger. He sniffed it. It was long cold. He could see
where teeth had torn through the bun. He brushed at
it, cleared it of grime as best he could.

It was damp and clammy, still shiny with spit where
it had been bitten.

Saul put it near his mouth. He let his mind play
over the filth of the dustbin, waited for his stomach to
turn. But it did not.

His mind still rang with admonishments heard long
ago - don't touch, it's dirty, take it out of your mouth but
his stomach, his stomach remained firm. The smell
of the meat was enticing.

He willed himself to feel ill. He strove for nausea.

He took a bite. He wriggled his tongue into the
meat, pushed apart the fibres. He probed, tasting
the dirt and decay. Lumps of gristle and fat split open
in his mouth, mixed with his saliva.

The burger was delicious.

Saul swallowed and did not feel ill. His hunger,


59



piqued, demanded more. He took another bite, and
another, eating faster and faster all the time.

He felt something slipping away from him. He
drew his strength from the old cold meat, food that
had surrendered to people and decay, and now to him.
His world changed.

King Rat nodded and ate on, grabbed handfuls and
shoved them into his mouth without looking at them.

Saul reached for a slimy chicken wing.

In the street, only twenty feet away, children were
appearing in outsized school uniforms. The bricks and
the bags kept Saul and King Rat hidden. They looked
up as the children passed, paused briefly in their
breakfast.


They were silent while they ate. When they had
finished, Saul licked his lips. The taste of filth and
carrion was very strong in his mouth, and he investigated
it, still wondering that it did not turn his
stomach.

King Rat nestled into the bags and pulled his coat
about him. 'Feeling better now?' he asked.

Saul nodded. For the first time since his sudden
release, he felt calm. He could feel the acids of his
stomach getting to work inside him, breaking down
the old food he had eaten. He felt molecules scurrying
out of his gut, carrying strange energy from the ruins


60



of other people's suppers and breakfasts. He was
changing from the inside out.

My mother was like this creature, he said to himself, this skulking thing. My mother was like this thin-faced
vagrant with magical powers. My mother was a spirit,
it seems, a dirty spirit. My mother was a rat.

'You can't go back, you know.' King Rat looked at
Saul from under his eyelids. Saul had long given up
trying to make sense of his features. The light would
not fall full on King Rat's face, no matter where he
stood or lay. Saul glanced at him again, but his eyes found no purchase.

'I know it,' he said.

'They think you did your pa, and they'll do you for
that. And now you've slung your hook from their old
Bucket, they'll have your guts for garters.'

The city had been made unsafe. Saul felt it yawn
before him, infinitely vaster than he had imagined,
unknowable and furtive.

'So, so ...' said Saul slowly. So what is London? he
thought. If you can be what you are, what's London?
What's the world? I've had it all wrong. Do werewolves
and trolls lurk under bridges in the parks?
What are the boundaries of the world?

'So ... what do I do now?'

'Well, you aren't going back, so you got to bing a
waste forward. I've to teach you how to be rat. You
got a lot going for you, sonny. Hold your breath
and squeeze in tight, freeze like a statue... you're


61



invisible. Move just right, dainty on your toes, you'll
make nary a sound. You can be like me. As far as
you're concerned, up's no longer out of bounds, and
down's nothing to fear.'

It didn't matter any more that he didn't understand.
Unbelievably, King Rat's words took away Saul's
trepidation. He felt himself grow strong. He stretched
out his arms. He felt like laughing.

'I feel like I can do anything,' he said. He was
overwhelmed.

'You can, my old son. You're a ratling boy. Just got
to learn the tricks. We'll cut your teeth. You and me
together, dynamite. We've a kingdom to win back.'

Saul had risen to his feet, was staring out into the
street beyond. At King Rat's words he turned slowly
and looked down at the thin figure cocooned in black
plastic.

'Back?' he said levelly. 'Back from who?'

King Rat nodded. 'Time,' he said, 'for a word in
your shell-like. Much as I hate to piss on your chips,
you're forgetting something. You're in another
country now because your old man did the six-storey
swan-dive' - King Rat blithely ignored Saul's aghast
stare - 'and he did that, the old codger, in lieu of you.
There's something out there wants your head, chal,
and you'd be wise not to forget it.'

Saul wobbled to his knees. 'Who?' he whispered.

'Well now, that's the biggy, isn't it? That's the question.
And therein lies a story, a twisting rat-tale.'


62
PART TWO


THE NEW CITY
CHAPTER FIVE


Fabian was trying to call Natasha but he could not
reach her. She had taken her phone off the hook. The
news about Saul's father was spreading among his
friends like a virus, but Natasha had immunized
herself for a little while longer.

It was just after midday. The sun was bright but as
cold as snow. The sounds of Ladbroke Grove filtered
along the backstreets to the first floor of a flat on
Bassett Road. They slid through the windows and
rilled the front room, a susurrus of dogs and paper
sellers and cars. The sounds were faint; they were
what passed for silence in the city.

In the flat a woman stood motionless in front of a
keyboard. She was short and her face was severe, with
dark eyebrows that met above a scimitar nose. Her
long hair was dark, her skin sallow. Her name was
Natasha Karadjian.

Natasha stood with her eyes closed and listened to
the streets outside. She reached out and pressed the


65



power button on her sampler. There was a static thud
as her speakers clicked into life.

She ran her hands over the keys and the cursor. She
had stood motionless for a minute or two now. Even
alone she felt self-conscious. Natasha rarely let people
watch when she created her music. She was afraid they
would think her precious, with her silent preparations
and her closed eyes.

She tapped out a message on a clutch of small
buttons, twisted her cursor, displayed her musical
spoils on the LCD display. She scrolled through the
selection and plucked a favourite bassline from her
digital killing jar. She had snatched it from a forgotten
Reggae track, sampled it, preserved it, and now she
pulled it out and looped it and gave it another life. The
zombie sound travelled the innards of the machine
and out through wires, through the vast black stereo
against her wall, and burst out of those great speakers.

The sound filled her room.

The bass was trapped. The sample ended just as the
bass-player had been about to reach a crescendo, and
expectation was audible in the thudding strings as
they reached out for something, for a flourish ... then
a break, and the cycle started again.

This bassline was in purgatory. It burst into existence
with a recurring surge of excitement, waiting for
a release that never came.

Natasha nodded her head slowly. This was the
breakbeat, the rhythm of tortured music. She loved it.


66



Again her hands moved. A pounding beat joined
the bass, cymbals clattering like insects. And the
sound looped.

Natasha moved her shoulders to the rhythm. Her
eyes were wide as she scanned her kills, her pickled
sounds, and she found what she wanted: a snatch of
trumpet from Linton Kwesi Johnson, a wail from
Tony Rebel, a cry of invitation from Al Green. She
dropped them into her tune. They segued smoothly
into the rolling bass, the slamming drums.

This was Jungle.

The child of House, the child of Raggamuffin, the
child of Dancehall, the apotheosis of black music,
the Drum and Bass soundtrack for a London of
council estates and dirty walls, black youth and white
youth, Armenian girls.

The music was uncompromising. The rhythm was
stolen from Hip Hop, born of Funk. The beats were
fast, too fast to dance to unless you were wired. It was
the bassline you followed with your feet, the bassline that gave Jungle its soul.

And above the bassline was the high end of
Jungle: the treble. Stolen chords and shouts that rode
the waves of bass like surfers. They were fleeting
and teasing, snatches of sound winking into existence
and sliding over the beat, tracing it, then winking
away.

Natasha nodded her satisfaction.

She could feel the bass. She knew it intimately. She


67



searched instead for the sounds at the top, she wanted
something perfect, a leitmotif to weave in and out of
the drums.

She knew the people who ran the clubs, and they
would always play her music. People liked her tracks
a lot, gave her respect and bookings. But she felt a
vague dissatisfaction with everything she wrote, even
when the sensation was shot through with pride.
When she finished a track she did not feel any purgation
of relief, only a slight unease. Natasha would
cast around, ransacking her friends' record collections
in an attempt to find the sounds she wanted to steal,
or would make her own on her keyboard, but they
never touched her like the bass. The bass never evaded
her; she needed only to reach out for it, and it would
drop out of her speakers complete and perfect.

The track was nearing a crescendo now: Gwan, exhorted a sampled voice, Gwan gyal. Natasha broke
the beat, teasing the rhythm out, paring it down. She
stripped flesh from the tune's bones and the samples
echoed in the cavernous ribcage, in the belly of the
beat. Come now... we rolltn' this way, mdebwoy.. . She pulled her sounds our one by one, until only the
bass was left. It had ushered the song in; it ushered it
out again.

The room was silent.

Natasha waited a while until the city silence of
children and cars crept into her ears again. She looked
around at her room. Her flat contained a tiny kitchen,


68



a tiny bathroom and the beautiful big bedroom she
was in now. She had put her meagre collection of
prints and posters in the other rooms and the hall; the walls here were quite bare. The room itself was empty
except for a mattress on the floor, the hulking black
stand which housed her stereo, and her keyboard. The
wooden floor was criss-crossed with black leads.

She reached down and put the receiver back on the
phone. She was about to wander into the kitchen,
when the doorbell sounded. Natasha crossed the
room to the open window and leaned out.

A man was standing in front of her door, looking
straight up at her eyes. She had a brief impression of a
thin face, bright eyes and long blond hair, before she
ducked back into the room and headed down the
stairs. He had not looked like a Jehovah's witness or a
troublemaker.

She walked through the dingy communal hall.
Through the rippled glass of the front door she could
see that the man was very tall. She pulled the door
open, admitting voices from the next house and the
daylight that was flooding the street.

Natasha looked up into his narrow face. The man
was about six feet four, dwarfing her by nearly a foot,
but he was so slim he looked as if he might snap in half
at the waist any moment. He was probably in his early
thirties, but he was so pale it was difficult to tell. His
hair was a sickly yellow. The pallor of his face was
exaggerated by his black leather jacket. He would


69



have looked quite ill were it not for his bright blue
eyes and his air of fidgety animation. He started to
grin even before the door was fully open.

Natasha and her visitor stared at each other, he
smiling, she with a guarded, quizzical expression.

'Brilliant,' he said suddenly.

Natasha stared at him.

'Your music,' he said. 'Brilliant.'


The man's voice was deeper and richer than she would
have thought possible from such a slender frame. It
was slightly breathless, as if he were rushing to get his
words out. She stared up at him and her eyes
narrowed. This was much too weird a way of starting
a conversation. She was not having it.

'What do you mean?' she said levelly.

He smiled apologetically. His words slowed down
a little.

'I've been listening to your music,' he said. 'I came
past here last week and I heard you playing up there. I
tell you, I was just standing there with my mouth
open.'

Natasha was embarrassed and amazed. She opened
her mouth to interrupt but he continued.

'I came back and I heard it again. It made me want
to stan. dancing in the street!' He laughed. 'The next
time I heard you stop halfway through, and I realized
someone was actually playing while I listened. I'd


70



thought it was a record. It was such an exciting
thought that you were actually up there making it.'

Natasha finally spoke.

'This is really ... flattering. But did you knock on
my door just to tell me that?' This man unnerved her
with his excited grin and breathy voice. It was only
curiosity that stopped her shutting the door. 'I've not
got a fan club yet.'

He stared at her and the nature of his smile
changed. Until that moment it had been sincere,
almost childish in its excitement. Slowly his lips closed
a fraction and hid his teeth. He straightened his long
back and his eyelids slid halfway down over his eyes.
He leaned his head slightly to one side, without taking
his eyes off her.

Natasha felt a wave of adrenaline. She looked back
at him in shock. The change which had come over him
was extraordinary. He stared at her now with a look
so sexual, so casually knowing, that she felt vertiginous.

She was furious with him. She shook her head a
little and prepared to slam the door. He held it open.
Before she could say anything, his arrogance had gone
and the old look was back.

'Please,' he said quickly. 'I'm sorry. I'm not explaining
myself. I'm flustered because I've ... been
plucking up courage to talk to you.

'You see,' he continued, 'what you're playing is
beautiful, but sometimes it feels a little bit - don't get


71



angry - a bit unfinished. I sort of feel like the treble
isn't quite... working. And I wouldn't say that to
you except I play a little bit myself and I thought
maybe we could help each other out.'

Natasha stepped backwards. She felt intrigued and
threatened. She always stonewalled about her music,
refusing to discuss her feelings about it with any
except her very closest friends. The intense but inchoate
frustrations she felt were rarely verbalized, as if
to do so would give them form. She chose to keep
them at bay with obfuscation, from herself as much as
from others, and now this man seemed to be unwrapping
them with an unnerving casualness.

'Do you have a suggestion?' she said as acidly as
she could. He reached behind him and picked up a
black case. He shook it in front of her.

'This might sound a bit cocky,' he said, 'and I don't
want you to think I reckon I can do better than you.
But, when I heard your playing, I just knew I could
complement it.' He undid the clasp of the case and
opened it in front of her. She saw a disassembled flute.

'I know you might think I'm crazy,' he preempted
hurriedly. 'You think what you play is totally different
to what I play. But... I've been looking for bass like
yours for longer than you could believe.'

He spoke earnestly now, his eyebrows furrowed as
he held her gaze. She stubbornly stared back, refusing
to be overawed by this apparition on her doorstep.

'I want to play with you,' he said.


72



This was stupid, Natasha told herself: even if this
man was not arrogant beyond belief, you could not
play the flute to Jungle. It was so long since she had
stared at a traditional instrument she felt a gust of deja vu: images of her nine-year-old self banging the
xylophone in the school orchestra. Flutes meant
enthusiastic cacophonies at the hands of children or
the alien landscape of classical music, an intimidating
world of great beauty but vicious social exclusivity, to
which she had never known the passwords.

But to her amazement, this lanky stranger had
impressed her. She wanted to let him in and hear him
play his flute in her room. She wanted to hear
him play over some of her basslines. Discordant indie
bands had done it, she knew: My Bloody Valentine
had used flutes. And while the result had left her as
dead cold as the rest of that genre, surely the alliance
itself was no more unlikely than this one. She realized
that she was intrigued.

But she was not simply going to stand aside. She
had a reputation for being intimidating. She was not
used to feeling so disarmed, and her defences flared.

'Listen,' she said slowly. 'I don't know what you
think qualifies you to speak about my tracks. Why
should I play with you?'

'Try it once,' he said, and again that sudden change
flooded his features, the same curled smile on the edge
of the lips, the same heavy-lidded nonchalance about
the eyes.


73



And Natasha was suddenly furious with this
pretentious little art-school wanker, livid where a
moment ago she had been captivated, and she leaned
forward and up on tiptoes, until her face was as close
to his as it would go, and she raised one eyebrow, and
she said: 'I don't think so.'

She closed the door in his face.


Natasha stalked back up her stairs. The window was
open. She stood next to it, close to the wall, looking
down at the street without putting herself in view. She
could see no sign of the man. She walked slowly to her
keyboard. She smiled.

OK, you cocky fucker, she thought. Let's see how
good you are.

She turned the volume down slightly, and pulled
another rhythm out of her collection. This time the
drums came crashing out of nowhere. The bass came
chasing after, filling out the snare and framing the
sound with a funky backdrop. She threw in a few
minimal shouts and snatches of brass, looped a
moment of trumpet, but the treble was subdued; this
was an offering to the man outside, and it was all
about rhythm.

The beats looped once, twice. Then, sailing up from
the street came a thin snatch of music, a trill of flute
that mimicked the looping repetition of her own
music, but elaborated on itself, changed a little with


74



every cycle. He was standing below her window, his
hastily assembled instrument to his lips.

Natasha smiled. He had made good on his arrogance.
She would have been disappointed if he had
not.

She stripped the beat down and left it to loop. She
stood back and listened.

The flute skittered over the drums, teasing the beat,
touching just enough to stay anchored, then transporting
itself. It suddenly became a series of staccato
flutterings. It lilted between drum and bass, now
wailing like a siren, now stuttering like Morse code.

Natasha was ... not transfixed, perhaps, but impressed.

She closed her eyes. The flute soared and dived; it
fleshed out her skeletal tune in a way she could never
achieve. The life in the live music was exuberant and
neurotic and it sparked off the revivified bass, the very
alive dancing with the dead. There was a promise to
this tension.

Natasha nodded. She was eager to hear more, to
feed that flute into her music. She smiled sardonically.
She would admit defeat. So long as he behaved, so
long as there were not too many of those knowing
looks, she would admit that she wanted to hear more.

Natasha paced silently back down the stairs. She
opened the door. He was standing a few feet back, his
flute to his lips, staring up at her window. He stopped


75



as he saw her, and lowered his hands. No trace of a
smile now. He looked anxious for approval.

She inclined her head and gave him a sideways look.
He hovered.

'OK,' she said. 'I'll buy it.' He finally smiled. 'It's
Natasha.' She jerked her thumb at herself.

'Pete,' the tall man said.

Natasha stood aside, and Pete passed into her
house.


76
CHAPTER SIX


Again Fabian tried Natasha's number, and again she
was engaged. He swore and slammed his receiver
down. He turned on his heel, paced pointlessly. He
had spoken to everyone who knew Saul except for
Natasha, and she was the one who mattered most.

Fabian was not gossiping. As soon as he had heard
about Saul's father he had got on the phone, almost
before he was aware of what he was doing, and begun
to spread the news. At some point he had rushed
out to buy a paper, before starting again on the phone.
But this was not gossip. He felt a powerful sense of
duty. This, he believed, was what was needed of him.

He pulled on his jacket, tugged his thin dreadlocks
into a ponytail. Enough, he decided. He would go to
Natasha, tell her in person. It was a fair journey from
Brixton to Ladbroke Grove, but the thought of the
cold air in his face and lungs was beguiling. His house
felt oppressive. He had spent hours on the phone that
morning, the same phrases again and again - Six floors
straight down... The filth won't let me talk to him 77



and the walls had soaked up the news. They were
saturated with the old man's death. Fabian wanted
space. He wanted to clean out his head.

He shoved a page of newspaper into his pocket. He
could recite the relevant story by heart: News in brief. A man died in Willesden, North London, yesterday,'
after falling through a sixth-floor window. Police will
not say if they are treating the death as suspicious. The
man's son is helping them with their enquiries. The
screaming accusation of the last sentence stung him.

He left his room for the filthy hall of the shared
house. Someone was shouting upstairs. The dirty, ill
fitting carpets irritated him always; now they made
him feel violent. As he struggled with his bike, he
glanced at the unwashed walls, the broken banisters.
The presence of the house weighed down on him. He
burst out of the front door with a sigh of relief.

Fabian treated his bike carelessly, letting it fall
when he dismounted, chucking it against walls. He
was rough with it. He yanked himself onto it now
with unthinking brutality, and swung out into the
road.

The streets were full. It was a Saturday and people
were thronging the streets, coming to and from
Brixton market, determined on their outward journey
and slow on the way back, laden down with cheap,
colourful clothes and big fruit. Trains rumbled, competed
with the sounds of Soca, Reggae, Rave, Rap,
Jungle, House, and the shouting: all the cut-up market


78



rhythm. Rudeboys in outlandish trousers clustered
around corners and music shops, touched fists.
Shaven-headed men in tight tops and AIDS ribbons
made for Brockwell Park or The Brixtonian cafe.
Food wrappers and lost television supplements tugged
at ankles. The capricious traffic lights were a bad
joke: pedestrians hovered like suicides at the edge of
the pavement, launched themselves across at the
slightest sign of a gap. The cars made angry noises and
sped away, anxious to escape. Impassive, the people
watched them pass by.

Fabian twisted his wheels through the bodies. The
railway bridge passed above him; some way ahead
the clocktower told him it was mid-morning. He
rode and walked intermittently past the tube station,
wheeled his bike across Brixton Road, and again over
Acre Lane. There were no crowds here, and no
Reggae. Acre Lane stretched out wide. The buildings
that contained it were separate, sparse and low. The
sky was always very big over Acre Lane.

Fabian jumped back onto his bike and took off up
the slight incline towards Clapham. From there he
would twist across into Clapham Manor Street, wind
a little through backstreets to join Silverthorne Road,
a steep sine-wave of minor industrial estates and peculiarly
suburban houses tucked between Battersea and
Clapham, a conduit feeding directly into Queenstown
Road, across Chelsea Bridge.

For the first time that day Fabian felt his head clear.


79



Early that morning a suspicious policeman had
answered Saul's phone, had demanded Fabian's name.
Outraged, Fabian had hung up. He had rung up
Willesden police station, again refusing to give his
name, but demanding to know why policemen were
answering his friend's phone. Only when he acquiesced
and told them who he was would they tell him that Saul's father had died, and that Saul was with
them - again that disingenuous phrase - helping
with enquiries.

First he felt nothing but shock; then quickly a sense
of a monstrous error.

And a great fear. Because Fabian understood
immediately that it would be easy for them to believe
that Saul had killed his father. And, as immediately, he knew without any equivocation or doubt that Saul
had not. But he was terribly afraid, because only he
knew that, because he knew Saul. And there was
nothing he could tell others to help them understand.

He wanted to see Saul; he did not understand why
the officer's voice changed when he demanded this.
He was told it would be some time before he could
speak to Saul, Saul was deep in conversation, his attention
wholly grabbed, and Fabian would just have to
wait. There was something the man was not telling
him, Fabian knew, and he was scared. He left his
phone number, was reassured that he would be contacted
as soon as Saul was free to speak.

Fabian sped along Acre Lane. On his left he passed


80



an extraordinary white building, a mass of grubby
turrets and shabby Art Deco windows. It looked long
deserted. On the step sat two boys, dwarfed by jackets
declaring allegiance to American Football teams
neither had ever seen play. They were oblivious to the
faded grandeur of their bench. One had his eyes
closed, was leaning back against the door like Mexican
cannon-fodder in a spaghetti Western. His friend
spoke animatedly into his hand, his tiny mobile phone
hidden within the voluminous folds of his sleeve,
Fabian felt the thrill of materialist envy, but battened
it down. This was one impulse he resisted.

Not me, he thought, as he always did. /'// hold out
a bit longer. I won't be another black man with a
mobile, another troublemaker with 'Drug Dealer'
written on his forehead in script only the police can
read.

He stood up out of his seat, kicked down and sped
off towards Clapham.

Fabian knew Saul hated his father's disappointment.
Fabian knew Saul and his father could not speak
together. Fabian had been the only one of Saul's
friends who had seen him turn that volume by Lenin
over and over in his hands, open it and close it, read
the inscription again and again. His father's writing
was tight and controlled, as if trying not to break the
pen. Saul had put the book in Fabian's lap, had waited
while his friend read.


81



To Saul, This always made sense to me. Love from
the Old Leftie.

Fabian remembered looking up into Saul's face. His
mouth was sealed, his eyes looked tired. He took the
book off Fabian's lap and closed it, stroked the cover,
put it on his shelf. Fabian knew Saul had not killed his
father.


He crossed Clapham High Street, a concourse of
restaurants and charity shops, and slid into the back
streets, wiggling through the parked cars to emerge on
Silverthorne Road. He started down the long incline
towards the river.

He knew that Natasha would be working. He
knew he would turn into Bassett Road and hear the
faint boom of Drum and Bass. She would be hunched
over her keyboard, twiddling dials and pressing keys
with the concentration of an alchemist, juggling long
sequences of zeros and ones and transforming them
into music. Listening and creating. That was what
Natasha spent all her time doing. When she was not
concentrating on source material behind the till of
friends' record shops, serving customers in an efficient
autopilot mode, she was reconstituting it into the
tracks she christened with spiky one-word titles: Arrival; Rebellion; Maelstrom.

Fabian believed it was Natasha's concentration
which made her so asexual to him. She was attractive


82



in a fierce way, and was never short of offers,
especially at clubs, especially when word got around
that the music playing was hers; but Fabian had never known her seem very interested, even when she took
someone home. He felt blasphemous even thinking of
her in a sexual context. Fabian was alone in his
opinion, he was assured by his friend Kay, a cheerful
dope-raddled clown who drooled lasciviously after
Natasha whenever he saw her. The music was the
thing, Kay said, and the intensity was the thing, and
the carelessness was the thing. Just like a nun, it was
the promise of what was under the habit.

But Fabian could only grin sheepishly at Kay,
absurdly embarrassed. Amateur psychologists around
London, Saul included, had wasted no time deciding
he was in love with Natasha; but Fabian did not think
that was the case. She infuriated him with her style
fascism and her solipsism, but he supposed he loved
her. Just not in the way Saul meant it.

He twisted under the filthy railway bridge on
Queenstown Road now, fast approaching Battersea
Park. He was riding an incline, racing towards
Chelsea Bridge. He took the roundabout with casual
arrogance, put his head down and climbed towards
the river. On Fabian's right, the four chimneys of Battersea
Power Station loomed into view. Its roof was
long gone, it looked like a bombed-out relic, a blitz
survivor. It was a great upturned plug straining to
suck voltage out of the clouds, a monument to energy.


83



Fabian burst free of South London. He slowed and
looked into the Thames, past the towers and railings of
steel that surrounded him, keeping him snug on
Chelsea Bridge. The river sent shards of cold sunlight
in all directions.

He scudded over the face of the water like a pond
skater, dwarfed by the girders and bolts ostentatiously
holding the bridge together. He hung poised for a
moment between the South Bank and the North
Bank, his head high to see over the sides into the
water, to see the black barges that never moved,
waiting to ferry cargo long forgotten, his legs still,
freewheeling his way towards Ladbroke Grove.


The route to Natasha's house took Fabian past the
Albert Hall and through Kensington, which he hated.
It was a soulless place, a purgatory filled only with
rich transients drifting pointlessly through Nicole
Farhi and Red or Dead. He sped up Kensington
Church Street towards Netting Hill and on through
to Portobello Road.

It was a market day, the second in the week,
designed to wrest money from tourists. Merchandise
that had cost five pounds on Friday was now offered
for ten. The air was thick with garish cagoules and
backpacks and French and Italian. Fabian cussed
quietly and inched through the throng. He ducked left


84



down Elgin Crescent and then right, bearing down on
the Bassett Road flat.

A gust of wind stained the air brown with leaves.
Fabian swung into the street. The leaves boiled around
him, stuck to his jacket. Pared-down trees lined the
tarmac. Fabian dismounted while still in motion,
walked towards Natasha's flat.

He could hear her working. The faint thumping of
Drum and Bass was audible from the end of the street.
As he walked, wheeling his bike beside him, Fabian
heard the sound of wings. Natasha's house teemed
with pigeons. Every protuberance and ledge was grey
with plump, stirring bodies. A few were in the air,
hovering nervously around the windows and gables,
settling, dislodging their peers. They shifted and shat a
little as Fabian stopped at the door directly below
them.

Natasha's rhythm was loud now, and Fabian could
hear something unusual, a clear sound like pipes, a
recorder or a flute, bursting with energy and exuberance,
shadowing the bass. He stood still and listened.
The quality of this sound was different from that of
samples, and it was not trapped in any loops. Fabian suspected it was being played live. And by something
of a virtuoso.

He rang the bell. The electronic boom of the bass
stopped cold. The flute faltered on for a second or
two. As silence fell, the company of pigeons rose en
masse into the air with the abruptness of panic, circled


85



once like a school of fish and disappeared into the
north. Fabian heard footsteps on the stairs.	;,

Natasha opened the door to him and smiled.

'Alright, Fabe,' she said, reaching up to touch her
clenched right fist to his. He did so, at the same time
bending down to put an arm around her and kiss
her cheek. She responded, though her surprise was
evident.

'Tash,' he whispered, in greeting and in warning.
She heard it in his voice, pulled back holding his
shoulders in her hands. Her face sharpened in
concern.

'What? What's happened?'

'Tash, it's Saul.' He'd told the story so often today
he'd become an automaton, just mouthing the words,
but this time it was difficult all over again. He licked
his lips.

Natasha started. 'What is it, Fabe?' Her voice
cracked.

'No no,' he said hurriedly. 'Saul's fine. Well, I
guess ... He's in with the pigs.'

She shook her head in confusion.

'Listen, Tash . .. Saul's dad ... he died.' He rushed
on before she could misunderstand. 'He was killed.
He was lobbed out of a window two nights back. J
I think... I think the police reckon Saul did it.'
He reached into his pocket and brought out the
scrunched-up news story. Natasha read it.

'No,' she said.


86



'I know, I know. But I suppose they heard about
him and the old man having arguments and that,
and ... I dunno.'

'No,' said Natasha again. The two of them stood
quite still, staring at each other. Eventually Natasha
moved. 'Look,' she said, 'come in. We'd better talk.
There's this bloke here ..."

'The one playing the flute?'

She smiled slightly. 'Yeah. He's good, isn't he? I'll
get rid of him.'

Fabian closed the door behind him and followed
her up the stairs. She was some way ahead of him and,
as he approached her inner door, he heard voices.

'What's happening?' It was a man's voice, muffled
and anxious.

'A friend's in a bit of bother,' Natasha was saying.
Fabian entered the sparse bedroom, nodded in
greeting at the tall blond man he saw over Natasha's
shoulder. The man had his mouth slightly open, was
fingering his ponytail nervously. In his right hand
was a silver flute. He looked up and down at the two
in the doorway.

'Pete, Fabian.' Natasha waved her hand vaguely
between the two in a cursory introduction. 'Sorry,
Pete, but you're going to have to split. I have to talk to
Fabe. Something's come up.'

The blond man nodded and hurriedly gathered his
things together. As he did so, he spoke rapidly.


87



'Natasha, do you want to do this again? I felt like
we were ... really getting into it.'

Fabian raised his eyebrows.

The tall man squeezed past Fabian without taking
his eyes off Natasha. She was clearly distracted, but
she smiled and nodded.

'Yeah. For sure. Do you want to leave me your
number or something?'

'No, I'll come by again.'

'Do you want my number, then?'

'No. I'll just come by, and if you're not in, I'll
come by again.' Pete stopped in front of the stairs and
turned back. 'Hope I see you again, Fabian,' he said.

Fabian nodded abstractedly, then looked into Pete's
eyes. The tall man was gazing at him with a peculiar
intensity, demanding a response. The two were locked
for a moment, until Fabian acquiesced and nodded
more pointedly. Only then did Pete seem satisfied. He
descended the stairs, followed by Natasha.

The two were speaking, but Fabian could not make
out any words. He frowned. The front door slammed
shut and Natasha returned to the room.

'He's a bit of a weirdo, isn't he?' Fabian asked.

Natasha nodded vehemently. "Strue, man, do you
know what I mean? I threw him out at first, he was
kind of getting leery.'

'Trying it on?'

'Kind of. But he was going on and on about
wanting to play with me, and I was intrigued, and he


88



started playing outside. He was good so I let him back

in.'

'Suitably humbled, yeah?' Fabian grinned briefly.

'Damn right. But he plays ... he plays like a
fucking angel, Fabe.' She was excited. 'He's the original
nutter, you're right, I know, but there's
something very right about his playing.'

There was a short silence. Natasha tugged at Fabian's jacket and pulled him into the kitchen. 'I
need a coffee, man. You need a coffee. And I need to
know about Saul.'


In the street stood the tall man. He stared up at the
window, the flute limp in his hand. His clothes twisted
in the wind. He was even paler in the cold, in front of
the dark trees. He was quite motionless. He watched
the tiny variations of light as bodies moved in and out
of the sitting-room. He cocked his ear slightly, pulled
his fringe out of his eyes, twisted a lock of hair in his
fingers. His eyes were the colour of the clouds. He
raised the flute slowly to his lips, played a brief
refrain. A little group of sparrows wheeled out from
the branches of a tree, circled him. The man lowered
his flute and watched as the birds disappeared.


89
CHAPTER SEVEN


Two eyes stained yellow by death gaped stupidly. All
the imperfections of the human body were magnified
by utter stillness. Crowley ran his eyes over the face,
took note of the wide pores, the pockmarks, the hairs
sprouting from nostrils, the patch of stubble under the
Adam's apple that the razor had missed.

The skin folded up under the chin and became a
tightly wound coil, a skein of flesh wrung out to dry.
The body was chest-down, limbs uncomfortable, and
the head was facing the ceiling, twisted round nearly
180 degrees. Crowley stood and pushed his hands into
his pockets to disguise their trembling. He turned and
faced his entourage, two burly officers whose faces
were identical portraits of disbelieving revulsion,
scarcely more mobile than their fallen comrade's.

Crowley paced through the small hall to the
bedroom. The flat was full of busy people, photographers,
pathologists. Fingerprint dust sat in the air in
flat layers, like geological strata.

He peered round the frame of the bedroom door. A


90



suited man crouched on the floor before a figure
sitting with splayed legs, leaning against a wall.
Crowley looked at the seated man and made a small
disgusted noise, as if at rotten food. He stared into the
ruinous mess of the other's face. Blood was smeared
across the wall. The dead man's uniform was saturated
with it, stiff like an oilskin coat.

The suited doctor removed his tentative fingers
from the bloody mess, and glanced behind him at
Crowley.
'You are...?'

'DI Crowley. Doctor, what happened here?'

The doctor gestured at the slumped figure. His
voice was utterly detached, exhibiting the defensive
professionalism Crowley had seen before at unpleasant
deaths.

'Ah, this chap, Constable Barker, yes? Well... he's
been hit in the face, basically, very fast and very hard.'
He stood, ran his hands through his hair. 'I think he's
come here to the front of the room, opened the door
and been walloped with a... a bloody piledriver which sent him into the wall and onto the floor, at
which point our assailant has borne down on him and
cracked him a few more times. Once or twice with his
fists, I think, then with a stick or a club or something,
lots of long thin bruises across the shoulders and neck.
And the line of damage here ...' He indicated a particular
trough in the bone-flecked pulp of the face.

'And the other?'


91



The doctor shook his head, and blinked several
times. 'Never seen that before, to be honest. He's had
his neck broken, which sounds straightforward
enough, but... well, my God, you've seen him, yes?'
Crowley nodded. 'I don't know ... do you have any
idea how strong the human neck is, Inspector? It's not
so very difficult to break a neck but someone has turned his the wrong way round ... And they've had
to dislocate all the vertebrae completely, so that
tension in the flesh doesn't send the head back round
to the front. So they didn't just turn his head round,
they pulled upwards while they were doing it. You're
dealing with someone very, very strong, and, I
shouldn't wonder, with some sort of karate or judo or
something.'

Crowley pursed his lips. 'There's no real sign of
struggle, so they were fast. Page opens the door and
has his neck done in half a second, makes a little noise.
Barker moves to the door of the bedroom, and ...'

The doctor looked at Crowley in silence. Crowley
nodded his thanks and rejoined his companions.
Herrin and Bailey were still staring at the implausible
figure of Constable Page.

Herrin looked up as Crowley approached. 'Jesus
fucking Christ, sir, it's like that film ...'

'The Exorcist. I know, Constable.'

'But like all the way round, sir ...'

'I know, Detective, now give it a rest. We're
leaving.'


92



The three ducked under the twists of tape which
sealed the flat, and made their way down through the
bowels of the building. Outside, a large patch of grass
was still surrounded with the same tape that closed off
the flat above. Vicious droplets of glass still littered
the earth.

'It doesn't seem possible, sir,' said Bailey, as they
approached the car.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, I saw Garamond when he came in. Quite a
big bloke but no Schwarzenegger. And Jesus, he didn't
look capable of..." Bailey spoke quickly, still deeply
shocked.

Crowley nodded as he swung the car round. 'I
know you're never supposed to let yourself make
judgements about who's "the type" and who's not, but
I've got to admit, Garamond's shocked me. I thought,
"Fine, no problem. Argues with the dad, struggle,
shoves him out the window, in shock, goes to bed."
Bit odd that, I admit, but when you're drunk and
freaked out, you do odd things.

'But I certainly didn't have him down for the little
Houdini he turned out to be. And as for this ...'

Herrin was nodding vehemently.

'How did he do that? Door open, cell empty, no
one sees him, no one hears a thing.'

'But all this,' continued Crowley, 'this is a real... surprise.' He gobbed the word out with disgust. He
spoke slowly, his quiet voice halting momentarily


93



between each word. 'What I interviewed last night
was a scared, confused, fucked-up little man. Whatever
escaped from the station was some sort of master
criminal, and whatever killed Page and Barker was ...
an animal.'

He thinned his eyes and gently thumped the
steering-wheel. 'But everything about this is weird.
Why did none of the neighbours hear anything going
on between him and the dad? His camping story
checks out?' Herrin nodded. 'We can put him in Willesden
at about ten, Mr Garamond hit the ground at
about ten-thirty, eleven. Someone should've heard it.
How's it going with the rest of the family?'

'Series of blanks,' said Bailey. 'Mum's long dead,
you know, and she was an orphan. His dad's parents
are dead, there's no uncles, an aunt in America no
one's seen for years ... I'm moving on to his mates.
Some of them have already been calling in. We'll go
chase them up.'

Crowley grunted assent as they pulled in at the
station. Colleagues slowed as he walked past, gazed at
him unhappily, wanting to say something about Page
and Barker. He pre-empted them by nodding sadly,
then moved on. He had no desire to share his shock.

He returned to his desk, sipping the crap from the
coffee machine. Crowley was losing his grasp on what
was going on. It was disquieting him. The previous
evening, when he had discovered that Saul had walked
out of his cell, he had been filthy angry, livid - but he


94



had made the right noises, done the right things.
There'd been some major fuck-up obviously, and he
would have serious words with a few people, just as
the governor had had words with him. He had sent
men out delving into Willesden's darkness; Saul could
not have got far. As a precaution, he had sent Barker
to join Page in the boring task of watching over the
crime scene, just in case Saul should be so stupid as to
return home.

Which it seemed he had done. But not the Saul
he had interviewed, he would not believe that. He
accepted that he made mistakes, could misjudge
people, but not like that, he could not believe it. Something
had demented Saul, given him the strength of
the unhinged, and changed him from the person
Crowley had interviewed into the devastating assassin
who had brought such carnage to the small flat.

Why had he not run? Crowley could not understand.
He shoved his fingers into his eyes, kneaded
them till they ached. Saul had returned, he pictured
it, disorientated and stumbling, to the flat; to atone,
perhaps, to try to remember, perhaps; and when he
opened the door on the men in uniform he should
have run, or fallen to the floor crying, denied all
knowledge, snivelled.

Instead he had reached out towards Constable
Page, taken his head in his hands and torn it around in
less than a second. Crowley winced. His eyes were
closed but that was no respite from the brutal image.


95



Saul had quietly dosed the door behind him, had 1 turned to Constable Barker who was surely gazing at
him in momentary confusion, had punched him back
five feet, following the suddenly limp body, and beaten
his face systematically into a broken, bloody, shattered
thing.

Constable Page was a stupid stocky man, quite new
to the force. He was talkative, forever telling idiot
jokes. They were often racist, although his girlfriend,
Crowley knew, was of mixed race. Barker was a perpetual
footsoldier, had been a constable for too long,
but would not get the message and change his career.
Crowley had not known either of the men well.

There was an unpleasant sombreness about the
station: not so much shock as a tentative uncertainty
about how to react. People were unused to death.

Crowley put his head in his hands. He did not
know where Saul was, he did not know what to do.


96
CHAPTER EIGHT


Greasy-looking clouds slid above the alley in which
King Rat and Saul sat digesting. Everything seemed
dirty to Saul. His clothes and face and hair were
smeared with a day and a half's muck, and now dirt
was inside him. As he drew sustenance from it, it
coloured what he could see, but he looked around at
his newly tarnished world as if it were a cynosure. It
held no horror for him.

Purity is a negative state and contrary to nature, Saul had once read. That made sense to him now.
He could see the world clearly in all its natural and
supernatural impurity, for the first time in his life.

He was conscious of his own smell: the old acridity
of alcohol splashed on these clothes long ago, the
muck from the gutter of the roof, rotting food; but
something new underneath it all. A taste of animal in
his sweat, something of that scent which had entered
his cell with King Rat two nights ago. Maybe it was
in his mind. Maybe there was nothing beyond the


97



faint remnants of deodorant, but Saul believed he
could smell the rat in him coming out.

King Rat leaned back against the rubbish sacks,
staring at the sky.

'It occurs,' he said presently, 'that thee and me
should scarper. Full?'

Saul nodded. 'You've got a story to tell me,' he said.

'I know it,' said King Rat. 'But I can't exercise
myself on that particular just yet. I've to teach you to
be rat. Your eyes aren't even open yet; you're still such
a mewling little furless thing. So ..." He got to his
feet. 'What say we retire? Grab a bit of tucker for the
underground.' He pushed handfuls of leftover fruitcake
into his pockets.

King Rat turned to face the wall behind the rubbish
sacks. He moved to the right-angle of brick where the
wall met one side of the narrow alley, wedged himself
within it in his impossible way, and began to scale the
wall. He teetered at the top, twenty feet up, his feet
daintily picking between rusting coils of barbed wire
as though they were flowers. He squatted between
them and beckoned to Saul.

Saul approached the wall. He set his teeth and
jutted out his lower jaw, confrontational. He pushed
himself into the corner space, as hard as he could,
feeling his flesh mould itself into the space. He
reached up with his arms. Like a rat, he thought, squeeze and move and pull like a rat. His fingers
gripped the spaces between bricks and he hauled


98



himself up with a prodigious strength. His face ballooned
with effort, his feet scrabbled, but he was
progressing up the wall in his own undignified
fashion. He let out a growl, and heard an admonitory
hissing from above him. He pushed his right arm up
again, the dank smell of rat-sweat more evident than
ever beneath his arms. His legs failed him, he quivered
and fell, was caught and pulled into the thicket of
crumbling wire.

'Not so bad, ratling boy. Isn't it a marvel what you
can do with a scrap of decent grub in your belly? You
were right up near the top.'

And Saul felt pride at his climbing.

Below them was a little courtyard hemmed in on all
sides by dirty walls and windows. To Saul's new eyes
the robust dirt of the enclosure was almost too vibrant
to look at. Every corner teemed with the spreading
stains of decay; this weak spot of the city had been
convincingly annexed by the forces of filth. A disconcerting
line of dolls gently mouldered where they had
been placed, their backs to the wall, eyes on the
pewter-coloured plug in the corner of the courtyard.
A manhole.

King Rat exhaled through his nose triumphantly.

'Home,' he hissed. 'Into the palace.'

He leapt from the top of the wall, landing in a
crouch over the manhole, surrounding it. He made no
sound as he came to rest on the concrete. His coat


99



drifted down around him, surrounding him like
oily puddle. He looked up and waited.

Saul looked down and felt the old fears. He steele
himself, swallowed. He willed himself to jump, bvif
his legs had locked into a fearful squat, and he gre
exasperated as he readied himself to land beside
uncle. He breathed in, once, twice, very deeply, tr
stood, swung his arms and launched himself at the
shape waiting for him.

He saw greys and reds of bricks and concrete lurct
around him in slow motion, he moved his body, pre
pared his landing, as he saw King Rat's grin approa
him at speed; then the world jolted hard, his eyes and
teeth juddered in his face, and he was down. His knees
pushed all the air out of his stomach, but he smile
with exhilaration as he overcame his spasming bellyS!
and sucked air into his lungs. He had flown, had I
landed ready. He was shedding his humanity like anj
old snakeskin, scratching it off in great swathes. It wasf
so fast, this assumption of a new form inside.

'You're a good boy,' said King Rat, and busied|
himself with the metal in the ground.

Saul looked up. He saw figures move behind th|
windows above, wondered if anyone could see them.

King Rat's London snarl had assumed a didactic|
tone. 'Pay attention, ratling. This here is the entrance |
to your ceremonial abode. The all of Rome-vill is;
yours by rights, you're royalty. But there's a special]
palace, the rat's own hidey-hole, and you bing a waste |


100



there through these portholes.' He indicated the metal
cover. 'Observe.'

King Rat's fingers scuttled over the iron disc like a
virtuoso typist's, investigating its surface. He turned
his head from side to side, cocked it briefly, then suddenly
tensed his body and slipped his fingers into
infinitesimal gaps between the seal and its shaft. It
was like sleight of hand: Saul could not see what had
happened, or how the fingers had fit, yet they were
there, pulling, in the gaps.

The manhole cover twisted with a yelp of rust.
There was a rush of dirty wind as King Rat pulled it
free.

Saul stared into the pit. The swirling winds of the
courtyard yanked at the rich-smelling wisps of vapour
emerging from the hole. The sewer was gorged with
darkness; it seemed to overflow, seeping out of the
open concrete and obscuring the ground. The organic
scent of compost billowed out. Just visible, a ladder
driven into the subterranean brick plunged out of
sight. Where it was riveted to the wall, metal had
oxidized and leached out profusely, making the sewer
bleed rust. The sound of a thin flow of water was
amplified by the yawning tunnels, making for a
bizarre booming trickle.

King Rat looked at Saul. He clenched his hand into
a fist, extended a pointing index finger, and his hand
described an elaborate twisting path through the air,
playfully circling, till it spiralled down and came to


101



rest pointing into the sewer. King Rat stood at the
edge of the thin circle. He stepped out over the hole
and dropped through the pavement. There was a tiny
echoing damp sound.

King Rat's voice emerged from underground.

'Down you come.'

Saul squeezed his hips through the hole.

Tut a lid on it,' said King Rat from below, and
laughed briefly. Saul fumbled with the metal cover. He
was half in, half out of the sewer. He sank under the
weight of the metal. He held it above his head and
descended. The light disappeared.

Saul shivered in the cold of the sewer. His feet
clapped on the metal. He stumbled as his feet hit
wetness. He backed away from the ladder and rubbed
himself in the darkness. Air gusted and hissed; freezing water flooded his shoes.

'Where are you?' he whispered.

'Watching,' came King Rat's voice. It moved
around him. 'Wait. You'll see. You've never tried this,
laddie, so hold your horses. The darkmans is nothing
to you.'

Saul stood still. His hands were invisible before
him.

Shapes moved in front of him. He thought they
were real until the corridors themselves began to
emerge from the darkness and he realized that those
other fleeting, indistinct forms were born in his mind.
They were dispelled as Saul began to see.

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1



He saw the muck of the drains. He saw the energy
it contained spilling out, a grey light that showed no
colours but illuminated the damp tunnels. Before him
a study in perspective, the shit- and algae-encrusted
walls of the shaft meeting in the distance. Behind him
and to his right more tunnels, and everywhere the
smell, rot and faeces, and the pungent smell of piss, rat
piss. He wrinkled his nose, his hackles rising.

'No worries,' said King Rat, a figure saturated in
shadows, drenched in them, a mass of darkness. 'Some
cove's staked a claim and made a mark, but we're royalty. His territory doesn't mean fuck to us.'

Saul looked about him. A thin rivulet of dirty water
seeped by at his feet. His every movement seemed to
set off an explosion of echoes. He stood in a twisting
brick cylinder seven feet in diameter. From everywhere
came the noises of streaming water and falling
stones, and organic sounds of squeaks and scratches,
peaking, dying out and being replaced, sounds far
away being written over by those nearby, a palimpsest
of noise.

'I want to see you leg it, staying mum as you like,'
said King Rat. He startled Saul. His voice wandered
through the tunnels, exploring every corner. 'I want
to see you shift your arse, climb sharpish. I want to
see you swim. School is in.'

King Rat turned to face the same direction as Saul.
He pointed into the charcoal grey.


103



'We're off thataway. And we're off sharpish. So pull
your ringer out and keep up. Ready, my old lad?'

Saul shivered with excitement, the cold irrelevant
now, and crouched in a starter's position.

'Come on, then,' he said.

King Rat turned and bolted.

Saul did not feel his legs moving as he followed. The
rapid, faint beat of footsteps he heard was his own;
King Rat was soundless. Saul could feel his nose twitching
and he felt like laughing.

He panted with exhilaration. King Rat was an ill
defined blur before him, his coat flapping vaguely in
the noisome wind. Tunnels passed by on either side,
water spattered him. King Rat disappeared suddenly,
cutting sharply left down a smaller tunnel where the
water pressure was greater, swirling insistently around
Saul's legs. He pulled his legs up out of the stream.

King Rat turned his head for a second, a flash of
pale flesh. He crouched as he ran and pulled to a
sudden halt. He waited briefly while Saul caught him
up, then ducked into a claustrophobic shaft barely
three feet high. Saul did not hesitate, but dove in after
him.

Saul's breath and the sound of his flesh on the brick
came bouncing back at him, as loud and intimate as
if they existed only in his head. He stumbled, mud


104


I



smearing his legs, careering along the tube in a messy,
effective fashion.

His nose hit wet cloth. King Rat had stopped
suddenly.

Saul peered over King Rat's shoulder.

'What is it?' he hissed.

King Rat jerked his head. He raised his hand, pointing
perfunctorily.

Something moved in the flat, leaden light. Two
small creatures edged backwards and forwards uneasily
in the brick warren. They crept a few ineffectual
inches in one direction, then in another, without once
taking their eyes from the figures before them.

Rats.

King Rat was quite still. Saul hovered, bewildered.

One rat stood on either side of the dirty water.
They moved in concert, forward together, backwards
together, a tentative dance, staring at King Rat.

'What's happening?' whispered Saul.

King Rat did not answer.

One of the rats scuttled forward and sat up on its
hind legs, six feet in front of King Rat. It paddled
its front legs aggressively, squeaked, bared its teeth. It
returned to all fours and crept a little further forward,
baring its teeth, clearly afraid but apparently angry,
contemptuous.

The rat appeared to spit.

King Rat suddenly barked in outrage and lurched


105



forward, his arm outstretched, but the two rats had bolted.

King Rat picked himself silently out of the muck
and continued along the tunnel.

'Hey, hey, hold on,' said Saul in amazement. King
Rat kept moving. 'What the fuck was that all about?'

King Rat kept moving.

'What's going on?' shouted Saul.

'Stow it!' screamed King Rat without turning. He
crept on. 'Not now,' he said more quietly. 'That's the
seat of my sorrow. Not now. Just you wait till I get
you home.'

He disappeared round a corner.

Saul became lulled by the sewers. He kept King Rat in
his sights, losing himself in the damp brick convolutions.
More rats passed them, but no more taunted
them as the first two had seemed to do. They stopped
when they saw King Rat, and then quickly ran.

King Rat ignored them, winding through the
complex at a constant quick trudge.

Saul felt like a tourist. He investigated the walls in
passing, reading the mildew on the bricks. He was
hypnotized by his own footsteps. Time passed as a
succession of brick tributaries. He was ignorant of the
cold and intoxicated by the smell. Occasional growls
of traffic filtered through the earth and tar above, to
yawn through the cavernous sewers.


106


I



Presently King Rat stopped in a tunnel through
which the two explorers had to crawl. He turned to
face Saul, a trick which looked impossible in the tiny
space. The air was thick with the smell of piss, a particular
piss, a strong, familiar smell, the smell which
permeated King Rat's clothes.

'Righto,' murmured King Rat. 'So have you
clocked your whereabouts?' Saul shook his head.
'We're at the crossroads of Rome-vill, the centre, my
very own conjunction, under King's Cross. Hold
your tongue and prick up your ears: hear the trains growling'} Got the map in your bonce? Learn the way. This is where you've to get to. Just follow your I
Suppose. I've marked out my manor nice and strong,
you can sniff it out from anywhere underground.'
And Saul felt suddenly sure that he could find his way
there, as easy as breathing.

But he looked around him, and could see only the
same bricks, the same dirty water as everywhere else.

'What,' he ventured slowly, 'is here?'

King Rat pushed his finger against his nose and
winked.

'I set myself down anywhere I bloody fancy, but a
king wants a palace.' As he spoke, King Rat was
busying himself with the bricks below him, running a
long fingernail between them, creating a rising worm
of dirt. He traced a jagged square of brick whose
uneven sides were a little less than two feet long. He


107



dug his fingernails under the corners and pulled what
looked like a tray of bricks out of the floor.

Saul whistled with amazement at the hole he had
uncovered. The wind played over the newly opened
hole like a flute. He looked at the bricks King Rat
held. They were an artifice, a single concrete plug with
angled edges under the thin veneer oi brick, so that it
sat snug and invisible in the tunnel floor.

Saul peered into the opening. A chute curved away
steeply out of sight. He looked up, King Rat was
hugging the lid, waiting for Saul.

Saul swung his legs over the lip of the chute, and
breathed its stale air. He pushed himself forward with
his bum and slid under the tight curve, greased
with living slime.

A breakneck careering ride and Saul was deposited
breathless into a pool of freezing water. He spluttered
and gobbed, emptying his mouth of the taste of dirt
and squeezing his eyes clear. When he opened them,
he stopped quite still, water dripping from his open
mouth.

The walls stretched out away from each other so
suddenly and violently it was as though they were
afraid of one another. Saul sat in the cold pool at one
end of the chamber. It swept out, a three-dimensional
ellipse, like a raindrop on its side, ninety feet long,
with him dumbstruck at the thin end. Reinforced
brick ribs striped trie walls of the chamber and arched
overhead: cathedral architecture, thirty feet high, like

108


I


the fossilized belly of a whale long entombed under
the city.

Saul stumbled from the pool, took a few short
steps forward. To either side the room dipped a little,
creating a thin moat drawing its water from the pool
into which the chute had deposited Saul. Every few
feet, just above the moat, were the circular ends of
pipes disappearing, Saul supposed, into the main
sewer above.

Before him there was a raised walkway, which
climbed an incline until at the opposite end of the
chamber it was eight feet from the floor, and there was
the throne.

It faced Saul. It was rough, a utilitarian design
sculpted with bricks, like everything under the
ground. The throne-room was quite empty.

Behind Saul something hit the water. The report
leisurely explored the room. King Rat came to stand
behind Saul.

'Ta very much, Mr Bazalgette.'

Saul turned his head, shook it to show that he did
not understand. King Rat scampered up the walkway
and curled into the chair. He sat facing Saul, one leg
thrown over a brickwork arm. His voice came as clear
as ever to Saul's ears, although he did not raise it.

'He was the man with the plan, built the whole
maze in the time of the last queen. People owe him
their flush crappers, and me... I can thank him for
my underworld.'


109



'But all this ...' breathed Saul. This room ... why
did he build this room?'

'Mr Bazalgette was a canny gent.' King Rat
snickered unpleasantly. 'I had a few whids, burnt his
lugholes, told him a few tales, sights I'd seen. We had
a conflab about him and his habits, not all of which
were unknown to me.' King Rat winked exaggeratedly.
'He was of the opinion that these tales should
remain undisclosed. We came to an arrangement.
You'll not find this here burrow, my cubby-hole, on
any plans.'

Saul approached King Rat's throne. He squatted on
all fours in front of the seat.

'What are we doing here? What do we do now?'
Saul was suddenly weary of following like a disciple,
unable to intervene or shape events. 'I want to know
what you want.'

King Rat stared at him without speaking.

Saul continued. 'Is this about those rats?' he said.
There was no answer.

'Is this about the rats? What was that about? You're
the king, right? You're King Rat. So command them. I
didn't see them showing any tribute or respect. They
looked pretty pissed off to me. What's this about? Call
on the rats, make them come to you.'

There was no sound in the hall. King Rat continued
to stare.

Eventually he spoke. 'Not... yet.'

Saul waited.

110


1



'I won't... yet. They're still... narked... with
me. They'll not do what I tell them just yet.'

'How long have they been ... narked?'

'Seven hundred years.'

King Rat looked a pathetic figure. He skulked with
his characteristic combination of defensiveness and
arrogance. He looked lonely.

'You're .. . not the king at all, are you?'

'/ am the king!' King Rat was on his feet, spitting at
the figure below him. 'Don't dare talk to me like that!
I'm the King, I'm the one, the cutpurse, the thief, the
deserter chief!'

'So what's going on}' yelled Saul.

'Something . .. went.. . wrong . .. Once upon a
time. Rats've long memories, see?' King Rat thumped
his head. 'They don't forget stuff. They keep it all in
the noggin. That's all. And you're involved, sunshine.
This is all tied up with the one that wants you dead,
the cove that bumped off your fucking dad.'

Fucking dad, said the echoes for a long time
afterwards.

'What... who ... is it?' said Saul.

King Rat looked balefully at him with those
shadow-encrusted eyes.

'The Ratcatcher.'


Ill
1
PART THREE


LESSONS IN

RHYTHM AND

HISTORY
I
CHAPTER NINE


Almost as soon as Fabian had left, Pete had appeared.
His alacrity was suspicious. In another mood it would
have pissed Natasha off, but she felt like forgetting
about Saul, just for a short time.

She and Fabian had sat up late in her small kitchen.
Fabian always commented on Natasha's rather
self-consciously minimalist approach to decor, complaining
that it made him feel uneasy, but that night
they had other things on their mind. The faint strains
of Drum and Bass filtered through from the stereo
next door.

The next morning Natasha rose at eight, regretting
the cigarettes she had shared with Fabian. He rolled
out of the sleeping-bag she had lent him, when he
heard her stir. They had no more words to say about
Saul. They were numb and tired. Fabian left quickly.

Natasha wandered out of the kitchen dripping
night-clothes, pulling a shapeless sweater over her
shoulders. She turned on the stereo, slipped the needle
onto the vinyl on the turntable. It was the best of last


115



year's compilations, now some months old, rendering
it an ancient classic in the fast-mutating world of
Drum and Bass.

She ran her hands through her hair, pulling brutally
at the tangles.

Pete rang the bell. She guessed it was him.

She was tired but she let him in. As he drank her
coffee, she leaned against the counter and peered at
him. She considered him ugly, his pale skin and thin
limbs. He was hardly a style guru, either. The world
of Jungle could be elitist. She smiled slightly at the
thought of the rudeboys and hard-steppers in the club
AWOL being presented with this under-sunned
apparition, complete with flute.

'How much do you know about Drum and Bass?'
she asked.

He shook his head. 'Not much, really ..."

'I can tell. When you played yesterday it was
impressive, but I've got to tell you it's a weird idea playing flutes or shit like that to Jungle. If it's going to
work, we're going to have to figure it out carefully.'

He nodded, his face comical with concentration.
Natasha almost wished for a repeat of his extraordinary
performance of the previous day, his sudden
knowing smile. The alternative was so cringing, so
desperate to please, that it all but nauseated her. If this
day didn't go well, she decided, she wasn't having any
more of it.


116



She sighed. 'I'm not cutting anything with you
without you knowing something about the music.
Just because General fucking Levy gets a single in the
top ten, and some art-school wankers start writing
about Jungle, and the next thing you know anything
with a backbeat's "Jungle". Even Everything But The
fucking Girl!' She folded her arms. 'Everything But
The Girl aren't Jungle, alright?'

He nodded. It was clear he had never heard of
Everything But The Girl.

She closed her eyes and bit back a grin.

'Right. There's a lot going on in Jungle: there's
intelligent Jungle, there's Hardstep, Techstepping,
Jazz Jungle ... I like 'em all, but I can't cut Hardstep
tracks. All the darkness edges. You want Hardstep, go
to Ed Rush or Skyscraper or something, OK? I cut
tunes more like Bukem, DJ Rap, stuff like that.'
Natasha was enjoying herself enormously, lecturing
him, watching his eyes dart frantically around. He had
no idea what she was talking about.

'DJs have started bringing musicians to gigs; Goldie
brings in a drummer, and stuff like that. Some people
don't like it, they reckon Jungle should be digital or
nothing. I'm not down with that, but I got no
immediate plans to be dragging you on stage either.
What I'm interested in is maybe playing with you for
a while and sampling some of your flute for the top
end. Loop it and cut it and stuff.'


117



Pete nodded. He was fumbling with his case,
assembling his flute.


Saul woke in the throne-room under the city. He sat
curled up in the cold, below the unmoving shape of
King Rat, stiff on his throne. As soon as Saul's eyes
opened, King Rat stood up. He had been waiting for
Saul to awake.

They ate and left the chamber by the brick ladder
which crept up behind the throne, emerging by means
of another hidden door into the main sewer. Saul followed
King Rat through the tunnels, and this time
he paid attention to his location, his movements, he
created a map in his head, he tracked himself.

The water rushed around them as drizzle hit the
urban sprawl above and poured into their recesses. It
slid around the bricks, transporting a sudden deluge
of oil. The walls here were coated with fat, thick with
translucent white residue.

'Restaurants,' hissed King Rat as he plunged on,
and Saul picked up his feet to avoid the slippery muck.
He could smell it as he ran past, the stench of old
frying and stale butter. It made him hungry. He ran
a finger along the wall as he moved, sucked the
glutinous mess he had picked up, and laughed, still
amazed and excited by his hunger for old food.

Saul could hear things frantically escaping their
path. The corridors were thick with rats, nibbling at


118



the walls and the abundant edible detritus, fleeing as
they approached. King Rat hissed and the path ahead
of them cleared.

The two of them quit the underground, emerging
into a Piccadilly backstreet, behind a great stinking
pile of food waste, gastronomic effluent spewed out
by London's finest.

They ate. Saul devoured a crushed concoction of
old cold fish in some rich sauce, King Rat wolfing
broken tiramisu and polenta cake.

And then up onto the roofs, King Rat ascending by
a stairway of iron piping and broken brick. As soon as
he had used it, its purpose became clear. Saul saw
through vulgar reality, discerned possibilities. Alternative
architecture and topography were asserting
themselves. He followed without hesitation, slipping
behind slate screens and running unseen over the
skyline.

They barely spoke. Periodically, King Rat would
stop and stare at Saul, investigate his motions, nod or
indicate to him a more effective way to climb or hide
or jump. They picked their way over banks and
behind publishing houses, sly and invisible.

King Rat whispered obscure descriptions under his
breath. He waved at the buildings they passed and
murmured at Saul, hinted at the dark truth concerning
the scratchmarks on the walls, the hollows that broke
up lines of chimneys, the destination of the cats that
scattered at their approach.


119



They wove in and out of central London, climbing,
creeping, moving behind houses and between them,
over offices and under the streets. Magic had entered
Saul's life. It didn't matter any more that he didn't
understand.

This was a million miles from the tawdry world of
conjuring tricks. His life was in thrall to another hex,
a power which had crept into his police cell and
claimed him, a dirty, raw magic, a spell that stank of
piss. This was urban voodoo, fuelled by the sacrifices
of road deaths, of cats and people dying on the tarmac,
an I Ching of spilled and stolen groceries, a Cabbala
of road signs. Saul could feel King Rat watching him.
He felt giddy with rude, secular energy.

They ate. They raced north beyond King's Cross
and Islington, the light already hinting that it would
soon leave. They passed Hampstead, Saul still not
tired, gorging himself from time to time from
backstreet rubbish bins. They skirted briefly into
Hampstead Heath, out of the intricate paved world.
They doubled back and found their way through
small parks and along ignored bus routes to the
borders of the financial world, the City.

Saul and King Rat stood behind a cafe on the corner
of High Holborn and Kingsway. Away in the east was
the forest of skyscrapers where so much money
was made. A huge squat building stood before them, a
financial Gormenghast, a hulk of steel and concrete
which seemed to exude like a growth from the build120



ings around it. It was impossible to define where it
began and ended.


Away in Ladbroke Grove, Pete peered over Natasha's
shoulder. She indicated the tiny grey screen on her
keyboard as the beats cascaded out of the speakers.
She was tweaking the treble, playing with sounds.
Pete's pale eyes flitted from screen to speaker to flute.


Fabian emerged from Willesden police station, cursing
with disbelief. He slipped into patois, into American
slang, into profanities.

'Bambaclaht motherfucker shithead blabddaht whitebread pig chickenshit piss-artist fuckers'

He wrestled with his jacket and stormed towards
the tube station. The police had arrived to pick him up
without warning, had not let him take his bike.

He still muttered obscenities in his rage. He
flounced up the hill to the underground.


Kay stood under Natasha's window, wondering what
she had done to her music, where she'd got the flute
sound from.


'I don't think he knows anything, sir,' said Herrin.


121



Crowley nodded in vague agreement. He was not listening. Where are you, Saul? he thought.


Who's the Ratcatcher? Saul wondered. What wants to kill me? But King Rat had mooched into melancholia
after he had mentioned the name, and would say
nothing more. Time enough for that, he had said. I
don't want to scare you.

King Rat and Saul saw the sun turn red over the
Thames. Saul found himself scrambling without fear
up the vast wires of the Charing Cross railway bridge,
looking out over the river. He hugged the metal.
Trains wriggled below like illuminated worms.

South, and they careered secretly through Brixton,
bore west for Wimbledon.

King Rat told more and more stories about the city
as they passed. His assertions were wild and poetic,
unreal, senseless. His tone was as casual as a cabby's.

The tour seemed to end quite suddenly, and they
wound back towards Battersea. Saul was exhilarated.
His body throbbed with exhaustion and power. The
city's mine, he thought. He felt headstrong and
intoxicated.

They came to a manhole in a deserted car park and
King Rat stood aside. Saul wiped the dust from the
metal disc. He fumbled with it, pushed his fingers
around it. He felt strong. His muscles were taut from
the continual effort of the day, and he rubbed them in


122



a motion that would have been narcissistic were it not
for his obvious amazement. He twisted at the metal,
felt his pores open with sweat and dirt then clog them,
invigorating him.

The cover squealed momentarily and burst from its
housing.

Saul barked in triumph and ducked into the darkness.


The music coming from Natasha's window was by
Hydro, Fabian realized. He had calmed somewhat in
the time it had taken for him to reach Ladbroke
Grove. The sky boiled in time to the beats.

He hammered on the door. Natasha came to him,
opening the door, her small grin frozen by his scowl.

'Tash, man, you ain't going to fucking believe it.
Just keeps getting weirder.'

She stood aside for him. As he came up the stairs he
heard Kay's laconic assertions.

'... go down there once or twice a month, you
know, and all Goldie and shit and them come there
sometimes ... Hey, Fabian, whassup man?'

Kay sat on the edge of the bed and peered up at
him. Pete sat somewhat stiffly in a chair brought in
from the kitchen.

Kay's amiable face was devoid of concern, blind to
Fabian's mood. He sat with the same vague, open
smile while Natasha caught up and entered the room.


123



Pete was clearly uncomfortable, but he sat with his
eyes unblinking on Fabian until Natasha arrived.

Fabian paused before speaking.

'I just spent the afternoon with the fucking pigs
dem. They been giving me serious shit for nuff time,
all fucking day, "What can you tell us about Saul?" I
told the motherfuckers time and fucking again, I don't
knows^z'r.'

Natasha sat cross-legged on the mattress.

'They still think Saul did in his dad?'

Fabian laughed theatrically.

'Oh, Tash, man, no no no, not any more, that's nothing, that's the least of anyone's worries.' He
sucked his teeth and pulled a battered newspaper out
of his bag, waved it in front of them. The story was
thumbed, the ink smeared. 'You won't get much from
that,' he said as they tracked it with their eyes. 'Only
the bare bones. Lemme give you the real deal.

'Saul's gone. He escaped.'

Fabian laughed unpleasantly at Kay's and Natasha's
dumbfounded expressions. He pre-empted their exclamations.

'Not yet, man, there's more. Two police got killed
at Saul's dad's flat, smashed up bad. And it looks ...
they reckon Saul did it. They're fucking bananas to
find him. They'll come for you all, your turn soon.
With all the fucking questions.'

No one spoke.

The strains of Hydro were alone in filling the room.


124
CHAPTERTEN


King Rat was gone.

Saul brooded. He felt gorged on the supernatural
and surreal.

He was crouched behind King Rat's throne. He
had lain down there after the epic journey around
London, sated and exhausted. That night he had
oozed in and out of sleep and when he awoke, King
Rat had gone.

Saul had risen and meandered around the room. He
listened to the sound of dripping and distant howls.

King Rat had pinned a grubby piece of paper to the
throne.

back soon, it said. stay put.

Alone, Saul felt unreal.

It was difficult to believe that he existed independently
of King Rat, that King Rat was not a figment of
his imagination, or Saul of his. Saul felt the stirrings
of panic.

Alone, he was suddenly sick of King Rat's evasion. What was the Ratcatcher? he wanted to know. King


125



Rat would not say. Their run across the city had been;
largely silent. With King Rat by his side, Saul had
acquiesced, was complicit in the cover-up; he had been
busy listening to the rat in him wake up.

But alone, he realized that it had been a long time
since he had thought of his father's death. That he had
been remiss in his mourning. His father's death was
the fulcrum. Understand that and he would know
what wanted to kill him, he would know why the rats
would not obey their king.

With King Rat by his side, Saul had seen a new city.
The map of London had been ripped up and redrawn
according to King Rat's criteria. Alone, Saul was suddenly
afraid that the city no longer existed.

Stay put? he thought. Fuck that.

Saul climbed out of the room and into the sewer.

Wind swept through the tunnels. Saul stood perfectly
still and listened. He could not hear King Rat
anywhere. He replaced the door to the hidden exit and moved gingerly away.

As he left the side tunnel which concealed the ways
in and out of the throne-room, the strong smell of
King Rat's piss dissipated. Three rats hovered outside
the tunnel, moving nervously, regarding him. He was
unafraid but uncertain. He stopped and watched.

One of the three scampered forward a little and
shook its head in a shockingly human motion.
Saul took off through the sewers, trembling with
trepidation. Alone, the sewer was a different world


126



from the one that King Rat had shown him, but Saul
was not afraid. He walked through an olfactory patchwork,
and the smells of piss told him stories. The rat
who pissed here was aggressive and quick to anger;
the one who pissed here was a follower; the one here
ate too much, and his favourite food was chicken.

Saul could feel the city above him. He felt lines and
directions pull at him. He followed the geomantic
tugging.

From behind him, Saul heard a pattering. He
turned, and in the grey non-light he saw three rats
following him. He stopped still and watched them.
They halted six feet from him and shifted, without
taking their eyes from him. As he watched two more
rats jumped from a pipe that jutted into the tunnel,
and joined their fellows.

Saul backed up a little and the rats followed,
keeping their distance. One of them squeaked loudly
and the others joined in, a discordant cacophony
which was taken up throughout the tunnels nearby.
Small feet scampered from all directions towards him.
The squealing reverberated around Saul's head.

More rats began to froth around him, out of the
side tunnels and the surrounding dark. They came in
twos and threes and tens, and although he did not fear
them the sheer number was overwhelming. There was
no light to glint off the hundreds of eyes which ringed
him; they remained only little points of blackness in


127



the general gloom, foci in the simmering mass of
bodies which had filled the tunnel around him.

The squealing continued. It filled his head.

Suddenly, through his trepidation Saul felt a burst
of excitement. He was confused by the sensation, it
felt alien and out of place. And he realized that it was
not his excitement at all, but that of the rats, that he
understood their shrill communication, that he could
feel what they felt.

He was awash with vicarious emotions.

Saul trembled and turned. There was nothing to
distinguish what was before him from what was
behind, everywhere was filled with the tiny eyes and
bodies of the rats. The rats' voices were tremulous,
cosseting, pleading.

Saul fled the pressure of the sound, flooded by
panic. He turned and leapt over the mass of bodies,
which parted under him, little islands of clear sewer
appearing under his feet as he landed, tails being
whisked out of the way. The voices were suddenly
plaintive. They followed him.

Saul ran through the tunnels and the rats scampered
after him. Ahead of him he saw a wall-mounted
ladder. He leapt up, caught it. The rats jumped, scratching
at the bottom rail. Saul felt a surge of relief as he
looked down into their inscrutable faces.

He climbed and forced open the metal cover,
peeping out through the crack. The exit was fringed
with high grass. Saul climbed out of the depths and


128



emerged in a hollow between shadowy bushes. He
was in a deserted park. Above the distant hum of
traffic there were closer sounds of birds. Saul saw
water before him, a twisted lake with islands.

Trees framed his field of vision. He saw a shape
over the arboreal boundary: a huge gilded dome surmounted
with a shaving of crescent moon. London's
central mosque, burnished by the streetlamps. To the
south he saw the thin stiletto of Telecom Tower. He
was in Regent's Park.

Saul circled the boating lake and slipped silently
through the hedgerows and trees and railings.

Saul clambered out into the dark city.

He walked south to Baker Street. Lights waved
wildly over the faces of the buildings as cars swung by.
Headlights pinned him in their glare as a battered van
swept towards him and past. Saul's heart raced for a
long time after it had gone.

He turned onto Marylebone Road.

People bore down on him from all directions. It
took him a moment to realize that they also moved
away on past him, that they were simply walking
along the street. Saul's breath shook a little as he
exhaled. He pushed his hands into his pockets and set
off west.

The first man to pass him was dressed in a blazer
and jeans, his rugby shirt tucked in, cuddling his distended
belly. He glanced momentarily at Saul before
his eyes flickered back ahead of him.


129


Look at me! Saul shouted in his head. I'm a rat!
Can you tell? Can you smell? The man must have
detected the stench which hung around Saul's clothes,
but was it so much worse than that which coloured
the passing of a drunk? The man did not turn to
investigate Saul, who stopped and stared after him. He
turned and gazed at the next person approaching him,
a young Asian woman in a short tight dress. She
smoked as she passed him. She did not spare him a
glance.

Saul laughed, giddy. He was passed from behind by
a short black man, from in front by a group of singing
teenagers, and then a very tall man with glasses, from
behind by a man in a suit who walked, then jogged,
then walked to his destination.

No one minded Saul.

Ahead of him the broken stream of night traffic
rose, cut across Edgware Road. It returned briefly
to earth then rebounded, flying again. This was the
Westway, the vast raised road which swept above
London. A thousand tons of impossibly suspended
asphalt, it soared off over Paddington and Westbourne
Grove, with the city spattered out forever on all sides.
In the west, over Latimer Road, it twisted into an
intricate mess of raised ramps and exits. It extricated
itself from this tangle and continued, finally returning
to earth outside Wormwood Scrubs prison.

Saul stared at the Westway. It passed Ladbroke
Grove station, where Natasha lived. The rules of the


130



city no longer concerned him. The prohibition against
pedestrians on the Westway did not apply to rats.


He ducked between the sparse cars and scampered onto the central reservation, racing up the incline,
skirting the barrier with vehicles buzzing past him on
both sides.

Below him he heard faint shouts from the mustard
coloured estates. Dirty winking lights swept away
from him. The drivers could not see him. He was a
dark figure, utterly inured to the cold, his back bent,
his arms grasping the barriers, pulling himself along.
He moved like a cartoon villain on speed, a fast, exaggerated
skulking.

Four great squat blocks reached up like stubby
fingers around the Westway: brown tower blocks
overlooking him with uneven points of light. The
sound of traffic was a rhythmic, constant crescendo,
flows without ebbs, never dying away.

Isolated in the centre of this wide road, Saul could
not see the streets below him. He could not gaze into
windows or over the edge of the Westway at late-night
walkers. He was alone with the anonymous cars and
the horizon. The whole city had become horizon punctuated by fat towers.

To his left, the raised tracks of the Hammersmith
and City tube line shadowed the Westway, only a
few feet away. A train rattled past. With a rush of


131



adrenaline, Saul pictured himself racing across the
road and leaping out, catching it as it went by and
straddling it like a rodeo rider, but he felt a sudden,
certain intimation that he could not make that jump,
not yet, and he stood still as the train headed on to
Ladbroke Grove.

He followed its passage on the Westway until he
could see Ladbroke Grove station hovering in the air
to his left. It was so close that he could probably leap
across onto the platform itself. Saul peered into the
headlights to his right, and bundled himself across
the road, passing like a discarded coat in wind before
the windscreens of startled drivers. He flattened
himself against the barrier and leaned over.

Just beyond the station, Ladbroke Grove still
throbbed with the beats of ghetto-blasters. A group
of youth leaned, studiously cool, outside the closed
Quasar building. They did their best to intimidate
the passers-by. Late-night grocers leaned out of their
doors and chatted to each other, to customers, to the
mini-cab drivers. The streets did not throng, but they
were hardly empty. From his precarious hide, Saul
watched.

Unnoticed he clambered over the barrier and held
it behind his back, leaning out over the streets. He
enjoyed his own insouciance.

It was an easy jump to the drainpipe opposite,
barely four feet, and he accomplished it without a sound. He descended to the wedge of low roofing


132



between the station and the raised road, and slid into
the Westway's looming shadow. He clambered over
mildewed eaves. Three days ago, he thought as he
jumped to the ground, / was heavy and human. And
now., he thought as he moved out of the graffitied
darkness towards Ladbroke Grove itself, I'm rat and
I can travel how I like. I woke up so fast.

He made no effort to hide himself, even swaggering
a little, and the groups of young men who clotted
the pavement eyed him but let him pass, their noses
wrinkling in his wake. He walked through conversations
in accented English, in Arabic and in
Portuguese.

He turned into Bassett Road and trotted up to Natasha's
house. Her lights were off. He cursed and
turned on his heel, pacing away to a tree opposite her
window. He leaned against it and folded his arms,
debating whether or not to wake her.

Saul had no illusions. He could never go back, he
had become a rat. There was no way into that world
again. But he had lived there once and he missed his
friends.

As he stood trying to make up his mind, a
slouching figure made its way down the street. With
a sudden thrill, Saul recognized the stumbling gait. As
the man approached Natasha's house and slowed, Saul
cupped his hands over his mouth and hissed, 'Kay.'

Kay jumped and looked all around him in confusion.
Saul hissed again. Kay stared straight at him


133



for a moment and panned his eyes around, comically
nervous.

Saul stepped out of the cover of the tree.

'Jesus, Saul man, you gave me a heart attack!' said
Kay as he slumped with relief. 'You were fucking invisible under that tree, and your voice has gone all
weird ...' He stopped short suddenly, shook his head
and put his hands to his face.

'Shit, man!' he hissed, looking wildly around him.
'What's gone on? How the fuck are you? I just heard
about all your shit! Jesus! What's happened?'

Saul had reached him, and he slapped his shoulder
and gripped his hand.

'Seriously, Kay, you wouldn't fucking believe it.
I'm not fobbing you off, man, it's just... I don't even
understand it myself.'

Kay's face had screwed up.

'What is that stink, man? Is that you? I mean no
offence, man, but...'

'I'm ... hiding out.'

'Where? The fucking sewers?' Saul said nothing
and Kay's eyes widened. Tuck me! You aren't} I
wasn't serious ...' Saul cut him off.

'Yeah, well, you heard about me getting out of the
cell? I got to hide, man, the police think I killed my
dad.'

Kay stared at him for a moment.

Saul was aghast. 'No I fucking didn't. Jesus, do you
have to ask me that?'


134



All the talk of chase and crime and capture was
making him nervous, and he backed into the darkness
under the tree, pulling Kay with him.

'So what are you doing?' said Kay.

'Oh ...' Saul was vague. 'I've got to find something
to prove I didn't do it.' He could not explain that he
could never go back.

'What about the two cops?' Saul stared at Kay
blankly. 'The ones who bought it in your flat.'

Saul stared at him in mounting horror.

'Didn't you know?

'So what fucking happened?' Saul shook his lapels.
Kay backed away, wrinkling his nose.

'I don't know, I don't know. Fabian came up to
Tash's waving a newspaper around. The police have
been interviewing him all day, said the two watching
your flat got beat up and died. They've got you
pegged for it, man.'

Kay had no malice. He could see that Saul knew
nothing of the crime, and felt only concern, no more
suspicion.

'Do you ... know ... do you know who ...' he
continued.
'No, but I think I know someone who does. Shit!' Saul ran his hands through his hair. 'Shit, they'll be
going ballistic for me now! Shit!'

He's going to tell me, he thought, overcome with
rage. No more petulant silences. When I find King Rat


135



he's got to tell me who's doing this and why, and fuck
all this fobbing me off.

He turned back to Kay.

'What's going on, man? Why you here?'

Kay pointed up the road.

'I was in the pub with Tash and Fabe and this
geezer Tash has started cutting some tracks with. It's a
lock-in . .. we're all talking about you, man.' He
grinned weakly. 'I realized I left my bag at Tash's, and
she give me her keys. I'm going back in a minute. You
want to come?' Saul hesitated and Kay began to urge
him. 'Come on, man, everyone's worried fucking sick over you, man. Fabe's terrible.'

Saul thought of Fabian and felt a wave of nostalgia.
His friendships felt shockingly distant. He wanted to
come to the pub, but he was suddenly terrified. He
had nothing in common with these people any more,
though he wanted them desperately; he missed them.
What could he say to them, tell them? And the
police ... they were already questioning them. After
this latest killing, could he risk incriminating them?

'I... can't, Kay. I'm wanted, man, and I can't be
hanging around in pubs and stuff. I got to keep
moving. But... will you tell them that I'm missing
them and I promise I'll try to see them. And Kay ...
tell them if they don't hear from me for a bit they can't
worry... I'm sorting things out. OK? Will you tell
them that?'

'Are you sure you won't come back?'


136



Saul shook his head.

Kay acquiesced with a sideways nod. 'So ... at least
tell me what's going on. How the fuck d'you get out
of prison?'

Saul even laughed a little.

'It was only a cell, and... I really can't explain
now. I'm really sorry.'

'How are you looking after yourself?'

'Kay... I can't, alright? Please stop, man. I can't
explain it.'

'But are you OK?' Kay was concerned. 'You don't
sound all that good. Like I say, your voice is all...
weird, and you smell... like ...'

'I know, but I can't talk about it. I promise I'm looking
after myself. I have to go, man. I'm sorry. Give
them all my big love.' He touched him briefly on the
shoulder and walked into the dark, turning to wave.

Kay stood under the tree, waving back. His eyes
peered intently as Saul left the circle of shadow and
found other darkness beside the front walls of houses.

'Take care, man,' Kay said, too loud, from behind
him.

Saul was lost to his sight.


Kay stood for a moment under the tree before walking
slowly to Natasha's front door and letting himself in.
He was deeply confused. Something was obviously
very wrong with Saul, but he could not tell what. The


137



man had turned into some kind of Ninja, for one
thing; walk five feet away from him and he turned
invisible. And his voice ... husky and somehow . . . close up.

It had unnerved Kay, made him a little afraid. It
was clear that Saul did not know anything about the
dead policemen, but Kay found himself wondering
whether he was somehow involved without knowing
it. There was certainly a touch of the psychopath
about him tonight: his eyes all dark, his voice and
manner intense, and that smell...! The man must be
living in pigshit. Could he really be dossing in the
sewers? How would you even get into them?

He was afraid for his friend.

He found his bag in the unlit sitting-room and left
the flat, locking the door behind him. He was eager to
tell the others of his meeting. At least Saul was ...
well, alive, if not OK.

He stepped out into the street and turned left, still
shaking his head in confusion. Something emerged
from a patch of darkness behind him and moved in
fast. Kay heard nothing. Metal twirled briefly and
something long and hard cracked him on the back of
his head. Kay emitted a gasp of air as he fell forward,
was caught, dead-weight, hanging like a corpse, before
he hit the pavement.

Blood welled up and dribbled onto his bag, trickling
inside, staining the covers of records by Ray
Keith and the Omni Trio.


138
CHAPTER ELEVEN


Saul saw the fat pillars of the Westway loom out at
him again.

He turned right, skirting the great dark thoroughfare,
wandering slowly west. He did not know where
to turn. He turned his eyes to the ground, seeking a
manhole. Perhaps he should hide himself from view,
seek out King Rat again. He did not know if he could
find his way back through the sewers to the throne
room. He did not want to see the rats. They had
unnerved him with their pleading. They wanted something
of him.

A few late walkers passed him by. Saul wanted to
stop, to sit and think for a while, to eat. He was not
tired. He thought suddenly of the policemen who had
died in his flat, and he winced.

He was gravitating towards the tangled concrete
of the Westway's mid-air junction, a confusion of
sweeping curves which hung above the earth like an
imminent threat. Below the skeins of steel and tarmac
the council had provided enclosures for basketball and


139



football, a climbing wall and chin-up bars. During the
day the area was full of the shouts of young players
oblivious to the concrete above and around them,
swooping in all directions with functional grandeur, a
found stadium occluding direct light, obscuring the
sky.

Saul wandered into the darkness between the
pitches. He looked up at the underside of the Westway
itself. The traffic above sounded very far away.

He meandered into the passageways between
chain-link fences and football fields. The wind was
stilled under the roadway. He stood and listened to it
buffet the edges of the secluded ground.

There was another sound.

A faint, quick scampering echoed quietly between
the pillars.

Saul turned and moved his head sharply as something
circled him. He backed away. Panic bubbled up
inside him. The Ratcatcher! he thought, and ran for
the faint glow of the streetlamps.

He spun around on his heel, desperately looking
for a way out of the darkness. Something flitted across
his vision, a black body that swung down from the
shadows above him, from the crevices in the underside
of the Westway. It swung around him, too quick for
his eye to follow, free of gravity's constraints, moving
in all directions through the air. Saul's breath came fast
as he turned and ran.

Something sailed out of the air above him and flew


140



overhead in a perfect parabola, with a grace and speed
that eclipsed any gymnast or circus performer alive.
The dark mass curved over the Earth and came to
rest, landing lightly twenty feet in front of him. The
crouching form sprang upright, splaying legs and arms
suddenly like a jack-inthe-box.

A tall, fat man swayed before Saul, his arms and
legs spread wide as if anticipating an embrace.

Saul braked and backed away, turning suddenly and
running back into the darkness from which he had
come. He tried to remember to hide, to become a rat,
but terror had frozen his cunning.

As he ducked behind a tennis court, the fleeting
shape passed, flying over the net, and the man was
there before him again, arms outstretched. A thin cord
suspended from somewhere above recoiled from the
swing, and brushed against Saul as it returned along its
flight path.

Saul changed direction and disappeared behind a
climbing frame. He heard something hissing behind
him. Saul gasped as he ran, his rat-strength pushing
him faster than he had ever moved before. His skin
crawled with fear. Ahead of him he glimpsed threadbare
trees. There was a thin gap between two of the
wire fences, beyond which was the garden to a
housing estate.

He raced for the slit and careered along it, making
very little sound, when something caught his ankle
and he swung like a felled tree towards the concrete.


141



He was yanked away from the ground before he hit
and he hung for a moment in the air. Thin ropes were
stretched across his path, tied to the chain links on
either side. One had swept away his foot, and another
had caught him across the chest. He cursed frantically
and struggled to stand, tugging at the rope which had
somehow entangled itself around his ankle. He
ploughed forward and saw spindly shapes before him:
more ropes, a thicket of them across his path. How
had he not seen them before?

He struggled to climb over them, but they confused
him; some tied so loosely they came away in his hand
and wrapped themselves around him, others so tight
they vibrated like a bass string as they repulsed him.
He fell again, caught in this cat's cradle. He could
not move. He hung suspended at a forty-five-degree
angle, head downwards, four feet from the ground.

Saul heard a footstep behind him. He jerked his
head, disentangling himself frantically, swivelled in
the midst of his mesh to face the way he had come, his
back to the morose shrubs he had sought.

The man stood at the entrance to the little passageway.

Light from the far-off lamps struggled to illuminate
him, glinting faintly on his skin. He wore nothing but
a pair of black cut-off shorts on his lanky legs. He
seemed unaffected by the cold. The man had very dark
skin and a massive belly jutting over his belt, but arms
and legs that were ridiculously long and thin, every


142



muscle standing firm with every movement. His
stomach was distended, globular but taut as a bubble.
It hardly rippled as he moved slowly towards Saul.
Saul saw a thick coil of filthy white rope wound
around his left shoulder.

'Don't give me no more trouble, pickney, or me
gwan mash you up.'

The voice was scratchy and sharp, vibrant with
Caribbean intonation. It sounded close in his ear, as
King Rat's did.

The man moved in little bursts. He paced quickly
forward a few feet, then stopped to investigate Saul,
moved forward again. As he approached, he unwound
the rope from his shoulder.

Saul shook violently to free himself from the
tangles of rope, seemed only to pull them tighter
around him. He began to screech.

The man was upon him, fetched him a vicious slap
across the cheek that stopped Saul's cry instantly. His
head rocked. He was dizzy and his face throbbed.

The tell you fe shut your mouth, bwoy!' The man
kissed his teeth.

Saul's head wobbled forward and he blinked hard.
The man was bending over him. Saul was deeply
afraid. He put up his hands, tried to push them
through the ropes to ward off the attack he was sure
was coming. He thrashed in his bonds and opened his
mouth to scream again.

The man reached down as fast as a snake and


143



pushed his fingers into Saul's mouth. Saul tried to
bite down, but the man spread his fingers and with
inhuman strength forced Saul's mouth open. Saul's
captor tugged at the rope draped over his shoulder
with his free hand. He wound it around Saul's head
once, twice, stuffed it into his mouth like a gag.

He muttered to himself in patois.

As he spoke, the man yanked the rope tight and
wound it expertly around Saul's head again, obscuring
the lower half of his face. Saul mewed frantically from
behind this mask as his eyes darted from side to side.

The man pulled at Saul's arms, twisting the rope
around them and pulling tight, securing them behind
Saul's back. He tugged Saul free of the little alley. Saul
stumbled and ran forward till his feet were jerked out
from under him and he fell. He had reached the end of
the rope which bound him. He slid back across the '
concrete. The man was reeling him in.

Saul was pulled to his feet and turned to face his
captor. With his mouth blocked, Saul breathed frantically
through his nose, sputtering flecks of snot onto
his bindings. Black eyes stared into his own, which
were wet with fear.

'You come with me fe see ratty. There some bad
obeah loose now.'

He twirled the rope suddenly over Saul's head like
a film cowboy. The coils slid down through the air
and wound around Saul's body. The man spun him on
the spot, tightening the bonds, letting out slack to


144



constrict him like a top, He bent and ran the rope on
down Saul's legs, until his whole body was obscured
in a shroud of grubby white cord.

Only Saul's eyes could move. He could feel a
hammering in his arms and legs as his heart struggled
to push blood past the obstructions cutting into his
flesh.

The man bit through the rope and tied the end at
Saul's feet. He stood before Saul and looked down
at him, nodded.

'No more nonsense and hollering now, innit?'

Saul began to pitch forward but the man caught
him and, to Saul's sudden horror, rolled him through
the air and onto his back. He pulled Saul into position
as effortlessly as King Rat had done. Saul felt like
fluff. The man took more rope from his shoulder and
wrapped it around his captive several times, attaching
him more firmly. Saul was helpless on those broad
flat muscles, his eyes facing backwards. His legs were
twisted up into a tight bend. He was suspended from
the man's shoulders and waist, the rope cutting into
his captor's skin, seemingly painlessly. Saul bobbed in
a terrifying and undignified fashion as his abductor
raced suddenly through the darkness.

He rushed through the underworld below the
Westway at a rate of knots, his route violent and oscillating.
The hidden byways receded before Saul's eyes.
The man beneath him lurched suddenly and Saul saw
the dark horizon drop around him. They were


145



airborne. Saul's eyes widened and he gave a muffled
yell, spit slithering down his chin behind the ropes.

They flew through the air, paused and swung backwards,
then around, a pendulum ten feet from the
ground. They were suspended, clinging to a rope, Saul
realized. The man began to climb.

He moved easily, the curve of his back suggesting
that he was using both feet and hands. The pace was
utterly smooth. The sports grounds disappeared
below them and, as they swung from side to side,
vistas of West London peeked in and out of Saul's
vision. The occasional roar of traffic was closer now.

They reached the top of the rope. Saul was facing
away from the highway, out over badly lit sidestreets.
The man clung to the barrier and scampered along the
side of the Westway. Saul's stomach drummed with
fear. There was nothing below his feet. He saw the
streets below curve a little closer to him, and he saw
the dim light catch on a filament, a thread passing up
from the chimney of a house fast approaching.

They were opposite the house now, and he caught
another glimpse of the thin line of light. It was close
by, twisting towards him.

Suddenly he was falling.

But the ground stopped rushing towards him, and
he bobbed in the air. He was facing directly down, the
Westway growling a few feet above and behind him.
The filament he had seen was another rope, tied at one
end to the roof and another to the railings of the great


146



road above. The man was descending the rope now,
headfirst, hand over hand, bouncing unnervingly as
he slid fast towards the intricate darkness of the
roofscape.

Saul prayed that the rope was strong.


And then they were down, and Saul was swung
around. He heard a loud snap, and when the man
turned again Saul saw that he had broken the rope
behind them, obscured their passing.

They were off over the tops of houses, another
raised race across London. The man swung himself
around obstacles, scampering over the slates even
faster than King Rat.

Blocks fleeted away below them. Behind them Saul
saw the monolithic Westway shrinking.

The man leapt forward and bounced perilously
over a road that blocked his path. Saul realized with
terror that they were on another rope tied horizontally
between buildings, but this time moving on top
of it, tightrope-walking faster than Saul could run.

The air was buffeted out of him by the quick
motion of his captor and the constricting ropes on his
chest. Below them Saul saw a solitary walker moving
nervously through the backstreets, oblivious to the
mad funambulism above him.

With a jump the dark man left the rope, landed on
the opposite roof, snapped the trail behind them.


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They moved like this at a crazy speed over the
streets, traversing a network of ropes already laid.
They passed through grassland and into an estate,
leaping along flat roofs and scampering insanely fast
down sheer bricks. Saul was convulsed with terror,
unable to see what his captor was doing.

They raced down a bank of scrub onto a railway
line, and rushed along the wooden sleepers. Saul
watched the tracks curve away behind them.

Again their passage was interrupted as the dark
man climbed the side of a bridge that passed over
the railway and the canal that skirted it. They swept
through an industrial estate, a collection of low,
shabby buildings and motionless forklift trucks. Saul
was hypnotized by the breakneck progress over the
houses. He had been caught, he did not know by
whom, and he did not know what was to happen to
him.

The noise of the city became oddly distant. They
had entered a yard full of ruined cars crushed flat,
piles of them like geological features: strata of old
Volvos and Fords and Saabs. The cars teetered around
them, leaving only narrow alleys through which to
pass.

They wound through these walkways.

Suddenly the man stopped and Saul heard another's
voice: a strange, vain, musical voice coloured with a
European accent he could not specify.

'You did find him, then.'


148



'Yeah, man. Caught the lickle bleeder down south
from here, not far you know.'

There was no more speaking. Saul suddenly felt the
ties that bound him slipping, and he fell in a heap to
the dust. He was still wrapped tight in his own rope
swaddling. The fat man picked him up and carried him
in his arms like a bride.

Saul caught a glimpse of the newcomer: thin and
very pale, with red hair, a sharp hawkish nose and
wide eyes. Saul was borne towards his destination, a
huge steel container like a vast skip ten feet high, over
which loomed a yellow structure something like a
crane.

His eyes flitted about as he was carried, he saw
the cars all flattened around him, and he realized that
this was a car-crusher, that the lid of the dark container
would bear down on whatever was inside, and
squeeze it, press it like a flower into two dimensions.
And as he was borne inexorably towards it Saul's eyes
widened in horror and he began to struggle, to shout
through his gag.

He flopped pathetically in the man's arms, tried to
roll out of his grip, but the man held him firm and
kissed his teeth in disgust, did not break his stride, no
matter how Saul emitted frantic humming protests
and jack-knifed. The man hauled Saul over his
shoulder, Saul staring for a moment into the insane
looking eyes of the redhead behind them. Saul was
held, bending and unbending at the waist pathetically,


149



till the tall man heaved him upwards and he sailed
over the edge of the ominous grey container ... hung
silent and still for a moment... fell, passing into the
shadow of its metal walls, feeling the air cool and still,
slamming into the pitted floor.

He landed hard on the shards of metal and glass
which littered the dark.

Only because he was a rat was he not unconscious
or dead, he decided, as he lay moaning. He struggled
to sit upright, trickles of blood discolouring the cords
which held him. Something approached him, footsteps
clanging on the metal floor, and he tried to turn,
and fell again, banging his head, only to feel himself
grabbed around the shoulders and pulled upright. He
opened his eyes and stared into a face glaring balefully
at his, a dark face, darker than the shadows in the
deadly car-crusher, a face boiling with anger, teeth
gritted hard, scoring lines around the mouth, and the
familiar stink of old wet animals and rubbish made
acrid with anger.

King Rat looked at him and spat in his face.


150
CHAPTERTWELVE


The spittle slid down around Saul's nose. His gaze was
bouncing off the walls of the crusher, vibrating back
and forth, trapped. King Rat stared at him unflinching
and angry. Why was he angry, Saul wondered frantically,
the thoughts crowding around each other in his
head. What was happening? They'd both been caught
by the Ratcatcher, that was why they were here, about
to be crushed, so why was King Rat still? He wasn't
trapped like Saul. Why did he not leap out of the
container and save them, or flee?

With his breath fast and ugly in his ears, Saul saw
the suspended weight of the lid hovering above them,
hideous with potential energy, full of pent-up momentum.
King Rat was trying to hold Saul's eyes,
was muttering something, but in his panic Saul stared
briefly at his uncle, then up at the lid, back down and
up again, waiting for it to descend.

King Rat shook him and growled, a quiet bellow of
rage.

'What by damn do you reckon you're playing ati


151



Off I go for my constitutional, on the lookout for
some victuals, leave you akip like a babe, and what
happens? You up and piss off.'

Saul shook his head frantically and King Rat
impatiently yanked at the rope around his face, tearing
it free. Saul spluttered, breathed deeply, spraying
mucus and spit and a little blood at King Rat.

King Rat did not move, did not wipe himself clean.

Instead he slapped Saul in the face.

Saul felt so abused, so sore and bloodied, the sting
of it was nothing to him, but his anger and confusion
overflowed. He exhaled, and the breath turned into a
long shout, a yell of incoherent frustration. He wriggled
and felt his muscles bunch up against his bonds.

'What are you doing? he yelled.

King Rat pushed his hand over Saul's mouth.

'Stow your parley, you little fucker. Don't come the
misunderstood. Don't ever be fucking off on your
tod, got it?' He was motionless, staring at Saul,
pushing him hard with his hand, driving his point
home. 'Care to share the whys and wherefores of your
little exhibition, eh?'

Saul's voice emerged muffled from behind King
Rat's hand.

'I wanted to look about, that was all; wasn't
looking for trouble. I've been learning, haven't I? No
one saw me, and I climbed like ... you would've been
proud.'

'Enough of your crap!' King Rat bellowed.


152


'Trouble's got its eyes peeled for you, sonny. There's a
roughneck out there wants you dead\ Like I told you,
you're wanted, you're prey, someone's out for your hide . .. and mine.'

'So fucking tell me what's going on,' spat Saul, suddenly
jutting his chin into King Rat's face. There was
a long silence. 'You go on and on, talking in riddles
like you think you stepped out of a fucking fable, and
I don't have time to wait for you to tell me what the
moral of it is! Something's after me? Fine. What? Tell
me, explain to me what the fuck is going on, or shut
up.'

The silence returned, stretched out.

'He's right, rattymon. He have to know wha'appen.
You can't keep him in the dark. He can't protect
himself.'

The voice of the man who had carried him from the
Westway dropped from above, and Saul glanced up to
see him crouched like a monkey on the corner of
the car-crusher. As he watched, the redhead appeared,
arriving suddenly next to the black man, with his legs
dangling into the container, as if he had jumped up
from below and landed perfectly on his bum.

'And who are they?' said Saul, jerking his head at
the watchers. 'I thought the Ratcatcher had caught
me. I'm walking along and suddenly that geezer's got
me trussed up, tripped up. I thought he was going to
crush me in this thing.'


153



King Rat did not look up at the men sitting on the
rim above, even as one of them spoke.

'Not just Ratcatcher, you know, bwoy. The one
want you, him the Ratcatcher and the Birdcatcher and
the Spidercatcher and the Batcatcher and the Human
catcher and all tings catcher'

King Rat slowly nodded.

'So tell me,' said Saul. 'Listen to your mate. I need
to fucking know. And get me out of these!'

King Rat reached into an inside pocket and pulled
out a flick-knife. It emerged from its case with a snikt, and he shoved it under Saul's bonds and pulled. The
ropes fell away. King Rat turned his head and paced to
the far end of the container. Saul opened his mouth
to speak, but King Rat's voice emerged from the darkness,
pre-empting him.

'I want nary word fucking one to emerge from
your gob, boy. I'll give you the whole spiel then, my
old son, if that'll quell your hankering.'

Saul could dimly see that he had turned to face him.
The three men now faced him in a row: the two above
- one squatting, one swinging his legs like a child and
the one below glowering in the corner.

Saul pushed the ropes away from him and backed
into the opposite corner, pulled up his knees like protection
for his brutalized body, listened.

'Meet my mates,' said King Rat. Saul looked up.
The man who had caught him was still motionless on
his haunches.


154


The name Anansi, pickney.'

The old China Anansi,' interjected King Rat. 'The
gent who most likely saved your skin from the ruffian
out there on the hunt for you.'

Saul knew the name Anansi. He remembered
sitting in a hushed circle, surrounded by other tiny
bodies all sucking lukewarm milk out of tiny bottles,
listening to his Trinidadian teacher tell the class about
Anansi the spider. He could not remember any more.

The redhead was standing now, balancing without
effort on the thin metal edge. He gave an exaggerated
bow, sweeping one arm out behind him. He wore suit
trousers in burgundy, tightly pressed and perfect, a
stiff white shirt and dark braces, a floral tie. His
clothes were immaculate and stylish. Again he spoke
in that peculiar accent, a composite of all the European
intonations Saul could think of.
'Loplop presents Loplop,' he said.

'Loplop, aka Hornebom, Bird Superior,' said King
Rat. 'We go back a long way, not all of it friendly.
When I saw you'd slung your hook, I called on this
pair of coves. You put us to a lot of strife, sonny. And
you want the story of the Ratcatcher.'

'Spidercatcher,' said Anansi softly.

'Birdcatcher,' spat Loplop.

King Rat's voice held Saul still. King Rat settled
back.

'We've all had our admirers, you know, your uncles
'Nans and Loplop and I. Loplop chased a painter for a


155



while, and I was always partial to a snatch or two of
verse. If you know some poesy you might know this
story already, acos I told it once before to another, and
he wrote it down for the Godfers -- a child's story he
called it. I didn't mind. He can call it what he wants.
He knew it was for honest.

'I haven't always lived in the Smoke, you know.
I've lived all over. I was here when London was born,
but it was measly pickings for a long time, so I took
my flock and jumped ship long time gone. Your ma
was entertaining herself elsewhere while I bing a waste
to Europa for a shufti with the faithful, going hell for
leather over land in packs with me at the head, my
coat sleek. One twitch of my tail and the massed ranks
of Rattus went west, east, wherever I gave the word.
We run through the dews-a-vill, through the fields of
France, the high-pads of Beige, through the flatlands
near Arnhem, and on through to Germany - not that
those were the names they used.

'Next thing you know we're looking around,
bellies on the growl. We've found a place where John
Barleycorn's been most generous ... The crops are
high and golden, ripe and ready and fit to burst. We
took a Butcher's. "Yes," I says, "this'll do," and on we
trog, slower now, on the skedge for a place to set us
down.

'Through a forest, tight-clumped together under
me the boss-man, afeared of nowt, on the hoof
through lightmans and darkmans. By a river we found


156



us a town, not too gentry a gaff, mind, but with silos
that fair creaked at the seams, and knockabout houses
with a hundred holes, nesting nooks, eaves and cellars,
a hundred little corners for a knackered rat to rest a
Crust.

'I gave the word. In we marched. The populace
dropped their bags, gobsmacked and agog. Next thing
they've lost their marbles, running around hither and
thither, and letting loose with such a damned caterwauling
... I We were an impressive phalanx: we
spewed in and didn't stop till the whole town was
chock with me and my boys and girls. We herded
the squealing civvies into the square, and they stood
clutching their pathetic duds and children. We were
bushed, been on the go a long time, but we pulled
ourselves up proud in the sun and our teeth were
magnificent.

'They tried to give us the heave-ho, flailing around
with torches ablaze and paltry little shovels. So we
bared our teeth, sank them in deep, and they ran
screaming like yellow-bellied ponces, disappearing as
quick as you like. We had the square to ourselves. I
called the troops to order. "Right," I says, "quick
march. This town is ours. This is Year One: this is the
Year of the Rat. Spread out, make your mark, set
the stage, find your places, eat your fill, anyone gives
you any gyp, send them to me."

'An explosion of little lithe bodies, and the square's
empty.


157



'Rats in the rub-a-dubs, the houses, the kazis, the
dews-a-vill, the orchards. We gave them what for. I
did walkabouts, with nary a word said, but all and sundry knew who ran things. Any burgher raised a
hand against one of my own, I took them down.
People soon clocked the rules.

'And that was how the rats came to Hamelin.'


'Saul, Saul, you should've seen us. Good times, chal,
the best. The town was ours. I grew fat and sleek. We
fought the dogs and killed the cats. The loudest sound
in that town was rats talking, chattering and making
plans. The grain was mine, the gaffs were mine; the
tucker they cooked, we took our cut first. It was all mine, my Kingdom, my finest hour. I was the
Kingpin, I made the rules, I was Copper and jury
and Barnaby and, when occasion demanded, I was
Finisher of the Law.

Tt turned famous, our little town, and rats flocked
to us, to join the little Shangri-La we put together,
where we ruled the roost. I was the boss-man.

'Until that Ruffian, that bastard, that peripatetic
fucking minstrel, that stupid tasteless shit with his
ridiculous duds, the prancing nancy, until he strolled
into town.

'First I knew of it, one of my girls" tells me there's
a queer cove with the mayor, furtive at the gates,
dressed in a two-tone coat. "Hallo," says I, "they're


158



about to have a go. They think they've a trick up the
sleeve." I settled back to piss on their parade, and it all
went a little sorry.

'There was a note.

'Music, something in the air. Another note, and I
prick up my ears to hear what's going on. Little sleek
brown heads appear from holes all over town.

'Then the third note sounds, and apocalypse
begins.

'Suddenly I could hear something: a body scraping
tripe from a bowl, a huge bowl. I could see it! I heard
apples tumbling into a press, and my Plates start
moving forward. I could hear someone leaving cupboards
ajar, and I knew the jigger had been sprung on the Devil's own pantry ... the door was wide open,
and I could fair sniff the scran inside, and I had to find
it, and I had to eat it all.

'I started forward and I could hear a rumble, a
shaking, a scamper of a hundred million little feet and
I saw the air around me heaving with my little
minions, all shouting for joy. They could hear the
food too.

'I do a leap from the gables into the Frog. Splashdown
in a stream of rats, all my little boys and girls,
my lovers and my soldiers, big and fat and small and
brown and black and quick and old and slow and
frisky and all of them, all of us after that food.

'And as I troop ravenous onwards, I suddenly feel


159



queer horror in my gut. I was using my nous, and I
saw there wasn't no food where we were going.

' "Stop," I shrieks, and no one listens. They just
bump my bum from behind to get past. "Don't," I
yell, and that starving stream just parts around me,
rejoins.

'I felt that hunger waxing, and I scamper over and
sink me Hampsteads fast into the wood of a door,
hard as you like, holding myself back with my good
strong gob. My pegs are dancing, they want that
music, that food, but my mouth's holding strong. I
feel my mind go slack and I gnaw some more, locking
my jaw ... but disaster strikes.

'I take a bite from the door. My mouth snaps free
and, before you can say knife, I'm in the stream of my
subjects, my brainbox weaving in and out of hunger
and joy for the tucker I can all but taste - and the
despair, I'm King Rat, I know what's happening to me
and my kind, and no one will listen. Something dire's
in the offing.

'On we march, willy-nilly, and from the corner of
my eye I can see the people leaning out the windows,
and the bastards are clapping, cheering, giving it all
that. We're trotting in time, all four legs stately and
sharpish to that... abominable piping, tails swaying
like metronomes.

'I can see where we're headed, a little journey to the
suburbs I've taken more times nor I can think, on a
beeline for the grain silos beyond the walls. And there


160



behind the silos, bloated after the showers, hollering
like the sea, roaring and pelting down through the
dews-a-vill, wide and rocky, filthy with swirling muck
and mud and rain, is the river.

'There by the bridge I catch sight of the swine
playing his flute in his fatuous duds. His Loaf bobs up
and down, and I clock a revolting grin all over his
North while he plays. The first ranks of rats are at
the bridge now, and I can see them troop calmly to the
edge, nary a hint of disquiet, eyes still narrowed on
that lovely mountain of scran they're headed for. I can
see them getting ready and I'm screaming at them to
stop, but I'm pissing in the wind, it's a done deal.

'They step off the stone walls of the bridge into the
water.'


'The most almighty cacophony of squeals starts up
from below the bridge, but none of the sisters and
brothers can hear it. They're still listening to the dance
of the sugarplums and bacon rind.

'The next in line jump on their comrades, and more
and more - the Fisherman's is seething. I can't bear it,
I can hear the screams, every one a blade in my gut,
my boys and girls giving up the ghost in the water,
fighting to keep their Crusts over the waves, good
swimmers all but not built for this. I can hear wails
and keens as bodies are swept downriver, and still
my goddamn fucking legs keep moving. I pull back


161



through the ranks, trying to turn round, going a little
slower than the others, feeling them pass me, and the
squire on the bridge looks at me, that infernal flute
still clamped to his gob, and he sees who I am. I can
see him see I'm King Rat.

'And he smiles a little more, and bows to me as I
march on past onto the bridge and into the river.'


Loplop hissed and Anansi breathed something to
himself. The three were locked into themselves, all
staring ahead, all remembering.

'The Fisherman's was icy, and the touch of it
cleared the bonce of nonsense. Every splash was
quick-echoed by a screech, a wail as my poor little
minions fight to keep their I Supposes in the air,
thinking What the fuck am I doing here? and busy
dying.

'More and more bodies jumping in to join them,
more and more fur becoming waterlogged, feeling the
tug of the river, slipping below the caps, raking their
claws every which way in panic, tearing each other's
bellies and eyes, and dragging brothers and sisters into
the freezing cold under the air.

'I kicked my pegs to get away. There was a frantic
mass of us kicking up froth, an isle of rat bodies,
fighting and killing to climb atop, the foundations
dying and disappearing below.

'Water plugged my lugs. All I can hear is the in-out


162



of my breath, panicked and disjointed, gulping and
retching and breathing in bile. The waves are smashing
me around, tossing me against rocks, and on all sides
rats are dying in thousands and thousands. I can just
make out the noise of the flute. It's stripped of magic
here in the Fisherman's, just a whining noise. I can
hear the splashes of more rats leaping in the water to
die; it's endless and merciless. Screams and choking
are everywhere; stiff little bodies bob past me like
buoys in hell's harbour. This is the end of the world, I
think, and the stinking water fills my lungs, and I sink.

'Everywhere are corpses.

'They move with the swell, and through my half
closed eyes I can just clock them, all around me,
suspended under the water, above me as I sink and
below me too, blobs of brown approaching. And
there in the murk, as the last bubbles of air spew out
of me, I can see the charnel house under the river, the killing fields, those sharp black rocks an abattoir for
ratkind, pile upon pile of cadavers, little skinless
babies and old grey males, fat matron rats and pugnacious
youth, the fit, the ill, an endless mass of death
shifting with the torrent above.

'And I alone stared this holocaust in the face.'


Drowned rats seemed to hover before Saul as he listened.
His ears pounded as if his lungs fought for air.


163



King Rat's voice came back, and the dead tone
which had crept into his descriptions had gone.

'And I opened my eyes and said, "No."

'I kicked suddenly, and left that cataclysm behind. I
didn't have no air, don't forget, so my lungs were
screaming murder, whipping me one stroke for every
heartbeat, and I climbed out of the quiet into the light,
and I could hear the cries through the river above
me, and I moved out and away, and finally pushed my
face into the air.

'I sucked it in like an addict. I was eager.

'I turned my Crust and it was still going on, the
deaths still continuing, but the spume was a sight
lower by now and there was no more ratkind falling
out of the sky. I saw the man with his flute walk away.

'He didn't see me watch him.

'And I decided, as I watched, that he had to die.

'I dragged myself out of the river, and laid myself
down under a stone. The cries of the dying continued
for a while, and then they went out, and the river
swept all the evidence away behind it. And I lay and
breathed and swore revenge for my Rat Nation.

'The poet called me a Caesar, who lived to swim
across. But that wasn't my Rubicon. That was my
Styx. I should've gone. I should be a drowned rat.
Maybe I am. I've thought of that. Maybe I never made
it, and maybe it's just hate that seeped into my bones
that keeps me up and scrapping.

'I got some small satisfaction, the first part only,


164
KING RAT


from the bastard sons and daughters of Hamelin. The
stupid, stupid fuckers tried to put one over on the
Piper and I had the pleasure of watching the gurning cunts, who'd clapped as we took our leave, screaming
in the alleys, stuck like glue while their Kinder pranced away to the tune of the flute. And I had the
small joy of smiling when the queer cove made the
mountain split open for those little Godfers, and they
skipped on in. Because those little Dustbins went
to bell, and they hadn't even died, and they hadn't
even done any wrong, and their bastard parents knew that.

'That was some pleasure, like I say.

'But it was that damnable minstrel himself I
wanted. He was the real culprit. He's the one who has
a certain reckoning due.'

Saul shivered at the viciousness of King Rat's tone,
but he stopped himself from remonstrating about the
innocence of the children.

'He sucked all the birds out of the sky and taunted
me, till I grew mad in my impotence.' Loplop was
speaking in the same dreaming tone as King Rat. 'I
fled to Bedlam, forgetting myself, thinking myself
nothing but a madman who thought himself King
of Birds. For a long time I rotted in the cage, till I
remembered and burst away again.'

'Him clear all the scorpion and my lickle pickneys
from the palace in Baghdad. Him call me in with him
piccolo, and my mind was gone, and him rough me,


165



mash me up, hurt me bad. And all the lickle spiders
them saw.' Anansi spoke softly.

The three were emasculated, casually stripped of
power by the Piper. Saul remembered the contempt,
the spitting of the rats in the sewer.

'That's why the rats don't obey you,' he murmured,
looking at King Rat.

'When Anansi and Loplop were caught, some lived
to see them suffer, saw Loplop lose his mind, saw
Anansi tortured. They bore witness to the martyrdom
of the monarchs. It was plain for every Jack with eyes
to see.

'My rats, my troops, they saw nothing. Every one
was taken. And drowning leaves no marks, no scars or
stripes to illustrate engagement. Word spread to the
towns and dews-a-vill around that King Rat had run, left his people to the swollen river. And they
dethroned me. Stupid shits! They've not got the nous
to live without me. It's anarchy, no control. We should run the Smoke, and instead it's chaos. And I've been
without my crown more nor half a thousand years.'

When he heard this, Saul thought of the entreating,
pleading rats who circled him below the pavements.
He said nothing.

'Anansi and Loplop, they still rule, bloodied
maybe, bowed and cowed, but they've got their
kingdom. I want mine.'

'And if,' said Saul slowly, 'you can defeat the Piper,
you think the rats will come back to you.'


166



King Rat was silent.

'He roams around the world,' said Loplop flatly.
'He has not been here for a hundred years, since he
cast me into the birdcage. I knew he had returned
when I called all my birds to me a night not long ago,
and they did not come. There is only one thing can
make them deaf to my command: the damnable pipe.'

'Sometimes the spiders rush away from me like
them do another's bidding. The Badman back in town,
fe true, and him want the rattymon bad this time.'

'None's ever escaped, you see, sonny, except me,'
said King Rat. 'He let Loplop and Anansi go, after
shaming them, letting them clock who's the bossman,
he reckons. But me, he wanted my hide. I'm the one
that got away. And for seven hundred years he's been
trying to make good his mistake. And when he found
I had a nephew, he came looking for you. He's on the
skedge for you now. Anything to square accounts.'

Anansi and Loplop looked at each other, looked
down at Saul.

'What is he?' breathed Saul.

'Him greed,' said Anansi.

'Covetousness,' said Loplop.

'He exists to own,' said King Rat. 'He has to suck
things in to him, always, which is why he's so narked
at me for having pulled a disappearing trick. He's the
spirit of narcissism. He's to prove his worth by guzzling
all and sundry in.'

'Him can charm anything,' said Anansi.


167



'He's congealed hunger,' said Loplop. 'He's
insatiable.'

'He can choose, see?' said King Rat. 'Will I call
the rats? The birds? The spiders? Dogs? Cats? Fish?
Reynards? Minks? Kinder? He can ring anyone's bell,
charm anything he fancies. Just choose and he plays
the right tune. Owt he chooses, Saul, except nor one
thing.

'He can't charm you, Saul.

'You're rat and human, more and less than each.
Call the rats and the person in you is deaf to it. Call to
the man and the rat'll twitch its tail and run. He can't
charm you, Saul. You're double trouble. You're my
deuce, Saul, my trump card. An ace in the hole. You're
his worst nightmare. He can't play two tunes at once,
Saul. He can't charm you.

'No, you he just wants to kill.'


No one spoke. Three pairs of unclear eyes transfixed
Saul.

'But no need to panic, sonny. Things are going to
change around here,' King Rat suddenly spat. 'See, my
mates and me are pissed off. We've had enough.
Loplop owes the Piper for his brain-box that was Tea
Leafed off him. Anansi here got tortured, still feels it
sore in all his pegs -- and in front of his own people.
And me ... I owe the fucker because he stole my
nation and I want it back.'


168


'Revenge,' said Loplop.

'Revenge,' said Anansi.

'Revenge is right,' said King Rat. 'Piper-man fucker
better steel himself for some animal magic.'

'The three of you ...' said Saul. 'Is that how many
there are? To take him.'

'There are others,' said Loplop, 'but not here, not
to do the job. Tibault, King of the Cats, he's trapped
in a nightmare, a story told by a man called Yoll.
Kataris, Queen Bitch, who runs with the dogs, she's
disappeared, no one knows where.'

'Mr Bub, Lord of the Flies, him a shifty murderer
and me can't work with him,' said Anansi.

'There are others but we're the ones, the hard core,
the sufferers, who've scores to settle,' said King Rat.
'We're bringing the war back to him. And you can
help us, sonny.'


169
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN


What woke Kay was the drumbeat of blood in his
head. Each stroke that landed on the back of his skull
sent vibrations of pain through the bone.

His eyes cracked a seal of rheum. He opened them
and saw nothing but black. He blinked, tried to focus
on the vague geometry he could glimpse in the
shadows. He felt that something stretched away in
front of him.

Kay was freezing. He groaned and raised his head,
a motion accompanied by a crescendo of aches, rolled
his neck and tried to move. His arms hurt and he
realized they were stretched out above him, held fast,
and stripped of clothing. He opened his eyes more
and saw coils of thick dirty rope around his wrists,
disappearing into the gloom above him. He was suspended,
his weight dragging him hard, pulling the skin
of his armpits taut.

He tried to twist his body, to investigate his position,
but he was suddenly constrained, his feet
refusing to obey. He shook his groggy head and


170



looked down. He saw that he was naked, his cock
shrivelled and tiny in the cold. He saw the same rope
around his ankles, spreading his legs. He was caught tight in a petrified star-jump, he was an X hovering in
the dark, the pain in his wrists and ankles and arms
beginning to register. Gusts of wind pulled at him,
raised goosebumps.

Kay winced, blinked hard, tried to work out where
he was, lowered his eyes again to his feet. As the cold
air began to cut through the muck of pain in his head
he became aware of the dim diffuse light around him.
Shapes clarified in the shadow below his dangling
toes: sharp lines, concrete, bolts, wood. Railway
tracks.

Kay's head wobbled up. He tried to throw it behind
him, to see over his shoulder.

He gave a yell of shock which bounced back and
forward in its enclosed environs.

Behind him, illuminated by half-hearted little bulbs
dribbling beige light, stretched an underground platform
covered in dust and small pieces of rubbish. The
darkness before him stopped sharp above Kay's head,
where the bricks of the tunnel began. Those bricks
arced down on both sides of him. To his right was a
wall, to his left the platform edge. The ropes which
bound him stretched out to that arch, wound around
huge nails driven roughly into the old brickwork.

He hung cruciform at the entrance to the tunnel,
from where the trains emerged.


171



Kay's scream echoed around and around him.

He shook ineffectually, tried to wriggle from his
bonds. His fear was complete. He was utterly vulnerable,
suspended nude in the path of the locomotives.

He screamed and screamed, but no one came.

He twisted his head around as far as he could.
Kay's eyes frantically skipped from surface to surface,
searching for some clue to tell him where he was. The
trimmings of the station were black; the line above the
poster spaces - all empty - was black. This was
the Northern Line. At the edge of his limited field of
vision he saw the curved edge of an underground sign,
the tell-tale red circle bisected by a blue line containing
the name of the station. He pulled his head
over, ignoring the pain in his neck and skull, trying to
push his shoulder out of the way with his chin, desperate
to see where he was. As he vibrated to and fro
the sign moved in and out of his view. He caught
glimpses of the two words it contained, one above the
other.

gton ent... ington scent. .. rnington rescent. ..

Mornington Crescent. The ghost station, the
strange zone between Euston and Camden Town on
the decrepit Northern Line: the odd, poky little tube
stop which had been closed for repairs sometime in
the late Eighties and had never opened again. Trains
would slow down as they passed through, so as not to
create a vacuum in the empty space, and passengers
would glimpse the platform. Sometimes posters

172


1



would apologize and promise a swift resumption of
service, and sometimes obscure pieces of equipment
to cure ailing underground stations lay scattered on
the abandoned concrete. Often there was nothing,
just the signs proclaiming the name of the station in
the faint light. It lived a half-life, never being finally
laid to rest, haunted by the unlikely promise that it
would one day open for business again.

Behind him Kay heard footsteps.

'Who's there?' he yelled. 'Who's that? Help me!'

Whoever it was had been standing on the platform,
out of his sight when he had tried to turn round. Kay's
head was twisted as violently over his left shoulder as
he could manage. The steps approached him. A tall
figure strolled into view, reading something.

'Alright, Kay?' said Pete without looking up. He
chuckled as he read. 'My God, they're not averse to a
bit of pretension, this bunch, are they?' He held up
what he was reading and Kay saw it was Drum 'n'
Bass Massive 3!, a CD Kay had just bought. Kay
fought to speak but his mouth was suddenly dry in
terror. ' "Rudeness ME sends shouts to: the Rough
an' Ready Posse, Shy FX," blah blah blah, "an' Boys
from da North, da South, da East, da West,
remember ... It's a London Someting! Urban-style
ghetto bass!" ' Pete looked up, grinning. 'This is
drivel, Kay.'

'Pete ...' Kay finally croaked. 'What's going on?
Get me down, man! How did I get here?'


173
'


'Well, I needed to ask you some questions about
something. I'm concerned about something.' Pete
moved off, still reading. In his other hand he held
Kay's bag. He replaced the CD and brought out
another.' "Jungle versus the Hardsteppers." Cor! I've
got a lot of lingo to learn if I'm going to get in with
Natasha, haven't I?'

Kay licked his lips. He was sweating even as he
shivered. His skin felt slick with terror.

'How did you get me here, man?' he moaned.
'What do you want?'

Pete turned to him, replaced the CD, squatted
down on the platform to his left. His flute, Kay saw,
was thrust through his belt like a sabre.

'It's early yet, Kay, probably not yet five o'clock.
The Northern Line doesn't start for a while. Just
thought I'd let you know. And, yes, what I wanted ...
well. When I came out of the pub I headed for Natasha's
flat as well, a little after you, wanted to have a
word or something. See what you got up to. I've been
very interested in all these stories I keep hearing about
your mate who's in trouble, and I wanted to maybe
get you on your own - see what you could tell me
about him.

'Then, as I come towards you, downwind, I smell a very particular scent, one that someone wore once
who I'm trying to track down. And it occurs to me
that maybe your mate knows the bloke I'm after!' He
smiled reasonably and put his head on one side.

174


1



'So. You did bump into your mate last night, didn't
you?'

Kay swallowed. 'Yeah. .. but Pete ... let me
down... please. I'll tell you all about it if you'll
just... please, man ... this is really freaking me out.'

Kay's mind was racing. He could not think for the
pain in his head. Pete was mad. He swallowed again.
He had to make him take him down, he had to do it
now. Kay could not formulate his thoughts clearly, so
overwhelming was the adrenaline rush brought on by
fear. He was trembling violently.

Pete nodded.

'I'm not surprised it's freaking you out, Kay.
Where's your mate?'

'You mean Saul? I don't know, man, I don't know.
Please ...'

'Where's Saul?'

'Just get me fucking down!'

Kay's control broke and he began to cry.

Pete shook his head thoughtfully.

'No. You see, you haven't told me where Saul is
yet.'

'I don't know, I swear I don't know! He, he, he said
he was ...' Kay thought desperately for something to
tell Pete, something that might save him. 'Please let me
go!'

'Where's Saul?'

'The sewers! He said something... he stank. I
asked where'd he been, and he was on about the


175


I



sewers ...' Kay's waist twisted, legs yanking violently
at the strong cord.

'Now that's interesting,' said Pete, leaning forward.
'Did he say anything about where in the sewers?
Because I've often suspected that... this guy I'm after
uses them.5

Kay was sobbing.

'Nah, man, he didn't say nothing else . .. please . . .
please ... he was weird, his voice was weird, he
stank... he wouldn't tell me anything.. . Please let
me down\'

'No, Kay, I won't let you down,' Pete's voice was
suddenly shockingly vicious. He rose and stalked
towards him. 'Not yet. You see, I want to know everything you know about your friend Saul, because |5 it's important to me. I want to know everything, Kay,
capeesh?'

Kay gabbled, tried to think of what he knew. He
screamed about sewers, repeated that Saul had stunk,
that he was hiding in the sewers. He ran out of anything
to say. He whimpered and twisted where he hung.

Pete had been taking notes, nodding with interest
now and then, writing carefully in a little notebook.

'Tell me about Saul's life,' he said without looking
up.

Kay talked about Saul's father, the fat socialist they
had all laughed at; about Saul's brief, disastrous
attempt to move in with a girlfriend; his return home,


176



temporary he said, always temporary for the next two
years. Kay kept talking, about Saul's friends, about his
social life, Jungle, the clubs, and as Kay spoke tears
rolled down his cheeks. He was pathetically eager to
please. He whimpered with each breath. He had no
more to say and he was afraid, because Pete seemed
pleased with him when he told him about Saul, and all
Kay could think of was that he must keep Pete happy.
But he truly had no more to say.

Pete sighed and put the pad in his pocket. He
glanced at his watch.

'Thanks, Kay,' he said. 'I guess you're wondering
what this all means, what I'm up to. I'm afraid I won't
tell you that. But you've helped me a lot. The sewers,
huh? I thought as much, but you don't really want to
go wading around in shit unless you're quite sure you
have to, do you? It's not really my turf, know what I
mean? I'll have to get him out.' He grimaced lightheartedly.
'Maybe ... maybe ... you ... can ... let... me ...
go ...' Kay forced the words out past chattering teeth.
His body was shaking with little sobs, and every word
of Pete's chilled him.

Pete looked at him and smiled.

'No,' he said after a moment's hesitation. 'I don't
think so.'

Kay's screams began again, went shooting off down
the tunnel he faced, bounced around him. He


177



threatened, cajoled, pleaded, and Pete ignored him,
and continued speaking in his conversational tone.

'You don't know me, Kay. I can do a trick.' He
pulled the flute from his belt. 'See this?' Kay continued
begging. 'I can play this, make anything I want
come to me. Play the right notes and I can get you
the cockroaches around us, the mice, anything close
enough to hear. And it feels so good to make them
come to me.' He crooned the last sentence, and at the
sound of that cloying wetness, that fucked-up sugary
tone, Kay retched.

'And I was looking at these tunnels and thinking
how much they looked like wormholes,' Pete continued.
'If I played this, what do you think I might
call?'

Pete put the flute to his lips and began to play, a
strange, droning tune, a hypnotic dirge that wailed
flatly over Kay's garbled exhortations.

Kay gazed into the mouth of the tunnel.

Behind him the melody continued, and Kay could
hear the slap of feet as Pete danced to his own tune.

The wind jerked around Kay, pushed into his face
from somewhere far off.

Deep in the darkness before him something
growled.

Kay hung like an obscene toy, nude and chubby in
the yawning darkness of the underground.

The wind pushed on with more resolve, and the
growl sounded again. Kay shrieked in despair, felt


178



himself relax in terror, sag in his bonds, felt piss run
down his legs. The tune continued.

There was a sound like steel whiplashing as the
tracks buckled and moved under the oncoming
weight. The wind began to hit Kay now, began to
push his hair out of his face. Scraps of paper and dirt
came whirling out of the blackness, surrounding him,
sticking to him; grit filled his eyes and mouth and he
fought and spat to clear himself of debris, consumed
by a ghastly desperation to see.

The growling ebbed and flowed, became a clattering,
began to drown out the disinterested flute. A
great presence rushed towards him.

Lights had appeared in the distance, two dirty
white lights that seemed to crawl towards him, seemed
determined never to arrive. It was only the wind and
noise that moved at speed, he reasoned desperately,
but even as he decided that, he saw how much closer
those lights suddenly were, and Kay wriggled and
fought and screamed prayers to God and Jesus.

He was in a tornado now as the lights suddenly rushed towards him. The howl and rumble echoed
around the tube with a strange raging melancholy, an
empty roar. The track was visible as glistening threads
illuminated by those lights. The filthy off-white of the
first Northern Line train of the day became evident
before him, the driver's glass front still a black slit. He
must see me, thought Kay. He'll stop! But the great flat
surface moved ineluctably forward at a horrible speed,


179



pushing the air out, clogging the wind with dirt. The
speed was intolerable, thought Kay, just stop, but
the lights kept coming, there was no let-up, the howl
of the tunnel had become a charnel roar, the lights
were dazzling, they blinded him, he looked up as he
screamed, still hearing the flute, always the flute
behind him, he looked up at the reflections varnished
onto the windscreen, caught a glimpse of his ridiculous
little body spreadeagled like a medical specimen,
then saw through that, through the wide-open mouth
of his reflection, into the incredulous gaze of the
driver who bore down on him, disbelief and horror
smeared across his face, those eyes aghast, Kay could
see the whites of the other man's eyes. . .


The glass front of the train burst open like a vast
blood-blister. The first Northern Line train of the day
arrived at Mornington Crescent station and ploughed
to an unscheduled halt, dripping.


180
PART FOUR


BLOOD
i
CHAPTER FOURTEEN


Days came and went in the city. In the sewers, on the
rooftops, under the canal bridges, in all the cramped
spaces of London, King Rat and his comrades held
councils of war.

Saul would sit and listen as the three unlikely
figures murmured together.

Much of what they said made no sense to him:
references to people and places and occurrences that
he could not fathom. But he understood enough of
the growled discussion to know that, despite their
grandiose declarations of hostilities, neither King Rat
nor Loplop nor Anansi had any idea how to proceed.

The prosaic truth was that they were afraid. Sometimes
the arguments became heated, and accusations
of cowardice would flurry between the three. These
accusations were true. The circular discussions, the
half-plans, the protestations of anger and pugnacity,
all were stymied by the fact that the three knew that in
any confrontation one of them would be doomed.

As soon as the Piper got his flute to his lips, or even


183



pursed his lips to whistle, or perhaps even hummed,
one of them would be commandeered, one of them
would be taken over to the other side. His eyes would
glaze and he would start to fight against his allies, his
ears stuffed with the enticing sounds of food and sex
and freedom.

Anansi would hear sluggish fat flies blundering
near his mouth, and the skittering of lovelorn feet
approaching him over towering webs to mate. That
was what he had heard in Baghdad, as the Piper had
thrashed him mercilessly.

Loplop knew that he would hear the snapping of
threadlike filaments as the roots of grass were pushed
aside and juicy worms groped blindly into the light,
towards his bill. He would hear the rush of air as he
felt himself swoop above the city, the come-hither
calls of the most beautiful birds of paradise.

And King Rat would once again hear the doors of
the pantries in hell swinging open.

None of the three wanted to die. It was a mission
which involved certain destruction for one. The sheer
force of animal self-preservation seemed to preclude
their willingness even to risk the odds of one in three.
There was to be no sentimental self-sacrifice in this
fight.

Saul was vaguely aware that he was a vital component
in this argument, that ultimately he was the
weapon which would have to be deployed. It did not


184



yet frighten him, as he could not begin to take it
seriously.

Some days, Loplop and Anansi would disappear.
Saul remained with King Rat.

Every time he walked or climbed or ate, he felt
stronger. He would look down over London as he
scaled the side of a gas tower and think How did I
get up here? with exhilaration. Their journeys across
London became rarer, more sporadic. Saul was frustrated.
He was moving faster and more quietly. He
wanted to roam, to make his mark - literally, sometimes,
as he had discovered the pleasure of pissing his
strong-smelling piss against walls and knowing that
that corner was now his. His piss was changing, just
like his voice.

King Rat was always there when Saul woke. After
the initial exhilaration of a new existence at right
angles to the world of people he had left behind, Saul
was disheartened by the speed with which his days
blurred. Life as a rat was dull.

The individual moments still thrilled him with
adrenaline, but those moments no longer coalesced.

He knew King Rat was waiting. His ferocious
whispered arguments with his comrades became the
focal point of Saul's life. In gravelly hisses and fluting
tones the three bickered furiously over whether
Anansi's webs would hold the Piper, and how best to
wrest his flute away from him, and whether spiders or
birds would constitute better cover. King Rat grew


185


furious. He was alone; he could contribute no troops
to any battle. The rats had snubbed him and ignored
his commands.

Saul became quieter, learning more about the three
creatures who constituted his circle.

He was alone on a roof, one night, sitting with
his back to an air-conditioning vent, while King Rat
scoured the alley below for food, when Anansi crept
over the side of the building before him. Saul was still
in his shadows and Anansi looked straight at him for a
moment, then cast his eyes around the roof.

I'm getting better at this, thought Saul, with idle
pride. Even he can't see me now.

Anansi sneaked forward under dark red clouds
which rolled around each other, belching themselves
into and out of existence. They threatened rain.
Anansi squatted on the roof, stripped to the waist, as
always, despite the cold. He reached into his pocket
and drew out a glittering handful, a shifting mass of
little buzzing bodies. He smeared the insects into his
mouth.

Saul's eyes widened in fascination, even as he grimaced.
He was not surprised by what he saw. He
thought he could hear the humming of mother-of
pearl wings obscured by Anansi's cheeks, till those
cheeks tensed and he saw Anansi suck hard, not
chewing, but pursing his lips and working his mouth
as if he sucked the juice from a big gobstopper.

There was the faintest of crunching sounds.

186



Anansi opened his mouth and poked out a tongue
rolled into a tight U. He exhaled sharply, as if through
a blowpipe, and a cascade of chitin shot out across the
roof, scattering near Saul's feet; the desiccated body
parts of flies and woodlice and ants.

Saul rose to his feet and Anansi started a little, his
eyes widening momentarily.

'Wha'appen, pickney,' he said evenly, gazing at
Saul. The never see you there. You a quiet lickle
bwoy.'


Loplop was harder to surprise. He would appear suddenly
from behind chimney stacks and rubbish bins,
ruffling his foppish coat behind him. His passage was
always invisible. Occasionally he would look up and
yell 'Oy!' into the firmament, and a pigeon, or a flock
of starlings, or a thrush, would wheel suddenly out of
the clouds, obeying his call, and perch nervously on
his wrist.

He would peer at the bird, then briefly up at Saul
or whoever observed him, and smile in satisfaction.
He would glance back at the bird, imperious suddenly,
and bark a command at it, upon which it would seem
to cringe and give obeisance, bobbing its head and
bowing. And then Loplop would become a good
and just king all of a sudden, with no time for such
puerile displays of power, and he would murmur


187



reassuringly to his subject, and jettison it, watching it
disappear with a look of noble benediction.

Saul believed that Loplop was still a little mad.

And King Rat, King Rat was the same: cantankerous
and cockney and irritable and otherworldly.

Kay did not reappear with Natasha's keys, and she
was forced to wake her downstairs neighbour, with
whom she left a spare set.

It was just like Kay to meander off and forget that
he had them, and she waited for him to call with his
cheerful apology. He did not call. After a couple of
days she tried his number, and his flatmates said they
had not seen him for ages. Natasha was heartily pissed
off. After another couple of days she had a new set cut
and resolved to charge him when he re-emerged.

The police did seek her out. She was taken to the
station and interviewed by a quiet man named
Crowley, who asked her several times in several
different ways if she had seen Saul since his disappearance.
He asked her if she thought Saul capable of
murder. He asked her what she had thought of Saul's
father, whom she had never met, and what Saul
thought of him. He asked her what Saul thought of
the police. He asked what she thought of the police.

When they let her go she returned home seething,
to discover a note on her door from Fabian, who was


188



waiting for her in the pub. She fetched him back to her
house where they smoked a joint and, to the sound of
Fabian's abrupt giggles, composed a Jungle track on
her sequencer using loads of samples from The Bill. They christened the song Fuck You Mister Policeman
Sir!.


Pete was coming around more and more. Natasha was
waiting for him to make a move on her, something
which seemed to happen with the majority of blokes
she hung out with for any length of time. He did
not, which was a relief to her, as she was completely
uninterested and did not want to have to deal with his
embarrassment.

He was listening to more and more Drum and Bass,
was making comments that were more and more
astute. She sampled his flute and wove it into her
tunes. She liked the sound it made; there was a breath
of the organic about it. Normally, for the main sounds
at the top end she would simply create something
with her digital powers, but the soullessness those
noises possessed, a quality she often revelled in, was
beginning to alienate her. She enjoyed the sounds of
his flute, the tiny pauses for breath, the hint of
vibration when she slowed it down, the infinitesimal
imperfections that were the hallmark of the human
animal. She sent the bass to follow the flute track.

She was still experimenting, still laying plenty of


189



tracks without him. After a time she focused her flute
experimentation on one track. Sometimes they would
play together, she snapping down a drum track, a bass line, some interjections, and he would improvise
over the top. She recorded these sessions for ideas,
and a notion formed in her mind of how they could
play together: a session of Jazz Jungle, the newest
and most controversial twist to the Drum and Bass
canon.

But for now she concentrated on the track she had
christened Wind City. She returned to it day on day,
tweaking it, adding layers to the low end, tickling the
flute, looping it back on itself.

She had a clear idea of the feeling she sought, the
neurotic beats of Public Enemy, especially on Fear
Of A Black Planet, the sense of a treble constantly
looking over its own shoulder. She took the harmony
of the flute and stretched it. Repetition makes listeners
wary of a statement, and Natasha made the flute
protest too much, coming back in and back in and
back in on its purest note, till that purity became a
testimony of paranoia, no sweet sound of innocence.

Pete loved what she was doing.

She would not let him hear the track until it was
finished, but occasionally she would give in to his
pesterings and play him a snippet, a fifteen-second
phrase. The truth was that although she feigned exasperation,
she enjoyed his rapturous reception.


190



'Oh, Natasha,' he said as he listened, 'you really understand me. More than I think you think you do."


Crowley was still haunted by the scene of the Morn
ington Crescent murder.

There had been something of a news blackout, a
halfway house of secrecy whereby the unknown
victim's death had been reported but the intricacies
withheld. There was a vain and desperate hope that
by mulling over the unbelievable facts in private, by
containing them, they could be understood.

Crowley did not believe it would work.

The crime was not connected to his own investigation,
but Crowley had come to examine the scene.
The unearthly circumstances surrounding the murder
reminded him of the peculiarities of Saul's disappearance
and the murder of the two police officers.

Crowley had stood on the platform, the train still
waiting there some hours after a hysterical driver had
reported something which made no sense. A brief
examination of the scene told the police that the
driver's 'floating man' had been suspended by rope to
the tunnel entrance. Frayed cord dangled from the
brick. The few passengers had been cleared out and
the driver was with a counsellor elsewhere in the
station.

The front of the train was encrusted with blood.
There was very little of the body left to identify.


191



Dental records had been rendered useless by the crushing,
inexorable onrush of metal and glass onto the
victim's face.

There was no escaping this crime, it lay all around
him, on the platform, spattering the walls, carbonized
on the live rail, smeared by gravity the length of the
first carriage. No cameras had recorded the passing of
criminal or victim. They had come and gone invisibly.
It was as if the metal stakes and bloodied stubs of
rope, the ruined flesh, had been conjured up spontaneously
out of the dark tunnels.

Crowley exchanged words with the investigating
detective, a man whose hands still shook since his
first arrival at the scene an hour or more previously.
Crowley had only tenuous reasons to connect the
crime to his own investigations. Even the savagery
was wrong. The murder of the policemen had seemed
an act of huge rage, but a spontaneous act, brutally
efficient. This was an imaginative piece of sadism,
ritualistic, like a sacrifice to some dangerous god. It
was designed to strip the victim of dignity and any
vestige of power. And as he thought that, Crowley
wondered if the man - they had found flesh that told
them it was a man - had been awake and conscious as
the train had arrived, and he screwed up his face, felt
briefly sick with horror.

And yet, and yet, despite the differences, Crowley
felt himself linking the crimes in his mind.

There was something in the infernal ease with


192


which life had been taken, a sense of power which
seemed to permeate the murder sites, the sure and
absolute knowledge that none of these victims, for
so much as one second, had the slightest chance of
escape.

He asked the shaking Camden detective to contact
him were there any developments at all, hinting at the
connections he might be able to make.

Now, days later, Crowley still visited Mornington
Crescent when he slept, its walls chaotically re
sprayed, abattoir chic, the red carpet laid down,
ghastly organic decor.

He was convinced that the three (four?) murders he
investigated contained secrets. There was more to the
story, there was much more than they knew. The facts
were damning, but still he wanted to believe that Saul
had not committed the crimes. He sought refuge in a
firm if nebulous belief that something big was going
on, something as yet unexplained, and that whatever
Saul was doing, he was not somehow responsible.
Whether being absolved by the sudden onset of
madness, or another's control, or whatever, Crowley
did not know.


193
CHAPTER FIFTEEN


For a long time Pete had been asking Natasha to take
him to a Jungle club. She found his pesterings irritating,
and asked why he could not just go by himself,
but he made noises about being a newcomer, being
intimidated (which was, in all fairness, entirely
reasonable given the atmosphere at many clubs). His
hectoring stayed just on the right side of whining.

He made one or two good excuses. He did not
know where to go, and if he were to follow Time
Out's appalling recommendations, he would end up a
lonely figure at a hardcore Techno evening or some
such fate. Natasha, by contrast, knew the scene, and
could walk into any of the choicest evenings in
London without paying. Just cashing in favours,
calling in accounts set up in the early days of the
music, by knowing the names and the faces, talking
the talk.

Something was rumbling in the Elephant and
Castle. The AWOL posse were getting together with
Style FM in a warehouse near the railway line.


194



Everyone was going to be there, she started to hear. A
DJ she knew called Three Fingers phoned her and
asked her to come along, bring a tune or two; he'd
play them. She could spin a few if she wanted.

She wasn't going to take him up on that, but maybe
just turning up wasn't such a bad idea. It was a month
since she'd last been out on a serious.night, and Pete's
clamouring made for a decent excuse to move. Three
Fingers put her 'plus whoever' on his guest list.

Fabian immediately said he would come. He
seemed pathetically grateful for the idea. Kay remained
incommunicado and, for the first time since
he had disappeared a week or more previously,
Natasha and Fabian felt the beginnings of trepidation.
But for the moment that was forgotten as they made
preparations for the foray into South London.

Pete was ecstatic.

'Yes yes yes! Fantastic! I've been waiting for this
forages!'

Natasha's spirit sank as she saw herself being shoehorned
into the role of Junglist Nanny.

'Yeah, well, I don't want to disappoint you or anything,
Pete, but so long as you know I'm not looking
after you there or anything. Alright? We get there, I
listen, you dance, you leave when you want, I'm
leaving when I want. I'm not there to show you
around, d'you know what I'm saying?'

He looked at her strangely.

'Of course.' His brow furrowed. 'You've got some


195



odd ideas about me, Natasha. I don't want to cadge
off you all evening, and I'm not going to ... to leach
any of your cool, OK?"

Natasha shook her head, irritated and embarrassed.
She was concerned that having a pencil-necked, white
bread geek padding after her was going to do her
credentials as an up-and-coming Drum and Bass
figure no good at all. She had only been vaguely conscious
of the thought, and having it pointed out with
frank good humour made her defensive and snappy.

Pete was grinning at her.

'Natasha, I'm going because I've found a new kind
of music I never knew existed, and it's one which - for
all I don't look the part - I think I can use, and I
think I can probably make. And I presume so do you,
because you haven't stopped recording me yet.

'So don't worry about me making you look less
than funky in front of your mates. I'm just going to
hear the music and see the scene.'


After the last bout of arguing, Anansi had disappeared.
Loplop had remained in the area for another
day or two, but had ultimately followed the spider
into obscurity.

King Rat had slumped into a foul mood.

Saul hauled himself into the sewers, careful not to
spill the bag of food he carried. He picked his way
through the tunnels. It was raining in the streets


196



above, a steady dribble of filthy, acid-saturated water
which raced into the tunnels, swirled around Saul's
legs, tried to pull him down, a stream nearly two feet
high, fast-moving and dilute, the usual warm compost
smell mostly dissipated.

King Rat had done nothing about finding food, and
Saul, impatient with his self-pity, had left the throne room and gone scavenging. King Rat's leash on him
was loosening. The neurotic hold he had kept for so
long was almost gone. As his mood grew worse, his
determination to keep Saul in his sights weakened.

Saul knew what this meant. His worth for King Rat
was not measured by blood. He had not been rescued
because he was a nephew, but because he was useful;
because his peculiar birthright meant he was a threat
to the power of the Piper. As the campaign against the
Piper dissolved in petty fights and squabbles, cowardice
and fear, Saul's existence meant less and less to
King Rat. Without a plan of attack, how could he
deploy his chosen weapon?

As Saul picked his way through the saturated
tunnels he heard a sound. In a crevice in the concrete
stood a waterlogged rat, her babies blind and
squealing in the darkness behind her.

She stood uncertainly on the grey lip, overlooking
the rush of water. She was only six inches or so above
the rising stream, and the comfortable hollow in
which she lived was on the verge of becoming a water
sealed tomb. She looked up across the tunnel. On the


197



far side from where she stood was another hole, an
accidental passageway slanting up away from the
depths.

The rat raised herself on her hind legs when she
smelt Saul, and she let forth a peculiar cry.

She bobbed up and down in the darkness, avoiding
looking him in the face, yet clearly aware of his presence.
Again the she-rat made a sound, a lengthy
screech, purged of the sneer which usually coloured
rats' voices.

He stopped just before her and hoisted his plastic
bag over his shoulder.

The rat was pleading with him.

She was begging him for help.

The tone of the squeal was beseeching, and Saul
was reminded of the profusion of rats who had followed
him a fortnight previously, rats which had
seemed animated by hunger and desperation, and
which had been eager to show him respect.

Not here, was the sentiment pouring out of the
bedraggled rat as she cringed below him. Not here, not
here!

Saul reached out to her and she hopped onto his
hand. A cacophony of infantile rat squeaks poured
out of the holes in the concrete, and Saul plunged his
hand further into the depths of the rotting stone.
Little bodies were pushed onto his hand, where they
lay squirming. He closed his fingers gently into a pro198



tective cage and drew out his hand, on which the little
family lay shivering as the water level rose.

He crossed the tunnel and placed them on the ledge
where the mother could pull the babies out of danger.
She backed away from him bobbing her head, the
pitch of her sounds changed, her fear gone.

Boss, she said to him, Boss, before turning and
pulling her family out of sight into the darkness.

Saul leaned against the soaking wall.

He knew what was happening. He knew what the
rats wanted. He did not think King Rat would like it.


By the time he arrived at the entrance to the throne
room, the water was moving faster and the level kept
on rising. He fumbled under the surface for the brick
plug hiding the chute, pulled it open with a sudden
explosive burp of air, and slipped through the cascade
of water into the dark room below, pulling the door
closed behind him.

He landed in the pool, splashed briefly onto his
arse, before standing and walking onto the dry bricks.
Behind him water dribbled into the room and down
the wall from the imperfectly fitting brick entrance,
but the chamber was so large and the hidden sluices so
efficient that the moat around the room's central
island of raised brickwork became only a little fatter.
It would take days of ceaseless rain truly to threaten
the air in the throne-room.


199



King Rat sat brooding on his grandiose brick seat.

Saul glared at him. He delved into the plastic bags.

'Here,' he said, and threw a paper package across
the room. King Rat caught it in one hand, without
looking up. 'Bit of falafel,' said Saul, 'bit of cake, bit of
bread, bit of fruit. Fit for a king,' he added provocatively,
but King Rat ignored him.

Saul sat cross-legged at the base of the throne. His
own package contained much the same as King Rat's,
with the emphasis skewed towards the sugary components
of the meal. Saul's sweet tooth had survived
his passage to rat-hood. The extra richness which rot
lent to fruit was a pleasure he was still indulging in as
often as possible.

He dug into the bag and pulled out a peach whose
surface was one seamless bruise. He ate, gazing all the
time at the morose King Rat.

'I'm fucking sick of this,' he finally snapped. 'What
is up with you?'

King Rat turned to stare at him.

'Shut your trap. You don't know buggery about it.'

'You stink of self-pity, you know that?' Saul gave a
sudden laugh. 'You don't see me acting up like this,
and if anyone's got reason to be ... moody ... it's me.
First off, you rip me out of my life and turn it into
some kind of fucking ... bad dream ... So fuck it,
alright, I'll do that, and I did a decent enough job
didn't I? And now, just when I've got to grips with the
rules of my life as Saul, Prince Rat, you get all morose


200



and change the channel. What the fuck is going on?
You ... galvanize me, get me ready, for fuck knows
what, and then you just slump. What am / supposed
to do?'

King Rat was staring at him contemptuously, ill at
ease.

'You've no clue what you're spouting, you little
gobshit...'

'Don't tell me that! Jesus! What the fuck do you
want me to do? Is my role here to fucking get
you spurred again? Am I supposed to shake you up?
Get you going again? Well fuck off! If you want to sit
there on your rat arse and mope, then fine. And
spider-features and Loplop can join you, you're as
bad as each other. But I'm fucking off!'

'Got any suggestions, you mouthy little cunt?'
hissed King Rat.

'Yeah, I have. You fuckers have got to be less chicken. That's what this is about. You're all scared,
and you're scared because you all want a plan which
makes sure your own arse isn't on the line. Well, it's
not going to happen! You all reckon the Piper is such
a bad fucker that you've got to take him, that this is the Final Battle - so long as none of you does the
actual fighting. And while we're on that subject, I get
the distinct fucking impression that it was me who was
supposed to do the fighting for you, but you're all still
chickenshit because you can't quite work out how to
deploy me without any danger of recoil or whatever.


201



Well count me the fuck out!' Saul had worked his way
into a righteous anger.

'The Piper wants you dead too!' hissed King Rat.

'Yeah, so you say. Well, unlike you, maybe I'm
going to do something about it!' There was a long
silence. Saul waited a moment, then spoke again.

'The rats want me to take over.'

There was a long silence as King Rat slowly swung
his head to look at him.

'What?'

'The rats. In the sewers. Sometimes in the streets,
or wherever. Whenever you're not around. They come
to me, hover, kow-tow, and they squeak, and I'm
beginning to make sense of what they're on about.
They want me to take over. They want me to be the
boss.'

King Rat was rising, standing on the throne.

'You little ingrate. You little Tea-Leaf,,. you little
shit, you bastard, I'll tan your hide, it's mine, mine, you understand, mine ...'

'So take a stand, you fucking has-been!' Saul was
standing, glaring at him, his face just below King Rat's,
their spittle forming a crossfire. 'They don't want you
back. And they're not going to have you back until
you ... redeem yourself. That seems to be the morality
of this fucking terrain.'

Saul turned and stormed to the exit. 'I'm going out.
I don't know when I'll be back, but I don't expect you
to care, because you don't think you can use me at


202



the moment. While I'm gone I recommend you think
carefully about doing something. Use Loplop, use
Anansi, get hold of them and track the motherfucker
down. When you're willing to get off your arse,
maybe we can talk.' He turned to face King Rat. 'Oh,
and don't worry about your Magic Kingdom. I don't want to be Rat King, not now, not ever, so I wouldn't
stress it. I'm going to find my mates or something. I'm
bored of you.'

Saul turned and swung out of the room, was briefly
coated in filthy water, and passed into the sewers.


While Saul stalked through the subterranean realms
above him, King Rat stood quivering with rage, his
hands tugging fitfully at his overcoat. Eventually
his motions ceased and he seated himself.

He brooded.

He jumped up again, purposeful for the first time
in days.

'OK, sonny, point taken. So let's talk about bait,' he
murmured to himself.

He rushed out of the room, suddenly moving as he
had when Saul first saw him, sinuous and mysterious,
fast and chaotic.

He passed quickly, silently through the layers of
the earth, while Saul still struggled to find his bearings.
King Rat emerged into a dark street. On the other
side, figures passed in and out of the puddle of


203



lacklustre lamplight, keeping their eyes fixed in front
of them.

He stood quite still, his hidden eyes twitching
imperceptibly. He looked around him. His eyes
crawled up the wall before him. He stalked forward,
one foot rising in a slow arch, curving back down
to earth in an exaggerated parabola, his upper body
bobbing slightly. He looked up, spread his arms wide,
gripped the brick wall like a lover. Silently, he scaled
the side of the building, his boots finding impossible
purchase, his hands gripping invisible imperfections.
He drew his hands back, contracting the muscles of
his arms, fixing his attention on the dark below the
eaves.

His arms uncoiled, shot out. Something fluttered
desperately and a family of dirty pigeons burst from
the shadow, disturbed from their sleep. They disappeared
into the air behind him. He withdrew his hand
and brought with it one of the birds, caught and held
tight, its wings trying to stretch open, unable to escape
him.

King Rat lowered his face towards his captive. It
stopped struggling as he brought his face closer. He
held it very tight to him, stared deep into its eye.

'You don't have Jack to fear from me, little cove,'
he hissed. The bird was still, waiting. 'I want you to
do me a favour. Go find your boss-man, spread the
word. King Rat wants Loplop. Have him track me
down.'

204


1



King Rat released his scout. It lurched into the
air, wheeled and swept off over London. King Rat
watched it go. When he couldn't see it any more, he
turned his back and disappeared into the dark city.


205
CHAPTER SIXTEEN


It was the first time since his solo stroll along the
Westway that Saul had been alone for so long. His are
was dwindling, threatening to snuff out, and he fed it
carefully, maintained it. It gave him a righteous rush.

He wanted out of the claustrophobic sewers,
wanted a taste of cold air. Judging by the ebb of water
around his legs, the rain outside had let up. He wanted
to emerge before it had fully dissipated.

Saul trusted to instinct in his rambles through the
brick underworld. The rules of the sewers were different,
the distinctions and boundaries between areas
blurred. Above ground he knew where he was, and
decided where he was going. Under the pavement he
felt only a vague tugging to move from one part of
the tunnel network to another, a buzzing of the
troglodytic radar apparently lodged in his skull, and
he would follow his nose. He did not know if he had
visited any particular patch of sewer before; it was
irrelevant. He knew it all. It was only the environs of


206



the throne-room which were particular, and all roads
in the underworld seemed to lead there eventually.

He ducked under low bricks, pushed his way
through tight tunnels.

Saul heard the patter of feet around him, isolated
squeals of excited rats. He saw a hundred little brown
heads peeking from chinks in the bricks.

'Hi, rats,' he hissed as he moved.

Ahead of him he saw the ruined metal of a ladder,
old and corroded, dribbling its constituent parts into
the stream of rainwater. He grasped it, felt it crumble
beneath him, scrambled up it before it disintegrated
entirely. He pushed at the cover, to poke his head into
Edgware Road.


It was the end of twilight. The street was busy with
Lebanese patisseries, mini-cab firms and cut-price
electrical repair shops, dirty video stores and clothing
warehouses with hand-drawn signs advertising their
wares. Saul looked over the top of a building site
across the road. Away in the west the fringe of the sky
was still a beautiful bright blue, shading to black. At
the base of the skyline the edges of the buildings
looked unnaturally sharp.

Saul slid gently through the hole in the pavement,
nonchalant in the knowledge that he could move
without being seen or heard, so long as he kept in the
shadows, obeyed the rules. Subtly he oozed through


207



the opening, waiting for a gap in the flow of pedestrians,
arching his eyebrows, rolling out of the hole
in the ground with the smell.

He reached back to replace the manhole cover, and
heard a mass of hisses. Peering over the edge, Saul
looked into the eyes of dozens of rats, perched precariously
on the rotting ladder.

He regarded them. They gazed at him.

He grunted and pulled the cover over the opening,
but not fully, leaving a slit of darkness, to which he
put his mouth and whispered, 'Meet me over by the
bins.'

In a quick, odd motion Saul bobbed to his feet. He
stuck his hands in his pockets, sauntered along the
street past the clumps of people. They noticed him
suddenly, moved aside and apart for him, frowning at
his smell. Behind him a brown bolt shot out of the
sewers, followed by another, then a sudden mass. One
of the proprietors noticed and shrieked, and all attention
focused on the manhole. By then the flow had
almost finished and the rats had melted into the interstices
of the city, made themselves invisible.

Saul continued walking at the same pace as the
street erupted into pandemonium behind him. People
snatched themselves away from the hole in the
ground.

'Who the fuck left that open?' came one yell, along
with a mass of Arabic.

Saul slid into the darkness at the edge of the street.


208



The rats had disappeared now and public-spirited citizens
were gingerly shoving the metal cover back into
position. Saul turned slowly and leaned against a wall,
ostentatious, if only for his own benefit. He inspected
his nails.

A few feet away to his right was a mass of bins,
some tumbling into each other and spilling bags, the
whole smelling faintly of baklava, sullied of course by
filth. There was a rustling from the bags. A honey
stained head poked up from the black plastic mass.
More heads appeared around it.

'Got yourself some food, then?' hissed Saul out of
the corner of his mouth. 'That's good.'

There was a faint screeching from the bins in reply.

A few feet away, in the world of the patisseries,
those who had collaborated on resealing the sewers
were laughing, unsettled. They were sharing cigarettes
and looking around nervously, in case the rats came
back.

Saul moved over to the dustbins.

'Alright, squad,' he said quietly. 'Show me what
you can do. First alley on the left, quick march, quiet
as ... mice? Fuck it, I suppose so. Rank yourselves nice for me.'

There was a sudden explosive burst and a hundred
brown torpedoes bolted from cover. Saul watched as
they disappeared up drains, behind walls, into the
darkness which dribbled down from the eaves of


209


the buildings, into the holes between bricks. The bins
were suddenly vacant and still.

Saul turned slowly on one heel in a deliberate
motion. He dragged his feet, picking them up, dropping
them, walking ponderously along the street. He
looked down at his chest as he moved. Saul was
thinking.

He felt as if he had lost all capacity for urgency.

Saul wondered what he was trying to achieve. Was
this revenge? Boredom? A dare?

He was becoming King Rat. Was he? Was that what
he was doing? He was not sure at all. He had not
asked the rats to follow him, but he wanted to see
what he could do with them.

He was aware that he should fear the Piper, that he
should think, form a plan, but he could not, not now.
He felt untrustworthy, confused, full of betrayal. He
would show King Rat. King Rat who had not chased
him, not tried to stop him, not urged him to come
back.

He did not know what he was about to do, he did
not know where he would go, when he would return.
But then the very emptiness he felt was a liberation.
For a long time he had felt full of guilt about his father,
full of his father's disappointment. Then he had been
full of King Rat, full of trepidation and amazement.

Now he was empty, all of a sudden. He felt very
alone. He felt light, as if he might evade gravity with every step. As if he had pissed after a day holding it in,


210



or had put down a massive burden he had forgotten
he carried. He felt he could blow away in the wind,
and he had to keep moving. And each movement, for
the first time he could remember, the first time ever,
was entirely his own.


There was a screaming from the alley just ahead of
him, and he swore and rushed to the corner. He swung
around the edge of brick and stared into the shadows.
A few feet from the Edgware Road a young woman
was lying in the delivery entrance of a shop. She had a
dirty face and dirty brown hair. She sat huddled in
a greasy blue sleeping-bag, pulling it up tight around
her. Her face was shot through with horror, her mouth
stretched as if it would split her cheeks. Her voice had
run dry. She did not see Saul. She could not take her
eyes from the wall before her.

A cascade of rats spewed and bubbled over the
edge. The stream was almost soundless, marked only
by a low white noise of scratching.

The sleeping-bag slipped slowly from the woman's
hands, and they stayed as they were, frozen, framing
her face. Rats simmered around her, looked up at
Saul, made sounds of supplication, sought approval.
They parted as he strode towards the terror-stricken
woman.

She did not look at him, still unable to look anywhere
except at the deluge of scuttling bodies. There


211



were more rats there than Saul had seen in the sewers.
They had been joined by compatriots from the houses
around them. Saul glanced up at them, then turned to
the woman.

'Hey, hey,' he said gently, and kneeled before her.
'Don't panic, shhhhh ...'

The woman's eyes flickered briefly to him and she
found her voice.

'Oh my God do you see them they're coming for
me Jesus Christ...'

She spoke in a strangled screech. It sounded as if
there were no air in her lungs, as if it were only fear
that was giving her a voice.

Saul grabbed her face in both hands and forced her
to look at him. Her eyes were green and open very
wide.

'Listen to me. You won't understand this, but don't
worry. Shhh, shhh, these rats are mine. They won't
hurt you, do you understand?'

'But the rats are here to get me and they're going to get me and ...'

'Shut up!' There was silence, for a second. 'Now watch.' Saul held her head still and slowly moved his
aside, until the ,woman could see the rats which waited
in the shadows and, as her eyes widened again and the
muscles around her mouth went taut, Saul threw his
head back briefly and hissed, 'Disappear!'

There was a flurry of feet and tails. The rats
vanished.


212



The alley was silent.

Bewilderment crept into the creases on the
woman's face. She looked from side to side as Saul
moved away from her. She craned her neck and peered
nervously around her. Saul sank to his haunches next
to her, sat back against the door. He looked to his
right and saw the lights of Edgware Road, only ten
feet away. Again he thought: these things take place so
close to the real city, and no one can see them. They
take place ten feet away, somewhere in another world.

Next to him the woman turned. Her voice
quivered.

'How did you do that?' She spoke too loudly still.

'I told you,' he said. 'They're my rats. They'll do
what I tell them.'

Ts it like a trick"} Like trained rats? Don't they scare you?'

As she spoke her eyes wavered from side to side.
Her voice was unnaturally loud and abrupt. Her panic
was over too quickly. She spoke to him as though
she were a child. Saul suddenly understood that this
woman was probably mentally ill.

Don't treat her like a child, he thought warily. Don't patronize her.

'The rats don't scare me, no,' he said carefully. 'I
understand them.'

'They frightened the shit out of me. I thought they
were out to get me!'


213



'Yeah, well I'm sorry about that. I didn't know
anyone was here when I sent them into the alley.'

'It's amazing that you can do that, I mean make rats
do what you want!' She grinned quickly.

There was silence. Saul looked around him but the
rats remained hidden. He turned back to his companion.
Her eyes were darting around like flies.

'What's your name?' he asked.

'Deborah.'

'I'm Saul.' They smiled at each other. 'Now that
you know the rats are mine,' he said slowly, 'would
you still be scared of them?'

She looked at him questioningly. Saul sighed for a
long time. He did not know what would happen next.
He did not really know what he was doing. He was
enjoying his words, rolling every one around his
mouth. It was the first time since meeting Kay that he
had spoken to a human being. He revelled in every
sentence. He did not want the conversation to end.

'I mean, I could bring them out again.'

'I don't know, I mean, aren't they dirty and stuff?'

'Not my lot. And if I tell them not to, they won't
touch you.'

Deborah twisted her face up. She was grinning, a sickly frightened grin.

'Oh you know I don't know I mean I don't know...'

'Don't be scared, now. Look. I'll call them out, and
show you they do what I want.' He turned his head


214



slightly. He could smell the rats. They waited just out
of sight, quivering. 'Heads up,' he said firmly, 'heads
only.'

There was a stirring in the debris and a hundred
little heads poked up, like seals in the waves, sleek
skulls under greased-back fur.

Deborah shrieked and put her hand over her
mouth. Her head shook, and Saul saw that she was
laughing.

'It's amazing ...' she said through her fingers.

'Down,' said Saul, and the heads disappeared.

Deborah laughed delightedly.

'How do you do it?'

'They have to do what I say,' said Saul. 'I'm the
boss, as far as they're concerned. I'm their prince.' She
looked at him in consternation. Saul felt irresponsible.
He wondered if he was damaging her further. What
she needs is reality, he thought, but the realization
came firmly to him that this was reality, whether
anyone liked it or not. And he wanted to keep talking
to her.

'Are you hungry, Deborah?' She nodded. 'Well,
why don't I get you some food?' He jumped up and
crept into Edgware Road, returned some seconds later
with two pastries, intricate things encrusted with pistachios
and icing sugar, which he put in Deborah's lap.

She bit into one, licked her lips. She was obviously
hungry.

'I was asleep,' she said, honey muffling her voice. 'I


215



heard the rats in my sleep and they woke me up. Oh,
it's OK. I'm glad I'm awake. I wasn't sleeping very
well, actually, I was dreaming horrible things.'

'Wasn't waking to a plague of rats a horrible thing?'

She laughed jerkily.

'Only at first,' she said. 'Now I know they do what
you tell them I don't mind so much. It's very cold.'
She had finished the pastries. She had eaten very fast.

There was a faint scratching. The rats were becoming
impatient. Saul barked a brief order to be
quiet and the sound ceased. It feels so easy, he thought, so simple to take control like this. It didn't even excite
him.

'Do you want to go to sleep, Deborah?'

'What do you mean? Her voice was suddenly
suspicious, even afraid. She almost whined in her
trepidation, and bundled herself up into her sleeping
bag. Saul reached out to reassure her and she shrank
away from him in horror and he realized with a
sinking feeling that she had heard such a line before,
but spoken with different intent.

Saul knew that the streets were brutal.

He wondered how often she had been raped.

He moved his hands away, held them up in surrender.

T'm sorry, Deborah, I didn't mean anything. I'm
just not tired. I'm lonely, and I thought we could go
for a wander.' She still looked at him with terrified
eyes. The won't... I'll go, if you want.' He did not want


216



to leave. 'I want to show you around. I'll take you
anywhere you want to go.'

'I don't know I don't know what you want to do ...' she moaned.

'Don't you want to do something?' he said desperately.
'Aren't you bored? I swear I won't touch you,
won't do anything, I just want some company ...'

He looked at her and saw her wavering. He put on
a silly expression, a clownish sad face, sniffed theatrically,
nauseating himself.

Deborah laughed nervously.

'Please,' he said, 'let's go.'

'Oh ... OK...' She looked pleased, even though
nervous.

He grinned at her reassuringly.

He felt ill at ease, shockingly clumsy. Even the simplest
mannerism cost him huge effort. He was relieved
that he had not frightened her away.

'I'll take you up to the roofs, if you want, Deborah,
and I'll show you the quick way of getting around
London on foot. Can I...' He paused. 'Can I bring
the rats?'


217
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN


Bring them, bring the rats, she said, after a little persuasion.
It was obvious that, despite her fear, she was
fascinated. Saul gave a long whistle and the rats
appeared again, eager to show willing.

He did not know how it was he commanded them.
It seemed to make no difference what words he used,
or if he whistled, or gave a brief shout. He could not
think an order for it to be obeyed, he had to make a
sound, but the rats seemed to understand him through
an empathy, not through language. He invested the
sound he made with the spirit of an order for it to be
obeyed.

He made the rats line up in rows, to Deborah's
delight. He made them move forward and backwards.
When he had shown off and made the rats ridiculous,
taking away Deborah's fear, she would even touch
one. She stroked it nervously as Saul murmured deep
in his throat, held the rat in thrall so it would not
panic, bite or run.


218



'No offence or anything, Saul, but you smell, you
know,' she said.

'It's where I live. Smell it again; it's not as bad as
you think at first.'

She leaned over and sniffed him, wrinkled up her
nose and shook her head apologetically.

'You'll get used to it,' he said.

When she had lost her fear he suggested that they
move. She looked nervous again, but nodded.

'Which way?' she said.

'Do you trust me?' Saul said.

'I think so ...'

'Then hold on to me. We're going up, straight up
the walls.'

She did not understand at first, and when she did
she was terrified, refused to believe that Saul could
carry her. He reached out to her gently, slowly so as
not to intimidate her, and when he was sure she did
not mind being touched, he lifted her easily, held her
with his arms outstretched, feeling his muscles snap
hard with rat-strength. She laughed delightedly.

He felt like a superhero.

Ratman, he thought as he held her. Doing good
with his bizarre rat-powers. Helping the mentally ill.
Carrying them around London faster than shit
through a sewer. He sneered at himself.

'See. I told you I could carry you. Let me put you
on my back.'


219



'Mnnnn ...' Deborah swung her face from side to
side like a flattered child, smiling a little. 'MnnnnOK.'

'Great. Let's go.' The rats scampered a little closer,
hearing the dynamism in Saul's voice.

Deborah still looked at them nervously every time
they moved, but she had forgotten most of her fear.

Saul bent down and offered her his back. She
stepped out of the sleeping-bag.

'Shall I take this?' she said, and Saul shook his head.

'Just hide it. I'll bring you back here.'

Deborah gingerly clambered onto Saul's back, and
he was struck once again by the fact that it was only
her tenuous grip on reality that meant she would do as
he suggested. Approach most people with the offer to
piggyback them across the roofs and he would not
have met with such a willing response.

The irony, of course, being that she was right to
trust him.

He rose to his feet and she shrieked as if she was on
a fairground ride.

'Gentle, gentlel' she yelled, and he hissed at her to
keep her voice down.

He strode into the passage, and all around him he
heard the pattering of hundreds of rat feet. This is bow
I changed worlds, he thought, carried to my new city
on the back of a rat. What goes around comes around.

He stopped below a window, its sill nine feet above
the pavement.

'See you up top,' he hissed at the rats, who disap


220



peared in a flurry, as before. He heard the scrape of
claws on brick.

Saul jumped up and grasped the window, and
Deborah shouted, a yell which did not die away but
ballooned in terror as her fingers fought for purchase
on his back. His feet swung above the ground, the toes
of his prison-issue shoes scraping the wall.

He called for her to shut up, but she would not, and
words began to form in her protest.

'Stopstopstop,' she wailed and Saul, mindful of discovery,
hauled himself at speed up into the space by
the window, flattened himself against the glass,
reached up again, determined to pull Deborah out of
earshot before she could order him down.

He scrambled up the building. Not yet as fast as
King Rat, but so smooth, he thought to himself as he
climbed. Terror had stopped Deborah's voice. / know
that feeling, thought Saul, and smiled. He would bring
this to a close as fast as he could.

Her weight on his back was only a minor irritation.
This was not a hard wall to climb. It was festooned
with windows and cracks and protuberances and
drainpipes. But Saul knew that to Deborah it was just
so much unbreachable brick. This building had a flat
roof contained by rails, one of which he grasped now
and tugged at, raising himself and his cargo up onto
the skyline.

He deposited Deborah on the concrete. She clawed
at it, her breath ragged.


221



'Oh now, Deborah, I'm sorry to scare you,' he said
hurriedly. 'I knew you wouldn't let me if I told you
what I was going to do, but I swear to you, you were
safe, always. I wouldn't put you in danger.'

She mumbled incoherently. He dropped to her side
and gently put a hand on her shoulder. She flinched
and turned to him. He was surprised at her face. She
was quivering, but she did not look horrified.

'How can you do that?' she breathed. All around
them on the roof the concrete began to swarm with
rats, struggling to prove their eager devotion. Saul
picked Deborah off her side and put her on her feet.
He tugged at her sleeve. She did not take her eyes
from him but allowed herself to be pulled over to the
railing around the roof. The light was entirely leached
from the sky by now.

They were not so very high; all around them hotels
and apartment blocks looked down on them, and they
looked down on as many again. They stood at the
midpoint of the undulations in the skyline. Black
tangles of branches poked into their field of vision,
over in Regent's Park. The graffiti were thinner up
here, but not dissipated. Here and there extravagant
tags marked the sides of buildings, badges pinned in
the most inaccessible places. I'm not the first to be
here, thought Saul, and the others weren't rats. He
admired them hugely, their idiot territorial bravery.
To scale that wall and spray boomboy!!! just there,
where the bricks ran out, that was a courageous act.


222



It's not brave of me, he thought. / know I can do it,
I'm a rat.

Deborah was looking at him. From time to time her
eyes flitted away towards the view, but it was him she
was conscious of. She looked at him with amazement.
He looked back at her. He was awash with gratitude.
It was so good, so nice to talk to someone who was
not a rat, or a bird, or a spider.

'It must be amazing to be able to do what all the
rats do,' she said, studying their massed ranks. They
stood a little way behind, quiet and attentive, fidgeting
a little when unobserved but hushing when Saul
turned to gaze at them.

Saul laughed at what she said.

'Amazing? I don't fucking think so.' He could not
resist bitching, even though she would not understand.
'Let me tell you about rats,' he said. 'Rats do
nothing. All day. They eat any old crap they can find,
run around pissing against walls, they shag occasionally
- or so I'm led to believe - and they fight over
who gets to sleep in which patch of sewer. Sure, they think they're the reason the world was invented. But
they're nothing.'

'Sounds like people!' said Deborah and laughed
delightedly as if she had said something clever. She
repeated it.

'They're nothing like people,' Saul said quietly.
'That's a tired old myth.'


223



He asked her about herself and she was vague about
her situation. She would not explain her homelessness,
muttering darkly about not being able to handle
something. Saul felt guilty but he was not that
interested. Not that he did not care: he did, he was
appalled at her state and, even alienated from her city
as he was, he felt the old fury against the government
so assiduously trained into him by his father. He cared
deeply. But at that moment he wanted to talk to her
not for herself particularly but because she was a
person. Any person. As long as she kept talking and
listening, he was not concerned about what she might
say. And he asked her about herself because he was
hungry for her company.

He heard a sudden sound of flapping, something
like heavy cloth. He felt a brief gust of wind in his
face. He looked up, but there was nothing.

'I tell you what,' he said. 'Never mind rats being
amazing. Do you want to come back to my house?'

She wrinkled her nose again.

'The one that smells like that?'

'No. I was thinking of going back to my real place
for a bit.' He sounded calm, but his breath came short
and fast at the thought of returning. Something in her
remarks about rats had reminded him of where he
came from. Cut off from King Rat, he wanted to
return, touch base.

He missed his dad.

Deborah was happy to visit his house. Saul put her


224



on his back again and set off, with the rats in tow,
across the face of London, across a terrain that had
quickly become familiar to him.

Sometimes Deborah buried her face in his shoulder,
sometimes she leaned back alarmingly and laughed.
Saul shifted with her to maintain his balance.

His progress was not as rapid as King Rat's or
Anansi's, but he moved fast. He stayed high, loath to
touch the ground, a vague rule he remembered from
a children's game. Sometimes the platform of roofs
stopped short and he had no option but to plunge
down the brick, by fire escape or drain or broken wall,
and scurry across a short space of pavement before
scrambling up above the streets again.

Everywhere around him he heard the sound of the
rats. They kept up with him, moving by their own
routes, disappearing and reappearing, boiling in and
out of his field of vision, anticipating him and following
him. There was something else, a presence he
was vaguely aware of: the source of that flapping
sound. Time and again he sensed it, a faint flurry of
wind or wings brushing his face. His momentum was
up and he did not stop, but he nursed the vague sense
that something kept up with him.

Periodically he would pause for breath and look
around him. His passage was quick. He followed a
map of lights, keeping parallel to Edgware Road,
shadowing it as it became Maida Vale. He followed
the route of the 98 bus, passed landmarks he knew


225



well, like the tower with an integument of red girders
which jutted out above its roof, making a cage.

The buildings around them began to level out; the
spaces between towers grew larger. Saul knew where
they were: in the stretch of deceptively suburban
housing just before Kilburn High Road. Terra cognita, thought Saul. Home ground.

He crossed to the other side of the road so fast that
Deborah was hardly aware of it. Saul took off into the
dark between main roads, bridging the gap between
Kilburn and Willesden, eager to return home.


They stood before Terragon Mansions. Saul was
afraid.

He felt fraught, short of breath. He listened to the
stillness, realized that the escort of rats had evaporated
soundlessly. He was alone with Deborah.

His eyes crawled up the dull brick, weaving
between windows, many now dark, a few lit behind
net curtains. There at the top, the hole through which
his father had plummeted. Still not fixed, pending
more police investigation, he supposed, though now
the absence was disguised by transparent plastic
sheets. The tiny fringe of ragged glass was still just
visible in the window-frame.

'I had to leave here in a hurry,' he whispered to
Deborah. 'My dad fell out of that window and they
reckon I pushed him.'


226



She gazed at him in horror.

'Did you?' she squeaked, but his face silenced her.

He walked quietly to the front door. She stood
behind him, hugging herself against the chill, looking
nervously about. He caressed the door, effortlessly
and silently slipping the lock. Saul wandered onto the
stairs. His feet made no sound. He moved as if dazed.
Behind him came Deborah, in fits and starts, her ebullience
gone with his. She dragged her feet as if she
were whining, but she made no sound.

The door to his apartment was criss-crossed with
blue tape. Saul stared at it and considered how it made
him feel. Not violated or outraged, as he would have
supposed. He felt oddly reassured, as if this tape
secured his house from outsiders, sealing it like a time
capsule.

He tugged gently at it. It came away in his hand,
airy and ineffectual, as if it had been waiting for him,
eager to give itself up. He pushed the door open and
stepped into the darkness where his father had died.


227
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN


It was cold, as cold as the night when the police had
arrived. He did not turn on the lights. What filtered
up from the streets was enough for him. He did not waste time, pushed open the door of the sitting-room
and entered.

The room was bare, had been stripped of possessions,
but he noticed that only in passing. He stared
at the jagged window full on. He dared it to unsettle
him, to sap his strength. It was just a hole, he thought,
wasn't it? Wasn't it just a hole? The plastic billowed
back and forth with a noise like whips cracking.

'Saul, I'm scared...'

He realized belatedly that Deborah could hardly
see. She stood at the threshold to the room, hesitant.
He knew what she could see, his obscure form against
the dark orange of the distant streetlamps. Saul shook
himself in anger. He had been using her with such ease
he had forgotten that she was real. He strode across
the room and hugged her.

He wrapped himself around her with an affection


228



she poured back into him. It was not sexual, though
he sensed that she expected it to be, and might not
have minded. But he would have felt manipulative and
foul and he liked her and pitied her and was so, so
grateful to her. They held each other and he realized
that he was trembling as much as she. Not all rat yet,
then, he thought ruefully. She's afraid of the dark, he
thought. What's my excuse?

There was a book in the middle of the floor.

He saw it suddenly over her shoulder. She felt him
stiffen and nearly shrieked in terror, twisting to see
whatever had shocked him. He hurriedly hushed her,
apologized. She could not see the book in the dark.

It was the only thing in the room. There was no
furniture, no pictures, no telephone, no other books,
only that.

It was not coincidence, Saul thought. They had
not missed that when they cleared out the flat. Saul
recognized it. An ancient, very fat red-bound A4 notebook, with snatches of paper bursting from its
pages; it was his father's scrapbook.

It had appeared regularly throughout Saul's life.
Every so often his father would drag it out from wherever
he hid it and carefully cut some article from the
paper, murmuring. He would glue it into the book,
and as often as not write in red biro in the margin. At
other times there was no article at all; he would just
write. Often Saul knew these bouts were brought on
by some political occurrence, something his father


229



wanted to record his pontifications on, but at other
times there was no spur that Saul could fathom.

When he was little the book had fascinated him,
and he had wanted to read it. His father would let
him see some things, articles on wars and strikes, and
the neat red notes surrounding them. But it was a
private book, he explained, and he would not let Saul
examine it all. Some of it's personal, he explained
patiently. Some of it's private. Some of it's just for me.

Saul removed himself from Deborah and picked it
up. He opened it from the back. Amazingly, there
were still a very few pages not yet full. He flicked
backwards slowly, coming to the last page that his
father had filled. A light-hearted story from the local
paper about a Conservative Party fundraising event
which had suffered a catalogue of disaster: failing electricity,
a double booking and food poisoning. Next to
it, in his father's carefully printed letters, Saul read,
'There is a God after all!!!'

Before that, a story about the long-running strike
at the Liverpool docks, and in his father's hand: 'A morsel of information breaches the carefully maintained
Wall of Silence! Why the TUG so ineffectual?!'

Saul turned the page backwards, grinned delightedly
as he realized that his father had been pondering
his Desert Island Discs selection. At the top of
the page was a list of old Jazz tunes, all with careful
question-marks, and below was the tentative list.
'One: Ella Fitzgerald. Which one??? Two: "Strange


230
T


Fruit". Three: "All The Time In The World", Satchmo.
Four: Sarah Vaughan, "Lullaby of Birdland". Five:
Thelonius? Basic? Six: Bessie Smith. Seven: Armstrong
again, "Mack the Knife". Eight: "Internationale".
Why Not? Books: Shakespeare, don't
want the Bloody Bible! Capital? Com. Manifesto? Luxury: Telescope? Microscope?'

Deborah knelt beside Saul.

'This was my dad's notebook,' he explained. 'Look,
it's really sweet...'

'How come it's here?' she asked.

'I don't know,' he said after a pause. He kept
turning the pages as he spoke, past more cuttings,
mostly political, but here and there simply something
which had caught his father's eye.

He saw small tales about Egyptian tomb-robbers,
giant trees in New Zealand, the growth of the
Internet.

Saul began to pull back clumps of pages now, going
back years at a time. There was more writing in the
earlier years.


7/7/88: Trade Unions. Must read old arguments! Had
a long argument with David at work about Union
today. He going on and on about ineffectual and etc.
etc. and I rather letting myself down, just seemed to
sit there saying Yes but solidarity vital! He wasn't
having any of it. Must reread Engels on Trade Unions.
Have vague memories of being rather impressed but


231



could be fooling myself. Saul still very sulky. Don't
know what's going on there at all. Remember seeing
book about Teenagers and Problems, though can't
remember where. Must track it down.


Saul felt awash with the same hopeless love he had
felt when he had shown Fabian the book his father
had bought him. He was going about it all wrong, the
old man, but all he wanted to do was understand.
Maybe there was no right way to do it. / was wrong
too., he thought.

Back, back, he moved through the years. Deborah
cuddled into him for warmth.

He read about the time his father had had an argument
with one of his history teachers over the best
way to present Cromwell.


No, fair enough, maybe can't be talking about Bourgeoisie
to group of ten-year-olds but shouldn't be
glossing over him! Terrible man, yes (Ireland, and etc.
etc.) but must make clear nature of Revolution!


He read a reference to one of his father's girlfriends
- 'M.' He could not remember her at all. He knew his
father had kept such affairs out of the house. He did
not think his father had had any romantic involvement
at all in the last six or seven years of his life.

He read about his own fifth birthday party. He
remembered it: he had been given two Indian head232



dresses, and in retrospect a thrill of worry had passed
around the adults, concerned at his reaction, but he
had been elated. To have not one but two of the
beautiful feathered things ... He remembered the joy.
Saul was seeking the first reference to himself,
maybe a mention of his dead mother, who had been
carefully excised from his father's ruminations. A date
caught his eye: 8/2/72, the only entry from the year of
his birth, the birth itself apparently not recorded.
There was no cutting attached to the entry. Saul's
brow furrowed as he read the first few words.


We are a few weeks on now from the attack, which I
don't really want to talk about. E. is very strong,
Thank God. Many fears, of course, alleys and etc. etc.,
but overall she is getting better daily. Kept asking her
was she sure, I thought we should go to the Police.
Don't you want him caught? I asked her and she said
No I just don't want to see him again. Can't help
thinking this is a mistake but it must be her decision
of course. Am trying to be what she needs but God
Knows it is hard. Worst at night, of course. Don't
know whether better to comfort/cuddle or not touch
and she doesn't seem to know either. Definitely the
worst times, tears etc. Am beating about the bush.
Fact is, E. had test and is pregnant. Can't be sure of course but have looked at timing carefully and looks
very likely that it is his. Discussed abortion but E.
can't face it. So after long hard talks have decided to


233



go ahead. No record, so no one need know. Hope
everything turns out alright. I'll admit, I'm afraid for
child. Haven't yet worked out my own reaction. Must
be strong for E.'s sake.


Saul's chest had gone quite hollow.

Somewhere Deborah was saying something to him.

Oh, he felt stupid.

He saw what he had lost.

Stupid, stupid boy, he thought, and at the same time
he was thinking: You needn 't have worried, Dad. You
were strong as fuck.

Tears came cold to his eyes and he heard Deborah
again.

Look at what you lost, he thought. She died! he
thought suddenly. She died, and still he did right by
me. How could he? I killed her, I killed his wife! Every
time he looked at me, wasn't he looking at the rape?
Wasn't he looking at the thing that killed his wife?

Stupid boy, he thought. Uncle Rat? When were you
going to think that one through? he thought.

But more than anything he could not stop wondering
at the man who had raised him, had tried to
understand him, and had given him books to help him
understand the world. Because when he had looked at
Saul, somehow he did not see murder, or his lost wife,
or the brutality in the alley (and Saul knew just how
that attacker had appeared, as if from nowhere, out of
the bricks, as he himself moved). Somehow, when he


234


looked at Saul he looked at his son, and even when the
air between them had poisoned and Saul had exercised
all his studied teenage insouciance not to care, the fat man had still looked at him and seen his son, and had
tried to understand what was wrong between them.
He had had no truck with the awful, bloody vulgarity
of genes. He had built fatherhood with his actions.

Saul did not sob, but his cheeks were wet. Wasn't it
odd and sad, he thought a little hysterically, that it was
only on learning that his father was not his father, that
he realized how completely his father he had been?

There's a dialectic for you, Dad, he thought, and
grinned fleetingly.

It was only in losing him that he regained him,
finally, after so many dry years.

He remembered being carried on those broad
shoulders to see his mother's stone. He had killed her,
he had killed his father's wife, and his father had set
him down gently and given him flowers to put on her
grave. He wept for his father, who had been given his
wife's murderer, the child of her rapist, and who had
decided to love him dearly, and had set out to do it,
and had succeeded.


And somewhere he kept telling himself how stupid a
boy he was. A new thought was occurring to him. // King Rat lied about this, he reflected, and the thought
trailed off like a sequence of dots ...


235



If he lied about this, the thought said, what eke did
he lie about?

Who killed Dad?

He remembered something King Rat had said, a
long time ago, at the end of Saul's first life. Tm the
intruder,' he had said. 'I killed the usurper.'

In the succession of words the sense had been
drowned, had been another surreal boast, a crowing,
bullish aggrandizement without meaning. But Saul
could see differently now. A cold stone of fury settled
in his gut and he realized how much he hated King
Rat.

His father, King Rat.


236
CHAPTER NINETEEN


The door to the flat opened.

Saul and Deborah had been huddled together on
the floor, she murmuring nervous words of support.
They looked up at the same moment, at the gentle
creak of hinges.

Saul scrambled silently to his feet. He was still
clutching the book. Deborah rocked herself, tried to
rise. A face peered around the rim of the door.

Deborah clung to Saul and gave a tiny whimper of
fear. Saul was primed like an explosive, but as his eyes
made light of the darkness his tension ebbed a little,
and he stood confused.

The face in the doorway was beaming delightedly,
long blond hair falling in untidy clumps around a
mouth stretched wide in childish joy. The man
stepped forward into the room. He looked like a
buffoon.

The thought I heard someone, I thought so!' he
exclaimed. Saul straightened a little more, his brow
furrowed. 'I've been waiting here night after night,


237



saying no, go home, it's ridiculous, he won't come here, of all places, and now here you are!' He glanced
at the book in Saul's hand. 'You found my reading
material, then. I wanted to know all about you. I
thought that might tell me a bit.'

He looked a little closer at Saul's red eyes and his
own face widened.

'You didn't know, did you?' His smile of pleasure
was broader than ever. 'Well. That does explain a few
things. I thought you were rather quick to join your
so-called father's murderer.' Saul's eyes flickered. Of 1 course, he thought, giddy with grief, of course. The
man was eyeing him. 'I thought blood must have been
thicker than water but, of course, why on Earth
should he have told you?' He rocked back on his
heels, stuck his hands in his pockets.

'I've needed to talk to you for a long time. The
rumours have been flying about you, you know!
You've been famous for years! So many places, so
many leads, so many possibilities ... I've been all
over, chasing impossible crime ... You know, any
time I heard about some weird break-in, some murder,
something that doesn't fit the bill, something people
couldn't have done, I'd run to investigate. The police
can be very helpful with information.' He grinned. 'So
many dead ends! And then I came here ...' The man
grinned again. 'I could just smell him, and I knew I'd
found you, Saul.'

'Who are you?' Saul finally breathed.


238



The man smiled pleasantly at him but did not
answer. He seemed to see Deborah for the first time.

'Hi! My God, what a night you must be having!'
He strolled forward as he laughed. Deborah clung
still to Saul. She gazed at the man with guarded eyes.
'Anyway,' he continued easily, reaching out his hand
towards her, 'I'm afraid I'm not interested in you.'

He snatched her wrist and wrenched her out of
Saul's grasp. Too late, Saul realized that the urbane
man had taken her, his head moved slowly down to
look where she had been even as his mind screamed at him to look up, to move.

He dragged his head up through the thick air.

He saw the man close his left hand in Deborah's
hair, Saul reached out in horror, determined to intervene,
but the man who was still smiling broadly
glanced down at her briefly and sent his other fist
slamming into the underside of her chin just as she
opened her mouth to scream, and the impact split the
skin and bone of her jaw and snapped her mouth
closed so fast that blood spurted out from between
her lips where she bit deep into her tongue. The
scream died before it appeared, mutating into a wet
exhalation. Even as Saul's slow, slow feet took him
towards her the man swivelled on his toes and pulled
her body around from the nape of the neck where he
held her, built up momentum, spun fast and buried
her face in the side of the door-frame.

He released her and turned back to Saul.


239



Saul shrieked in anguish and disbelief, stared past-|
the man at Deborah's carcass, which slid down the I
door-frame and tumbled back into the room. It was
twitching as nerve endings died. Her flattened and
distorted face stared blindly up at Saul as she danced
in a posthumous fit, her heels pattering on the floor <
like a monsoon, blood and air bubbling out of her j
exploded mouth.

Saul bellowed and flung himself at the man with all 1
his rat-strength.

'/'// eat your fucking heart!' he screamed.

The tall man sidestepped the flurry of blows easily,'
still grinning broadly. He pulled his fist back leisurely
and sent it into Saul's face.

Saul saw the blow coming and moved away from it,
but he was not fast enough and it snapped into the |
side of his skull, sending him reeling. He spun round,
hit the floor hard. A shrill sound hurt his head. He
turned to look at the man, who stood with his lips
pursed, whistling a jaunty, repetitive air. He glared at 1
Saul and his eyes flickered dangerously. Without
pause, the tune he was whistling changed, became less |
organized, more insidious. Saul ignored him, tried to
crawl away. The whistling stopped short.

'So it's true,' the Piper hissed, and his urbane voice J
had metamorphosed into something unstable. He 1
looked as if he was about to be sick, and he looked
enraged. 'Dammit, neither man nor rat, can't shift


240



you. How dare you how dare you ...' His eyes were wild and sick-looking.

'I can't believe how stupid you are coming here,
rat-boy,' said the Piper as he approached him. He
shook with effort and his voice righted itself. 'Now
I'm going to kill you and string your body up in the
sewers for your father to find, and then I'm going to
play for him and make him dance and dance, and
eventually when he's really tired I'm going to kill
him.'

Saul pulled himself up, stumbled out of his way,
sent a lumbering kick at the Piper's balls. The Piper
grabbed his foot, pulled up very fast, sending him
thumping onto his back and pushing the wind out
of him. All the while he kept talking, amiable and
animated.

'I'm the Lord of the Dance, I'm the Voice, and
when I say jump, people jump. Except you. And I
have you here about to die. You're a fucking abortion. If you don't dance to my tune, you don't belong in
this world. Twenty-five years in the planning, and
here's the rat's secret weapon, the supergun, the half
and-half.' He shook his head and wrinkled his nose
sympathetically. He kneeled next to Saul who
struggled for breath, tried to hold his head up.

'I'm going to kill you now.'

A high-pitched screech made them both look up.
Something burst the plastic sheet shrouding the
window with an improbable pop, shot through the


241



tattered window of the flat, a figure, careering through
the air towards the Piper, shoving into his body with
an impact that took him flying away from Saul's
supine body. Saul struggled up, saw an immaculately
suited man trying to strangle the Piper, who convulsed,
sending his adversary flying back across the
room.

It was Loplop, with terror in his eyes, screaming at
Saul to come on, grabbing him and running for the
window, until a short clear sound stopped him cold.
Saul turned and saw the Piper's puckered lips as he
rose, whistling. A liquid tune, repetitive and simple.
Loplop was stiff. Saul saw a look of wonder cross his
face as he turned to face the Piper, his eyes alive and
ecstatic.

Saul backed away, felt the wall behind him. He
could see Deborah's corpse behind Loplop, see the
stain of blood oozing liberally onto the floor. To his
left was the Piper, moving forward now, still whistling.
Before him was Loplop, stepping towards him,
his eyes not seeing, his arms outstretched, his feet
moving in rhythm to the Piper's bird song.

Saul tried to get past Loplop, could not, felt his
throat underneath those fingers. The Bird Superior
fell on him and began to squeeze the air out of him, all
the while holding his own entranced face up to catch
the music. He was not heavy but his body was as stiff
as metal. Saul beat at him, twisted, tugged at his
fingers. Loplop was impervious, unaware. As black242



ness began to creep in at the edges of his vision, Saul
saw the Piper in the corner of the room, rubbing his
throat, and the rage pushed blood back into Saul's
face, even past Loplop's cruel talons, and he spread his
arms wide, cupped his hands exactly as his father had
warned him not to in the swimming pool, even if
you're just playing, Saul, and he slammed his hands
down, clapping with all his strength, around Loplop's
ears.

Loplop shrieked and snapped up, arcing his back,
his hands quivering. Saul's rat-strength had driven air
deep into those aural cavities, shattering the delicate
membranes and sending bubbles rushing in like acid
through the ruptured flesh. Loplop shook in agony.

Saul rolled out from under him. The Piper was
upon him again, and he wielded the flute like a club.
Saul could only roll a little out of his way and feel it
crush his shoulder rather than his face. He dodged
again and this time his chest was struck, and the pain
took his breath away.

Behind him Loplop stumbled away from the wall,
fumbled blindly, as if his other senses had gone with
his hearing.

The Piper gripped the flute in both hands, straddled
Saul and pinned his arms to the floor with his knees,
raised the flute like a ceremonial dagger, ready to drive
the stubby object into Saul's chest. Saul screamed in
terror.

Loplop still shrieked, and his voice mixed with


243



Saul's. The dissonance made the air shake and some- *
thing in the vibrations made Loplop turn and kick
the flute from the Piper's clenched hands. The Piper
bellowed in rage and reached for it. Loplop pulled
Saul from under the tall man's legs, and hauled him to
the window. Still Loplop shrieked, and the sound did
not stop as he leapt onto the sill of the ruined window.
He was still shrieking as he grabbed Saul with his right
hand and stepped out into darkness.


Saul could not hear his own despairing yell through
Loplop's incessant keening. He closed his eyes and felt
air swirl around him, waited for the ground, which
did not come. He opened his eyes a little and saw a
confusion of lights, moving very fast. He was falling
still... the only sound was Loplop's wail.

He opened his eyes fully and he saw that the constriction
around his chest was not terror but Loplop's
legs, and that the ground was shooting not towards
him but parallel to him, and that he was not falling but
flying.

His head faced backwards, so he could not see Loplop as they flew. The Bird Superior's legs, elegant
in Savile Row tailory, wrapped around him below
his armpits. Terragon Mansions receded behind them.
Saul saw a thin figure standing in the punctured plastic
shadow of his father's flat, somehow heard a faint
whistling over Loplop's cries.


244



In Willesden's dirty darkness the trees were
obscure, a tangle of fractal silhouettes from which
there now burst pigeons and sparrows and starlings,
startled out of their sleep by the compulsion of the
Piper's spell. They swirled like rubbish for a moment,
and then their movements became as precise and
sudden as a mathematical simulation.

They converged on the Piper, imploding from all
sectors of the sky towards his hunched shoulders,
and then en masse they rose again, suddenly clumsy,
trying to fly in concert, dragging the Piper's body
through the air with them.

'The fucker's following us!' Saul screeched in
fright. He realized as he spoke that Loplop could not
hear him, that all that stopped Loplop from joining his subjects in transporting the Piper was the fact that
Saul had deafened him.

Saul rocked alarmingly in Loplop's tight embrace.
The streets lurched below them. They oscillated
uncertainly between the skies and the freezing earth.
Loplop's wails were now turning to moans; he
crooned to comfort himself. Behind them a writhing
clot of birds dragged the Piper through the air after
them. As birds fell away, exhausted or crushed, others
rushed to their place, dug their claws into the Piper's
clothes and flesh, pulling against each other, bearing
him on in a butterfly's drunken rush.

The Piper was gaining on them.


245



The moon glinted briefly on water and railway
tracks far below. Loplop began to spiral out of the sky.

Saul shook the legs that held him, shouted at him to
continue, but Loplop was close to fainting, and the
screaming in his head was all he could hear. Saul
caught glimpses of a vast roadway and an undulating
red plain below them, but they were snatched from
his field of vision as Loplop's body spun. The Piper was closing in, shedding his entourage like a ragged
man shedding clothes.

They fell. Saul caught glimpses of a network of
railtracks spreading out like a fan, and then that red
field again, the tight-packed roofs of a hundred red
buses. They were spiralling towards Westbourne Park
station, where bus routes and railways converged on a
hill, under the yawning gloom of the Westway.

They swept into that shade and crashed to the
ground. Saul was thrown from Loplop's grasp. He
rolled over and over, came to a stop, covered in dust
and dirt. Loplop lay some feet away, hunched up in a
strange position, his arms wrapped around his head,
his arse thrust into the air, his knees on the ground.

They were beside the dark entrance to the bus terminus.
A little way off was the yard, full of the buses
Saul had seen from the air. In the cavernous building
before him were hundreds more. They were packed
tight, an intricate puzzle set up and solved day after
day; there was a strict order in which they could leave
the garage. Each was surrounded by its fellows, no


246



more than two feet away on any side, a maze of the
ridiculous-looking vehicles.

Loplop's suit was muddy and ruined.

Moving unsteadily through the sky came the Piper.
Saul stumbled across the threshold into the vaulted
chamber, dragging Loplop behind him. He ducked
out of sight behind the nearest bus, which constituted
one of the red labyrinth's external walls. He shook
Loplop's leg, pulled him towards him. Loplop flopped
a little and lay still. He breathed heavily. Saul looked
around frantically. He could hear the storm of wings which heralded the Piper's arrival, and above it the
thin whistle of the Lord of the Dance himself. There
was a gust of air as the Piper was swept down into the
cold hall, spewing feathers in his wake.

The whistling stopped. Instantly the birds dispersed
in panic, and Saul heard a thud as the Piper
landed on the roof of a nearby vehicle. For a minute,
there was no sound apart from the escaping birds,
then footsteps approached across the buses' roofs.

Saul let go of Loplop's legs and flattened himself
against the bus beside him. He crawled sidewise, striving
for quietness. He felt feral instincts awaken in
him. He was dead silent.

The bus was an old Routemaster, with an open
platform at the back. Saul made his way silently into
this opening, as the footsteps above him grew nearer.
They moved slowly, up and down over the roofs,


247



punctuated by little leaps as the Piper crossed the
ravine between two vehicles.

Saul backed slowly up the stairs without a sound as
the footsteps approached. Then again there was a
jump, and the landing made him shudder with the
vibration as the Piper leapt onto Saul's bus and strode
across its roof.

The bus was in darkness. Saul moved backwards
continually, his hands reaching out to touch the rows
of seats on either side. He grasped the steel poles as if
the bus was moving, steadying himself. His mouth
hung open stupidly. He gazed at the ceiling, his eyes
following the steps above. They crossed in a long
diagonal, towards where he and Loplop had landed.
Then they reached the edge and Saul's heart lurched
into his mouth as the Piper's body flew past a window
on his left. He froze, but nothing happened. The Piper
had not seen him. Saul crouched silently, crept
forward, came up from underneath the window
frame, pushed just enough of his head into the open to
see, his hands framing his face, his eyes big, like a
Chad graffitied on a wall.

Below him, the Piper was leaning over Loplop. He
was touching him with one hand, his stance like a
concerned bystander who finds someone sitting in the
street and crying. The Piper's clothes were shredded
from all the tiny bird claws, and they ran red.

Saul waited. But the Piper did not attack Loplop,
just left him in his misery and bloody silence. He


248



stood and slowly turned. Saul ducked down and held
himself quite still. His mind suddenly began to replay
the grotesque two-step he had seen the Piper perform
with Deborah and he felt weak and enraged, and disgusted
with himself, and scared. He breathed fast and
urgent, with his face down on his knees, hunched on
the top floor of the bus, in the dark.

And then he heard a whistling, and it came from
the passenger entrance below. He felt the enormous
welling of energy in his arms and legs that fear gave
him.

The Piper's voice called up to him, as amiable and
relaxed as ever.

'Don't forget I can smell you, little ratling.' Feet
began to mount the stairs and Saul scuttled backwards
towards the front of the bus. 'What, do you think you
can live and sleep and eat in a sewer and I wouldn't
smell you? Honestly, Saul...'

A dark figure appeared at the top of the stairs.

Saul rose to his feet.

'I'm the Lord of the Dance, Saul. You still don't get
it, do you? You really think you're going to get away
from me? You're dead, Saul, because you just will not
dance to my tune.'

There was fury in his voice as he said that. The
Piper stepped forward, and the weak light of the
garage hit him. It was enough for Saul's rat eyes.

The Piper's face was a ghastly white, ruthlessly
stripped of colour. His hair had been tugged from its


249



neat ponytail by a thousand frantic little claws, and it
swept around his face and under his chin and around J
his throat as if it would strangle him. His clothes
were pulled and stripped and tugged and unravelled
and stretched in all directions, a collectivity of
tiny injuries, and everywhere blood spattered him,
streaked his milky face. His expression belied his
ruined skin. He stared at Saul with the same relaxed, '*
amiable gaze he had first levelled, the same banal I
cheerfulness with which he had greeted Saul, dispatched
Deborah, the calm which had only disappeared
for one moment when he could not make Saul dance.

'Saul,' he said, in greeting, and held out his hands.

He walked forward.

Tm not a sadist, Saul,' he said, smiling. He held out
his hand as he walked, and when it touched one of
the steel poles that rose between seat and ceiling, he
gripped it, then grasped it with his other hand. He
began to twist it, his body straining and shaking violently
with the effort, and the steel slowly bent and
tried to stretch, snapped loudly. He did not take his
eyes from Saul, nor did his expression change, even as
he strained. He yanked at the broken end and the pole
broke again, came away in his hand, a twisted cudgel
of shining metal.

'I'm not eager to hurt you,' he continued, resuming
his pace. 'But you are going to die, because you won't
dance when I tell you to. So you're going to die now.'
The slender club swung down with a flash like an


250



electric arc, and Saul hissed as he saw it move, jerked
under the shining thing with a rodent's nervous grace.
The club tore great gouts of stuffing into the air as it
eviscerated a seat with its ragged tip.

The Piper's strength was awesome and unstoppable,
dwarfing the tight rat muscles that reclaimed
food had awoken in Saul, his new power that he was
so proud of. He rolled away from the club and
scuttled backwards to the front end of the bus. He
thought of Deborah and rage choked him. His rat
side and his humanity oscillated violently, buffeted by
the great storm of his anger. He wanted to bite out the
Piper's throat and then he wanted to beat him, to smash his head, pummel him methodically with his
fists and then he wanted to claw at his stomach, he
wanted to gut him with his sharp claws. And he could
do none of these things, because he was not strong
enough, and the Piper would kill him.

The Piper straightened a little, paused and grinned
at Saul. 'Enough,' he said and lunged straight forward,
his weapon held like a spear. Saul screeched in fear and
rage and frustration as his bestial reflexes carried him to the side of the brutal thrust.

There was no way past the Piper, that was clear as
he jumped, and he pulled his legs up tight under him
and brought them down on the seat beside him, and
he drove them up again like pistons, kicking hard
away from the seat, out to the side, punching at the
glass next to him, stretching his body out like a diver,


251


feeling the window fall around him in a million pieces,
taking bits of his skin with it as it fell.

He flew through the air between the bus and its
neighbour, another of the same route, that had preceded
it into the maze. Saul's body passed fifteen feet
above the ground, and then another wall of glass disintegrated
under his ferocious rat fists and his arms
and shoulders disappeared into the next bus before his
feet had even left the last one, and the explosive collapse
of the first window, still loud in his ears, segued
into the next, and he was through, rolling off the seat,
glass shards showering him like confetti.

He could still hear a spattering sound from outside,
as little nuggets of glass hit the ground. He stood,
shaking, ignored his ripped skin and deep bruises. He
ran for the stairs at the back of the bus. From behind
him he heard a strange sound, a roar of irritation,
exasperation raised to the point of rage. There was a
further loud crashing, and in the curved mirror at the
top of the stairs he saw another window shatter, saw
the Piper burst the glass feet-first and land sitting on a
seat, his head craned to watch Saul. He swung up
immediately, no more talk, and raced after Saul.

Saul careened down the stairs and out of the rear of
the bus, running through the dark alleys between the
sides of the great red vehicles, losing himself in
the maze. He stopped, crouching, and held his breath.

From a way away he heard feet running, and a voice
shouting, 'What the fuck is going on?' Oh Christ,


252



thought Saul. The fucking guard. Saul's heart was
beating like a Jungle bassline.

He could hear the guard's leaden steps somewhere
close by, and he could clearly hear the man's wheezing
and panting. Saul stood quite still, tried to listen
beyond the sounds of the guard, to hear any movement
the Piper might make.

There was nothing.

An overweight, middle-aged man in a grey uniform
emerged suddenly into the gap between buses in
which Saul stood. The two men stood still for a
moment, gazing stupidly at each other. They moved
simultaneously. The guard approached with a truncheon
raised, opened his mouth to shout, but Saul was
on him, underneath the sluggish truncheon, pushing it
out of his opponent's hand. He pinned the man's arm
behind him, held his mouth closed and hissed in his
ear.

'There is a very bad man in here. He will kill you.
Leave right now.'

The guard's eyes were blinking violently.

'Do you understand?' hissed Saul.

The guard nodded vehemently. He was looking
around frantically for his truncheon, deeply scared by
the ease with which he had been disarmed.

Saul released him and the man bolted. But as he
reached the end of the little bus-street, the sound of
the flute pierced the air around them and he froze.
Instantly Saul ran to him, slapped his face hard twice,


253



pushed him, but the man's eyes were now ecstatic,,
fixed with a quizzical, overjoyed look over Saul's,
shoulder.

He moved suddenly, pushing Saul aside with a
strength he should not possess, and skipped like an
excited child deep into the red maze.

'Oh fuck, nol' breathed Saul, and overtook him,;
shoved him back, but the man kept moving, simply
pushing past Saul without once looking at him. The
flute was closer now, and Saul grabbed him in a bear
hug, held him, tried to block his ears, but the man,
impossibly strong, elbowed him in the groin and
punched him expertly in the solar plexus, knocking
the wind out of Saul and doubling him over in a crippling
reflex prison. He could only stare desperately,
willing himself to breathe, as the man disappeared.

Saul pulled himself up and hobbled after him.

In the heart of the bus maze was an empty space. It
was a strange little room of red metal and glass, a
monk's hole barely six feet square. Saul found his way
towards the centre, rounded a corner and was there, at
the outskirts of the square.

Before him stood the Piper, flute to his lips, staring
at Saul over the shoulder of the guard, who pranced
ridiculously to the shrillness of the flute.

Saul grabbed the man's shoulders from behind, and
hauled him away from the Piper. But the guard spun
around and Saul saw that a shard of glass was embedded
deep in one of his eyes and thick blood had


254


welled all over his face. Saul shrieked and the Piper's
playing stopped dead. The guard's expression took on a puzzled cast; he shook his head, raised his hand
experimentally towards his face. Before he could
touch his eye, silver flashed behind him and he
dropped like a stone. A pool as dark and thick as tar
began to spread very quickly from his broken head.

Saul was quite still.

The Piper stood before him, wiping his flute clean.

'I had to let you know, Saul, what I can do.' He
spoke quietly and did not look up, like a teacher who
is very disappointed but is trying not to shout. 'You
see, I feel that you don't really believe what I can do. I
feel that you think because you won't listen to me, no
one else will. I wanted to show you quite how hard they listen, see? I wanted you to know. Before you
die.'


Saul leapt straight up.

Even the Piper stared, momentarily stupid with
amazement, as Saul grabbed one of the surrounding buses' big wing-mirrors, pivoted in his flight, and
swung his feet through the top front window. Then
the Piper was there behind him, his flute thrust
aggressively into his belt. No attempt to hide this
time, Saul just hurled himself through windows again,
leaping the gap to the next bus, bursting into its top
deck. He picked himself up and leapt again, refusing


255



to hear his screaming limbs and skin. Again and agaii
always followed, always hearing the Piper behir
him, the two of them pushing through layer after layer*
of glass, littering the ground below, a fantastically fasti
and violent passage through the air, Saul desperate
reach the edge of the maze, eager to take this into opeej
ground.

And then there it was. As he girded himself to leap^
through another window, he realized that what he?
could see through it was not just a bus two feet,*
beyond, that he was looking out at a window in the?
garage wall itself, and through that at a house, a long \ way off. He smashed free of the last bus and leapt
onto the window-ledge, halfway up the bricks.
Between him and that house a gash was cut through
London soil, a wide chasm filled with railway lines.
And between Saul and those railway lines was nothing
but a high fence of steel slats and a long drop.


Saul could hear the Piper still following him, great
heavy crashes and vibrations rocking the massed ranks
of buses. Saul kicked out the final window. He braced
himself, jumped out and clutched at the dull metal
barrier below. He landed across it, his weight shaking
it violently. He clung to it tight, let his balance adjust.
Scuttled a little forward, looked back at the ripped
out window. The Piper appeared, looked out. He had
stopped grinning. Saul fled down the sheer metal, his


256



descent something between an exercise in rat agility, a
controlled slide, and a fall.

He looked up momentarily and saw the Piper
trying to follow. But it was too far for him: he could
not grasp that fence, he could not crawl like a rat can

crawl.

'Fuck it!' he screamed, and snatched his flute to his
lips. And as he played, all the birds began to return.
They flocked once again to his shoulders.

The railway lines curved out of sight in both directions.
Above him Saul could see buildings which
seemed to jut out over the valley, seemed to loom
over him. He ran, following the tracks to the east. He
snatched a glimpse behind him, and saw the birds
settling on the dark figure who stood in the window
frame. Saul lurched hopelessly on, and nearly sobbed
with delight when he heard a tight metallic snap, a
restrained rattling, and he knew that a train was
approaching. He looked behind him and saw its lights.

He moved sideways a little, making room, running
alongside the tracks. Come on! he willed it, as the two
lights he could not help but think of as eyes slowly
drew nearer. Above them he saw the scarecrow figure
of the Piper approaching him.

But now the train was nearby and Saul was smiling
as he ran, as his sores and his ripped skin pulled
against each other. Even as the Piper swung close
enough for Saul to see his face, the tube train hurtled
past Saul and he accelerated as it slowed for a bend,


257



and as it passed him he threw himself at the back
the final carriage, grappling with it like a judo wrestle
jostling for position, thrusting his fingers deep int
crevices and under extrusions of metal.

He pulled himself to the top and spread his ar
wide, clinging tight to the edges of the roof as
train began to increase its speed. Saul swivelled on ]
stomach until he faced backwards, stretched his nec^
and looked up into the Piper's enraged face, bobbir
up and down in the air, contorted even as he continue
to play, borne aloft by a canopy of dying birds in 1
slit through the city, this roofless tunnel - but ther
was nothing the Piper could do to catch Saul now.

And as the train pulled away even faster, Saul saw
him become a flying ragdoll, and then a speck, and|
then he couldn't see him any more, and he looked instead at the buildings around him.

He saw light and motion inside them, and he;
realized that people were alive that night, making tea;
and writing reports and having sex and reading books and watching TV and fighting and expiring quietly in;
bed, and that the city had not cared that he had been ;
about to die, that he had discovered the secret of his
ancestry, that a murderous force armed with a flute
was preparing to kill the King of the Rats.

The buildings above him were beautiful and
impassive. Saul realized that he was very tired and
bleeding and in shock, and that he had seen two
people die that night, killed by a power that didn't


258



care if they lived or died. And he felt a disturbance in
the air behind him, and he put his head down and let
his breath out in a great sob as the approaching tunnel
swept up rubbish and sucked it in behind the train, as
a sudden warm wind hit him like a boxer's glove, and
all the diffuse city light went out and he disappeared
into the earth.


259
PART FIVE


SPIRITS
CHAPTERTWENTY


Fabian shook his head, scrunched up his dreadlocks
into vicious little bunches. His head ached terribly. He
lay on his bed and pulled faces at the mirror just
visible on his desk.

Lying some way off was his 'work in progress', as
his tutor insisted on calling it. The left two-thirds of
the huge canvas were a garish panoply of metallic
spray-paints and bright, flat acrylic; the right third
was covered in ghost letters, faint pencil lines and
charcoal. He had lost motivation for the project,
though he still felt a certain pride in it as he stared at it
again.

It was an illuminated manuscript for the 1990s, the
letters a careful synthesis of mediaeval calligraphy and
graffiti lettering. The whole screen, six feet by eight,
consisted of just three lines: Sometimes I want to lose
myself in faith/and Jungle is the only thing I can turn
to,/because in Drum an' Bass I know my place...

He had thought of a phrase which started with an
'S' because it was such a pleasing letter to illuminate.


263



It was very large, contained in a box, and surrounded
by ganja leaves and sound-system speakers and
modern serfs, rudebwoys and gyals, an intricate
parody, the expressionless zombies of monastic art
executed by Keith Haring or one of the New York
Subway Artists. The rest of the writing was mostly
dark, but not matt-black, shot through with neon
strips and encased in gaudy integuments. In the corner
below the writing lurked the police, like devils: The
Man. But these days the sloganeering had to be ironic.
Fabian knew the rules and couldn't be bothered to
disobey them, so the devils coming up from the pit
were ridiculous, the worst nightmares of St Anthony
and Sweet Sweetback combined.

And up in the top right, though not yet drawn,
would be the dancers, the worshippers who've found
their way out of the slough of urban despond, a drab
maze of greys in the centre of the piece, to Drum and
Bass heaven. The dancing was fierce, but he had been
careful to make these faces more than ever like those
in the old pictures he was mimicking: placid, stupid,
expressionless. Because individualism, he remembered
explaining earnestly to his lecturer, had no more place
in a Jungle club than in a thirteenth-century church.
That was why he loved it and why it frustrated him
and sometimes frightened him. That was why the
ambiguous text as well.

He was always on at Natasha to cut a really political track, and she demurred, claiming not to be interested,


264


which irritated him. So until someone would do it,
he would keep on with his loving chiding. Hence
the Middle Ages, he had explained. The necessary
displays of opulence and style at the clubs were as
grandiose and vapid as any display of courtly etiquette,
and the awe in which DJs were held was
positively feudal.

At first, his tutor had hummed and hawed, and
sounded unconvinced at the project, until Fabian had
hinted that he did not appreciate the importance of
Jungle in modern pop culture, and that had given it
the seal of approval. All the lecturers at his art college
would rather have died than admit that there were any
gaps in their knowledge of youth.

But he was unable to concentrate on 'Jungle Liturgy', even though he was quite proud of it.

He was unable to concentrate on anything except
his disappearing friends. First Saul, in a blur of
shocking violence and mystery, then Kay in circumstances
far less dramatic but no less mysterious.
Fabian could still not bring himself really to worry
about Kay, although it had been at least a couple of
weeks now since he had seen him, maybe more. He
was concerned, but Kay was so vague, so aimless and
genial, that any notion that he was in trouble was
impossible to take seriously. It was, nonetheless, frustrating
and perplexing. No one seemed to know where
he had gone, including his flatmates, who were beginning
to get agitated about his share of the rent.


265



And now it seemed as if he might be losings
Natasha. Fabian scowled at the thought and turned 1
over on his bed, sulking. He was angry with Natasha. j She was obsessive about her music at the best of times,
but when she was on a roll it was compounded. She I
was excited about the music she was making with"!
Pete, a man Fabian considered too weird to be liked. 1
Natasha was working on tracks to take to Junglist
Terror, the event coming up fast in the Elephant and
Castle. She had not called Fabian for several days.

It was Saul's departure, he thought, which had pre- |
cipitated all this. Saul was hardly the leader of a social 1
phalanx but, since his extraordinary escape from
custody, something that held Fabian's friendships
together had dissipated. Fabian was lonely.

He missed Saul deeply, and he was angry with him.
He was angry with all his friends. He was angry with
Natasha for failing to realize that he needed her, for
not putting away her fucking sequencer and talking to
him about Saul. He was quite sure she must be missing
Saul, but she was such a control freak she was unlikely
to discuss the matter. She would only allude to it
obliquely and suddenly, and then refuse to say more
about it. She would listen to him, though, patiently.
She always broke that social contract, the exchange
of insecurities and neuroses with one another. With
Natasha the offering was always one-way. She either
did not know, or did not care, how that disempowered
him.


266



And Saul - Fabian was angry with Saul. He found
it amazing his friend had not contacted him. He
understood that something unbelievable must be
going on in Saul's life, that it would take a lot to cut
Fabian off so completely, but it still hurt him. And he
was desperate to know what was happening! He was
sometimes afraid now that Saul was dead, that the
police had killed him and had concocted a bizarre
story to allay suspicion, or that he was caught up
in something huge - vague images of Triads flashed
through Fabian's mind, and the London chapter of the
Mafia, and God-knew-what - and that he had been
routinely eliminated.

Often that seemed the likeliest explanation, the
only thing that could explain the deaths of the police
and Saul's escape, but Fabian could not believe he
would have known nothing about his friend's involvement.
It seemed unbelievable. And then he was forced
to consider the possibility that Saul had killed those
men - and his father, which he did not believe, definitely
- but then ... what was happening?

Fabian stared around him at his room, a tip of paint
and record covers and clothes and CDs and posters
and cups and wrappers and dirt and paper and books
and pads and pens and canvas and bits of glass for
sculptures and plates and postcards and peeling wallpaper.
He was lonely and pissed off.


267



The view was so familiar Natasha did not see it. It was
a tabula rasa to her, a white space on which she could
impose her tunes. She had gazed out at it for so many
hours and days, especially since Saul disappeared and
Pete appeared, that she had achieved a Zen-like transcendence
of it. She transcribed its features into her
mind as nothingness.

First the net curtains, a tawdry throwback to the
previous occupant that she had never bothered to get
rid of. They moved slightly, a constant whiteness with flickering edges. Through this veil the trees, just at the
level where the boughs thrust outward from the body.
Stripped by winter, black branches clutching. So a film
of curtain, then the twisted knots of wood, dark and
intricate, a random lattice of twigs and thick limbs.
Beyond that a street lamp .

After dark when it had rained, she would sit at her
window and poke her head out from under the net
curtains and stare at that lamp through the tree
outside. Its rays would pass through the thicket,
lighting up the inside of each branch, surrounding
the streetlight with thin circles of illuminated wood,
composites of a thousand tiny wet sections reflecting
the light. As Natasha moved her head, the streetlight's
halo moved with it behind the tree. The lamp sat like a
fat spider in the centre of a wooden web.

Now it was day and the lamp was nothing, just
another washed-out shape beyond the curtain, a shape
Natasha was not seeing as she stared at it. Beyond it


268



the houses on the other side of the street. The child's
bedroom, the little study. The kitchen. The roofs, the
slate anaemic, its rough red invisible inside the room.
Behind the roofs the jutting landmarks, the estates
that stretched up over West London, squat and huge
and awe-inspiring. Behind them a sky that was all
cloud, a shifting scudding mass whose details twisted
and turned and decayed leaving the totality unchanged.

Natasha knew every part of this diorama. Had anything
been missing or different, she would have seen it
immediately. Instead she saw that it was as it should
be, and therefore she did not see it at all. In her careful
itemization of its qualities, it became invisible.

She felt as if she would float into the clouds,
sometimes.

She did not feel tethered at all.

She thought about Saul but she thought about
basslines as well, and she wondered where he was, and
she heard a stunning track suggest itself in her mind.
She wondered where Pete was. She wanted to hear his
flute. It was time to put some layers down on to Wind City. She realized that she could not really think
straight. She had not felt secure and engaged for some
days now. But she was eager to lay down some more
flute.

Pared down as it was, Natasha wanted to strip
the room of all its extraneous objects, the bed, the
telephone, the cups she saw by her pillow. She wanted


269



to close the door and ignore the rest of her flat and
just stare at that window, at that view, through the
dilute milk interference of the curtain. She wanted no
sounds except the tiny murmurings of the street and
her own sequencer, weaving her tune, making Wind
City what she wanted.

A couple of weeks ago she had mentioned the track
to Fabian when he had called her, and he had made a
joke about the title: about eating too many beans, or
something cretinous like that. She had brought the call
to an abrupt close, and when she had put the receiver
down she had cursed him, sworn at him, told him how
fucking stupid and crass he was. A part of her had
tried to evaluate his comment dispassionately, tried to
see it as he saw it, but even as she understood she
saw how wrong he was. Her opinion of Fabian was
shaken. Maybe he had to hear the track, she concluded
charitably.

He could not hear the word Wind without remembering
his little idiot jokes in playgrounds, the puerile
scatology she could not empathize with. It was a boy
thing. How could she make him see what she saw
when she named that track, when she played it and
tweaked it and made it work so well it made her chest
hollow?

To start, a tiny piano run from some histrionic
Swingbeat rubbish. She had stripped it down so
severely that she had dehumanized it. This was something
different from her usual approach. The piano,


270



the instrument that so often ruined Jungle, making her
think of Happy House and idiotic Ibiza clubs, here
turned into an instrument that signalled the destruction
of anything human in this world. Deeply
plaintive and melancholy, but ghostly. The piano tried
to remember melancholia, and presented it as if for
approval. Is this it? Is this sadness? it asked. I can't
recall. And under the piano she faded in, for a fraction
of a second, subliminal, she laid down a sample of
radio static.

She had sought it for a long time, recording great
swathes of sound from all the bands on her radio,
rejecting them all, until she found and seized and
created exactly what she wanted. And here she hinted
at it.

The beat kicked in after the piano went around and came around several times, each time separated by a
severe gap, a rupture in the music. And the beat was
all snares at first, fast and dreamy, and a sound like a
choir welled up and then resolved itself into electronic
orchestration, fabricated emotion, a failed search for
feeling.

And then the bassline.

A minimal program, a single thud, pause, another
thud, pause, another, longer pause ... double thud
and back to the beginning. And underneath it all she
began to make those snatches of radio static a little
longer, and longer still, and looping them more and
more randomly, until it was a constant, shifting refrain


271


under the beat. A chunk of interference that sounded
like someone trying to break out of white noise. She
was proud of that static, had created it by finding a
station on shortwave and then just missing it, so that the peaks and troughs of the crackling could have been
voices, eager to make contact, and failing ... or they
could have just been static.

The radio existed to communicate. But here it was
failing, it had gone rogue, it had forgotten its purpose
like the piano, and the people could not reclaim the
city.

Because it was a city Natasha saw as she listened.
She sped through the air at huge speed between vast
crumbling buildings, everything grey, towering and
enormous and flattened, variegated and empty,
unclaimed. And Natasha painted this picture carefully,
took a long time creating it, dropping a hundred
hints of humanity into the track, hints that could not
deliver, dead ends, disappointments.

And when she had sucked her listener in to the city,
all alone, Natasha brought on the Wind.

A sudden burst of flute mimicking the almost
speaking of the static, a trick she had pilfered from a
Steve Reich album - God knew where she had heard
that - where he made violins mimic human voices.
The static rolled on and the beat rolled on and the
soulless piano rolled on and as the static rose and fell
the flute would shudder into existence behind it for a


272



moment, a shrill echo, and then it would disappear.
Gusts of Wind sweeping rubbish off the streets. Then
again. More and more often, until two gusts of flute
would appear, overlaying each other. Another and
another would join in, a cacophony of simultaneous
forces of nature, half-musical, half-feral, artificial,
commentary, an intruder in the city that shaped it
contemptuously, sculpted it. A long low wail of flute
piped up from behind, gusting through everything,
the only constant, dwarfing the effect of the other
sounds, intimidating, humbling. The peaks and
troughs in the static go, they are blown flat by the
flute. The piano goes, each trill of notes reducing by
one until it is just a single note like a slow metronome passing time. Then that, too, disappears. The intricacies
of flute are superseded and only the great single
wind remains. Flute, white noise, snares and bassline,
stretching off for a long time, an unbroken architecture
of deserted beats.

This was Wind City, a huge metropolis, deserted
and broken, alone, entropic, until a tsunami of air
breaks over it, a tornado of flute clears its streets,
mocks the pathetic remnants of humanity in its path
and blows them away like tumbleweed, and the city
stands alone and cleared of all its rubbish. Even the
ghost of the radio proclaims the passing of the people,
a flat expanse of empty sound. The boulevards and
parks and suburbs and centre of the city were taken,


273



expropriated, possessed by the Wind. The property of
the Wind.


This was Wind City, the title that made Fabian laugh.

She could not talk to him after he had made his
joke.

Pete really understood. In fact, when he heard
pieces of the track, he told her that it was she who
understood, that she really understood him.

Pete loved the track with an extraordinary passion.
She supposed it appealed to him, the notion of the
whole world possessed by the Wind.


The little flat in Willesden had become the setting for
Crowley's dreams. He was no longer fooled by its
nondescript architecture. This flat was a dynamo. It
had been turned into a generator of horrors.

He was on his haunches, looking down at another
ruined face.

The little flat was becoming steeped in violence. It
contained some vast attractive force luring people in
to violent and bloody mayhem. Crowley felt trapped
in some ghastly time-slip. Here we are again, he
thought, gazing at the destroyed and bloody mask
beneath him.

There had been the first time, when he had seen
Saul's father shattered on the lawn. Not systematically


274



pulped like this, it was true. Maybe he had been
running from the flat. Maybe that was why his injuries
were less severe; he had tasted it in the air, he had
known that had he stayed he would not just die but be
crushed. He had not wanted to die like an insect, so he
had hurled himself instead from the window, eager for
a human death.

Crowley shook his head. His edge was blunting, he
could not help it. Here we are again.

Then Barker, another one whose face was destroyed,
and Page, looking over his own shoulder,
impossible.

And now another had been broken on this sacri
hcial altar. The girl lay on her back, the floor around
her was vile with blood. Her face was bent inwards as
if on a hinge. Crowley glanced up at the door-frame.
That patch of wood there, with radial explosions of
blood and saliva and mucus bursting out from it on all
sides, that section of the frame there, that was where
her face had been thrust.

Crowley vaguely remembered the sense of duty
which pushed him into the dark corridors at night, as
he lay sleeping. He would stand in the sitting-room,
where he was now, looking behind him, again, again,
like a dog chasing its tail, unable to stand still because
he knew that if he did something would come and smash his face ...

He never saw Saul, in his dreams.


275



Bailey entered, pushing through the perplexed knot of
uniforms.

'No sign of anything anywhere else, sir. Just this,
just here.'

'Has Herrin got anything?' he said.

'He's still talking to the uniform who got called to
the bus station this morning. A load of the buses are
smashed up; and the guard, they reckon it wasn't the
glass in his eye that killed him. He was hit over
the head with a long, thin stick.'

'Our unusual club, again,' mused Crowley. 'Too
thin for most people's taste; they like something that
packs a wallop. Of course, if you're as strong as our
murderer seems to be, the thinner the better. Less
surface area, more pressure.'

'Our murderer, sir?'

Crowley looked at him. Bailey seemed confused,
and even accusatory. Crowley could tell that he
thought his superior was losing it. The extraordinary
nature of the crimes had affected Bailey in the
opposite way from Crowley. He had been thrust
towards an aggressive, dogmatic common sense,
determined to bring Saul to heel, refusing to be overawed
or surprised by the carnage he saw.

'What?' demanded Crowley.

'You sound unsure, sir. Have you got some reason
for thinking it's not Garamond?'

Crowley shook his head as if at a mosquito, irritated,
brushing the air. Bailey withdrew.


276



Yes, I have ample reason, thought Crowley, because
I interviewed him and saw him. I mean Jesus look at
him, he did not do this. And if he did, then something
happened to change him in that night after I interviewed
him, and he changed so much h,e is no longer
what I saw, in which case I am still right, Saul Garamond
did not do this, and I don't give a shit what you
and Herrin think, you lumbering great pricks.

Nothing added up. The dead guard at Westbourne
Grove was clearly the victim of the same man as had
killed the two policemen, and this girl here lying
ruined in blood and bone. But the police had been
called to the bus station minutes after the inhabitants
of Terragon Mansions had reported violent shouts and
bumps from upstairs. And Westbourne Park was
simply too far from Willesden to be reached in that
time. So whoever was shattering all that glass in those
buses and pushing it in that poor man's eye could not
be the same one who had destroyed this woman.

Of course, Herrin and Bailey saw no problem with
this. Someone had been confused about the time. The
people in Willesden must be half an hour or so out. Or
the people in Westbourne Grove were, or both were
fifteen minutes out, or something. And the fact that so
many were out by the same amount, well, what did you think happened then, sir? If not that?

And of course Crowley had no answer.

He was intrigued by reports of music coming from
the garage at the time Saul - or whoever - was


277



destroying it. The reports were vague, but seemed
to indicate a high-pitched sound like a recorder or a
flute or pipes, or something. Saul was no musician,
Crowley knew that, though he was apparently something
of an aficionado of Dance music, the kind that
his taciturn friend Natasha played. So what of the
pipes?

Crowley could see the scenario being created for
Saul. Saul had become a serial killer. And Saul therefore
needed rituals, such as the return to this, the site
of his first murder, that had unhinged him. And the
playing of music at the site of a murder, such as
the one at the bus station, what was this but ritualized?
Perhaps he had played music also at the death
of the as yet unidentified man in the underground,
a crime Crowley was still sure was part of the
same rampage. The public-transport connection only
strengthened his conviction.

So, why was Saul no longer into Dance music?
Why had he started playing what most of those who
had heard it described as Folk music? None of this
was airtight, of course, of course ...

But Crowley could not help thinking it might be another who had played the music in the bus station.
Why not? Why must it be Saul? What if it was another who mocked him with this music so utterly different
to Saul's own taste?

Crowley straightened up suddenly. A long, thin,
light club. Made of metal: the impact was clear about


278



that. Something the murderer hung on to, used more
than once. Took from crime to crime. Where he
played music, it seemed.

'Bailey!' Crowley yelled.

The big man appeared, still impatient, still exasperated
with his boss.

He all but rolled his eyes at Crowley's new
question.

'Bailey, do any of Saul's mates play the flute?'


279
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE


Deep underneath London, King Rat skulked and ferreted
in the darkness.

He clutched a stash of food, carried it slung over^j
one shoulder like a swag bag. His strides were long A and left no sign. He stalked silently through the water
of the sewers.

The rats ran as he approached. The braver souls n
stayed a little to spit at him and provoke him. His|
smell was deeply ingrained in their nervous system,|
and they had been taught to despise it. King Ratl
ignored them. Walked on. His eyes were dark.

He passed like a thief in the night. Unclear. Min-l
imal. Dirty. Subaltern. His motives were opaque.

He reached under the dirty stream to dislodge the!
plug to his throne-room, slid through the murk intoi
the great teardrop chamber. He shook the water fror
him, and stamped into the room.

Saul came from behind him. He clutched a broken!
chair leg which he swung at an incredible speed and
cracked against the back of King Rat's skull.


280



King Rat flew forward and flung his arms out with
a sudden shrill bark of pain. He sprawled, rolled,
clutching his head, regained his footing.

Food spread across the sodden floor.

Saul was upon him, quivering, his jaw set hard and
tight. He swung the chair leg again and again.

King Rat was as pliable as quicksilver. He slid
impossibly out of Saul's flurry of blows and scampered
away, hissing, clutching his bleeding head.

He spun to face Saul.

Saul's face was a mosaic of bruises and blood and
puffy flesh. King Rat was quite still. He eyed Saul
with his hidden eyes. His teeth were bared and glinted
v,'ith dirty yellow light. His breath came hard. His
hands were crooked into eager claws.

But Saul hit him again, before those claws could
move. Saul's hands and club came at him hard, but
King Rat ripped up with his clawed hands and drew
lines on Saul's stomach, below his ruined shirt.

Saul spoke, muttering in time to the blows he
attempted to land.

'So what the fuck was Loplop doing there, unh?' Slam.

King Rat slipped outside the club's arc. It hit the
floor loudly.

'Tell him to follow me, unh?' Slam. 'What was he
going to do - report back?' Slam. This time the wood
connected and King Rat yelled in rage.

King Rat growled and slashed at Saul with those


281



claws, and Saul bellowed and swung the club wit
renewed venom. The two of them skittered around!
the dark room, slipping on mould and food, moving
now on two limbs, now on four. Saul and King Rat
moved like liminal figures, hovering between evolutionary
strata, bestial and knowing.

'So was Loplop going to send a message, unh?
bird? Little bird going to let slip where I was, then?'

Again the attacks came, again King Rat moved,!
refusing to engage in battle, content to draw blood*
and slip away, his teeth still visible and wicked.

'What if Loplop had accidentally told someone else!
where I was, unh? Was I fucking bait?' King Rat!
caught the club with his right hand and bit at it suddenly
and savagely, and it dissolved in a burst of|
splinters. Saul did not pause, but grasped King Rat's?
filthy lapels and carried him down into the muck,|
straddling him.

'Well you needn't have bothered, you fucking shit^ because the Piper was there and look what he did to
me, you shit. You just weren't ready, you and 'Nansi*
so poor old Loplop had to take him on his own.' Sat
pinioned King Rat's arms to the brick floor and bega
systematically to punch his face. But even trapped lit
that King Rat writhed and slipped under him,
many of the heavy blows did not land.

Saul thrust his face right up to King Rat, and stare
through the shadows on his eyes.

'I know you wouldn't give a fuck if I'd died, as lon^|


282



as I took Piper-man with me,' he hissed. 'And I know you killed my dad, you fucking shithead rapist, you
piece of crud - not the fucking Piper ..."

We.' King Rat shouted the word out and convulsed,
throwing Saul from him and sliding in a single
movement until he stood in characteristic pose by the
throne, skulking and aggrandizing, but this time with
his claws bared and his teeth dangerous, coated in
slaver like a wild animal. Saul moved backwards in the
dirt, fought to right himself.

King Rat spoke again. 'I never bumped off your
dad, stupid. I killed the Usurper.'

The word stayed in the air after he had spoken it.

King Rat spoke again.

'I'm your dad ...'

'No you fucking aren't, you weird old fucked-up
spiritual degenerate,' replied Saul instantly. 'I might
have your blood in my veins, you fucking rapist
bastard, but you aren't shit to me.'

Saul smacked himself on the forehead, laughing
bitterly.

'I mean, hello? "Your mother was a rat, and I'm
your uncle." Jesus, nice one - playing me like a
fucking idiot! And...' Saul paused and jerked his finger viciously at King Rat, 'and, that goddamn
fucking lunatic Piper who wants me dead only knows
about me because of you.'

Saul sat down hard and held his head in his hands.
King Rat watched him.


283



'I mean, I keep saying I've sorted it out, right?' Saul
murmured. 'And I just can't stop thinking about it.
You killed my father, you rapist shit, and when you
did that you let some fucking spirit of darkness out
after me, you gave him my fucking address, and, what,,
I'm supposed to go "Daddy!"?' Saul shook his head in
disgust. He felt his gut twist with contempt and
hatred. 'You can fuck off. It doesn't work like that.'

'So what're you after, an apology?'

King Rat was scornful. He moved towards Saul.

'What do you want? We're blood. It was half an age
since I left, since you were a little Godfer in the fat
man's arms. I could clock you getting flabby. It was
time to join your old dad, the cutpurse king. We're
blood.'

Saul stared up at him.

'No, fucker, I don't want shit from you.' Saul I
stood. 'What I want is out.' He moved off behind the|
throne, turned to face King Rat. 'You can deal with|
the Piper on your own. He only wants me because of|
you, you know? You've been bragging about me, you
stupid shit. You don't give a fuck about family. Yow raped my mum so you could have your weapon. Th<|
Piper knows it; he called me the secret weapon. know what I mean to you. I know I'm a good way o|
getting at him, because he can't control me.

'But he only wants me dead because of you. So, tel
you what.'


284



Saul moved backwards as he spoke, towards the
room's peculiar exit.

'Tell you what. You deal with the Piper as best you
can, and /'// look after myself. Agreed?'

And Saul looked King Rat in the eye, those eyes he
could still not see, and he left the room.


Up above the sewers: in the sky, over the slate. Out in
the air. Saul fingered the skin over his bruises and felt
it stretched out taut and split. He gazed at London,
spread out before him, unfolding, the underworld
threatening to burst through, to rupture its surface
tension. It was dark; his life was always dark now. He
was becoming a night creature.

His body hurt. His head ached, his arms were
scratched and stretched, his muscles burned with deep
bruises. But he could not stay still. He felt a desperate
eagerness to work through it, to burn the pain out of
his body. He swung meaninglessly around girders and
antennae, loose-limbed and elegant like a gibbon. He
was suddenly very hungry, but he remained on the
roofs for a while, running and jumping over low walls
and skylights. He straddled the intricacies of St
Pancras station, and sped along the spine of roofs
which jutted out behind it like a dinosaur's tail.

This was the realm of the arches. Weird little businesses
waged a battle against empty space, cramming


285



into the unlikely hollows below the railway lines.
They proclaimed themselves with crude signs.

OFFICE EQUIPMENT CHEAP.
WE DELIVER.

Saul descended to street level. He was fighting to channel the force of elation which had flooded
through him at his renunciation of King Rat. He was
fragile, ready to burst into tears or hysterics. He
was captivated by London.

Someone approached him from around a corner: a |
woman in heels, he could hear, a brave soul walking
this area alone at night. He did not want to scare her; |
so he slumped against a wall and slid down to the
floor, just a comatose drunk.

The associations of homelessness struck him and,
as the heels clicked by him unseen, he thought of |
Deborah and he felt his throat catch. And then it was 1
easy to think of his father.

But Saul did not have time for this, he decided. He I
leapt up and followed his nose to the dustbins of this!
odd realm, a world where the streets were empty off
houses, where the only things that surrounded himl
were the peculiar businesses, Victorian throwbacks.

The bins were not rich in pickings. Withoutl
domestic rubbish there was little to them. Saul crept |
back towards King's Cross. He found his way to|
the dumping grounds of the all-night eateries, and|
amassed a huge pile of food. He played games withl


286



himself, refusing to allow himself to eat a mouthful
until he had collected everything he wanted.

He sat in the shade of a skip in a cul-de-sac by
a Chinese take-away and fondled the food he had
collected, chunks of greasy meat and noodles.

Saul gorged himself. He ate as he had not for days.
He ate to fill all the cavities inside him, to drive out
anything that had been left behind.

King Rat had used him as bait, but the plan had
gone wrong. The Piper had pre-empted his plan.

As Saul stuffed himself, he felt an echo of that surge
of strength that had coursed through him the first
time he ate reclaimed food, found food, rat food.

The Piper still wanted him dead, of course, now
more than ever. He did not think he would have to wait too long before the Piper came for him.

It was a new chapter, he reflected. Away from King
Rat. Out of the sewer. He ate until his belly felt
dangerously taut, and then resumed his position in the
skyline.

Saul felt as if he would burst, not from food but
from something that had been released inside him. / should be mad, he thought suddenly, and I'm not.
I haven't gone mad.

He could hear sounds from all over London, a murmuring.
And as he listened, it resolved itself into its
components, cars and arguments and music. He felt
as if the music was everywhere, all around him, a
hundred different rhythms in counterpoint, a tapestry


287



being woven underneath him. The towers of the city
were needles, and they caught at the threads of music
and wound them together, tightened them around
Saul. He was a still point, a peg, a hook on which to
wind the music. It grew louder and louder, Rap and
Classical and Soul and House and Techno and Opera
and Folk and Jazz and Jungle, always Jungle, all the
music built on drum and bass, ultimately.

He had not listened to music for weeks, not since
King Rat had come for him, and he had forgotten it.
Saul stretched as if waking from a sleep. He heard the
music with new ears.

He realized that he had defeated the city. He
crouched on the roof (of what building he did not
know) and looked out over London at an angle from
which the city was never meant to be seen. He had
defeated the conspiracy of architecture, the tyranny
by which the buildings that women and men had
built had taken control of them, circumscribed their
relations, confined their movements. These monolithic
products of human hands had turned on their
creators, and defeated them with common sense,
quietly installed themselves as rulers. They were as
insubordinate as Frankenstein's monster, but they had
waged a more subtle campaign, a war of position more ;
effective by far.

Saul kicked carelessly off and stalked across the;
roofs and walls of London.

He could not put off thinking for ever.


288



Tentatively, he considered his position.

King Rat was no longer with him. Anansi was his
own man, would do whatever made him and his
kingdom safest. Loplop was mad and deaf and maybe
dead.

The Piper wanted to kill them all.

Saul was on his own. He realized that he had no
plan, and felt a curious peace. There was nothing he
could do. He was waiting for the Piper to come to
him. Until then he could go underground, could
investigate London, could find his friends ...

He was afraid of them now. When he let himself
think of them, he missed them so much it made him
ache, but he was not made of the same stuff as them
any more, and he was afraid that he did not know how
to be their friend. What could he say to them, now
that he lived in a different world?

But perhaps he didn't live in a different world. He
lived where he wanted, he thought suddenly, furiously.
Wasn't that what King Rat had told him, all that
time ago? He lived wherever he wanted, and even if he
didn't live in the same world as them any more,
he could visit, couldn't he?

Saul realized how much he wanted to see Fabian.

And he remembered as well that the Piper wanted
to kill him precisely because he could move between
the worlds. He felt a fleeting sense of loneliness as he
thought about the Piper, and then he realized that the


289



smell of rat was all around him, was always all around
him. He stood slowly.

He realized that the smell of London was the smell
of rat.

He began to hiss for attention, and lithe heads
poked out of piles of rubbish. He barked a quick
order and the ranks began to approach him, tentatively
at first and then with eagerness. He shouted for
reinforcements and seething waves of filthy brown
bodies boiled over the lip of the roof, and from chimneys
and fire escapes and hidden corners, like a film
of spilt liquid running backwards, they congealed
around him, tightly wound, an explosion frozen at
the flashpoint, hovering with suppressed violence,
hanging on his words.

He would not face the Piper alone, he realized. He
would have all the rats in London on his side.


290
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO


Sometimes, between putting food in her mouth and
sleeping and then Jungle, seeing Pete, Natasha remembered
other things.

She remembered something; she had a sense of
being needed for something. She could not be sure
what it was until somebody called her. She fumbled
with the phone, confused.

To yo Tasha!'

The voice was bizarre, muted and enthusiastic. She
did not recognize it at all.

'Tash man, you there? It's Fingers. I got your
message about Terror and, yeah, that's no problem.
We're going to stick you on the poster, make out like
you're famous. No one's gonna admit they haven't
heard of you.' The man on the telephone yelled with
laughter.

Natasha muttered that she did not understand.

There was a long pause.

'Look, Tash, you faxed me, man - told me you
wanted to spin some at Junglist Terror ... you know,


291



couple of weeks' time? Well, that's fine. I wanted
to know what name you're under, because we're
chucking out some last-minute posters. Going to do a
blitz down Camden, down your way too.'

What name? Natasha gathered herself, played the
phone call by ear, pretended she understood what was
happening.

Tut me in as Rudegirl K.'

That was a name she used. Was that what he
wanted, the man? Gradually she began to remember,
and to understand. Junglist Terror, near the Elephant
and Castle. It came back. She smiled delightedly. Had
she asked for an opportunity to play? She could not
remember that, but she could play Wind City, she
didn't mind...

Fingers rang off. He seemed perturbed, but
Natasha only promised to come on the date he told
her, and agreed that she would spread the word. She
held the receiver against her ear for a little bit too long
after he had rung off. The buzz confused her again,
until gentle hands reached around her head and disentangled
her from the machine.

Pete was there, she realized with a jolt of pleasure.
He put the receiver down, turned her to look at him.
She wondered how long he had been with her. She
looked up at him, smiled beatifically.

'I forgot to tell you that, Natasha,' he said. 'I
thought we should take the opportunity to show the


292



world what we've been doing. So we're going to play Wind City. OK?'

Natasha nodded and smiled.

Pete smiled back. His face; Natasha saw his face. It
seemed hurt, she saw long thin scabs adorning it, but
she did not really notice them somehow, he grinned so
happily. His face was very pale, but he smiled at her
with the same wide-eyed pleasure she always associated
with him. Such a sweetie, she thought, so green. She smiled.

Pete backed away from her, holding her hand until
he was out of reach.

'Let's play some music, Natasha,' he suggested.

'Oh yes,' she breathed. That would be excellent. A
little Drum and Bass. She could lose herself in that,
take the tunes apart in her mind, see how they fitted
together. Maybe they could play Wind City.


All of Saul's friends were accounted for, apart from
the man Kay. As he considered the piece of paper
he held, the queasy foreboding in Crowley's stomach
grew. He was afraid he knew exactly where Kay was.

He felt ridiculous, like a cop from some American
TV show, operating on hunches, responding to preposterous
gut feelings. He had sought to cross-refer
the data that had been gathered on the ruined body
in the tube with the information they had on Saul's


293

friend Kay, who had been missing now for a couple of
weeks.

For a while, Crowley had played with the idea that
Kay could be behind all this. It would be so much
easier to attribute the carnage he had seen to the other
missing man. He kept his conjectures to himself.
His unwillingness to see Saul as the killer made no
sense to those around him, and he could understand
why. There was just something, there was just
something ... the thoughts went around and around
in his head ... it did not work; he had seen Saul; there
was something else happening.

He jeopardized control of the investigation with
his disquiet. He was reduced to scribbled notes to
himself, exchanging favours with laboratory technicians,
the usual channels too risky for his ideas. He
could not sit with his men and women and brainstorm,
bouncing possibilities back and forth, because
they knew full well who they were looking for. His
name was Saul Garamond, he was an escaped prisoner
and a dangerous man.

So Crowley was cut off from discussion, the
medium in which his best work was done. He was
afraid that without it his notions were stunted, half
truths, soiled with the muck of his own mind that no
one could brush off for him. But he had no choice; he
was atomized.

Kay as killer. That was one of the ideas that he must
dispense with. Kay was peripheral, not close to any of


294



the main protagonists in this drama. He had even less
motive than Saul for any of these actions. He was even
less physically impressive than Saul.

And besides, his blood group matched that which
had covered the walls of Mornington Crescent station.

The fragments of jaw that could be analysed
seemed to match Kay's.

Nothing was certain, not with a body as destroyed
as that had been. But Crowley believed he knew who
they had found.

And he still, he still, could not believe that it was
Saul they wanted.

But he could talk to no one about this.

Nor could he share the pity he felt, a pity which
was welling up inside him more with every day, a pity
which was threatening to dwarf his horror, his anger,
his disgust, his fear, his confusion. A growing pity for
Saul. Because if he was right, if Saul was not the one
responsible for all the things Crowley had seen, then
Saul was right in the middle of something horrendous,
a kaleidoscope of bizarre and bloody murder. And
Crowley might feel isolated, might feel cut off from
those around him, but if he was right, then Saul...
Saul was truly alone.


Fabian returned to his room and immediately felt bad
again. The only time now that he did not feel
oppressed by isolation was when he got on his bike


295



and rode around London. He was spending more and
more of his time on the road these days, burning up |
the junk calories he got from the crap he was eating.: He was a wiry man, and his hours and hours on the
road were stripping the final ounces of excess flesh from him. He was being pared down to skin and|
muscle.

He had ridden for miles in the cold and his skin
blushed with the change of temperature. He sweated
unpleasantly from his exertions, his perspiration cold -1
on him.

Straight south he had ridden, down Brixton Hill,
past the prison, through Streatham, down towards
Mitcham. Real suburbia, houses flattening down,
shopping districts becoming more and more flat and
soulless. He had ridden up and down and around a
roundabouts and along sidestreets: he needed to cross |
traffic, to wait his turn on the road, to look behind
him and indicate brief thanks to someone letting him
in, he needed to cut in front of that Porsche and ignore |
the fact that he had pissed them off...

This was Fabian's social life now. He interacted
on the fucking tarmac, communicated with people
passing him in their cars. This was as close as he came
to relationships now. He did not know what was happening.

So he rode around and around, stopped to buy
crisps and chocolate, orange-juice maybe, ate on the 1
saddle, standing outside the poky little groceries and


296



newsagents he now frequented, balancing his bike
next to the faded boards advertising ice-cream and
cheap photocopying.

And then back out onto the road, back into the
cursory conversations of the roadways, his dangerous
flirtations with cars and lorries. There was no such
thing as society, not any more, not for him. He had
been stripped of it, reduced to begging for social
scraps like signalling and brake lights, the rudenesses
and courtesies of transport. These were the only times
now that anyone took notice of him, modified their
behaviour because of him.

Fabian was so lonely it made him ache.


His answering machine blinked at him. He pressed
play and the policeman Crowley's voice jerked into
life. He sounded forlorn, and Fabian did not think it
was just the medium which was having that effect.
Fabian listened with the contempt and exasperation
he always felt when he dealt with the police.

'... pector Crowley here, Mr Morris. Ummm ... I
was wondering if you might be able to help me again
with a couple of questions. I wanted to talk to you
about your friend Kay and ... well... perhaps you
could call me.'

There was a pause.

'You don't play the flute, do you, Mr Morris?
Would you or Saul have known anyone who does?'

297



Fabian froze. He did not hear what else Crowley
said. The voice continued for a minute and stopped.

A wave of gooseflesh engulfed him briefly and was
gone. He fumbled, stabbed at the rewind button.

'... ould call me. You don't play the flute, do you,
Mr Morris?'

Rewind.

'You don't play the flute, do you, Mr Morris?'

With an agony of numb fingers Fabian fast
forwarded, found the number Crowley gave. He
punched it into the phone. Why does he want to know that? why that? his mind kept begging.

The number was busy, and a pleasant female voice
told him he was in a queue.

'Mother/wc&er!' Fabian yelled and threw the
receiver at the cradle. It bounced and hung from its
cord, the dial tone just audible.

Fabian was trembling violently. He tugged at his
bike, wrestled it through the constricted entrance hall
and hurled it ready for him into the street. He
slammed the door behind him. Adrenaline and terror
made him feel sick. He lurched into the road and sped
towards Natasha's house.

No sociability now. He wove in and out of cars,
leaving a cacophony of horns and curses in his wake.
He twisted around corners at sharp, sharp angles,
leaving pedestrians leaping out of his way.

Jesus Christ Jesus Christ, he thought, why does he


298



want to know that? What has he found out? What has
a man who plays the flute done?

He was over the river now, Jesus God knew how,
he realized he was risking his life at every second. He
seemed to be in and out of fugues, he had no recollection
at all of passing through the intervening streets
before the bridge.

Blood poured through Fabian's veins. He felt
giddy. The cold air woke him, slapped him in the face.

He saw a clump of phone boxes speeding into view
before him. He was struck with a sudden realization
of his isolation, again. He tugged at his brakes and
pulled his bike up short, letting it fall to the ground
and breaking into a run before it had stopped moving.
The nearest box was empty, and he ransacked his pockets for money, pulled out a fifty-pence piece. He
dialled Crowley's number.

Dial 999 you stupid fucker! he suddenly admonished
himself, but this time Crowley's phone was
ringing.

'Crowley.'

'Crowley, it's Fabian.' He could hardly speak; the
words swallowed each other up in their eagerness.
'Crowley, go to Natasha's house now. I'll see you
there.'

'Now, hold on, Fabian. What's this all about?'

'Just be there, motherfucker! The flute, the fucking
flute!' He hung up.

What's he doing to her? Fabian thought as he ran to


299



his bike. Its pedals still spun slightly where it lay.
That weird fucker who just appeared, Jesus! He had
thought she was having an affair with him, that this
explained her weird behaviour, and the obscure challenge
Fabian always sensed from Pete. But what if ...
what if that was not the whole story? What did
Crowley know?

He was nearly there now, speeding towards Natasha's
house. London light surrounded him. He could
not hear the traffic at all, he relied only on his eyes to
stay alive.

Another sharp turn and there was Ladbroke Grove.
He realized briefly that he was drenched in sweat. The
day was overcast and cold, and his wet skin was
frozen. Fabian felt like crying. He felt utterly out of
control, as if he could have no effect on the world.

He turned, and was in Natasha's street. It was as
deserted as usual. The ringing in his ears dispersed
and there was the Drum and Bass, the soundtrack to
Natasha's house. Dreamy and washed out, a very
bleak song. He could feel it creeping into him behind
his eyes.

He stepped free of his bike, letting it fall beside her
door.

Fabian rang the bell. He put his finger on the
button and did not release it until he saw a form
approach behind the smoked-glass door.

Natasha opened the door to him.

Fabian wondered for a moment if she was stoned:


300



she looked so vague, her eyes so clouded. But he saw
how white she looked, how thin, and he knew that
this was more than dope.

She smiled when she saw him, and looked up at him
with unfocused eyes.

'Hey, Fabe, man, how's it going?' She sounded
tired, but she raised her hand to touch fists.

Fabian took her hand. She looked at him in mild
surprise. He put his lips close to her ear.

His voice, when he spoke, was unsteady.

'Tash, man, is Pete here?'

She looked up at him, creased her face quizzically,
nodded.

'Yeah. We're practising. For Junglist Terror.'

Fabian began to tug at her.

'Tash, we have to go. I want you to come with me. I
promise I'll explain, but come with me now ...'

'Oh, no.' She did not sound angry or perturbed.
But she pulled away from him gently and began to
close the door. 'I've got to play some tracks with him.'

Fabian pushed the door open and grabbed her. He
held her mouth closed with his right hand. She
struggled, her eyes suddenly wide, but he dragged her
towards the door.

His eyes were prickling, and he whispered to her.
'Tash please you don't understand he's something to do with it all we have to get away ...'

'Hi, Fabian! How's it going?'

Pete had appeared at the top of the stairs. He


301



looked down at them both, his body poised in mid
stride. He grinned amiably.

Fabian froze, as did Natasha, in his arms.

Fabian stared at Pete's face. It was white, crisscrossed
with vicious, half-healed scratches, bloody
and intricate. He affected his usual cheerful expression
but his eyes were giving him away now, open a little
too wide, staring a little too hard.

Fabian realized that he was very frightened of Pete.
Fabian wondered how long before Crowley would be
there.

'Hey, Pete, man...' he muttered. 'Uh... I was
wanting... me and Tash might split for a bit...
uh . . .'

Pete shook his head, looking amused and rueful.

'Oh, Fabian, you mustn't go. Come hear what
we've been playing.'

Fabian shook his head and stumbled backwards a
little more.

'Natasha?' said Pete, and turned to her. He whistled
something very quickly. Instantly Natasha spun in
Fabian's arms and twisted her leg, taking his feet from
under him and kicking the door closed behind him in
one motion. She stood to one side as he fell against the
door. He stared at her, and her eyes clicked back into
the focus that had momentarily deserted her.

Fabian fumbled behind him for the latch, his mouth
open, his legs wobbling as he stood.

'Look, Fabe,' said Pete reasonably, descending


302



towards him. 'It's simple.' Natasha stood still and
gazed at him as he approached. 'I don't know quite
what you've worked out or how, and I'm impressed,
really I am, but now what? What to do with you? I
could kill you, like I did Kay, but I think I've got a
better idea.'

An angry, frightened little noise issued from
Fabian's throat. Kay ... what had happened to him?

'So anyway, the first thing I think is that you should
come upstairs.' Pete motioned to the room above
them, and the faint strains of Jungle that had been
filtering down the stairs seemed to swell, the plaintive
song that he had caught from outside was suddenly
filling Fabian's head. And it was such a beautiful song,
it completely took him away ...

It made him think of so many things ...

He was on the stairs, he realized, and then he was
in the bedroom, but he wasn't really bothered about
that, because what was important was that he should hear this song. There was something about it...

It stopped and he caught his breath, stumbled, felt
as if he was choking.

The room was silent. Pete had one hand by the on/
off switch on the sequencer. Natasha stood next to
him, her arms by her side, the same free-floating look
in her eyes. With his left hand Pete held a kitchen
knife to her throat. She obligingly held her head up.

Fabian opened his mouth in horror and gesticulated
towards the two of them, frozen like a waxwork scene


303



of the moment of murder. He emitted inchoate
sounds.

'Yes yes yes, Fabian. Answer or I slit her throat.'
Pete's voice was still measured, urbane. 'Is anyone else
coming?'

Fabian's eyes flitted around the room as he tried to
gauge the situation. He shrieked as Pete pressed the
knife to her throat, and blood welled up around it.

'Yes! Yes! The police are coming!' Fabian screamed.
'And they're going to fucking take you, you motherfucker
...'

'Nope,' said Pete. 'Nope, they won't.'

He released Natasha and she touched her neck
experimentally, screwing up her face, perturbed and
confused by the blood. She picked up her pillow
and pressed it to the side of her neck, watched it stain
red.

Pete kept his eyes on Fabian. He fumbled on the
top of the keyboard and gathered up some DATs
which sat there.

'Tash?' he said. 'Grab your record bag and a few
twelve-inches. We're going to go to mine until Junglist
Terror.' He smiled at Fabian.

Fabian bolted for the door. He heard a faint whispering
and his left calf burst into agony. He screamed
as he fell. The kitchen knife was embedded deep in the
muscle of his lower leg. He fumbled at it with bloody
fingers and screamed when he had the breath.

'See,' said Pete, sounding amused. 'I can make you


304



dance to my tune, but fuck it, sometimes other
methods do the job.' He stood over Fabian.

Fabian closed his eyes and laid his head on the
floor. He was fainting.

'You will come to Junglist Terror, won't you,
Fabe?' said Pete. Behind him Natasha quietly gathered
some things. 'You may not feel like dancing now, but
I promise you will. And you can do me a favour.'


The faint percussive thump of the Drum and Bass
beat which wafted into Bassett Street was washed out,
rendered nothing by the sirens. Two police cars slid to
a stop outside the house. Uniformed men and women
leapt out and raced to the door. Crowley stood beside
one of the cars. Behind him, the residents peered out
of their doors and windows.

'Have you come about all that screaming? That was
quick,' said an old man approvingly to Crowley.

Crowley looked away as his stomach yawned. He
felt sick with foreboding.

Next to the door a bicycle lay on the pavement.
Crowley stared at it as the battering ram took care of
the door. The police swept up the stairs in a confused
mass. Crowley saw the guns at the ready.

There was a sound of heavy feet in the house,
audible in the street outside. The faint Jungle beat
jerked to an abrupt halt. Crowley strode after the


305



advance party into the hallway. He jogged up the steps
and waited by the front door to the flat.

A short woman in a flak jacket approached him.

'Nothing, sir.'

'Nothing?'

'They're gone, sir. Not a sign. I think you should
see this.'

She led him into the flat. It was thick with heavy
bodies. The air was full of authoritative voices, the
sounds of searching.

Crowley looked around him at the bare walls of the
sitting-room. By the entrance to the room was a pool I
of blood, still slick and sticky. One of the white
pillows on the futon was stained deep red.

The keyboard, the stereo, a handbag ... everything
was untouched. Crowley strode over to the turntable.
A twelve-inch single rested on it. The needle had
skipped, pushed off course by the vibration of the
heavy police boots. Crowley swore.

When he raised his voice it dripped bile.

'I don't suppose anyone saw how far through the
record we were? No?'

Everyone stared at him in incomprehension.

'Because that way we could have told how long ago
they left.'

They looked away, surly. Next time you try rushing
a fucking lunatic and stopping to take notes, sir, they
said with every look and gesture.

To hell with them, thought Crowley, furious. To


306



fucking hell with them. He looked at the blood on the
floor and the pillow. He looked out of the window.
The constables held back the growing crowds. The
bicycle lay alone, ignored.

Fabian, Fabian ... thought Crowley. I've lost you,
I've lost you. You were my lead, Fabian, and now
you've gone.

He leant down and rested his head on his arms,
there on the windowsill.

Fabian, Natasha, where have you gone? he
thought. And with whom?


307
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


Scrawled notes were appearing on walls.

In a hand at once gothic and subliterate, they
entreated Saul to a peace. They were etched into the
brick, scribbled in pencil, sprayed with aerosol.

The first, Saul found on the side of a chimney stack
he had decided to sleep in.

listen sonny, it read. were blood and blood

STICKS SO LETS US LET BYGONES BE. TWOS BETTER NOR
ONE YOU KNOW AND IN FACT TWO CAN BE THE DEVIL.

Saul had run his fingers over the thin scratches and
looked around the roof. The stench of King Rat was
on the air, he could smell it clearly. The rats with him
had bristled, and been ready to bite or run. He was
never alone now, always surrounded by a group
whose number was unchanging even as the individuals
who formed it came and went.

Saul and his entourage had crouched on the roof
and sniffed the air. He had not slept in the chimneys
that morning.


308



The next evening he had woken in the corner of the
sewer he had found, and painted above his head was
another message. This was in white paint, paint that had dripped and slid down the walls into the dirty
water, leaving the words only just legible.

LOOK YOU AINT DOING NOONE ANY FAVOURS CEPT
THE PIPER.

It had been written while he slept. King Rat was
stalking him, afraid to speak but desperate for reconciliation.

Saul was angry. The ease with which King Rat was
still able to sneak past him rankled. He realized that
he was just a baby, a little ratling.

He could not think about whether or not King Rat
was right. It was irrelevant to him. He had had enough
of compromise. King Rat the rapist and murderer,
destroyer of his family, had no right to his collaboration.
King Rat had released the Piper, King Rat had
made Saul what he was. He had released him, but only
into his new prison.

So fuck King Rat, thought Saul. He had had it with
being bait. He knew that King Rat could not be
trusted.

So instead he thought about what he could do for
himself.

For all that he felt liberated, for all that he felt
powerful, Saul did not know what to do. He did not
know where the Piper lived. He did not know when


309



the Piper would attack. He knew nothing at all except
that he himself was not safe.

Saul began to think more and more about his
friends. He spent a lot of time speaking to the rats, but
they were only cunning, not clever, and their stupidity
alienated him. He remembered his thoughts on the
night he had left King Rat, the realization that it was his decision whether or not his world would cross
those of Fabian and others.

He wanted to see Fabian more than anything.

So one evening he bade the rats leave him alone.
They obeyed immediately, disappearing in a sudden
flurry. Saul began to cross the city, alone again.

He wondered if King Rat was with him, was
watching him. As long as the fucker kept his distance,
Saul decided, he did not care.

Saul crossed the river under Tower Bridge. He
swung like an ape along the girders which festooned
its underside, convoluted thickets of vast wires and
pipes. In the middle, just at the point where the bridge
could split and open for tall ships, he stopped and
hung by his hands, swaying slightly.

The sky was taken from him; the great mass of the 1
bridge above him was all he could see at eye-level |
and above. At the very edge of his sight, buildings
appeared again over the river. But for the most part 1
the city was inverted and refracted in the Thames, ai|
sinuous shattered mirror. Lights glinted on the water,
dark shapes punctuated with hundreds of points of ,|


310



light, the towers of the city, the far-off lights of the
South Bank Centre, far more real for him then than
their counterparts in the air above.

He stared down at the city below his feet. It was an
illusion. The shimmering motion of the lights he saw
was not the real city. They were part of it, to be sure, a
necessary part... but the beautiful lights, so much
more lively than those above them, were a simulacrum.
They merely painted the surface tension.
Below that thin veneer the water was still filthy, still
dangerous and cold.

Saul held on to that. He resisted the poetics of the city .


Saul walked fast, making the passers-by ignore him,
being nothing to them. He strode the streets like a
cipher, invisible. Sometimes he stopped quite still and
listened, to see if he was being followed. He could see
no one, but he was not so naive as to think that was
conclusive.

He approached Brixton from the backstreets, not
wanting to run the gamut of its light and crowds. His
pulse was up. He was nervous. He had not spoken
to Fabian for so long, he was afraid they would no
longer understand each other. How would he sound
to Fabian now? Would he sound strange, would he
sound ratty?


311



He reached Fabian's street. An old woman walked
past him, bent into herself, and he was alone.

Something was wrong. The air tasted charged.
People moved behind the white curtains of Fabian's
room. Saul stood quite still. He stared at the window,
saw the vague movements of men and women within.
They milled uncertainly, investigating. With a growing
horror, Saul pictured those within opening drawers, I examining books, looking at Fabian's artwork. He
knew who moved like that.

Saul's demeanour changed. One moment his
shoulders were hunched, he was tightened into a drab
stance, something to see but not notice, his disguise
for the streets. Now he uncurled and sank towards the
pavement. He bent in a sudden snap of motion, sidling
simultaneously against the low wall. He crept through
the thin strip of garden, the desultory tiny patios.

He was truly invisible now. He could sense it in
himself.

He sidled along the wall, sudden bursts of motion |
interspersed with unearthly stillness. His nose ,|
twitched. He smelt the air.

Saul stood before Fabian's house. Soundlessly he 1
vaulted the low wall and landed in a crouch below the 1
window. He placed his ear to the wall.

Architecture betrayed those within. Bluff voices |
seeped out through cracks and rivulets between I
bricks.

'... don't like that bloody picture, though ...'


312



'... know that the DFs totally losing it over this. I
mean he's fucking well lost it...'

'... geezer Morris, why have a go at him? ...
thought he was a mate

The police talked in an endless stream of banalities,
cliches and pointless verbiage. Their speech served no
purpose, thought Saul in despair, no fucking purpose
at all. He ached for conversation, for communication,
and to hear words wasted like this ... he felt like
crying.

He had lost Fabian. He put his head in his hands.


"Him gone, bwoy. Him with the Badman now.'

Anansi's voice was soft and very near.

Saul rubbed his eyes without opening them. He
breathed deeply. Finally he looked up.

Anansi's face hovered just in front of his, suspended
before him upside-down. His strange eyes were very
close, staring right into Saul's.

Saul looked at him calmly, held his gaze. Then he
let his eyes slide casually up, investigating Anansi's
position.

Anansi was hanging from one of his ropes, suspended
from the roof. He grasped it with both hands,
effortlessly suspended his weight, his naked feet intertwined
with the thin white rope. As Saul watched,
Anansi's legs uncoupled from the fibres and swivelled
slowly and soundlessly through the air. His eyes held


313



Saul's, even as his face turned one hundred and eighty
degrees.

His feet touched the concrete with a tiny pat.

'You damn good now, you know, pickney. Not
easy keep track of you, these days.'

'Why did you bother? Daddy send you?' Saul's
voice was withering.

Anansi laughed without sound. He smiled lazily,
predatory - the big spider-man.

'Come now. Me want fe talk.' Anansi pointed with
a long finger, straight up. Then hand over hand he
seemed to fall up the rope, which was tugged peremptorily
from view.

Saul slid silently to the corner of the building and
gripped it on both sides. He hauled himself away from
the earth.

Anansi was waiting. He sat cross-legged on the flat
roof. His mouth worked as if he were preparing to say
something unpleasant. He nodded a greeting to Saul
and indicated with a nod that he should sit opposite
him.

Instead, Saul interlaced his fingers behind his head
and turned away. He looked out over Brixton.

There were noises all around them from the streets.

'Mr Rattymon going crazy waiting for you now.'
Anansi spoke quietly.

'Motherfucker shouldn't have used me as bait, then,'
said Saul evenly. 'Rapist motherfucker shouldn't*
have killed my dad.'


314



'Rattymon you dad.'

Saul did not answer. He waited.

Anansi spoke again.

'Loplop come back and him crazy mad at you. Him
want you dead fe true.'

Saul turned, incredulous.

'What the fuck has he got to be angry with me for?'

'You make him deaf, you know, and you done also
make him mad again, mad in him head.'

'Oh for fuck's sake,' spat Saul. 'We were both about
to be killed. He was about to kill me and get fucking
taken apart himself. I think the fucking Piper's done
playing with us, you know? I think he just wants us all dead now, all the kings. Loplop would've fucking died, I saved his life ...'

'Yeah, man, but him save you. Could've watch
while the Piperman done kill you, but him try to save
you, and you fuck up him ear ...'

'That's a load of crap, Anansi. Loplop tried to save
me because you all... you all... know the Piper can't
hold me, and you all know I'm the only thing that can
stop him.'

There was a long silence.

'Well, Loplop him mad, anyway. Don't be getting
too close to him now.'

'Fine,' said Saul.

Again, a long pause.

'What do you want, Anansi? And what do you
know about Fabian?'


315



Anansi sucked his teeth in disgust.

'You still green, bwoy, fe true. You sure got all the
rats dem upon you side, but you don't know what fe
do with them. Rats everywhere, bwoy. Spiders everywhere.
Them you eyes, the rats. My lickle spiders tell
me what the Badman do with you friends. You ain't
never ask. You not care till now.'

'Friends?'

Anansi screwed up his face and looked at Saul disdainfully.

'Him have kill the fat bwoy.' Saul's hands fluttered
about his face. His mouth stayed shut, but it quivered.
'Him have take the black bwoy and the lickle DJ
woman.'

'Natasha,' breathed Saul. 'What does he want with
her ...? How does he know who they are ...? How is
he getting inside me?' Saul grabbed his head with both
hands, began to thump himself in despair. Kay, he
thought, Natasha, he hit himself more, what was happening?

Anansi was on him. Strong hands gripped his
wrists.

'Stop now!' Anansi was horrified.

Animals do not hurt themselves, Saul realized.
There was still human inside him, then. He shook
himself and stopped.

'We have to get them back. We have to find
them

'How, bwoy? Be real.'


316



Saul's head spun.
'What did he do to Kay?'
Anansi pursed his lips.
'Him took the bwoy apart.'


They ran for a while, then there was a short scurrying
climb, and they stood on Brixton Rec, the sports
centre. They could hear the faint thump of MTV from
the weights room below. Saul stood at the very edge
of the roof, a little way forward from Anansi. He
pushed his hands in his pockets.

'You could have told me, you know ...' he said. He
heard himself, and hated his plaintive tone. He half
turned, glanced at Anansi, who stood quite still, his
arms folded over his bare chest.

Anansi sucked his teeth in contempt.

'Cha, bwoy, you still full to the brim with rubbish.
You talk about how the Rattymon him you father?
What for me want tell you that?'

Saul looked at him. Anansi was insistent.

'What for me want tell you? Hmmm? Listen, bwoy,
pickney, hear me now. Me one bigass spider, understand?
The Rattymon, him a rat. Loplop him the bird, the Bird Superior. Now you, you some strange half
ting, fe true, but what for we gwan tell you ting like
that? Me tell you just what me want you fe know.
Always, there you have a promise. No more hypocrisy
now, you see, bwoy? No need. Animal like me no


317



need for such ting. You leave that behind. You can
trust me to be just so trustworthy, never no more, but
never no less. Y'understand?'

Saul said nothing. He watched a train arrive at
Brixton station and trundle away again.

'Was Loplop going to tell the Piper where I was?
Were you all going to come for him when he tried to
take me?' he asked finally.

Anansi shrugged, almost imperceptibly.


They sidled along the side of the railway, the British
Rail line which rose above the market and the streets.
They slid along without speaking, heading for Cam
berwell. Saul appreciated the company, he realized,
though it was hardly what he had hoped for when
setting out this evening.

'How could he find my friends?' said Saul. They sat
on the climbing frame in a nondescript schoolyard.

'Him search all you books an tings. Him find some
address tings fe sure.'

Of course, thought Saul. My fault.

He was numbed. If he was still human, he realized,
he would be in shock. But he was not, not any more;
he was half rat, and he felt inured.

Anansi was very silent. He made no attempt to
persuade Saul to return to King Rat, or to do anything,
for that matter.

Saul looked at him curiously.


318



'Does King Rat know you're here?' he asked.

Anansi nodded.

'Has he asked you to say anything? Get me back?'

Anansi shrugged. 'Him want you back, sure. You
useful, y'know? But him know you can't be told
nothing you don't want. You know what him want. If
you want come back, you will come.'

'Do you ... do you understand why I won't come
back to him?'

Anansi looked at his eyes. Gently, he shook his
head.

'No, bwoy, not at all. You can survive better with
him, with us, fe true. And you are rat. You should go
back. But I know you don't think like that. I don't
know what you are, bwoy. You can't be rat, you can't
be man. I don't understand you at all, but that's
alright, because I know now that I will never understand
you, nor will you me. We are not the same.'


In the small hours, after they had eaten, they stood
together at an entrance to the sewers. Anansi looked
behind him, planning his route up the side of the
warehouse beside them. He looked back at Saul.

Saul stuck out his hand. Anansi grasped it.

'You are the only hope, bwoy. Come back to us.'

Saul shook his head, twisted, uncomfortable before
the sudden intensity.

Anansi nodded and dropped his hand.


319



'See you around.'

He turned and slung one of his ropes over an overhang,
disappeared at speed over the vertical bricks.

Saul watched him go. He turned and examined
where he was. The grille in a yard littered with hulking
pieces of machinery. They loomed solemnly in the
dark, looking vaguely pathetic. There were no roads
visible from here, and Saul enjoyed the moment of
solitude. Then he reached down without looking and
pulled the grille from the earth.

He hesitated.

He knew there was little point searching for
Natasha and Fabian. The city was so large, the Piper's
powers so prodigious, it would not be hard for him to
hide two humans. But he knew also that he could not
bear to leave them in his power. He knew he had to
search, if only to prove that he was still half human.
Because he was disquieted by his passivity, his acceptance,
the speed with which he had conceptualized
their absence as inevitable, as done, as a done thing.
He was becoming dulled. Kay's death was utterly
unreal to him, but that was a human reaction. More
disturbing to him was his reaction to the Piper's |
abduction of his two closest friends.

The acceptance of the unacceptable was a kind of
reactionary stoicism, a dynamic that dulled his feelings
for these others. He could feel it within him, a
growing cunning, a hyper-real focus on the here and
now. It frightened him. He could not battle it head on, 1


320



he could not decide what to feel and what not to feel,
but he could challenge it with his actions. He could
change it by refusing to behave as if it were how he
felt. He abhorred his own reaction, his own feeling.
It was an animal trait.


321
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR


Saul could tell something was wrong as soon as he
stepped into the sewers.

The sounds, the sounds he had become accustomed
to walking into, were absent. As his feet hit the trickling
water, he dropped into a crouch, suddenly full of
feral energy. His ears twitched. He knew what was
missing. He should walk into the sewers into a barely
audible network of scratching and skittering, the
noises of his people. He should hear them at the very
edge of his rat-hearing, and subsume them within him,
make them part of him, use them to define his time in
the darkness.

The sounds were missing. There were no rats
around him.

He lowered himself effortlessly, sliding into the
organic muck. He was utterly silent, his ears twitching.
He was trembling.

He could hear the constant soft drip of the tunnels,
the thick trickle of viscous water, the mournful


322



soughing of warm subterranean winds, but his people
were gone.

Saul closed his eyes, stilled himself from his toes
up. His joints ceased to work over each other; he
banished the sound of his blood, slowed his heart,
dispensed with all the tiny noises of his body. He
became part of the sewer floor, and he listened.

The quiet of the tunnels appalled him.

He rested one ear gently against the floor. He could
feel vibrations from all around the city.

A long way off, something sounded.

A high-pitched sound.


Saul snapped to his feet. He was sweating and trembling violently.

The Piper had come here? Was he in the sewers'?

Saul raced through the tunnels. He did not know
where he was running. He ran to kill the shuddering
of his legs, the terror he felt.

What was he doing here"?

He sped past a ladder. Maybe he should leave,
maybe it was time he left the sewers and ran for it
through the streets above, he thought, but damn
it, this was his space, his safe haven... he could not
have it taken from him.

He stopped still suddenly and cocked his head, listening
again.

The sound of the flute was a little closer now, and


323



he could hear a scratching around it, the sound of
claws on brick.

The flute slid violently up and down the scale, a
cacophony of quavers chasing each other in mad
directions. The flute and the claws were strangely
static. They did not grow nearer or further away.

There was something strange, Saul realized, about
the sound. He listened. Unconsciously he braced
himself against the tunnel walls, spread his arms, one
above him, one to his side, his legs slightly parted,
each climbing the gentle incline of the cylindrical
tunnel. He was framed by the passageway.

The flute trilled on, and now Saul could hear something
else, a voice raised in anguish.

Loplop. Squawking, emitting meaningless, despairing
cries.

Saul moved forward, tracking the sounds through
the labyrinth. They remained where they were. He
wound his way through the dark towards them.
Loplop still shrieked intermittently, but his cries were
not pained, not tortured, but miserable. Loplop's
voice rose above the scrabbling - an orderly scrabbling,
Saul realized, an unearthly timed scratching.

The sounds were separated from him now only by
thin walls, and he knew he was there, around the
corner from the congregation. The tremors had returned
to Saul's body. He fought to control himself.
Terror held him hard. He remembered the numbing
speed with which the Piper moved, the power of his


324



blows. The pain in his body, the pain he had managed
to forget, to ignore, reawakened and coursed through
him.

Saul did not want to die.

But there was something not right about this
sound.

Saul pressed himself hard against the wall and swallowed
several times. He edged forward, to the
junction with the tunnel which contained the sounds.
He was very afraid. The mad piping, Loplop's random
cries, and above all the constant, orderly scrabbling
against brick - everything continued as it had for
minutes. It was loud, and so close it appalled him.

He looked around. He did not know where he was.
Deep somewhere, buried in the vastness of the sewer
system.

He steeled himself, drew his head slowly, silently
around the edge of the brick.


At first, all he could discern were the rats.

A field of rats, millions of rats; a mass that started a
few feet from the entrance to the tunnel and multiplied,
bodies piling upon bodies, rat upon rat, a sharp
gradient of hot little bellies and chests and legs. A
moving mountain, replacing those that fell with new
blood, defeating the urge of gravity to level its impossibly
steep sides. The rats boiled over each other.

They moved in time, they moved together.


325



All together they pushed down with their right
forefoot, then all together with their left. Then the
back legs, again in time. They clawed each other,
ripped each other's skin, trampled on the young and
dying - but they were one unit. They moved together,
in time to the hideous music.

The Piper was nowhere. On the other side of the
rat mountain Saul could see King Rat. Saul could not
see his face. But his body moved on the same beat as
those of his rebellious people, and he danced with
the same disinterested intensity, his body stiff and
spasming in perfect time.

Loplop cried again and again, and Saul glimpsed
him, a desperate figure before King Rat, his fists
flailing against King Rat's chest. He pushed King Rat,
tried to move him back, but King Rat continued with
his stiff zombie dance.

And behind them all, something hanging from the
ceiling ... something emerging, Saul saw, from a shaft
to the pavements above. A black box, dangling at a
ridiculous angle, its handle tied to a dirty rope ...

A ghetto-blaster.

Saul's eyes widened in astonishment.

The fucker doesn't even have to be here, he
thought.

He stumbled into the tunnel and approached the
seething mass. The flute was ghastly, loud and fast and
insane like an Irish jig played in Hell. Saul edged f
forward. He began to pass straggling rats. The ghetto-J


326



blaster swayed slightly. Saul waded into the mass of
rats. So many already, all around him, and he had at
least six feet to walk. It seemed as if every rat in the
sewer had found its way here; monstrous foot-long
beasts and mewling babies, dark and brown, crushing
each other, killing each other in their eagerness to
reach the music. Saul pushed forward, feeling the
bodies squirm around him. A thousand claws ripped
at him, never in antagonism, only in the ecstasy of the
dance. Under the rats he could see were layers that
moved sluggishly, tired and dying; and below them
were rats who did not move at all. Saul walked knee
deep in the dead.

King Rat did not turn, stayed where he was,
dancing at the head of his people once again. Loplop
saw Saul. He shrieked and pushed past King Rat,
launched himself through the living wall towards Saul.

He was ruined. His suit was filthy, and in tatters.
His face contorted, rage and confusion fleeting across
it.

He waded forward two, three steps, then stumbled
under the weight of enthralled bodies. He went under,
drowning in the seething mass. Saul ignored him, contemptuous
of him, disgusted.

But he too found it difficult to move; he pushed
through the rats, killing, he was sure, with each step,
unwillingly but inevitably. He swayed, regained his
balance. The cacophonous flute was utterly deafening.
Saul went down suddenly on one knee and the rats


327



used him as a springboard, leapt from him, tried to fly J
to the dangling stereo.

Saul swore, struggled to regain his feet, went under
again. He became enraged, surged to his feet, spilling |
rats as he rose. A few feet away he could see the pitiful
sight of Loplop's body bobbing below the surface ofll
the rats, trying and failing to stand.

Saul shook himself and brown bodies spun through
the air. He could not reach the boombox. He tugged
hard with his feet, which seemed stuck as firmly as in
quicksand. He roared, suddenly livid, pulled inexorably
through the mass of rats, stumbled again, yanked
and forced his way through, past King Rat, to the
point where the rats thinned out and the stereo hung
six feet from the floor.

He reached up to it, and saw King Rat. He stopped
moving, shocked.

King Rat stood in thrall, his face slack, his limbs 1
swinging vaguely, stripped of dignity, a string of drool
stretching and snapping from his lower jaw. Saul J
stared, fascinated and horrified.

He hated King Rat, hated what he had done, but!
something in him was appalled at seeing him so shorn j
of power.

Saul turned and grasped the swinging box, pulled!
hard, snapping the rope.

He smashed it hard against the wall.

The music stopped at the instant of impact. Metall
and plastic spattered out of the broken casing. Hef


328



slammed it twice more against the brick. Its speakers
burst out of their housing. A tape flew from the ruined
cassette deck.

Saul turned and looked at the assembled multitude.

They stood still, confused.

Understanding and recollection seemed to well
over them all simultaneously. In a panic, a terrified
flurry, the rats emitted a communal hiss and disappeared,
scampering over each other, made clumsy by
the fallen.

The mountain crumbled and disappeared. Lame
and ruined rats tried to follow their fellows. The first
wave was gone; then the second wave, limping after
them; and the third wave, the dying, hauled themselves
away, sliding on blood.

The ground was covered with bodies. Corpses lay
two, three thick. Loplop crawled into a corner.
King Rat stared at Saul. Saul looked back at him for
a moment, then returned his attention to the ruined
stereo. He fumbled in the mud until he found the tape.

He wiped it, examined the label.

Flute 1, it said. It was handwritten. It was Natasha's
writing.

'Oh fuck,' Saul shouted and pushed his head into
the crook of his arm. 'Oh fuck, oh leave them alone,
you fucker,' he breathed.

He heard King Rat move forward. Saul looked up
sharply. King Rat looked uneasy. He moved with a


329



deferential cast to his limbs, resentment curling his
mouth. He was intimidated, Saul realized.

Saul nodded.

'It's just noise to me,' he whispered. He nodded
again, saw King Rat's eyes widen. 'Just noise.'

With a shriek Loplop saw Saul, ran towards him
flapping his rags and his arms, stumbled as he ran.

King Rat started. Saul stepped smartly out of
Loplop's way and watched as the Bird Superior
slipped in mud, went over in a half-controlled fall and
banged his head against the wall.

Saul gesticulated at King Rat, danced back a few
steps.

'Keep that motherfucker under control!' he
shouted.

Loplop still shouted, still yelled his incoherent cries
as he tried to stand. King Rat strode to where Loplop
slithered in mud, and gripped his collar. He tugged;
him, pulled him along the slippery sewer bottom.;
Loplop struggled and whimpered. At the entrance to';
the tunnel King Rat crouched before him, held his|
finger before Loplop's face. Saul could not tell if he :l was speaking to Loplop, or merely holding him still", with those eyes. Some kind of communication passed ;j
between them.

Loplop stared past King Rat at Saul. He looked |
afraid and enraged. King Rat regained his gaze and!
seemed to say something, gesticulated. Loplop's eyesl
returned to Saul, and the same rage filled him asi


330


before, but he backed away, moved away through the
tunnels, disappeared.

King Rat turned back to Saul.

As he walked back through the bodies of the rats, Saul saw that King Rat had regained his furtive
swagger. He had composed himself.

'Back, then?' King Rat asked casually.

Saul ignored him. He looked up into the shaft from
which he had pulled the stereo. Several feet above, a
grille was visible, and above it the drab orange-shot
black of the city night. Something was affixed to the
inside of the narrow shaft.

'So what you here for, then, chal?' asked King Rat,
his insouciance wearing and affected.

Tuck you,' replied SauJ quietly. He stood on
tiptoe, reached up into the vertical tunnel. He could
feel a corner of paper flapping in wind. He gripped it,
pulled gently, but succeeded only in tearing the corner
away.

He looked down briefly. King Rat stood near him,
his hands held uncertainly to his chest.

Saul looked around him at the corpses.

'Another fine display of leadership skills, then, Dad.'

'Fuck you, you pissing little half-breed, I'll kill
you...'

'Oh give it a rest, old man,' said Saul, disgusted.
'You need me, you know it, I know it, so shut up with
your stupid threats.' He returned his attention to the


331



tunnel. He jumped up and grabbed the top of the
paper, pulled it down with him when he fell.

It came away in his hands. He spread it out.

It was a poster.

It was designed by someone with Adobe Illustrator,
a sixth-form aesthetic and too much time.
Garish and jumbled, a confusion of fonts and point
sizes, information crowding itself out and details
fighting for space.

A line drawing took up most of the sheet: a
grotesquely muscled man in sunglasses standing
impassive behind a twin-deck turntable. He stood
with his arms folded, as the chaotic writing exploded
around him.

junglist terror!!! it exclaimed.

One night of Extreme Drum an' Bass Badness!

10 pounds entry, it exclaimed, and gave the address of a a
club in the Elephant and Castle, in the badlands of
South London; and a date, a Saturday night in early
December.

Featuring da Cream of da Crop, Three Fingers, | Manta, Ray Wired, Rudegirl K, Natty Funkah. ..

Rudegirl K. That was Natasha.

Saul let out a little cry. He bent slightly, his breath 1
pushed from him.

'He's telling us,' he hissed to King Rat. 'He's inviting us.'

Something was scrawled on the bottom of thel


332



poster, an addendum in a strange ornate hand. Also
featuring a special guest! it proclaimed. Fabe M!

Jesus he was pathetic! Saul thought. He sank slowly
back against the wall as he grasped the paper. Fabe M! Look, he's trying to play games, thought Saul, but this
isn't his environment, he doesn't know what to do, he
can't play with these words. ..

It made him feel obscurely comforted. Even in the
misery of knowing that his friends were in the hands
of this creature, this monster, this avaricious spirit, he
felt a triumph in the ineptitude with which his foe
stumbled on jargon. He was trying for nonchalance,
scribbling an addition in Drum and Bass style, but the
language was unfamiliar and he had stumbled. Fabe
M! It sounded stupid and contrived. He wanted Saul
to know that he had Fabian, that Fabian would be at
the club, but he was not on his home ground, and his
clumsy affectation showed that.

Saul found himself chuckling, almost ruefully.

'Bastard can't play no more.' He crushed the paper
and threw it at King Rat, who had been hovering
nervously, resentfully. King Rat snatched it out of the
air. 'Fucker's telling us to come and get them,' said
Saul, as King Rat opened out the sheet.

Saul pushed past King Rat, kicked his way through
the bodies of the rat dead.

'He's operating like a fucking Bond villain,' he said.
'He wants me. Knows I'll come for him if he dangles
my friends in front of me.'


333



'So what's a rat to do?' said King Rat.

Saul turned and stared at him. He knew, quite sud|
denly, that his eyes were as hidden to King Rat as King'
Rat's were to him.

'What am I going to do?' Saul said slowly. 'A trap is <
only a trap if you don't know about it. If you know |
about it, it's a challenge. I'm going to go, of course.'!
I'm going to Junglist Terror. To rescue my friends.' ^
He could feel that sentiment within him which had
disturbed him before, a part of him saying fuck it,
don't go, it's not your problem any more.

That was King Rat's blood. Saul would not listen to \ it. / am what I do, he thought, furiously.

There was a long silence between the two of them.

'You know what?' said Saul finally. 'I think you;
should come too. I think you will.'


334
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE


Squadrons of rats spread out across London. Saul
harangued them in foetid alleys, behind great plastic
bins. He raged to them about the Piper, told them that
their day had come.

The massed ranks of the rats stood quivering,
inspired. Their noses twitched; they could smell
victory. Saul's words broke over them like tides, swept
them up. He communicated with them by his tone;
they knew they were being commanded, and after
centuries of furtive skulking they became brave,
puffed up with millennial fervour.

Saul ordered them to prepare. He ordered them to
search out the Piper, to bring Saul information, to find
his friends. He described them, the black man and the
short woman being kept hostage by the Piper. The
rats did not care about the people being held. They
represented nothing except a task set by Saul.

'You are rats,' Saul told them, sticking out his lower
lip and jerking his head back like Mussolini. They
gazed at him, a shifting mass of followers, peering out


335



from all the nooks and crannies of the building site i
which they had congregated. 'You're the sneakers, the.l
creepers, the rat-burglars. Don't come to me afraid of
being seen, don't come to me with fears of the Piper's!
revenge. Why will he see you? You're rats... if he?
sees you you're a failure to your species. Stay hiddenj
creep in the spaces in between, and find him, and tell|
me where he is.'

The rats were inspired. They longed to follow him. *
He dismissed them with a wave and they scattered hr
short-lived bravado.

Saul knew that beyond the range of his voice, the;
rats' fear would quickly return. He knew that they i
would hesitate. He knew they would slow down as
they scaled walls, look around anxiously for him to:
shout them on, and that they would fail. He knew: they would slink back to the sewers and hide until he |
found them and urged them out again.

But maybe one would be brave or lucky. Maybe;
one of his rats would scale the walls that divided thej
Piper's sanctuary from the outside, and pick a way!
through the barbed wire, scamper along the pipes and!
the cables, cross the wasteland, and find him.

Somewhere, squeezed into the air-conditioningl
housing on the top of a financial building in the heartj
of the City, or in a bitumen-sealed hole under a sub-J
urban railway bridge, or in a room with nawindows|
in an empty hospital beyond Neasden, or in the high*|
tech vaults of a bank to the west of Hammersmith, or |


336


in the attic above a bingo hall in Tooting, the Piper
was holding Natasha and Fabian, waiting out the
week before Junglist Terror.

Saul suspected that the Piper would avoid the gaze
of rats and spiders and birds. He was not afraid of
his adversaries, but there was no point advertising his
presence. He had issued his challenge, had told them
the night that they would die. The Piper had issued
them with invitations to their own executions.

It might be that he was only concerned with Saul,
with the half-and-half, the rat-man he could not
control, but he must suspect that Anansi would be
there, too, and King Rat, and Loplop. They were not
brave or proud. They were not ashamed to turn down
challenges. But they knew that Saul was the only thing
that the Piper could not control, that Saul was the
only chance they had, and they knew they must be
there to help him. If he did not survive, they could
not.

The rats spread throughout London.

Saul was alone amidst the rubble and the scaffolding.

He stood in the centre of a wide ruined landscape, a
blitzed corner of London that hid behind hoardings,
in easy earshot of Edgware Road. A forty-foot by
forty-foot square, carpeted in crushed brick and old
stone and surrounded by the backs of buildings. On
one edge of the square a rough wooden fence hid the
street that flanked the site, and above the fence


337



towered the old brick walls of ancient shops and |
houses. Saul looked up at them. On that side the
windows were surrounded by large wooden frames,
rotting but ornate, designed to be seen.

On all other sides the walls that enclosed him were
vulnerable. They constituted the buildings' underbellies,
soft underneath the aesthetic carapace. Out of > sight of their facades, he was ringed by great flat
expanses of brick, windows that spilt at random down
featureless walls. Seen from behind, caught unawares,
the functionality of the city was exposed.

This point of view was dangerous for the observer, \ as well as for the city. It was only when it was seen |
from these angles that he could believe London had
been built brick by brick, not born out of its own';
mind. But the city did not like to be found out. Evens
as he saw it clearly for the product it was, Saul felt irfj
square up against him. The city and he faced each 1
other. He saw London from an angle against which it|
had no front, at a time when its guard was down.

He had felt this before, when he had left King Rat,!
when he had known that he had slipped the city's!
bonds; and he had known then that he had made off
it an enemy. The windows which loomed over
reminded him of that.

In the corner of the square lurked obscure building
machines, piles of materials and pickaxes, bags of cement covered with blue plastic sheeting. The
looked defensive and overwhelmed. Just in front


338



them stood the remnants of the building that had been
pulled down. All that remained was a section of its
front, a veneer one brick deep, with gaping, glassless
holes where windows had been. It seemed miraculous
that it could stand. Saul walked over the broken
ground towards it.

There were lights on in a few of the rooms that
overlooked him and, as he walked silently, Saul even
caught sight of movement here and there. He was not
afraid. He did not believe that anyone would see him;
he had rat blood in his veins. And if they did, they
might be surprised to see a man striding by lamplight
in the forbidden space of a nascent building, but who
would they tell? And if someone were, unbelievably,
to call the police, Saul could simply climb and be gone.
He had rat blood in his veins. Tell the police to call
Rentokil, he thought. They might have a better
chance.

He stood under the free-standing facade. He stretched his arms up, prepared to scramble over the
city himself, to join his emissaries in their search. He
did not believe that he would find Fabian or Natasha
or the Piper, but he could not fail to look for them. To
acquiesce in the Piper's plans would be to abrogate his
own power, to become collaborator. If he were to
meet the Piper on the ground the Piper had specified,
he would be dragged there, he would be unwilling. He
would be angry.

He heard a noise above him. A figure swung into


339


view in one of the empty window-frames. Saul was
still. It was King Rat.

Saul was not surprised. King Rat followed him
often, waited until the rats had left, then poured scorn
on his efforts, ridiculed him in agonized contumely,
incoherent with rage at the behaviour of the rats who
had once obeyed him.

King Rat grasped his small perch with his right
hand. He crouched, his left arm dangling down
between his legs, his head lowered towards his knees.:
Seeing him, Saul thought of a comic-book hero:
Batman or Daredevil. Silhouetted in the ruined win- ', dow, King Rat looked like a scene-setting frame at the
start of an epic graphic novel.

'What do you want?' Saul said finally.

In a sinewy sliding movement King Rat emerged,
from the window and landed at Saul's feet. He bentj
his knees on landing, then rose slowly just before him.|

His face twisted.

'So what silly buggers are you playing now, cove?'

Tuck off,' said Saul and turned away.

King Rat grabbed him and swung him back to face|
him. Saul slapped the other's hands down, his eyesj
wide and outraged. There was a horrible unea
moment as Saul and King Rat stared at each other||
their shoulders wide, their fists ready to strike. Slowrj
and deliberately, Saul reached up and pushed King ]
on the chest, shoved him slightly back.

His anger boiled up in him and he shoved King Raf

340



again, growled and tried to make him fall. He punched
him suddenly, hard, and images of his father raced
through his mind. He felt a desperate desire to kill
King Rat. It shocked him how fast the hatred could
overtake him.

King Rat was stumbling slightly on the uneven
ground, and Saul reached down to snatch up a half
brick. He bore down on King Rat, flailing brutally
with his weapon.

He swung it at King Rat's head, connecting and
sending his opponent sprawling, but King Rat hissed
with rage as he fell. He rolled painfully across the
shattered ground and swung his legs up at Saul, taking
him down. The fight became a violent blur, a flurry of
arms and legs, nails and fists. Saul did not aim, did not
plan; he flailed in rage, feeling blows and scratches
bruise him and rip his skin.

Blood exploded from a vicious strike below his eye
and his head rocked. He slammed his brick down
again but King Rat was not there, and the brick struck
stone and burst into dust.

The two rolled and grappled. King Rat slid from
Saul's grip and hovered like a gadfly, ripping him open
with a hundred cruel scratches and dancing out of the
range of retaliation.

Saul's frustration overwhelmed him. He suddenly
broke off his frenzied attack with a shouted curse. He
stalked away across the rubble.

Another vicious half-fight. He could not kill him.


341



King Rat was too fast, too strong, and he would not*
engage Saul properly, he would not risk killing Saul, i)
King Rat wanted Saul alive, for all that he was growing!
to hate him for his following among the rats, for his;
refusal to obey him.

King Rat shouted scornfully after him. Saul could'j
not even hear what he said.

He felt blood well from the deep scratches on his
face and he wiped himself as he began to run, surefooted
despite the terrain. He threw himself at one^
of the walls which overlooked him, scrambled up itsi
tender surface, slipping by those unadorned windows,5
leaving a long smear of blood and dirt on his way up the
bricks.

He stared briefly behind him. King Rat sat for;;
lornly on the hulking piles of cement. Saul turned*
away from him and set out over the top of Londoifcf
He looked around him as he moved, and sometimes!
he stopped and was still.


On the top of a school, somewhere behind Pad-*|
dington, he saw harsh security lights catching on
billowing cobweb suspended below the railings
topped the building. The fragile thing was empty an<|
long deserted, but he lowered himself to the ground
and stared around him. There were other, smalle
webs below it, still inhabited, less visible without th<
accumulated dust of days.


342



He lowered his lips to these webs and spoke in a
voice he knew sounded removed and intimate, like
King Rat's. The spiders were quite still.

'I need you to do what I say, now,' he whispered. 'I
need you to find Anansi, find your boss. Tell him I'm
waiting for him. Tell him I need to see him.'

The little creatures were still for a long time. They
seemed to hesitate. Saul lowered himself again.

'Go on,' he said, 'spread the word.'

There was another moment's hesitation, then the
spiders, six or seven of them, tiny and fierce, took off
at the same moment. They left their webs together,
on long threads, little abseiling special forces, disappearing
down the side of the building.


Fabian drifted on waves.

He was stuck very deep in his own head. His body
made itself felt occasionally, with a fart or a pain or an
itch, but for the most part he could forget it was even
there. He was conscious of almost nothing except perpetual
motion, a tireless pitch and yaw. He was not
sure if it was his body or only his mind which was
lulled by the liquid movement.

There was a Drum and Bass backdrop to the hypnagogic rolling. The soundtrack never stopped, the
same bleak, washed-out track that he had heard from
Natasha's stairs.

Sometimes he saw her face. She would lean over


343


him, nodding gently in time to the beat, her eyes
unfocused. Sometimes it was Pete's face. He felt soup
trickle down his throat and around his mouth, and he
swallowed obligingly.

Most of the time he lay back and surrendered to
the rocking motion in his skull. He could see almost
anything when he just lay back and listened to the
Jungle filtering from somewhere close by, twisting
around him in a tiny dark room, oppressive, stinking
of rot.

He spent a lot of time looking at his artwork in
progress. He was not always sure it was there, but
when he thought of it and relaxed into the beat, it
invariably appeared, and then he would make plans,
scribble charcoal additions in each corner. Changing 'jjk this canvas was so easy. He could never quite re- * member the moment when he drew, but the changes
appeared, bright and perfect.

He became more and more ambitious in his
changes, going over old ground, rewriting the text
at the centre of his piece. In no time at all it was
changed beyond recognition, as smooth and perfect as
computer graphics, and he stared at the legend he
could not quite remember choosing. Wind City, it said.

Fabian swallowed the food he found in his mouth
and listened to the music.


344



Natasha spent most of her time with her eyes closed.
She didn't need to open them at all. Her fingers knew
every inch of her keyboard, and she spent her time
playing Wind City, tweaking it, changing it in slight
and subtle ways, to fit the exigencies of her mood.

Occasionally she would open her eyes and see with
surprise that she stood in unfamiliar environs, that she
was in the centre of a dim, stinking space, that Fabian
danced horizontally, lying down nearby, food drying
on his face, and that her keyboard was not in front of
her after all. But when she tweaked Wind City, it
changed anyway, it did what she wanted, so she closed
her eyes and continued, her fingers flying over the keys.

Sometimes Pete would come and feed her, and she
would play him what she had done, still with her eyes
closed.


The rats had given up in fear and confusion. The great
cadres that had set out earlier in the night had dried
up, had sliink home to the sewers, but here and there the braver souls continued the search, as Saul had
hoped they would.

In the streets of Camberwell they searched the catacombs
of old churches. On the Isle of Dogs they ran
past Blackwall Basin and scoured the decrepit business
park. The rats worked their way along the great
slit of the Jubilee Line extension, past vast hulking
machines that tunnelled through the earth.


345



Their numbers dwindled. As the night wound on,
more and more gave in to hunger and fear and forgetfulness.
They could not work out why they were
running so hard. They could no longer remember
what their quarries looked like. One by one they
slipped back into the sewers. Some fell prey to dogs
and cars.

Soon there were only a very few rats left searching.


'Lickle bird tell me you want talk to me, bwoy.'

Saul looked up.

Anansi descended from the bough of a tree above
him. He moved elegantly, belying his size and weight,
slipping smoothly down one of his ropes, utterly controlled.

Saul leaned back. He felt the cold weight of the
gravestone behind him.

He was sitting quietly in a small cemetery in Acton.
It was a tiny space that straddled the overland train
line, tucked behind a small industrial estate. It was
overlooked on all sides by ugly functionality, a set
of grotesque flattened factories and suburban warehouses,
uncomfortable in this residential zone.

Saul had wandered West London for a time and
entered the graveyard to eat and rest, here amid the
crammed urban dead.

The stones were nondescript, apologetic.

Anansi came to the ground silently a few feet from


346



him, stalked past the low grey markers and crouched
beside him.

Saul glanced at him, nodded in greeting. He did not
offer Anansi any of the old fruit he had scavenged. He
knew he would not take it.

Saul sat and ate. 'Now was it really a little bird,
'Nansi?' he asked mildly. 'How is Loplop?'

Anansi jerked his head.

'Him still screaming angry, bwoy. Him mad, too.
Them can't understand him, the birds dem. Him have
lost a kingdom again, think you take it from him.'
Anansi shrugged. 'So we no have no birds. Just my
lickle spiders and the rats, and you and me.'

Saul bit into his bruised apple.

'And Loplop?' he asked, and paused. 'And King
Rat? They going to be there with us? They going to be
there when we take him?'

Anansi shrugged again. 'Loplop is nothing, whether him there or not. King Rat? You tell me,
bwoy. He's your daddy ...'

'He'll be there,' said Saul quietly.

The two sat for a while. Anansi rose presently and
walked to the railing in front of them, looked over at
the train-line below.

'I've sent the rats to find the Piper,' said Saul, 'but
they'll fail. They're probably all sitting stuffing their
bellies right now. They've probably forgotten what it
is I wanted them to do ...' He smiled humourlessly.
'We're going to face him on his terms.'


347



Anansi said nothing. Saul knew what he was
thinking.

Anansi had to come to the Junglist Terror, because
Saul would be there. Saul was the only chance he had
to defeat the Piper, but he knew it was a tiny chance;
he knew that he was walking into a trap, that by being
there he was doing exactly what the Piper wanted. But
he had no choice. Because if he were not there, Saul's
chances of defeating the Piper were even smaller, and
if Saul failed, the Piper would have them all, the Piper
would hunt Anansi down and kill him.

It was paradoxical. Anansi, King Rat, they were
animals. Preserve yourself, that was the whole of their
law. And that law would compel them to go to Junglist
Terror. To their almost certain death. Because
Saul had to go, because of his human friends, because
Saul was refusing to act as an animal.

Saul was going to kill Anansi.

They both knew it. Saul was going to kill Anansi
and Loplop and King Rat, and Saul was going to die,
all in an effort to prove that he was not his rat-father's
son.

Anansi looked back at Saul and shook his head
slightly.

Saul returned his gaze.

'Let's talk about what we're going to do, 'Nansi,'
he said. 'Let's make a iew plans ... let's not let everything go this fucker's way.'

They had spiders, they had rats ... they had Saul.

348


m



The Piper would have to make a choice. One of the
armies would be defeated as soon as they all entered
the fray, but the Piper had to make a choice. Anansi
and his troops had half a chance of remaining free
from the Piper's thrall. And so did the rats.


A handful of rats still scoured London for...
something...

They could not remember exactly what.

These were the pride of the nation. These were
the bravest, the fattest and strongest and sleekest, the
leaders of the pack.

As smooth as seals through the water they roamed.

One raced like a chubby bullet along the Albert
Embankment.

It had come up from the kitchens of St Thomas's
Hospital, next to Waterloo, there on the South Bank
of the river. It had snatched food to fortify itself, had
searched the attic spaces and cellars. It had run like a
ghost through the hospital, leaving its footprints in
thick dust, dirtying obscure and forgotten diagnostic
machinery.

It had passed through others' territories, but it was
a great big animal, and it was on royal business. They
did not challenge it.

It had found nothing. It made its way out of the
building.


349



In the open space it scampered along the bank of
the river towards the medical school.

The Thames glinted balefully beside it, oozing
fatly through the city. On the opposite bank stood
Westminster Palace, London's absurdly crenellated
seat of power. Its many lights flickered on the river's
skin.

The rat stopped.

Lambeth Bridge loomed up over the water before
it, darkening the muck of the Thames.

An indistinct shape bobbed sullenly in the water
beside it. An ancient barge, one of the various hulks
that littered the river, untended and ignored. It heaved
gently to and fro in the current, little waves slapping
its greasy boards like petulant children. The corpse of
a boat, its black wood leprous and decaying, a vast
tarpaulin slung across it like a shroud.

The rat moved forward nervously, stopped, uncertain.

It strained its ears. It could hear something, faint
and sinister. Sounds emanating from under the heavy
waterproof cloth.

The barge rocked back and forth. The water was
digesting it. But in the meantime, before the wood
splintered and dissolved into the Thames, someone I
was on the vessel, desecrating it, interrupting its long
death.

Two old ropes still tethered it to the bank. One
dipped in an elegant curve below the surface of thej


350



water, but the other was nearly taut. Tentative, the rat
stepped onto the mooring. Like a tightrope walker it
scurried over the water.

It slowed as it approached the boat. Foreboding
flooded its tiny brain, and it would have turned to run
if it could, but the rope was too narrow. The rat was
stuck with its choice, its impetuous courage.

The rope was strung like a necklace, with huge
lumpy beads designed to impede a rat's progress. But
unable to turn back, and dreading the water, the rat
was tenacious. It hauled itself over the impediments
until only a few feet of rope remained.

Stealthy now, silent, the rat continued. The sound
from the barge was clearer now, a low repeated
thump, a thin, plaintive wailing, the creaking of wood
under moving bodies. With
the lightest of touches the rat set foot on the
barge.

It crept around to the side, seeking a gap in the
tarpaulin. It could feel vibrations in the wood that
were nothing to do with the water.

Slinking below the boat's lip, the rat found a place
where the material was rucked up, where it could
creep through tunnels left between folds in the heavy
canvas.

It made its way through this maze until it could
hear soft murmurings. It could feel the tarpaulin
opening up around it.


351



With a nose twitching maniacally, the rat crept
forward, peered furtively up into the barge.

There was an incredible stink. A mixture of decay,
food, bodies and old, old tar. The tarpaulin was
stretched out on a frame to make the barge a floating
tent. The rat could see by the weak light of a torch
suspended from the frame. It pointed directly down
and its ambient light was poor, so everything in the
room was glimpsed, half-seen, noticed briefly as the
motion of the boat swung the torch one way, then lost
as its oscillations took it away again.

A low, very quiet bass thump pervaded the tiny
space.

In one corner a man lay on the floor. He looked feverish, moved his arms and legs as if he were
dancing, his face thrashing uneasily from side to side.

A woman stood nearby, facing away from him. Her
eyes were closed. She nodded her head and moved
her hands in abstract, exact patterns in front of her, her
fingers flying, tracing intricate motions.

Their clothes were dirty. Their faces were thin.

The rat stared at them briefly. Saul's descriptions
were muddled in its mind, but it knew that these two
were important, it knew that it had to tell Saul what it
had found. It turned to run.

A foot slammed down on its escape route, closing
off the way through the cloth.

The rat bolted in terror.

It ran around and around the room, everything a


352


dark blur, between the legs of the standing woman,
under the arms of the lying man, scratching madly at
the cloth all around in a frenzy of fear.

Then suddenly it heard a quick whistling, a jaunty
marching tune, and it stopped running, filled with
wonder and amazement. The whistling segued gently
into the sounds of sex, and the slopping of rich, fatty
food falling to the ground, and the rat turned and
marched in the direction of the sound, eager to find all
these good things.

Then the whistling stopped.

The rat was staring into a man's eyes. Its body was
held fast. Frantic, it bit down, drew blood, savaged the
fingers which gripped it, but they did not relax.

The eyes gazed at it with a lunatic intensity. The rat
began to scream in terror.

There was a brief and sudden motion.


The Piper slammed the rat's head against the wooden
floor again and again, until it had lost its definition,
become just a flaccid, indistinct appendage.

He held the little corpse up to his face, pursed his
lips.

He reached down for the small ghetto-blaster on
the floor, and lowered the volume still further. Wind City could still be heard, but now it was almost subliminal.


353



Fabian and Natasha turned simultaneously, looked
at him in confusion and surprise.

'I know, I know,' he said, mollifying. 'You'll have
to listen really hard. I have to turn it down a bit. We're
attracting attention. We don't want to do that yet,
right?' He smiled. 'Save that for the club. Right?'

He moved the ghetto-blaster closer with his foot.
Spent batteries lay all around it, moving uneasily with
the current.

Natasha and Fabian subsided into their previous
poses.

Fabian sank back and began to paint.

Natasha continued to play Wind City. They both
strained their ears a little, and heard what they were
looking for.


Warily, the Piper lifted a corner of the cloth. His pale
eyes scanned the darkness around the boat.

No one was passing by on Albert Embankment; J
Pete saw by the lights of the Houses of Parliament.

He reached out and dropped the rat's body into the Thames.

It circled, one speck of dirty darkness among many i
in the water. The current pulled it slowly, tugging it ,|
beyond Westminster, carrying the little cadaver way'
out to the east.


354
PART SIX


JUNGLIST TERROR

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX


Jungle night.

It was in the air. The sharp-dressed youth who
congregated on the Elephant and Castle could taste it.

The clouds were low and moving very fast, ruddy
with street lamp light, billowing up from behind the
skyline. London looked like a city on fire.

Police cars swirled ephemeral through the streets,
streaking past those other cars that prowled towards
Lambeth, stereos pumping. The strains of Dancehall
and Rap, blunted and languorous, and everywhere
Drum and Bass, febrile and poised, savage and impenetrable.

The drivers leaned their arms out of open windows,
nodded lazily in time to the music. These cars were
full, bursting with designer clothes and basslines. For
the cruisers, the evening kicked in at the zebra crossings
and red lights, when they could stop, engine
idling, beats pounding, visible in all their finery. They
drove from junction to junction, searching for places
to be still.


357



A hundred slogans boomed out of a hundred car
windows, the samples and shouted declarations of the
classic tracks being played, a hundred preludes to
the evening.

Mr Loverman, came the shouts, and Check yo'self.
Gangsta.Jump. Fight the Power. There is a Darkside.

I could just kill a man.

Six million ways to die.

They only had eyes for each other that night. They
drove and walked the streets like conquistadors in
Karl Kani, Calvin Klein and Kangols. In wafts of
cologne the homeboys and rudegirls, the posses and
massives claimed the streets south of Waterloo,
striding past the intimidated natives as though they
were shades.

Touching fists and kissing their teeth, the massed
ranks moved in on the venue. Irish boys and Caribbean
girls, smooth Pakistani kids, gangstas in huge
coats muttering into mobile phones, DJs with record
bags, precocious kids aping the studied nonchalance
of the elders ...

They made their way into the Jungle.

Here and there the police lurked in corners. Sometimes
they were judged worthy of a contemptuous
glance, a sneer, before the lights changed and the
drivers moved on. The police watched them, whispered
to their radios in garbled code. The air teemed
with their electronic hisses, warnings and prophecies,


358



unheard by the gathering, swamped by urban
breakbeats.

The night was fraught, full of looks held too long.

In the dark streets the warehouse shone. Light
spilled from its crevices as if it were a church.

Lines stretched out before the entrance. The bouncers,
vast men in bomber jackets, stood with arms
folded like grotesque gargoyles. Feudal hierarchies
asserted themselves: the serfs in line, clamouring at the
gates, staring enviously at the DJs and the hangers-on,
the movers and shakers of the Drum and Bass scene,
who sauntered casually past them and murmured to
the guards. For the noblest of them, even checking the
guest list was unnecessary.

Roy Kray and DJ Boom, Nuttah and Deep Cover,
familiar from a hundred CD covers and posters, were
waved in without demur. Even the preposterously
proportioned bouncers showed their obeisance, as
their impassivity became momentarily more studied. Droit de seigneur was alive and kicking in the Elephant
and Castle that night.


If any of the assembled had looked up they might
have caught a glimpse of something lurching across
the sky, seemingly out of control. A bundle of rags as
big as a man, buffeted through the air. It was not at
the mercy of the wind: no wind changed direction as


359



violently or as fast as the shapeless mass, no wind
could carry such bulk.

Loplop, the Bird Superior, arced and wheeled
above the streets, staring down at the dirty map below
him, staring up into the night stained orange by
diffuse light, falling, rising, his ears filled with ringing.

He could not hear the city. He could not hear the
predatory grunting of the cars. He could not hear
the thud thud thud emanating from the warehouse.
The intricate hairs and bones in his ears had burst, and
the canals were blocked with dry blood.

Loplop had only his eyes, and he searched as
best he could, weaving silently between buildings,
perching on weathervanes and springing into the sky.

The air was slowly thickening with birds. The few
that had been awake as Loplop sped by had cried
out, pledged their fealty, but he had not heard them.
Confused, they had risen from the eaves and the
branches of trees, had followed him, screaming out to
him, frightened by his wild flight and his ignoring of
them. Huge ponderous crows circled him. Loplop
saw them and shouted wordlessly, clutching at the
authority he had lost.

The birds wove elegantly around each other, their
numbers growing. Their eyes darted from side to side
in confusion. In the midst of their slow wheeling,
Loplop rose and sped and zigzagged and fell - a wild
card.

The birds could not obey their general.


360


Elsewhere in London, other armies were also
massing.

The walls and corners of houses were emptying
out. From crevices and holes all over the city, the
spiders streamed. They scuttled in their millions, little
smudges racing across dirty floors and through
gardens, descending on threads from building tops.
They crawled over each other, a sudden, nervous mass
of blacks and browns.

Here and there their squadrons were seen. In
children's bedrooms and backstreets, the night was
punctuated by sudden screams.

Many died. Crushed, eaten, lost. Ruined chitin and
smeared bodies marked their passing.

Something sparked deep in the spiders' tiny brains.
A sensation that was not the hunger or fear or
nothingness that were previously their lot. Trepidation?
Excitement? Vindication?

The city lights glinted minutely on the spiders'
multiple eyes. Close set and impenetrable, as cold and
disinterested as a shark's ... except tonight...

The spiders trembled.

In the wilds of South London, Anansi watched
from rooftops. He could feel the air shifting. He could
taste the presence of his troops.


The sewers boiled with rats, incited to a frenzy.

Their Crown Prince had passed among them. Saul


361


9



had spread the word. He had commanded them, controlled
them, sent them forth.

The rats surged through the tunnels like a flash .,#% flood. Smaller tributaries streamed into the main
branch, bodies on bodies, fat and fast.

They poured under the streets and over the skyline.
Up in the canopy of the city, in the thin air, rats
bounded over walls and between partitions, scrabbled
along slates and behind chimneys.

The river was no obstacle: they found their way
across almost without pause.

Different dirt, different packs, a hundred different
smells ... all the tribes in London running for the
south, gnawing on forgotten filth and shaking with
adrenaline, ready for battle. An enormous sense of
wrong had been encoded in their genes for years,
eating them alive like a cancer, and for the first time
they could smell a cure.

Rats spewed out of a hundred thousand holes and
converged on the wastelands of South London, a
scratching, biting mass, hungry and scared, trying to
be brave.

Insidiously, furtively, the rats gathered round the
warehouse, and waited.


The warehouse was a spark plug. It crackled with
energy. It was surrounded by invisible circles, waves


362



and cadres of rats and spiders, crowned with confused,
wheeling birds, penetrated by people.

It was a magnet.

Loplop still watched from above.

Anansi scanned the rooftops.


'Where the fuck is she at?'

Three Fingers, wiry and cantankerous, addressed
his question to one of the bouncers. The huge man
shook his head. Fingers danced from side to side in
frustration. The wet thumping of basslines and beats
welled up behind him. He felt as if he could lean
backwards on the sound without falling, cushioned,
held in the air.

He stood at the entrance to the warehouse, gazing
out at the crowd assembled in the forecourt. He had
been on the top step for some minutes, waiting for
Natasha. All the other DJs had arrived. Fingers had
already had to rearrange his running order a little, in
case Natasha did not appear. He trotted down the
stairs into the courtyard, strode out to the split in
the wire-mesh fence and looked up and down the
street.

Swaggering dancers were still appearing from all
over, converging on the warehouse. Looking absurdly
drab in their midst, a few locals passed by, staring at
Fingers and glancing uneasily at the warehouse lit up
and pounding, monstrous in the dull light.


363



A tall figure rounded the corner and bore down on
him. Close behind him appeared two figures, a slim
black man and a short woman. Fingers started, looked
hard. It was Natasha.

'Where the fuck have you been?' shouted Fingers,
smiling tightly, amiable but pissed off. He strode off
down the street towards Natasha and her escorts.

She looked amazing. Her hair was pulled up into a
high, coiling ponytail. Her body was sheathed in
a tiny bra-top, reflective red, and her trousers were so
tight they looked painted onto her legs. She wore no
jacket, nothing on her thin arms or midriff. She must
be freezing, Fingers thought. He shrugged: no surrender
to comfort in the style war. But he was
surprised. Whenever he had seen her DJ before, S
Natasha had resolutely dressed down, in clothes that
were baggy and comfortable and nondescript. But not
tonight. Gold glinted in her ears and around her neck.

Fingers stopped short, waited for her to come to
him.

She was approaching with an odd gait, he realized,
a peculiar hybrid, at once arrogant sashay and aimless
wander. He noticed that she was wearing a walkman,
as was the guy next to her, Fabian. Fingers had met
him once before. He was as dressed up as Natasha,
and walking in the same half-lost manner. It suddenly
occurred to Fingers that the two of them might be
high, and he gritted his teeth. If she was fucked up and
couldn't perform ...


364



The tall man reached him first and proffered a hand,
which Fingers stared at, then shook perfunctorily.
Fuck knew where Natasha had picked this one up, he thought. An embarrassing grin, his blond hair enticed
into a ponytail it clearly resented, and clothes that
proclaimed his indifference to fashion. Incongruously,
his face was covered in thin, half-healed scratches. If
he hadn't been with Natasha, he would never have got
past the bouncers. 'You
must be Fingers,' he said. 'I'm Pete.'

Fingers nodded briefly and turned to Natasha. He
was about to harass her about her late arrival but, as
he opened his mouth, her face passed from shadow
into the dim glow of a street lamp and his complaints
died unsaid.

Her make-up was immaculate and excessive,
vampish, but it could not disguise how thin and pale
she looked. She looked up at him with eyes that did
not properly focus, smiled abstractedly. Drugs for
sure, he thought again.

'Tash, man,' he said uneasily, 'are you OK?'

Behind him the thumping beats of the warehouse
were audible, a backdrop to his conversation.

She cocked her head, pulled the headphone from
one ear. He repeated his question.

'For sure, man,' she said, and he was a little
reassured. Her voice sounded firm and controlled.
'We're ready to go.'

Fingers realized that Fabian was nodding his head


365



slightly, in time to the beat passing through his
headphones, his eyes unfocused.

Natasha followed Fingers' gaze. 'You'll be hearing
that later,' she said softly. 'You can join in. I swear
you'll love it. Have you got a DAT player in there?
Pete brought mine, in case.' She paused and gave
another wan smile. 'You have to hear what I've been
doing. It's special, Fingers.'

There was a silence Fingers did not know how to
fill. Eventually he inclined his head for them to follow
him, turned and walked back towards the warehouse.

It felt like a long way.

As he walked, he heard a brief sound, a snatch of
billowing and snapping like a sheet being shaken out.
He turned, but saw nothing. Pete was looking into the
sky, smiling.


Giddy with excitement and terror, Loplop spun in
circles in the air, passing through narrow passages
between buildings, searching for Anansi. He caught
a glimpse of his nude torso tucked under the eaves
of a building. Loplop hovered before him like
a humming-bird, screeching incoherently. Anansi
understood. He glowered and mouthed something.

He's here. The Piper's here.

Loplop nodded, shrieked, disappeared.

Anansi whispered into his hand, released the tiny
spider held therein. It scuttled away from him down


366


the side of the building, to the bottom of the drainpipe,
where another five comrades awaited it. They
caressed the newcomer with their long, powerful legs,
leaned in close and gazed into one another's eyes.
Then all six turned and disappeared, their paths
forming an expanding asterisk, until each spider met
others of its kind, waiting, and there was another brief
conference, and more messengers joined the throng,
exponentially, faster and faster, and word spread
among the spiders like contagion.


Directly opposite the warehouse rose a high red wall,
the boundary of a long-gone factory. Behind it was a
small area of urban scrub, and beyond that a thickset
tower block, fabricated from grey slabs, that overlooked
the warehouse and its courtyard.

On the top of the block's flat roof, something
moved under a pile of old cardboard. Stealthy hands
with filthy nails crept gingerly out from underneath
and gently cleared a small space. Two indistinct eyes
peered out as Natasha, Fabian and Pete followed
Fingers up the stairs of the warehouse, past the bouncers
and into the building.

The cardboard rose, then fell away as Saul stood.

He was still for a moment, breathing deeply,
calming himself, slowing his heart.

His old clothes, stolen from the prison, fluttered
around him.


367


f He closed his eyes briefly, rocked on his heels, then ^

snapped to attention, scanned the air for any signs of 2
Loplop coming for him.	J*

It was partly in case of such an attack that he had **
concealed himself, but there was more and less to it -j
than that. He could not speak, could not talk to f
Anansi, could not make any more plans. He gave an
empty smile. As if they had come up with any plans.

*B

This was the night when it would all happen. This *
was the night when he would free himself, or the night
he would die. And he wanted to be alone in London,
using the city as his climbing frame, asserting himself
alone, before the night came for him.

And as he had known it would, the night had come.

It was time to move.


aul leant forward, grasped the gutter with both
hands, shook it vigorously, testing its strength.

His legs bent a little for leverage, he paused, then
vaulted over the edge of the building.

Saul swung round in mid-air, his hands leapfrogging
over each other as he renewed his grip,
tugged himself out of his acrobatic arc and into a sharp
sideways movement, curtailing his curving passage
and slithering along the gutter to the drainpipe.

He slipped down it as if it were a firefighter's pole,
his hands and feet moving imperceptibly fast to avoid
the bolts that tethered it to the wall.


368



He touched down on the desiccated earth and
moved through the desultory patches of dandelions
and grass into the shadow of the wall.

Saul clicked his fingers imperiously. Immediately a
dozen little brown heads poked up from hiding places
behind old bricks, from holes in the earth, cavities
in the wall. The rats watched him, twitching in
excitement and fear.

'It's time,' he said. 'Tell everyone to get ready. I'll
see you in there.' He paused, and spoke his final
words with a flat excitement, a fatalistic thrill. 'In you

go-'

The rats bolted.

Saul ran with them. He overtook them, ran through
them like a symbol of victory. He slunk along the top
of the wall, invisible. He crossed the road unseen, now
in the shade of a car, now flattened against a building,
now as a passer-by; into the gutter and out, over the
wall and along the side of the warehouse, past the
waiting crowds without giving them a second glance.
The air was thick with the taste of alcohol and scent,
but Saul held his nose through that.

He kept his nose clean to smell his troops.

Up a low garage and across its collapsed skylight, a
ramp onto the crumbling brick walls of the venue,
clinging to forgotten nails and the undersides of heavy
old windows. He gripped the edge of the gently
sloping roof and bent his legs against the wall. He
could feel the bricks vibrate with bass. Then, just as


369


King Rat had done so long ago, on Saul's first night
among the beasts, before he had eaten their food,
when he was still human, Saul pushed out with his
legs and swung around in a perfect circle, landing
solidly on the warehouse roof.

He slithered quickly up the slates towards the
massive skylights. They were cracked all over, a few
seconds' work to pry open and push aside, opening
the way to an attic space, a dusty wooden floor that
jumped with the bass from below, as if the building
itself was eager to dance to the music in its bowels.

Saul paused. He could taste a mass movement in the
air. He could sense the migration of the compact little
bodies, was aware of the exodus of his troops from the
streets and sewers and scrub, towards the glowing
building. He could feel the scratch of claws on concrete,
the feverish searching for causeways and flaws
in brick.

The rats and Saul left the relative safety of London's
nightlands and entered the warehouse, the frenzied
jaws of Drum and Bass, the domain of smoke and
strobe lights and Hardcore, the Piper's lair, the heart
of Darkness, deep in the Jungle.


The wooden boards drummed under Saul's feet: the
dust motes would not settle but hovered instead in an
indistinct mist around his ankles. He crept the length


370


of the long attic. In the corner of the great dark space
there was a trapdoor.

Saul flattened himself against the floor and tugged
at it very gently, raising it slowly away from the surrounding
boards. Music and coloured light and the
smell of dancers spilled through the slit to which he
put his eye.

The lights below spun and changed colours, illuminating
and obscuring, bouncing off suspended globes
and dissipating throughout the hall. They cut through
the darkness, confusing as much as they elucidated.

A long way below him was the dancefloor. It was
a hallucinogenic vision, shimmering and metamorphosing
like a fractal pattern, feverish bodies moving in a
thousand different ways. In the corners lurked the
bad boys, nodding their heads, no more than that, no
reaction to the overwhelming music. On the floor the
hard-steppers, swinging their arms, loose-limbed and
syncopated; and those on speed and coke, ludicrously
trying to keep up with the BPM, shifting their feet
like lunatics; the rudegirls, arms spread wide, winding
their hips slowly to the bassline, a barrage of colours
and clothes and undress. The dancefloor was tight
packed, thronging with bodies, decadent and vibrant,
thrilling, communal and brutal.

As he watched, a strobe light kicked in, transforming
the room momentarily into a series of frozen
tableaux. Saul could investigate individuals almost at


371



his leisure. He was struck by the multiplicity of
expressions on the faces below.

The Drum and Bass felt as if it would lift the hatch
out of the floor, off into the sky. It was unforgiving, a
punishing assault of original Hardcore beats.

A little below him an iron walkway described the
edge of the hall. It was deserted. There was a ladder in
one corner, tucked up under the walkway and secured
with chains. It was designed to swing down to
another, similar ledge further down. This lower level
was crowded with bodies, people looking down on
the dancers ten feet below.

Saul cast his eyes around the hall. There was a tiny
movement in the corner opposite him.

Red and green lights swirled around a black shape
suspended from the ceiling. Anansi swung gently
from one of his ropes. His arms and legs were tucked
up impossibly tight. His knuckles were just visible,
motionless, and stretched taut from grasping.

He swayed from side to side, buffeted by sonic
vibrations. Saul knew that Anansi's army was with
him, around them both, invisible and ready.

Directly below Anansi, Saul saw the stage raised
above the dancefloor. His breath quickened a little:
there, framed by two colossal speakers, were the
decks.

Behind the stage a huge graffito was hung: the same
grotesque DJ who had adorned the poster, and the
legend Junglist Terror!!! was writ very large. Dwarfed


372



by the unlikely figure on the canvas, the DJ labouring
behind the decks paced quickly to and from his record
box, a bulky pair of earphones tucked against one ear.
He moved with a controlled, feverish energy. Saul did
not recognize him. As he watched, the man deftly
segued between two tracks. He was good.

Behind him, Saul felt the tentative lick of a rat
tongue on his hand. He was no longer alone.

'Alright,' he whispered, and stroked the little head
without looking backwards. 'Alright.'

Saul opened the trapdoor. He poked his head
upside-down into the hall, breaking the surface
tension of the music and immersing himself in it. He
lowered himself gently to the iron grille below. The
beats were overwhelming. They crept into every
crevice of the room. He felt as if he was moving
underwater. He was almost afraid to breathe. Out of
the corner of his eye he saw Anansi notice him, and he
raised his hand.

It was sweltering in the hall, as humid and heavy
as a rainforest. The condensed heat of the dancers
enveloped him. He pulled off his shirt. Oily dirt
coated him. He realized that it was weeks since he had
seen his own body. The shirt had become his fur.

He remembered the touch of the rat above, and he
reached up to wedge one sleeve of his shirt under the
open trapdoor's hinge. He pulled at the other sleeve
until it was stretched taut, tied it to the railing which
enclosed the walkway. Almost immediately, two rats


373



scurried along this greasy canvas bridge and leapt onto
the iron.

Others would be joining them, thought Saul as he
watched them race away along the rampart, finding
their way down.

Sweat trickled down his body, cutting channels in
the grime which covered him. He felt no shame. His
standards had changed.

Saul flattened himself against the wall and crept
forward towards the decks, keeping his eyes fixed
on the stage below him. He lowered himself as he
advanced. By the time he had covered half the length
of the wall, he was slithering along the cold iron like a
snake. He pushed his face to the gaps in the grille, his
eyes darting urgently from side to side. He crawled
slowly forward.

Even through the pervasive clouds of cologne and
sweat and drugs and sex, Saul could taste rat. The
troops were arriving in force, waiting for his signal.

He glanced up. Anansi flickered in and out of existence
in the quickfiring lights.

A door opened at the back of the stage.

Saul stiffened.
Natasha emerged from the depths of the building,
into the sound and fury.
Saul caught his breath. He gripped the grille on
which he crawled until his fingers hurt. She looked
breathtaking. But she was thin, much too thin, and she
moved as if she was in a dream.


374



Where was the Piper? Was she here of her free will? Saul stared at her in consternation. He saw headphones
on her ears and was momentarily confused how
could she listen to a walkman in the middle of a
club? - before he understood. He caught his breath,
watching her bob her head, moving to a different
rhythm from the rest of the dancers. He knew what
she was listening to, he knew whose music it was.

In one hand she held a case full of records, in the
other a squat box, some piece of electronics, trailing
wires. He could not see what it was. Natasha tapped
the DJ on the shoulder. He turned and touched fists
with her, shouting animatedly into her ears. As he
spoke she busied herself plugging the box into the
sound system, nodding occasionally, whether in
answer or in response to the music in her ears Saul
could not tell.

The DJ removed his huge earphones and placed
them over Natasha's ears, hesitating for her to remove
her small walkman earpieces. When she did not, he
shrugged and placed the larger ones over the top of
them and laughed. He disappeared into the door from
which Natasha had emerged.

Natasha rifled through the records she had
brought, pulled something out, twirled it elegantly
and blew dust from it. She placed it on the turntable
and hunched over, spinning it, smoothing it back
with her fingers, listening through the tune on her
walkman, mixing the beats, until she stood straight,


375



with her fingers poised, and let a burst of piano spill
over from the twelve-inch she had selected into the
tune now coming to an end.

It was impossible to tell where one started and the
other ended, the mixing was seamless. She pulled
the record back, let it forward again a little, pulled it
back, scratching playfully like an old school rapper,
finally releasing her hand and switching off the first
tune in a smooth movement, unleashing the new
bassline.

She stood back without a trace of a smile on her
lips.

Saul knew that he had to get down to her, had to
take the phones from her head and make her understand
the danger she was in. But this must be exactly
what the Piper had in mind for him. The cheese in his
trap.

The door opened again and two more figures
appeared. The first was Fabian. Saul was appalled,
nearly leapt to his feet. Fabian was even more
emaciated and exhausted-looking than Natasha. His
finery could not disguise that. He was limping. Like
Natasha, he wore walkman headphones. It was that
beat, the tune that only he could hear, that propelled
Fabian forward.

Behind him was the Piper.

As he entered the room he stopped, breathed in
deeply, gave a huge smile. He spread his arms wide as
if he would embrace all the dancers below him.


376


Fabian stayed very close to him.

Saul looked up at Anansi. He was oscillating on
his rope, his sudden tension communicated violently
through his body.

Rush him?

Should we rush him? thought Saul frantically.

What is to be done?

Anansi and Saul were paralysed, caught in the gaze
of a snake. And the Piper could not even see them.

Natasha turned and saw her two companions. She
held out her hand and the Piper pulled something out
of his pocket, tossed it across the stage to her. As it
curved through the air it was transfixed for a moment
in a beam of white light. It seemed to freeze, letting
Saul examine it at his leisure. It glinted, a small plastic
case, like a cassette but smaller, squarer ...

A DAT.

A Digital Audio Tape. Natasha used them to record
her tracks.

He screamed and leapt to his feet as Natasha's hand
closed around the tape.

The cavernous space was full of sound, there was no room for his paltry screech. He could not even
hear it himself in the cacophony of beats and basslines.
The dancers danced on, unperturbed, Natasha turned
towards the decks, Fabian continued his shambling
little rotations... but the Piper turned his head
sharply at the imperceptible sound, stared up, through
the cat's cradle of light beams, past the too-cool bodies


377



on the lower walkway, up into the shadow of the roof,
gazing directly into Saul's eyes.

The Piper gave a jaunty wave, and grinned. He was
burning with triumphalism.

Saul propelled himself along the gantry while the
Piper laughed on the stage. The dancers were oblivious.
The beats seemed to slow down, everything
was slow, Saul could see the mass of bodies below him
sink and rise ponderously.

He pounded along the iron towards the corner
where Anansi hung, paralysed. He stared through the
floor at Natasha walking slowly towards the DAT
player she had plugged in, reaching out with the hand
holding the tape. Saul looked up as he drew near
Anansi, who swung from side to side, around and
around, a useless pendulum.

Saul had not stopped shouting. He was ululating
appallingly as he ran. Anansi looked up at him. As
Natasha slipped the tape into the deck and crooked
one of the headphones against her shoulder, Saul
grabbed the rail with his left hand and vaulted up high,
moving so slowly he could stare at the faces below
him, all the individuals that made up the bouncing
mass. He brought his feet down together on the
railing, bent down and leapt out, sending himself
through the air, flying above the dancers like a
superhero.

Anansi's eyes widened as Saul surged towards him,
his arms flailing, legs tucked up in front of him like a


378



long-jumper. Saul spread his arms and legs wide, and
crashed into Anansi forty feet above the stage.

He clutched at Anansi, hugged himself to him. He
felt himself lurching crazily back and forth through
the air, heard Anansi yelling something at him. The
rope holding the two bodies was vibrating, dangerously
taut. Saul was screaming into Anansi's ears.

'Down!' he screamed. 'Go down now!'

Saul felt himself drop and his stomach lurched. His
descent smoothened out as Anansi manipulated the
fibres in his hand. Smoother than any abseiler,
the spider-man and his cargo sank swiftly towards the
stage.

As they plummeted, Saul and Anansi spun around
their centre of gravity, and the room whirled around
them. Saul caught glimpse after glimpse of the dancers,
frozen, gazing at the men dropping out of the air.
Some looked aghast or confused, but most were
laughing, enrapt at this new entertainment.

'Run! Get the fuck out!' screamed Saul, but the
Jungle was remorseless, and no one heard him except
Anansi.

Saul looked down, eight feet from the stage, relaxed
his grip and dropped from Anansi like a bomb.

He was rigid, his quarry dead in his line of flight.
Even over the Drum and Bass beats, Saul thought he
heard a collective gasp. His face set as he fell, his legs
straightened, but the Piper had been watching and
he danced nimbly to one side, away from Saul's


379



punishing boots, leaving Saul to slam into the wooden stage.

He staggered but remained on his feet. The decks
were so well supported that the record playing did not
even skip at his arrival. Saul looked on in horror as
Natasha's hand tightened on the DAT player's volume
control, her face furrowed over the headphones as she
prepared to mix from the record to the tape, waiting
for the right moment in the beat.

Saul leapt towards her, prepared to throw her away
from the decks, to hurt her if need be, rage and fear
filling him, but as he neared her something slammed
into him from behind and he went sprawling, flying
off to the side of the stage. Natasha did not even look
round.

Saul rolled on the floor, twisted, and pulled himself
back up.

Fabian was bearing down on him.

His friend was not looking at him, was focusing
over Saul's shoulder, just as Loplop had done that
night in the flat. He moved towards Saul without
pausing, his arms outstretched like a cinematic
zombie.

Behind Fabian, Saul saw Anansi touch the stage,
only for the Piper immediately to smack him hard in
the mouth, sending him sprawling. But Saul's attention
was taken by the tiniest of motions: Natasha's
hand turning the volume slowly up.

Saul barrelled into Fabian, trying to run through


380



him, overpower him, and his friend held him fast,
twisted as Saul tried to run past him. The two came
crashing down, Saul's hand outstretched, an inch from
Natasha's shoe.

She nodded in satisfaction and turned up the DAT.


Everything froze.

There was a sublime moment. Everyone was
utterly still: the dancers, the men who had jumped on
stage to break up the rights they saw there, Saul, rigid
with despair.

The beats that slid insidiously from the speakers
were all at the high end, cymbals, no bassline. A tiny
snatch of piano cried out plaintively.

But it was the flute which held the attention.

A sudden burst had heralded the song, a trill that
had erupted into the room's collective consciousness
and cleared the minds of the listeners. As Saul
watched, Natasha removed her headphones and her
walkman. No need for them now. This was the song
she had been listening to. Behind him Fabian rose and
followed suit.

The snatch of flute had shocked the dancers into
submission, and now it faded, leaving only echoes and
the sounds of radio static, the ghosts of dead stations
rolling over the beat and the soulless piano. Still there
was no bassline. Saul could not get up. He saw the
dancers begin to shake their heads and extricate


381



themselves from the snares of the flute, and then
another burst exploded into the room and with comically
precise timing, the assembled throng all snapped back upright, their eyes rapt.

And then again. Again.

The Piper stared at Saul, the amiable cast of his
face belied by his ghastly wide eyes, ferocious with
pleasure.

'You lose,' he mouthed to Saul.

Saul glared balefully at the Piper. He raised his arm
theatrically, and caught Anansi's eye as he struggled to
his feet. Shaking, Anansi imitated him.

Together, they brought their arms down.

'Now!' Saul shrieked.

Floorboards and pipes boiled over with rats. Saul's
crack troops exploded into the room, racing voraciously
through the frozen legs of the dancers
towards the stage. The walls erupted as spiders burst
from the pores of the building and spilled like liquid
towards the Piper.

At that moment, the bassline of Wind City burst
into the room, pared down and simple. And riding it,
sailing over the troughs and peaks of beat and bass,
was the flute.

The dancers moved as one.

They moved in time, dancing again, an incredible
piece of choreography, every right foot raised
together, coming down, then every left, a strange
languorous hardstep, arms swinging, legs rigid, up and


382


down in time to the beat, obeying the Piper's flute.
And every step aimed at a rat.

This was war.

The rats were righting now, leaping onto bodies
and backs. The dancers' unearthly unity slowly dissolved
as they fought their small, vicious enemies
without that dislocated look ever leaving their eyes.

The spiders had reached the stage now, with the
vanguard of the rats, and both armies swarmed
towards the Piper. Anansi rose behind him and
lurched forward, slamming his arms into the Piper's
back, but his power was diminished by the men who
leapt forward to hold him. They did not look at him.
They held their heads to the side to hear the music,
and they did what the music told them. With a
strength that was not theirs they hurled Anansi backwards
into the wall. He shouted at his troops,
gesticulated.

Saul slithered across the floor towards the decks,
the DAT player, the source of the music. Instantly
Natasha turned and stamped on his hand with her
long heel. He screeched in pain, slithered away again,
tried to get past her, but she stamped again and
again, faster and faster, until it seemed impossible that
she remain standing.

Someone behind Saul grabbed him and pulled him
up and with a sudden surge of righteous anger he
elbowed them in the face. The head snapped back
and lolled, the body staggering but somehow kept


383



standing by the music. Saul turned, his hands claws,
and his rage dissipated in horror. His assailant was
about seventeen, a chubby Asian boy dressed in his
Jungling best, now spattered with blood. His nose was
a mess in the middle of his face and still he tried to
keep time to the beat.

Saul pushed him away hard, out of the fight.

He realized that the dancers were slowly approaching
the stage, fighting and scratching, hurling
rats and spiders against the walls, ripping at them with
their teeth, all the while cocking their heads thoughtfully
to hear the notes of Wind City. The fucking flute!

It was multilayered, alienating, frightening, a cacophonous
backdrop.

More and more dancers leapt onto the stage, their
clothes clogged with blood, rat and human, with fragments
of fur, their faces shredded by tiny claws. Saul
could taste the rat blood on the air. It flooded him
with adrenaline.

Spiders and rats covered the stage, swarmed up the
legs of Fabian and the dancers. Fabian tugged at the fat
bodies of rats and slammed them underfoot where
their legs and spines and skulls cracked and they
crawled off to die. He slapped at himself and danced
from leg to leg, smearing spiders into the wood.

Saul could hear Anansi bellowing.

Saul turned and made for the decks again. Fabian
kicked him in the crotch from behind and Natasha
stamped at his shoulder. He moved, avoided being


384



impaled, but hands grasped his legs and tugged him
violently across a floor slippery with rat blood and
crushed spiders, slid him away from Natasha and the
DAT player, slammed him into a wall. Bodies fell
across him, inhumanly strong knees crushed his back,
he was pinioned by a score of arms and legs.

Saul could hear Anansi shrieking.

He looked up, saw the Piper bent over Anansi, the
spider-man held down by several dancers. With his
head low against the boards, all Saul could see of the
dancefloor was the bobbing heads of the dancers.

It was a vision of hell, rats and spiders and blood
swarming over the damned.

Fabian stumbled into his view, and Saul looked up
at him and back at Natasha. They were invisible
beneath a second skin of spiders, a thick skittering
mass. The tide of spiders spilled towards the Piper.
Anansi kept shrieking.

The Piper looked up, caught Saul's eye, and looked
briefly at the spiders approaching him.

'Shall I show you my new party trick?' he said.
His voice sounded close and intimate in Saul's ear,
whispered through the Jungle and the flute.

The Piper flickered his eyes briefly at the decks.

Something changed in the flute.

The samples were looped and laid one on top of the
other, and as he listened Saul realized that one of
the layers was soaring, changing, becoming staccato
and breathless. Anansi was suddenly silent.


385



As it reached the Piper's feet, the tide of spiders
stopped dead.

He's changing the music! He's changing his choice! thought Saul. He's going for the spiders instead!

But the dancers kept dancing, even as the spiders
began to move together, incredibly, undulating with
the beat. The circle of spiders around the Piper's feet
expanded, gave him space.

Still the dancers did not stop dancing. The spiders
coating the bodies of the dancers dripped off them
and scuttled onto the stage. Natasha and Fabian were
uncovered, their skin covered in tiny welts and sores,
dead spiders dropping from their clothes and mouths.
They resumed their war against the rats.

The Piper began to leap, higher and higher, from
one foot to the other, without taking his eyes from
Saul's. Saul looked down at the Piper's feet. As he
jumped, a little group of spiders would dance out, in
time to the music, and stand below him, arranging
themselves into the shape of the underside of each
shoe. They would wait patiently as he plunged
through the air and destroyed them exactly, the
carnage of each step pre-empted by the spiders themselves,
queuing up to die.

'You see, Saul?' whispered the Piper across the
slick, stained stage. 'That's the joy of Jungle. All those
layers ... I can play my flute as many times as I want, all at once ...'


386



The dancers kept dancing, and the spiders still
waited to die.

Anansi sat up, his eyes glazed with delight at the
spider music in Wind City. An idiot's grin spread
across his face. His left arm was missing at the
shoulder, his side awash with blood, his shoulder a
mass of ruined flesh and bone.

The Piper watched Saul's face.

'Yes, cruel, I know, to pull the legs off spiders, but
this one had caused me no end of trouble.'

He pushed Anansi's head back to the stage.

Saul's shout was drowned in the Drum and Bass
and flute. He struggled violently, but was held fast by
the dancers. He could feel them move slightly with the
beat as they leant on him.

The Piper leapt up, pulled his legs up hard and
stamped down with all his strength.

Bones crunched and split in Anansi's head.

Saul collapsed with a howl.


The wood of the stage heaved and buckled. Something
burst through the boards in front of the Piper. Saul
caught a momentary glimpse of a back, of wiry arms
snapping out like whipcord and grasping the Piper's
ankles, then tugging sharply and disappearing back
under the stage.

The Piper was gone. The music still blared, Saul
was still pinioned, the rats still fought and bit and


387



scratched, the dancers still fought back and massacred
rats and danced, but the Piper was gone.

Saul could feel the vibrations of some huge battle
being waged under him. He tugged at the arms
holding him. They were obscenely strong but quite
still. They held him tight but did not punish him for
his pointless struggles.

The wood under his stomach lurched as something
was thrust against it. A little to one side of him he
heard a systematic pounding, something slammed
again and again into the wood. Splinters of wood that
fringed the hole in the stage spilled gently into the
darkness below.

Spiders poured into the hole, and Saul saw the back
of a nearby dancer lowering himself into the dark.

Saul pounded suddenly at the wood under his
body, thrust his fingers into the tiny gap between two
planks, ignoring the skin he left behind. He had no
leverage, this was the wrong angle, but adrenaline gave
him strength, and he tugged and ripped at the boards
beneath him. His fingers shoved into the small cavity
and scrabbled for purchase. He was straining, shoving
upwards, feeling the board resist, then relax as old
nails sprang from their moorings and the board went
flying away.

He stuck his head into the darkness.

There, rolling in the dirt, his eyes frenzied and livid,
his veins bulging with fury, was the Piper. And
clinging to him like a limpet, the heel of his right hand


388



shoved hard into the Piper's mouth, his teeth bared
and snapping at any of the Piper's limbs in reach, his
claws scratching, his old coat wrapping around the
two bodies like a living thing, was King Rat.

His hand streamed with blood from where the
Piper gnawed at him, but he would not release the
Piper's mouth. He swarmed with spiders. Behind him
the dim shape of a dancer, bent double under the stage,
flailed at him with his arms. King Rat rolled from side
to side to avoid him, desperate to stay out of reach.

King Rat stared up at Saul. His eyes begged for
help.

Saul saw the dancer's arms wind around King Rat's
neck, begin to bend inexorably backwards.

He tugged desperately at the hands holding him,
straining against them with all his strength, arching his
back. They pushed him down so he suddenly acquiesced, rolling slightly and squeezing himself through
the thin slit in the wood, being shoved through to
freedom by those trying to constrain him, until he
dropped suddenly and landed across the Piper's feet.

He yelled with triumph, and turned.

'Help me,' hissed King Rat between clenched teeth.
His head was pulled back at a grotesque angle, his
arms were losing their grip on the Piper, his hand
having to strain harder and harder to block the Piper's
mouth. The man behind him was slowly defeating
him, made preternaturally strong by the music which
surrounded them.


389
Saul stormed through swathes of dancing spiders
and punched hard at the face of the man holding King
Rat.

He saw that it was Fabian just as his fist connected.

Saul had hit him hard, with all his rat-strength, and
Fabian's head rolled on his shoulders dangerously fast,
teeth splintered in his mouth, but he retained his grip
on King Rat, and continued to pull.

The Piper was pulling free, his teeth ripping at King
Rat's hand, a growl of triumph bubbling bloodily out
from behind it.

'Help me,' repeated King Rat. Desperately Saul
grabbed at Fabian, shoved him this way and that, with
all his strength, but the flute had entered Fabian's soul
and nothing would move him. If that punch did not
do the job, Saul knew he would have to kill Fabian to
get him off.

'Help me,' said King Rat once more.

But Saul had hesitated too long and Fabian pulled
King Rat free of the Piper.

'Yes!' The Piper was standing before Saul, filthy,
scratched and quivering, spilling spiders in all directions.
He grabbed Saul's collar, heaved him with those
insanely strong arms, sent him flying through the hole
in the stage back out into the heat and noise and blood
of the club.

Saul landed awkwardly, skidded across the splintered
wood.


390



The Piper rose behind him, dragging King Rat by
the hair.

Wind City was looping, again and again. Saul was
sure it covered the whole DAT, perhaps an hour long.

' You lose!' the Piper shouted to Saul. 'You and your
daddy and uncle spider and the birdman, you lose, because I can play my flute as often as I want now.
Your friend showed me how, Saul...' He waved his
hands at the walls where the spiders were dancing in
little circles. He gesticulated at the dancefloor where
the dancers jumped up and down to Wind City, drenched in blood, stamping on dying rats.

He released King Rat into the arms of the dancers
on the stage. King Rat sagged with weakness and
defeat.

Saul was exhausted. He felt more hands grab him.
The Piper sauntered towards him and crouched in
front of him, just out of reach.

'See, Saul,' he whispered, Tm not just going to kill
you. Before you die, Saul, I'm going to make you
dance for me. You think you're so special, don't
you? Well, I'm the Lord of the Dance, Saul, and
before you die you're going to dance for me. Why do
you think I let your pathetic little army fight to the
last gasp?' He indicated the dancefloor, where lacklustre
little battles were still continuing, where the
routed rats were being systematically destroyed as
the dance continued.

'You see, I wanted to explain to you, Saul. You see


391


how I can make the people dance and the spiders?
See how I did that? Well, I can make the rats dance,
too, Saul. And you're the famous half and half, aren't
you? Eh? The rat-boy? Eh? Well, I'm already playing
for the people, Saul, so half of you is dancing, even if
you can't feel it. So when I start playing for the rats, Saul, then I'm playing for both your sides. See? See,
you little fucker? I didn't know what I'd found when
I checked your address book, tried to find you. Just
turned up at the one with stuff scrawled next to it...
and see what I found. Your friend Natasha, who
showed me how to make my flute multiply ...'

The Piper grinned and patted Saul's face gently,
then backed away towards the decks. Behind him
stood Natasha, her clothes ruined, her face coated in
blood as thick as oil.

The dancefloor still surged, but an odd calm had
settled on the stage.

'I'm going to play for both your halves, Saul,' he
said. 'I'm going to make you dance.'

He looked up, raised his finger like a conductor and
the music changed again.


The beat was sustained, the bassline unchanged, the
static and the hesitant piano continued... but the
flute soared.

Across the top of the mellifluous and pointillist
flute lines that seduced the dancers and the spiders, a


392



third level of sound sprang into being. An unsettling,
crawling democracy of semitones and minor chords,
pauses punctuated by surreal bursts of noise, music to
make the skin crawl. Rat-music.

All across the dancefloor, the rats that had not fled
or died were suddenly still.

Out of the corner of his eye Saul saw King Rat
stiffen, his eyes glaze and focus on something just out
of sight. And as he saw that, Saul felt himself jerk
upright, listened to the music, heard it with a wave of
amazement, stared wide-eyed at the bursts of light
around him, saw through the speakers and the walls,
felt his mind open up.

A long long way away he heard a high-pitched
laugh, saw the Piper lying back, being borne around
the room on the raised arms of the dancers, but that
didn't bother him now. The hands that held him were
gone. Saul stood and paced to the centre of the stage.
All he could concentrate on was the music.

There was something just out of his reach ...

Just out of his reach ... there was beautiful food ...

He could smell it... he could taste it on the air, and
sex, he felt his cock stiffen, his mouth was watering,
his feet propelled him, he did not need to think of
where to walk, the responsibility had been taken from
him, he obeyed the music, two tunes at once, the rat
and the man, the mellow and the frenzied, spilling
around each other, filling his mind.


393



Beside him, he was dimly aware of King Rat, pacing
from side to side, his feet ponderous but enthusiastic.

'Dance!' The command came from across the floor,
where the Piper rode the arms of the crowd like a
sportsman, a hero, a dictator.

Obedience came easily to Saul. He danced.

Hardstepping.

With the fighting stopped, everyone in the hall
could dance, the people and the spiders and rats that
were still alive, all moving in time, getting down as
one, as the Piper laughed delightedly. Saul was vaguely
aware of being pleased, moving in a tight circle, eager
for the food and the sex and the music, proud to be
part of this hall, this great gestalt.

The Piper had ridden the tops of the dancers all
around the hall in his triumph, a lap of honour, and
through a blissful haze Saul saw the tall figure step
smoothly back onto the stage.

Saul danced for joy, opened his arms wide. This was
his epiphany, he was filled with music, two strains of
music, his mind relaxed and floating, his feet revelling
in the dance, gazing up and around at the bobbing
bodies on all sides of him, the faces of the
worshippers ... Saul was ecstatic.

The Piper smiled, and Saul smiled back.

He was vaguely aware of words being spoken, felt
his feet propel him forward, across the big stage,
towards the Piper, who waited for him, something
long and glinting in his hand.


394



'... to me...' Saul heard between beats.
'... dance for me ... come ...'

He stepped forward, shifting in time to the two
tunes he could hear, eager to dance.

But something was wrong.

There was a disturbed moment. Saul hesitated.

The two flutelines were dissonant.

Saul put his foot on the stage and tried to dance, but
a shadow had crossed his mind.

The flutes jarred with each other. .

He was suddenly aware of their raucous discord.
His hunger and desire burned as strong as ever, but
he could not see, he was blind, pulled in different
directions, shaken by the aesthetic antiphase of the two flutes.

And as he listened, standing suddenly outside the
music, looking in, desperate to get back, he sensed
the great cavity between the flutes.

And pushing its way through the gap, vibrating in
his gut, ever-present, the foundation of the music, the
beginning and the end-point of Jungle, there came
the bass.

Saul stood poised, immobile, centre stage.

The flute and the bass surged inside him.

The flutelines swirled around him, inveigling their
way past his defences, seducing him, urging him to
dance, teasing his rat-mind and his humanity in turn.
But something inside him had hardened. Saul was


395



straining for something else. He was listening for the
bass.

The words of a hundred slogans raced through his
mind, the endlessly sampled Hip Hop and Jungle
paeans to the low end.

DJ! Where's the bass?

Bass! How low can you go?

R-r-r-roll the bass. . .

Da bass too dark .. .

Here's the bass.

Here's how low the bass can go.

I... I'll roll with the bass.

Because the bass too dark .. .

Because the bass is too dark for this, thought Saul
suddenly, with shocking clarity, the bass is too dark to
suffer this, the insubordinate treble, fuck the treble,
fuck the ephemera, fuck the high end, fuck the flute, and as he thought this the flutelines faded in his mind,
became nothing more than thin, clashing cacophonies, fuck the treble, he thought, because when you dance
to Jungle what you follow is the bass ...

Saul rediscovered himself. He knew who he was.
He danced again.

This was different. He was fierce, swinging his arms
and legs like weapons. He danced with the bassline,
rolled over the beats ... ignored the flutes.

It was the bass that set the agenda. It was the bass
that made the song. It was the bass that united the
Junglists, that cemented their community, that built a


396



room full of dancers, something far stronger than this
hive mind.

The Piper was still waiting for him. Saul saw a
renewed smile spread across his face. He had seen Saul
falter. You wanted me to dance, didn't you? thought Saul. Had to have me dance my way over to you,
waltz to my death ... and now I'm dancing, you think
your treble won, don't you?

Saul danced closer and closer to the Piper. The
Piper held his flute close, flush with his body like a
Samurai sword. The Piper's arms were tense.

Two flutes aren't enough, thought Saul, giddy with
power. He danced on, approaching his enemy. The
Piper smiled and raised his right hand, the hand
holding the flute, held it high, quivering, ready to
strike.

Saul came close enough to touch.

'Now dance on the spot, ratling,' said the Piper
softly.

He swung the flute.


The strike was cocky, cavalier and ill-timed, the Piper
waiting for his prey to walk into the path of the
wicked silver club.

Instead, Saul stepped inside the killing blow.

He moved in a blur of rat-speed, channelling all his
frenetic panic and power, burning calories from old
food. He turned as he stepped forward and reached up


397


with his right hand, grabbing the flute and twisting,
spinning round in a full circle, tugging at the cold
metal, ripping it out of the Piper's too-confident
fingers and bringing his left arm up and around,
looking over his left shoulder as he spun, and slamming
his elbow into the Piper's throat.

The Piper staggered backwards. His eyes bulged
and stared at Saul in disbelief. He retched, clutched at
his throat, sucked at the air. Saul stalked towards him,
holding the flute. The Drum and Bass was pounding
in his ears. It wasn't the Piper's song any more; it was
the drums he heard, the drums and the bass.

'One plus one equals one, motherfucker,' he said,
and brought the flute up hard under the Piper's jaw.
The Piper staggered back but did not fall. 'I'm not rat
plus man, get it? I'm bigger than either one and I'm
bigger than the two. I'm a new thing. You can't make
me dance.' He slammed the flute against the Piper's
temple, sending the tall figure spinning across the
stage in a spray of blood, towards where King Rat still
danced.

The Piper twirled an ugly pirouette but still did not
fall.

Saul advanced on him, hitting him again and again
with the flute, brutal and unforgiving. He punctuated
his assault with proclamations.

'Should've just killed me. You're too strong for me,
but you had to get cocky. Well, I'm the new blood, motherfucker. I'm more than the sum of my parts.


398



You can't play my fucking tune, and your flute means nothing to me.'

With the last strike, the Piper went down in the
shadow of King Rat. His legs folded and he sat down
hard on the floor, his back to the brick wall. He stared
up at Saul, horrified and broken. His face was crushed
and spoilt. Blood slid over the silver of the flute. The
Piper's eyes were glazed with agony and with affront,
with outrage at this man who would not dance to his
tune.

His breath rattled grotesquely in his throat. He
fought to speak, failed.

Saul looked up. The dancing figures that filled the
room were slowing down. The flute was mutating,
folding in on itself. It could not sustain itself without
the Piper's will. People's faces were confused, their
heads lolling as if in uneasy sleep. The rats and spiders
were twitching pathologically as the flutelines that
held them imploded.

King Rat fell to the floor and twisted in agony,
pulling himself out of the spell.

Always the strongest, thought Saul.

He looked back at the Piper, collapsed on the floor.
With puffy lips and bloody teeth, the Piper smiled.

Saul held the flute like a dagger, raised it over his
head.

There was a Stygian rumble deep in the walls. The
stage shook. Saul staggered.

'What the fuck...?'he said.


399



The floor lurched, shook violently. Saul fell backwards.

Above the Piper's head a split appeared in the wall,
thin and unnaturally straight as if scored with a vast
razor. The stage shook until all the dancers had fallen.
It was only because it was on DAT, safe from the
caprice of styluses and shocks, that Wind City did not
falter.

The split widened and spread downwards, opening
the bricks behind the Piper's back. The rent in the wall
opened onto a sheer darkness.

The Piper fixed Saul with his little smile.

The darkness widened and sucked at the air in the
room. As if a window on an aeroplane had burst,
papers and clothes and fragments of spider corpses
whirled through the air into the black.

He opened a mountain once before, thought Saul
urgently, he can open up a wall. He's heading for
home.

The Piper was quite still as the split pulled itself
open behind him, the eye in a tornado of detritus that
filled the room. Saul planted his feet wide and got to
his knees, adamant that the Piper would not escape
out of the world.

Then, as he steadied himself and gripped the flute
once more, ready to strike, he heard a thin, desperate
keening from the pit that was opening.

A child's voice.

Saul froze, aghast. The Piper was still. He did not


400



release Saul's gaze. He did not stop smiling. The split
behind his back was a foot wide now, and he began to
wriggle his way into it, holding Saul's eyes all the time.
The pathetic wail stopped abruptly.

And just as abruptly a chorus of terror welled out
of the darkness, hundreds of tiny voices screaming,
stripped raw, mad with fear.

The lost children of Hamelin could see the light.


Saul fell back in a paralysis of horror.

His mouth was stretched wide but only tiny noises
burst out. He reached out to the split in the wall,
powerless, useless.

The Piper saw him crumple, and winked.

Later, he mouthed, and put his hands to each side
of the split, gave a little wave.

A growling thing shoved into Saul at a fierce speed
and tore the flute from his hands.

King Rat gripped the flute with both hands and
leapt at an impossible angle from Saul's lap to the Piper's side. His teeth were clenched, his feral roar
barely contained. His overcoat whipped in the vortex
of wind. The Piper looked up at him, stupid and
confused.

King Rat's growl burst, became a frenzied bark, he
drew back his arms, holding the flute like a spear.

He punched it into the Piper's body with an animal
strength.


401



The Piper gave a shout of amazement, ludicrously
bathetic with the music and the wails of the children
behind him.

The flute punctured him like a balloon, shoved
deep into his belly. His face went white under the
blood, and he gripped King Rat's arms, clinging to
them with all his might, holding the hands that held
the flute close to him, staring into King Rat's eyes.

Everything was poised, for a moment. Everything
hung in the balance.

The Piper fell backwards into the dark.

King Rat fell with him.

All Saul could see was the curve of King Rat's back,
which lurched forwards and stopped abruptly. The slit
was suddenly closing around him; the voices of the
children were more and more plaintive and distant.

King Rat's back wriggled and his arms emerged
above his head, holding the great rent open for half a
second more as he braced himself and shoved back
from the brink, falling across Saul.

The two sides of the rip met and resealed with a
faint crunch.

The Piper had gone. The cries of the children had
gone.

Only the Drum and Bass could be heard.


402
CHAPTER TWENTY'S EVEN


Saul lay still, exhausted, listening to King Rat breathe.

He rolled away, crawled across the stage. He surveyed
the room.

The disco lights still spun and stuttered pointlessly.
The wreckage of the hall did not seem real. It was a
carnage of blood and sweat, dead rats, crushed spiders,
collapsed dancers. The walls were foul with a thousand
different stains. The floor was slippery and vile.
The dancers shuffled like revivified corpses from side
to side, ruined, their eyes closed, shifting their weight
from foot to foot, as the beat of Wind City droned on,
and the flute continued to degrade. All over the hall
dancers were falling.

Saul stumbled across to the decks and ripped the
lead from the DAT player. The speakers went dead.
Instantly, all around the room, the dancers dropped,
fainting where they stood, as still as the dead. It
looked like the aftermath of a massacre.

The spiders and rats still dancing when the music


403



stopped were still for a moment, then bolted. They
quit the hall and disappeared into the London night.

Saul looked around the hall, searching for his
friends.

There, under the heavy body of a huge dancer, lay
Natasha. He tugged her free, crooning.

'Tash, Tash,' he whispered, wiping the blood from
her face. She was scratched and ripped, her skin welted
with the poison of a million tiny spiders, covered with
bruises and rat-bites, but she was breathing. He
hugged her very hard as she lay there, and squeezed
his eyes tight closed.

It had been so long since he had held one of his
friends.

He put her gently down, searched for Fabian.

Saul found him lolling out of the hole King Rat had
pushed through the stage. He almost wept to see him.
He was badly damaged, his face crushed and broken,
his skin as ruined as Natasha's.

'He'll live.'

Saul looked up sharply at King Rat's harsh voice.

King Rat stood over him, taking his weight on his
left leg, regarding Saul's ministrations to Fabian.

Saul looked back down at his friend.

'I know,' he said. 'His heart's beating. He's
breathing.'

It was difficult to talk. His throat was constricted
with emotion. He looked up at King Rat, gesticulated
at the wall.


404



'The children ...' he couldn't say any more.

King Rat nodded sharply. 'The little fuckers whose
parents clapped us out of town,' he spat.

Saul's face twisted. He could not speak, could not
look at King Rat. He shook with anger and disgust,
clenched his fists. He could still hear the pathetic cries
echoing up from the dark.

'Fabian,' he whispered. 'Can you hear me, man?'

Fabian moved gently but did not respond. It's
better, thought Saul suddenly. / can't talk to him now,
here, I can't explain all this. He needs to be out of this.
He mustn't see this. Saul could not bear the loneliness.
He wanted his friend so much, but he knew that he
must wait.

Time enough soon, he thought and tried to be
brave.

He stood, limped his way to King Rat. The two
looked warily at each other, then fell forward,
catching each other's forearms, gripping each other. It
was a long way from an embrace or a reconciliation,
but it was a moment of connection. Like exhausted
boxers leaning on each other, still enemies, but each
granting the other a moment's respite, and each
grateful.

Saul breathed deep, stepped back.

'Did you kill him?' he said.

King Rat was silent. He turned away.

'Did you?'

'I don't know ...' The words lingered in the silence


405



of the hall. 'I think so ... the flute was deep inside
him, his throat was crushed ... I don't know ...'

Saul ran his hands through his hair, looked down at
his heavy torso, smeared with the muck of combat.
He felt winded by anticlimax and uncertainty. But,
then, he thought suddenly, it doesn't matter to me. He
can't touch me. He's dead, or dying, or fucked and
wounded, and if he ever comes back, I'll be whatever
I am now, only infinitely more so. He can't touch me.

'He can't touch you,' said King Rat and licked his
lips.


Anansi's body had gone. King Rat was unsurprised.
He looked from side to side at the carpet of crushed
spiders on the stage and the dancefloor.

'You'll never find him,' he mused.

Saul looked at him and stared around the room. He
was trembling violently. The stench of rat-blood was
heavy in the air, and with every step Saul walked on
the bodies of Anansi's dead. Some of the dancers were
beginning to stir.

Blood decorated the walls like abstract art.

'I have to get out of here,' Saul whispered.

Without words Saul and King Rat climbed to the
attic. King Rat went before him. Saul untied his prison
shirt and draped it across his back before jumping and
grasping the edges of the hatchway, hauling himself up
and out.


406



He looked back once, stuck his head into the huge,
silent room.

Red and green and blue lights spun on intricate
axes, flashing at random now that the beats had gone.
The floor was littered with bodies, a few twitching
gently. Saul looked at the stage where he had arranged
Fabian and Natasha. They looked as if they were
sleeping peacefully side by side. Natasha moved her
arm dreamily and it fell across Fabian's chest.

Saul's breath caught. He could not look on any
more.

He followed King Rat, emerged blinking from the skylight, sucked at the cold fresh air. It seemed days
ago that he had entered by this route, but the sky was
still dark and the streets as deserted as they ever were.

It was the small hours, the small hours of the same
night. London slept, fat and dangerous and blithely
unaware of what had happened in the Elephant and
Castle. The crisp ignorance of the city refreshed him.
It carried on whatever, he thought. There was a great
comfort in that.


King Rat and he were eager to leave these bricks
behind. They moved as fast as they could, hauling
themselves across the roofs, trailing their bruised
limbs and wincing with pain, but high and exhilarated.
When they had put some houses between them and
the warehouse, Saul stopped.


407



He was going to call for help for those left behind
in the club. God knew how many broken bones and
punctured lungs and so on were lying in that hall,
and he was very afraid of what they might contract
from his troops. He could not contemplate that any
would die. Not after that night. To live through that,
crazed, possessed and dancing, only to die of ratbite in
bed ... he could not bear to think of that.

He stood a little way off from King Rat, on the flat
roof of a bookie's shop. Nondescript low-rise housing
surrounded them. Saul revelled in the banality of the
view, the slate grey, the lacklustre billboard ads,
peeling and out of date, the obscure graffiti. He could
hear a train pass by somewhere not far away.

King Rat faced him.

'You off, then?' he said.

Saul burst out laughing at the absurd understatement
of the parting.

'Yeah.' He nodded.

King Rat nodded back. He seemed very distracted.

'/ killed him, you know,' he said suddenly. '/ took
him out. Not you, you froze up. You'd have let him
do a bunk, but not me! I sprung up with my sharp
Hampsteads and took the ruffian out!' Saul said
nothing. King Rat stared at him, his excitement
ebbing. 'But nary a rat was there to get a shufti,' he
said slowly. 'None of my boys and girls. They saw
nowt, all dancing, out of it, dead and dying.'

There was a long silence.


408



King Rat pointed briefly at Saul.

'They'll think you done it.'

Saul nodded.

King Rat began to quiver. He fought to control
himself, shoved his hands into his mouth, beat his
sides, but he could not contain the anguish and
excitement.

He grabbed Saul's arms, his hands shaking.

'Tell them,' he begged. 'They'll believe you. Tell
them what I did.'

Saul stared at that dark, dirty figure. From where
he stood, nothing of London was visible behind King
Rat. That wiry, ill-defined face was all he could see,
surrounded by nothing but the sky, the faint stars and
oily clouds. King Rat was an island in his field of
vision, operating under his own rules. The dark spaces
in which those eyes hid were fervent, would not
release him. The clouds behind King Rat's head were
tinged with red, stained by the city.

King Rat begged for absolution. He wanted his
kingdom back.

Saul did not want it. He did not want to be Crown
Prince of rats. He was not a rat any more than he was
a man.

But as he stared at King Rat's face he saw a sordid
brutality in an alley. He saw a fat old man who loved
him falling out of the sky in a deadly rain of glass.

Saul closed his eyes and remembered his father. He
wanted him. He wanted to talk to him so much.


409



He would never ever speak to him again.

He spoke very slowly, without opening his eyes.

'I'm going to tell my troops,' he said, 'about how
you cowered and begged the Piper for your life, and
promised him all the rats he could kill, and how it
would have worked if I hadn't fought past you
bravely and shoved him into hell impaled on his flute.

'I'll tell them all what a craven lying coward Judas
you were.'


He opened his eyes as King Rat began to screech.

'Give me my Kingdom,' he shrieked, and clawed at
Saul's face. 'You little cunt I'll kill you . ..'

Saul stumbled back from the flailing claws, and
pushed King Rat in the chest.

'So what are you going to do?' he hissed. 'You going
to kill me? Because you know what? I'm not sure you
killed the Piper! And if he ever comes back he'll kill
you dead like fucking vermin, and he'll make you
dance and beg for it before you die, but he can't kill
me...'

King Rat slowed down, his frantic flailings subsided.
He backed away from Saul, his shoulders
slumped, broken.

'See? He can't touch me ...' Saul hissed. He jabbed
a finger at King Rat's chest. 'You dragged me into this
world, murderer, rapist, Dad, you killed my father,
unleashed the Piper on me ... I can't kill you, but you


410



can sing for your fucking Kingdom. It's mine, and
you need me in case he ever comes back. You can't kill
me, just in case.' Saul laughed unpleasantly. 'I know
how you work, you fucking animal. Self fiber alles. Kill me and you might be killing yourself. So what do
you want to do? Eh?'

Saul stepped back and spread his arms wide. He
closed his eyes.

'Kill me. Take your best shot.'

He waited, listening to King Rat breathe.

Eventually he opened his eyes and saw King Rat
skulking, moving back and forth, towards him and
away again, clenching and unclenching his fists.

'You little bastardV he hissed despairingly.

Saul laughed again, bitter and tired. He turned his
back on King Rat and walked to the edge of the roof.
As he began his descent, King Rat whispered to him
again.

'Watch your back, you shit,' he hissed. 'Watch your
back.'

Saul climbed down a curving line of old bricks and
disappeared into the labyrinth behind a skip, wound
his way along a tiny alley and emerged into South
London.

He scoured the streets until he found a darkened
arcade of kebab vendors and newsagents and shoe
shops, and there at the end a mercifully unvandalized
phone box. He dialled 999 and sent the police and


411


ambulances to the warehouse. God knew, he thought,
what they would make of the scene awaiting them.

When he had made that call, Saul held the receiver
to his chin for a long time, trying to decide whether to
act on his instinct. He wanted to make one more call.

He called directory enquiries and got the number
for the Willesden police station. He called the operator
and told her that his pound coin had stuck in the
phone box and he had to make an urgent call. The
operator acquiesced with a bored voice designed to let
Saul know that she knew he was lying.

The phone was answered by a crotchety sergeant
on the graveyard shift.

Saul didn't suppose that DI Crowley was available.
At this time? Was Saul mad? Anything urgent the
sergeant could help with?

Saul asked to be put through to Crowley's
answering machine. He stiffened with deja vu at the
sound of Crowley's measured tones. He had not heard
them since his rebirth, the night after his father's
murder.

He cleared his throat.

'Crowley, this is Saul Garamond. By now you'll
know about the fucking carnage in the Elephant and
Castle. This is just to let you know that I was there,
and to tell you not to bother asking anyone there what
happened, because none of them know. I don't know
how you'll end up writing it up ... Fuck it, say it was
a performance art piece that went horribly wrong. I


412



don't know. Anyway, I was calling to tell you that
I did not kill my father. I didn't kill your policemen. I
didn't kill the bus guard, I didn't kill Deborah, and
I didn't kill my friend Kay.

'I wanted to tell you that the main culprit is gone.

'I don't think we'll see him again.

'There's one more culprit for part of this, Crowley,
and I can't get rid of him, not yet. But I'll be keeping
my eye on him. I promise you that.

'I want to come back, Crowley, but I know I can't.
Leave Fabian and Natasha alone. They don't know anything, and they haven't seen me. I did everyone a
favour tonight, Crowley. You'll never know the half
of it.

'If we're both lucky that's the last we'll hear of each
other.

'Good luck, Crowley.'

He hung up.

Tell me about your father, Crowley had suggested,
all those weeks ago. Ah, Crowley, thought Saul, that's
just what I can't do.

You wouldn 't understand.

He walked into the dark streets, heading for home.


413
EPILOGUE
Deep under London, in a rough chamber off a tube
line abandoned for fifty years, accessible from the
sewers and the pipes of a hundred buildings, Saul told
the rats the story of the Great Battle.

They were spellbound. They ringed him in concentric
circles, rats from all over London, here a survivor
of that night, licking her scars ostentatiously, another
boasting of his exploits, others chattering in agreement.
It was dry and not too cold. There were piles of
food for everyone. Saul lay in the centre and told his
story, showing off his healing wounds.

Saul told the assembled company about King Rat's
Betrayal, when he had abased himself in the dirt and
offered the life of every rat in London if only the Piper
would spare him. Saul told the story of how he himself
had heard the cries of the dying and had broken the
Piper's spell, shoved him into a void with his infernal
pipe embedded in him, and he told them how he had
stamped on King Rat in contempt as he did so.

The rats listened and bobbed their little heads.


417




Saul warned the rats to be vigilant, to keep a watch
for the Piper, and to avoid the lies and seductions of
the Great Betrayer, King Rat.

'He's still in the sewers,' warned Saul. 'He's on the
roofs, he's all around us, and he'll try to win you over,
he'll tell you lies and beg you to follow him.'

The rats listened intently. They would not fail.

When Saul had finished the story, he sat up on his
haunches and looked into the ring of faces. Row upon
row of anxious eyes, gazing at him, demanding that he
command them. They oppressed him.

There was so much that Saul wanted to do. He had
a letter to Fabian in his pocket. Fabian would be
leaving hospital soon and he would find it waiting for
him, some tentative overtures, hints at explanation g
and a promise to contact him when things had calmed
down.

Saul wanted to find a permanent base. There was an
empty tower in Haringey he wanted to investigate.

There was shopping that needed doing. He had his
eye on a very flash Apple Mac portable computer.
Leaving the human world behind certainly made
things easier as far as money was concerned.

But he could not operate like that as long as the rats
hung on his every word, followed him everywhere,
desperate to do his bidding. His revenge on King Rat
had trapped him with endless ranks of adoring followers
from whom he was eager to escape. And there
was always the chance that the rats might start lis418



tening to King Rat. He was out there, skulking,
plotting, destroying. Saul had to ensure that his
revenge would last.

He had to change the rules.

'You should all be proud of yourselves,' he said.
'The nation scored a great triumph.'

The gathering basked.

'It's a new dawn for the rats,' he said. 'It's time the
rats realized their strength.'

Excitement swept the assembly. What announcement
was this ?

'And it's for that reason that I abdicate.'

Panic! The rats ran from side to side, beseeched
him. Lead us, they said to him with eyes and screeches
and claws, take us.

'Listen to me! Why don't I quibble with King Rat's
right to that name? Listen to me! I abdicate because
the rats deserve better than a King. The dogs have
their Queen, the cats their King, the spiders will throw
up another sovereign, all the nations fawn before
leaders, but let me tell you all... I couldn't have
defeated the Piper without you. You don't need champions.
It's time for a revolution.'

Saul thought of his father, his fervent arguments,
his books, his commitment. This one's for you, Dad, he thought wryly.

'It's time for a revolution. You were led by a
monarch for years, and he brought you to disaster.
Then years of anarchy, fear, searching for a new ruler,


419


the fear isolating you all so you didn't have faith in
your nation.' A frisson passed momentarily up and
down Saul's back. He was suddenly alarmed. Jesus, he
thought, / wonder what I'm unleashing. But it was
too late to stop and he plunged on. He felt like an
agent of history.

'So now you know what you can do, the rats will never kow-tow to the whims of kings again. I do not
abdicate in favour of another.' Saul paused theatrically.

'I declare this Year One of the Rat Republic.'

Pandemonium. Rats tearing around the room,
terrified, excited, liberated, aghast. And above the
hubbub and confusion, Saul's voice continued, his
speech nearly at an end.

'All equal, all working together, respect going to
those who deserve it, not just those who claim
it... Liberty, Equality ... and let's put the "rat" back
into "Fraternity",' he concluded with a grin. This way, he thought, maybe I can get a bit of peace.

He raised his voice over the clamour.

Tm not Prince Rat, I'm not King Rat.... Let the
Betrayer cling to his outmoded title if he wants,
pathetically hankering for the past. From now on
there are no kings,' said Saul.

'I'm just one of you,' he said.

'I'm Citizen Rat.'


420



Alone again.

I've done this before.
You can't keep me down.
Watch your back, Sonny.


I'm the one that's always there. I'm the one that sticks.
I'm the dispossessed, I'll be back again. I'm why you
can't sleep easy in your bed. I'm the one that taught
you everything you know, I've got more tricks up my
sleeve. I'm the tenacious one, the one that locks
my teeth, that won't give up, that can't ever let go.

I'm the survivor.

I'm King Rat.


421
