King Rat (11 page)

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.’

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 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.

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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.

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 buildings 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.

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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.

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 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.

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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.

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 preempted 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.

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.

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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 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 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.

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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 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.