“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. “Fuck 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?”
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 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?”
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 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.
E
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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 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 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-in-the-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.
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 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.
“He tell you to 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 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 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 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. br />
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 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.
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.