King Rat

  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 café 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 gray 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 blahdclaht 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. 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.

  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 know shit.”

  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.

  T

  E

  N

  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 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 s
ide 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 favorite 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 gray 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 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 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.

  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 colored 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 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 colored 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 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 b
ack, 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 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, I 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 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.