King Rat Part 3

'f.u.c.k 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 s.p.a.ce between them, a rooftop cubby-hole into which he crept with a quick contortion. He curled up in this little s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.sionless, 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 h.e.l.l 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-a.r.s.ed 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 m.u.f.fled 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 f.u.c.king 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 pa.s.sageways. But this time they remained earthbound. King Rat led Saul through deserted building sites and car parks, down narrow pa.s.sages masquerading as culs-de-sac. Their route was chosen with an instinct Saul did not understand, and they did not pa.s.s 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 G.o.dfers. No colds or sneezing; only some queer sickness making you s.h.i.+ver 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 s.h.i.+ny 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 pa.s.sed, 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 coc.o.o.ned in black plastic.

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

King Rat nodded. 'Time,' he said, 'for a word in your sh.e.l.l-like. Much as I hate to p.i.s.s 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.'

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 Ba.s.sett 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.ton 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 b.u.t.tons, twisted her cursor, displayed her musical spoils on the LCD display. She scrolled through the selection and plucked a favourite ba.s.sline from her digital killing jar. She had s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 ba.s.s was trapped. The sample ended just as the ba.s.s-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 ba.s.sline 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 ba.s.s, 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 s.n.a.t.c.h 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 ba.s.s, the slamming drums.

This was Jungle.