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.
Saul had quietly dosed the door behind him, had 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.
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 smelclass="underline" 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 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 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 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, but his legs had locked into a fearful squat, and he grew exasperated as he readied himself to land beside uncle. He breathed in, once, twice, very deeply, to 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, prepared his landing, as he saw King Rat’s grin approached 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 belly and sucked air into his lungs. He had flown, had I landed ready. He was shedding his humanity like an old snakeskin, scratching it off in great swathes. It was 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 the 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 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.