Saul was vaguely aware that he was a vital component in this argument, that ultimately he was the weapon which would have to be deployed. It did not yet frighten him, as he could not begin to take it seriously.
Some days, Loplop and Anansi would disappear. Saul remained with King Rat.
Every time he walked or climbed or ate, he felt stronger. He would look down over London as he scaled the side of a gas tower and think How did I get up here? with exhilaration. Their journeys across London became rarer, more sporadic. Saul was frustrated. He was moving faster and more quietly. He wanted to roam, to make his mark — literally, sometimes, as he had discovered the pleasure of pissing his strong-smelling piss against walls and knowing that that corner was now his. His piss was changing, just like his voice.
King Rat was always there when Saul woke. After the initial exhilaration of a new existence at right angles to the world of people he had left behind, Saul was disheartened by the speed with which his days blurred. Life as a rat was dull.
The individual moments still thrilled him with adrenaline, but those moments no longer coalesced.
He knew King Rat was waiting. His ferocious whispered arguments with his comrades became the focal point of Saul’s life. In gravelly hisses and fluting tones the three bickered furiously over whether Anansi’s webs would hold the Piper, and how best to wrest his flute away from him, and whether spiders or birds would constitute better cover. King Rat grew furious. He was alone; he could contribute no troops to any battle. The rats had snubbed him and ignored his commands.
Saul became quieter, learning more about the three creatures who constituted his circle.
He was alone on a roof, one night, sitting with his back to an air-conditioning vent, while King Rat scoured the alley below for food, when Anansi crept over the side of the building before him. Saul was still in his shadows and Anansi looked straight at him for a moment, then cast his eyes around the roof.
I’m getting better at this, thought Saul, with idle pride. Even he can’t see me now.
Anansi sneaked forward under dark red clouds which rolled around each other, belching themselves into and out of existence. They threatened rain. Anansi squatted on the roof, stripped to the waist, as always, despite the cold. He reached into his pocket and drew out a glittering handful, a shifting mass of little buzzing bodies. He smeared the insects into his mouth.
Saul’s eyes widened in fascination, even as he grimaced. He was not surprised by what he saw. He thought he could hear the humming of mother-of pearl wings obscured by Anansi’s cheeks, till those cheeks tensed and he saw Anansi suck hard, not chewing, but pursing his lips and working his mouth as if he sucked the juice from a big gobstopper.
There was the faintest of crunching sounds.
Anansi opened his mouth and poked out a tongue rolled into a tight U. He exhaled sharply, as if through a blowpipe, and a cascade of chitin shot out across the roof, scattering near Saul’s feet; the desiccated body parts of flies and woodlice and ants.
Saul rose to his feet and Anansi started a little, his eyes widening momentarily.
‘Wha’appen, pickney,’ he said evenly, gazing at Saul. ‘The never see you there. You a quiet lickle bwoy.’
Loplop was harder to surprise. He would appear suddenly from behind chimney stacks and rubbish bins, ruffling his foppish coat behind him. His passage was always invisible. Occasionally he would look up and yell ‘Oy!’ into the firmament, and a pigeon, or a flock of starlings, or a thrush, would wheel suddenly out of the clouds, obeying his call, and perch nervously on his wrist.
He would peer at the bird, then briefly up at Saul or whoever observed him, and smile in satisfaction. He would glance back at the bird, imperious suddenly, and bark a command at it, upon which it would seem to cringe and give obeisance, bobbing its head and bowing. And then Loplop would become a good and just king all of a sudden, with no time for such puerile displays of power, and he would murmur reassuringly to his subject, and jettison it, watching it disappear with a look of noble benediction.
Saul believed that Loplop was still a little mad.
And King Rat, King Rat was the same: cantankerous and cockney and irritable and otherworldly.
Kay did not reappear with Natasha’s keys, and she was forced to wake her downstairs neighbour, with whom she left a spare set.
It was just like Kay to meander off and forget that he had them, and she waited for him to call with his cheerful apology. He did not call. After a couple of days she tried his number, and his flatmates said they had not seen him for ages. Natasha was heartily pissed off. After another couple of days she had a new set cut and resolved to charge him when he re-emerged.
The police did seek her out. She was taken to the station and interviewed by a quiet man named Crowley, who asked her several times in several different ways if she had seen Saul since his disappearance. He asked her if she thought Saul capable of murder. He asked her what she had thought of Saul’s father, whom she had never met, and what Saul thought of him. He asked her what Saul thought of the police. He asked what she thought of the police.
When they let her go she returned home seething, to discover a note on her door from Fabian, who was waiting for her in the pub. She fetched him back to her house where they smoked a joint and, to the sound of Fabian’s abrupt giggles, composed a Jungle track on her sequencer using loads of samples from The Bill. They christened the song Fuck You Mister Policeman Sir!.
Pete was coming around more and more. Natasha was waiting for him to make a move on her, something which seemed to happen with the majority of blokes she hung out with for any length of time. He did not, which was a relief to her, as she was completely uninterested and did not want to have to deal with his embarrassment.
He was listening to more and more Drum and Bass, was making comments that were more and more astute. She sampled his flute and wove it into her tunes. She liked the sound it made; there was a breath of the organic about it. Normally, for the main sounds at the top end she would simply create something with her digital powers, but the soullessness those noises possessed, a quality she often revelled in, was beginning to alienate her. She enjoyed the sounds of his flute, the tiny pauses for breath, the hint of vibration when she slowed it down, the infinitesimal imperfections that were the hallmark of the human animal. She sent the bass to follow the flute track.
She was still experimenting, still laying plenty of tracks without him. After a time she focused her flute experimentation on one track. Sometimes they would play together, she snapping down a drum track, a bass line, some interjections, and he would improvise over the top. She recorded these sessions for ideas, and a notion formed in her mind of how they could play together: a session of Jazz Jungle, the newest and most controversial twist to the Drum and Bass canon.
But for now she concentrated on the track she had christened Wind City. She returned to it day on day, tweaking it, adding layers to the low end, tickling the flute, looping it back on itself.
She had a clear idea of the feeling she sought, the neurotic beats of Public Enemy, especially on Fear Of A Black Planet, the sense of a treble constantly looking over its own shoulder. She took the harmony of the flute and stretched it. Repetition makes listeners wary of a statement, and Natasha made the flute protest too much, coming back in and back in and back in on its purest note, till that purity became a testimony of paranoia, no sweet sound of innocence.