Saul turned and stormed to the exit. ‘I’m going out. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but I don’t expect you to care, because you don’t think you can use me at the moment. While I’m gone I recommend you think carefully about doing something. Use Loplop, use Anansi, get hold of them and track the motherfucker down. When you’re willing to get off your arse, maybe we can talk.’ He turned to face King Rat. ‘Oh, and don’t worry about your Magic Kingdom. I don’t want to be Rat King, not now, not ever, so I wouldn’t stress it. I’m going to find my mates or something. I’m bored of you.’
Saul turned and swung out of the room, was briefly coated in filthy water, and passed into the sewers.
While Saul stalked through the subterranean realms above him, King Rat stood quivering with rage, his hands tugging fitfully at his overcoat. Eventually his motions ceased and he seated himself.
He brooded.
He jumped up again, purposeful for the first time in days.
‘OK, sonny, point taken. So let’s talk about bait,’ he murmured to himself.
He rushed out of the room, suddenly moving as he had when Saul first saw him, sinuous and mysterious, fast and chaotic.
He passed quickly, silently through the layers of the earth, while Saul still struggled to find his bearings. King Rat emerged into a dark street. On the other side, figures passed in and out of the puddle of lacklustre lamplight, keeping their eyes fixed in front of them.
He stood quite still, his hidden eyes twitching imperceptibly. He looked around him. His eyes crawled up the wall before him. He stalked forward, one foot rising in a slow arch, curving back down to earth in an exaggerated parabola, his upper body bobbing slightly. He looked up, spread his arms wide, gripped the brick wall like a lover. Silently, he scaled the side of the building, his boots finding impossible purchase, his hands gripping invisible imperfections. He drew his hands back, contracting the muscles of his arms, fixing his attention on the dark below the eaves.
His arms uncoiled, shot out. Something fluttered desperately and a family of dirty pigeons burst from the shadow, disturbed from their sleep. They disappeared into the air behind him. He withdrew his hand and brought with it one of the birds, caught and held tight, its wings trying to stretch open, unable to escape him.
King Rat lowered his face towards his captive. It stopped struggling as he brought his face closer. He held it very tight to him, stared deep into its eye.
‘You don’t have Jack to fear from me, little cove,’ he hissed. The bird was still, waiting. ‘I want you to do me a favour. Go find your boss-man, spread the word. King Rat wants Loplop. Have him track me down.’
King Rat released his scout. It lurched into the air, wheeled and swept off over London. King Rat watched it go. When he couldn’t see it any more, he turned his back and disappeared into the dark city.
Chapter Sixteen
It was the first time since his solo stroll along the Westway that Saul had been alone for so long. His are was dwindling, threatening to snuff out, and he fed it carefully, maintained it. It gave him a righteous rush.
He wanted out of the claustrophobic sewers, wanted a taste of cold air. Judging by the ebb of water around his legs, the rain outside had let up. He wanted to emerge before it had fully dissipated.
Saul trusted to instinct in his rambles through the brick underworld. The rules of the sewers were different, the distinctions and boundaries between areas blurred. Above ground he knew where he was, and decided where he was going. Under the pavement he felt only a vague tugging to move from one part of the tunnel network to another, a buzzing of the troglodytic radar apparently lodged in his skull, and he would follow his nose. He did not know if he had visited any particular patch of sewer before; it was irrelevant. He knew it all. It was only the environs of the throne-room which were particular, and all roads in the underworld seemed to lead there eventually.
He ducked under low bricks, pushed his way through tight tunnels.
Saul heard the patter of feet around him, isolated squeals of excited rats. He saw a hundred little brown heads peeking from chinks in the bricks.
‘Hi, rats,’ he hissed as he moved.
Ahead of him he saw the ruined metal of a ladder, old and corroded, dribbling its constituent parts into the stream of rainwater. He grasped it, felt it crumble beneath him, scrambled up it before it disintegrated entirely. He pushed at the cover, to poke his head into Edgware Road.
It was the end of twilight. The street was busy with Lebanese patisseries, mini-cab firms and cut-price electrical repair shops, dirty video stores and clothing warehouses with hand-drawn signs advertising their wares. Saul looked over the top of a building site across the road. Away in the west the fringe of the sky was still a beautiful bright blue, shading to black. At the base of the skyline the edges of the buildings looked unnaturally sharp.
Saul slid gently through the hole in the pavement, nonchalant in the knowledge that he could move without being seen or heard, so long as he kept in the shadows, obeyed the rules. Subtly he oozed through the opening, waiting for a gap in the flow of pedestrians, arching his eyebrows, rolling out of the hole in the ground with the smell.
He reached back to replace the manhole cover, and heard a mass of hisses. Peering over the edge, Saul looked into the eyes of dozens of rats, perched precariously on the rotting ladder.
He regarded them. They gazed at him.
He grunted and pulled the cover over the opening, but not fully, leaving a slit of darkness, to which he put his mouth and whispered, ‘Meet me over by the bins.’
In a quick, odd motion Saul bobbed to his feet. He stuck his hands in his pockets, sauntered along the street past the clumps of people. They noticed him suddenly, moved aside and apart for him, frowning at his smell. Behind him a brown bolt shot out of the sewers, followed by another, then a sudden mass. One of the proprietors noticed and shrieked, and all attention focused on the manhole. By then the flow had almost finished and the rats had melted into the interstices of the city, made themselves invisible.
Saul continued walking at the same pace as the street erupted into pandemonium behind him. People snatched themselves away from the hole in the ground.
‘Who the fuck left that open?’ came one yell, along with a mass of Arabic.
Saul slid into the darkness at the edge of the street.
The rats had disappeared now and public-spirited citizens were gingerly shoving the metal cover back into position. Saul turned slowly and leaned against a wall, ostentatious, if only for his own benefit. He inspected his nails.
A few feet away to his right was a mass of bins, some tumbling into each other and spilling bags, the whole smelling faintly of baklava, sullied of course by filth. There was a rustling from the bags. A honey stained head poked up from the black plastic mass. More heads appeared around it.
‘Got yourself some food, then?’ hissed Saul out of the corner of his mouth. ‘That’s good.’
There was a faint screeching from the bins in reply.
A few feet away, in the world of the patisseries, those who had collaborated on resealing the sewers were laughing, unsettled. They were sharing cigarettes and looking around nervously, in case the rats came back.
Saul moved over to the dustbins.
‘Alright, squad,’ he said quietly. ‘Show me what you can do. First alley on the left, quick march, quiet as… mice? Fuck it, I suppose so. Rank yourselves nice for me.’
There was a sudden explosive burst and a hundred brown torpedoes bolted from cover. Saul watched as they disappeared up drains, behind walls, into the darkness which dribbled down from the eaves of the buildings, into the holes between bricks. The bins were suddenly vacant and still.