King Rat slipped outside the club’s arc. It hit the floor loudly.

‘Tell him to follow me, unh?’ Slam. ‘What was he going to do — report back?’ Slam. This time the wood connected and King Rat yelled in rage.

King Rat growled and slashed at Saul with those claws, and Saul bellowed and swung the club wit renewed venom. The two of them skittered around the dark room, slipping on mould and food, moving now on two limbs, now on four. Saul and King Rat moved like liminal figures, hovering between evolutionary strata, bestial and knowing.

‘So was Loplop going to send a message, unh? bird? Little bird going to let slip where I was, then?’

Again the attacks came, again King Rat moved, refusing to engage in battle, content to draw blood and slip away, his teeth still visible and wicked.

‘What if Loplop had accidentally told someone else where I was, unh? Was I fucking bait?’ King Rat caught the club with his right hand and bit at it suddenly and savagely, and it dissolved in a burst of splinters. Saul did not pause, but grasped King Rat’s filthy lapels and carried him down into the muck, straddling him.

‘Well you needn’t have bothered, you fucking shit because the Piper was there and look what he did to me, you shit. You just weren’t ready, you and Nans so poor old Loplop had to take him on his own.’ Saul pinioned King Rat’s arms to the brick floor and began systematically to punch his face. But even trapped lit that King Rat writhed and slipped under him, many of the heavy blows did not land.

Saul thrust his face right up to King Rat, and stare through the shadows on his eyes.

‘I know you wouldn’t give a fuck if I’d died, as long as I took Piper-man with me,’ he hissed. ‘And I know you killed my dad, you fucking shithead rapist, you piece of crud — not the fucking Piper…’

‘We.’ King Rat shouted the word out and convulsed, throwing Saul from him and sliding in a single movement until he stood in characteristic pose by the throne, skulking and aggrandizing, but this time with his claws bared and his teeth dangerous, coated in slaver like a wild animal. Saul moved backwards in the dirt, fought to right himself.

King Rat spoke again. ‘I never bumped off your dad, stupid. I killed the Usurper.’

The word stayed in the air after he had spoken it.

King Rat spoke again.

‘I’m your dad…’

‘No you fucking aren’t, you weird old fucked-up spiritual degenerate,’ replied Saul instantly. ‘I might have your blood in my veins, you fucking rapist bastard, but you aren’t shit to me.’

Saul smacked himself on the forehead, laughing bitterly.

‘I mean, hello? "Your mother was a rat, and I’m your uncle." Jesus, nice one — playing me like a fucking idiot! And…’ Saul paused and jerked his finger viciously at King Rat, ‘and, that goddamn fucking lunatic Piper who wants me dead only knows about me because of you.’

Saul sat down hard and held his head in his hands. King Rat watched him.

‘I mean, I keep saying I’ve sorted it out, right?’ Saul murmured. ‘And I just can’t stop thinking about it. You killed my father, you rapist shit, and when you did that you let some fucking spirit of darkness out after me, you gave him my fucking address, and, what, I’m supposed to go "Daddy!"?’ Saul shook his head in disgust. He felt his gut twist with contempt and hatred. ‘You can fuck off. It doesn’t work like that.’

‘So what’re you after, an apology?’

King Rat was scornful. He moved towards Saul.

‘What do you want? We’re blood. It was half an age since I left, since you were a little Godfer in the fat man’s arms. I could clock you getting flabby. It was time to join your old dad, the cutpurse king. We’re blood.’

Saul stared up at him.

‘No, fucker, I don’t want shit from you.’ Saul stood. ‘What I want is out.’ He moved off behind the throne, turned to face King Rat. ‘You can deal with the Piper on your own. He only wants me because of you, you know? You’ve been bragging about me, you stupid shit. You don’t give a fuck about family. You raped my mum so you could have your weapon. The Piper knows it; he called me the secret weapon, know what I mean to you. I know I’m a good way on getting at him, because he can’t control me.’

‘But he only wants me dead because of you. So, tell you what.’

Saul moved backwards as he spoke, towards the room’s peculiar exit.

‘Tell you what. You deal with the Piper as best you can, and I’ll look after myself. Agreed?’

And Saul looked King Rat in the eye, those eyes he could still not see, and he left the room.

Up above the sewers: in the sky, over the slate. Out in the air. Saul fingered the skin over his bruises and felt it stretched out taut and split. He gazed at London, spread out before him, unfolding, the underworld threatening to burst through, to rupture its surface tension. It was dark; his life was always dark now. He was becoming a night creature.

His body hurt. His head ached, his arms were scratched and stretched, his muscles burned with deep bruises. But he could not stay still. He felt a desperate eagerness to work through it, to burn the pain out of his body. He swung meaninglessly around girders and antennae, loose-limbed and elegant like a gibbon. He was suddenly very hungry, but he remained on the roofs for a while, running and jumping over low walls and skylights. He straddled the intricacies of St Pancras station, and sped along the spine of roofs which jutted out behind it like a dinosaur’s tail.

This was the realm of the arches. Weird little businesses waged a battle against empty space, cramming into the unlikely hollows below the railway lines. They proclaimed themselves with crude signs.

OFFICE EQUIPMENT CHEAP.

WE DELIVER.

Saul descended to street level. He was fighting to channel the force of elation which had flooded through him at his renunciation of King Rat. He was fragile, ready to burst into tears or hysterics. He was captivated by London.

Someone approached him from around a corner: a woman in heels, he could hear, a brave soul walking this area alone at night. He did not want to scare her; so he slumped against a wall and slid down to the floor, just a comatose drunk.

The associations of homelessness struck him and, as the heels clicked by him unseen, he thought of Deborah and he felt his throat catch. And then it was easy to think of his father.

But Saul did not have time for this, he decided. He leapt up and followed his nose to the dustbins of this odd realm, a world where the streets were empty off houses, where the only things that surrounded him were the peculiar businesses, Victorian throwbacks.

The bins were not rich in pickings. Without domestic rubbish there was little to them. Saul crept back towards King’s Cross. He found his way to the dumping grounds of the all-night eateries, and amassed a huge pile of food. He played games with himself, refusing to allow himself to eat a mouthful until he had collected everything he wanted.

He sat in the shade of a skip in a cul-de-sac by a Chinese take-away and fondled the food he had collected, chunks of greasy meat and noodles.

Saul gorged himself. He ate as he had not for days. He ate to fill all the cavities inside him, to drive out anything that had been left behind.

King Rat had used him as bait, but the plan had gone wrong. The Piper had pre-empted his plan.

As Saul stuffed himself, he felt an echo of that surge of strength that had coursed through him the first time he ate reclaimed food, found food, rat food.

The Piper still wanted him dead, of course, now more than ever. He did not think he would have to wait too long before the Piper came for him.

It was a new chapter, he reflected. Away from King Rat. Out of the sewer. He ate until his belly felt dangerously taut, and then resumed his position in the skyline.

Saul felt as if he would burst, not from food but from something that had been released inside him. I should be mad, he thought suddenly, and I’m not. I haven’t gone mad.