King Rat (16 page)

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Mornington Crescent. The ghost station, the strange zone between Euston and Camden Town on the decrepit Northern Line: the odd, poky little tube stop which had been closed for repairs sometime in the late Eighties and had never opened again. Trains would slow down as they passed through, so as not to create a vacuum in the empty space, and passengers would glimpse the platform. Sometimes posters would apologize and promise a swift resumption of service, and sometimes obscure pieces of equipment to cure ailing underground stations lay scattered on the abandoned concrete. Often there was nothing, just the signs proclaiming the name of the station in the faint light. It lived a half-life, never being finally laid to rest, haunted by the unlikely promise that it would one day open for business again.

Behind him Kay heard footsteps.

‘Who’s there?’ he yelled. ‘Who’s that? Help me!’

Whoever it was had been standing on the platform, out of his sight when he had tried to turn round.

Kay’s head was twisted as violently over his left shoulder as he could manage. The steps approached him. A tall figure strolled into view, reading something.

‘Alright, Kay?’ said Pete without looking up. He chuckled as he read. ‘My God, they’re not averse to a bit of pretension, this bunch, are they?’ He held up what he was reading and Kay saw it was Drum ‘n’

Bass Massive 3!, a CD Kay had just bought. Kay fought to speak but his mouth was suddenly dry in terror. ‘ “Rudeness ME sends shouts to: the Rough an’ Ready Posse, Shy FX,” blah blah blah, “an’

Boys from da North, da South, da East, da West, remember ... It’s a London Someting! Urban-style ghetto bass!” ‘ Pete looked up, grinning. ‘This is drivel, Kay.’

‘Pete ...’ Kay finally croaked. ‘What’s going on? Get me down, man! How did I get here?’

‘

‘Well, I needed to ask you some questions about something. I’m concerned about something.’ Pete moved off, still reading. In his other hand he held Kay’s bag. He replaced the CD and brought out another.’ “Jungle versus the Hardsteppers.” Cor! I’ve got a lot of lingo to learn if I’m going to get in with Natasha, haven’t I?’

Kay licked his lips. He was sweating even as he shivered. His skin felt slick with terror.

‘How did you get me here, man?’ he moaned. ‘What do you want?’

Pete turned to him, replaced the CD, squatted down on the platform to his left. His flute, Kay saw, was thrust through his belt like a sabre.

‘It’s early yet, Kay, probably not yet five o’clock. The Northern Line doesn’t start for a while. Just thought I’d let you know. And, yes, what I wanted ... well. When I came out of the pub I headed for Natasha’s flat as well, a little after you, wanted to have a word or something. See what you got up to.

I’ve been very interested in all these stories I keep hearing about your mate who’s in trouble, and I wanted to maybe get you on your own - see what you could tell me about him.

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‘Then, as I come towards you, downwind, I smell a very particular scent, one that someone wore once who I’m trying to track down. And it occurs to me that maybe your mate knows the bloke I’m after!’ He smiled reasonably and put his head on one side.

‘So. You did bump into your mate last night, didn’t you?’

Kay swallowed. ‘Yeah. .. but Pete ... let me down... please. I’ll tell you all about it if you’ll just... please, man ... this is really freaking me out.’

Kay’s mind was racing. He could not think for the pain in his head. Pete was mad. He swallowed again.

He had to make him take him down, he had to do it now. Kay could not formulate his thoughts clearly, so overwhelming was the adrenaline rush brought on by fear. He was trembling violently.

Pete nodded.

‘I’m not surprised it’s freaking you out, Kay. Where’s your mate?’

‘You mean Saul? I don’t know, man, I don’t know. Please ...’

‘Where’s Saul?’

‘Just get me fucking down!’

Kay’s control broke and he began to cry.

Pete shook his head thoughtfully.

‘No. You see, you haven’t told me where Saul is yet.’

‘I don’t know, I swear I don’t know! He, he, he said he was ...’ Kay thought desperately for something to tell Pete, something that might save him. ‘Please let me go!’

‘Where’s Saul?’

‘The sewers! He said something... he stank. I asked where’d he been, and he was on about the sewers

...’ Kay’s waist twisted, legs yanking violently at the strong cord.

‘Now that’s interesting,’ said Pete, leaning forward. ‘Did he say anything about where in the sewers?

Because I’ve often suspected that... this guy I’m after uses them.’

Kay was sobbing.

‘Nah, man, he didn’t say nothing else . .. please . . . please ... he was weird, his voice was weird, he stank... he wouldn’t tell me anything.. . Please let me down!’

‘No, Kay, I won’t let you down,’ Pete’s voice was suddenly shockingly vicious. He rose and stalked towards him. ‘Not yet. You see, I want to know everything you know about your friend Saul, because it’s important to me. I want to know everything, Kay, capeesh?’

Kay gabbled, tried to think of what he knew. He screamed about sewers, repeated that Saul had stunk, that he was hiding in the sewers. He ran out of anything to say. He whimpered and twisted where he
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hung.

Pete had been taking notes, nodding with interest now and then, writing carefully in a little notebook.

‘Tell me about Saul’s life,’ he said without looking up.

Kay talked about Saul’s father, the fat socialist they had all laughed at; about Saul’s brief, disastrous attempt to move in with a girlfriend; his return home, temporary he said, always temporary for the next two years. Kay kept talking, about Saul’s friends, about his social life, Jungle, the clubs, and as Kay spoke tears rolled down his cheeks. He was pathetically eager to please. He whimpered with each breath. He had no more to say and he was afraid, because Pete seemed pleased with him when he told him about Saul, and all Kay could think of was that he must keep Pete happy. But he truly had no more to say.

Pete sighed and put the pad in his pocket. He glanced at his watch.

‘Thanks, Kay,’ he said. ‘I guess you’re wondering what this all means, what I’m up to. I’m afraid I won’t tell you that. But you’ve helped me a lot. The sewers, huh? I thought as much, but you don’t really want to go wading around in shit unless you’re quite sure you have to, do you? It’s not really my turf, know what I mean? I’ll have to get him out.’ He grimaced lightheartedly. ‘Maybe ... maybe ... you ... can

... let... me ... go ...’ Kay forced the words out past chattering teeth. His body was shaking with little sobs, and every word of Pete’s chilled him.

Pete looked at him and smiled.

‘No,’ he said after a moment’s hesitation. ‘I don’t think so.’

Kay’s screams began again, went shooting off down the tunnel he faced, bounced around him. He threatened, cajoled, pleaded, and Pete ignored him, and continued speaking in his conversational tone.

‘You don’t know me, Kay. I can do a trick.’ He pulled the flute from his belt. ‘See this?’ Kay continued begging. ‘I can play this, make anything I want come to me. Play the right notes and I can get you the cockroaches around us, the mice, anything close enough to hear. And it feels so good to make them come to me.’ He crooned the last sentence, and at the sound of that cloying wetness, that fucked-up sugary tone, Kay retched.

‘And I was looking at these tunnels and thinking how much they looked like wormholes,’ Pete continued. ‘If I played this, what do you think I might call?’

Pete put the flute to his lips and began to play, a strange, droning tune, a hypnotic dirge that wailed flatly over Kay’s garbled exhortations.

Kay gazed into the mouth of the tunnel.

Behind him the melody continued, and Kay could hear the slap of feet as Pete danced to his own tune.

The wind jerked around Kay, pushed into his face from somewhere far off.

Deep in the darkness before him something growled.

Kay hung like an obscene toy, nude and chubby in the yawning darkness of the underground.

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The wind pushed on with more resolve, and the growl sounded again. Kay shrieked in despair, felt himself relax in terror, sag in his bonds, felt piss run down his legs. The tune continued.

There was a sound like steel whiplashing as the tracks buckled and moved under the oncoming weight.

The wind began to hit Kay now, began to push his hair out of his face. Scraps of paper and dirt came whirling out of the blackness, surrounding him, sticking to him; grit filled his eyes and mouth and he fought and spat to clear himself of debris, consumed by a ghastly desperation to see.

The growling ebbed and flowed, became a clattering, began to drown out the disinterested flute. A great presence rushed towards him.

Lights had appeared in the distance, two dirty white lights that seemed to crawl towards him, seemed determined never to arrive. It was only the wind and noise that moved at speed, he reasoned desperately, but even as he decided that, he saw how much closer those lights suddenly were, and Kay wriggled and fought and screamed prayers to God and Jesus.

He was in a tornado now as the lights suddenly rushed towards him. The howl and rumble echoed around the tube with a strange raging melancholy, an empty roar. The track was visible as glistening threads illuminated by those lights. The filthy off-white of the first Northern Line train of the day became evident before him, the driver’s glass front still a black slit. He must see me, thought Kay. He’ll stop! But the great flat surface moved ineluctably forward at a horrible speed, pushing the air out, clogging the wind with dirt. The speed was intolerable, thought Kay, just stop, but the lights kept coming, there was no let-up, the howl of the tunnel had become a charnel roar, the lights were dazzling, they blinded him, he looked up as he screamed, still hearing the flute, always the flute behind him, he looked up at the reflections varnished onto the windscreen, caught a glimpse of his ridiculous little body spreadeagled like a medical specimen, then saw through that, through the wide-open mouth of his reflection, into the incredulous gaze of the driver who bore down on him, disbelief and horror smeared across his face, those eyes aghast, Kay could see the whites of the other man’s eyes. . .

The glass front of the train burst open like a vast blood-blister. The first Northern Line train of the day arrived at Mornington Crescent station and ploughed to an unscheduled halt, dripping.

Days came and went in the city. In the sewers, on the rooftops, under the canal bridges, in all the cramped spaces of London, King Rat and his comrades held councils of war.

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Saul would sit and listen as the three unlikely figures murmured together.

Much of what they said made no sense to him references to people and places and occurrences that he could not fathom. But he understood enough of the growled discussion to know that, despite their grandiose declarations of hostilities, neither King Rat nor Loplop nor Anansi had any idea how to proceed.

The prosaic truth was that they were afraid. Sometimes the arguments became heated, and accusations of cowardice would flurry between the three. These accusations were true. The circular discussions, the half-plans, the protestations of anger and pugnacity, all were stymied by the fact that the three knew that in any confrontation one of them would be doomed.

As soon as the Piper got his flute to his lips, or even pursed his lips to whistle, or perhaps even hummed, one of them would be commandeered, one of them would be taken over to the other side. His eyes would glaze and he would start to fight against his allies, his ears stuffed with the enticing sounds of food and sex and freedom.

Anansi would hear sluggish fat flies blundering near his mouth, and the skittering of lovelorn feet approaching him over towering webs to mate. That was what he had heard in Baghdad, as the Piper had thrashed him mercilessly.

Loplop knew that he would hear the snapping of threadlike filaments as the roots of grass were pushed aside and juicy worms groped blindly into the light, towards his bill. He would hear the rush of air as he felt himself swoop above the city, the come-hither calls of the most beautiful birds of paradise.

And King Rat would once again hear the doors of the pantries in hell swinging open.

None of the three wanted to die. It was a mission which involved certain destruction for one. The sheer force of animal self-preservation seemed to preclude their willingness even to risk the odds of one in three. There was to be no sentimental self-sacrifice in this fight.

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.

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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.