King Rat Read online

  King Rat scampered on all fours up the slate incline, his heavy boots making no sound. Like a tightrope walker the surreal figure then crept swiftly along the apex of the roof towards the chimneys, and a looming tower block beyond. Terror had cemented Saul to his body, his fingers twisted into the fabric of the stinking trenchcoat with the tenacity of rigor mortis. But King Rat prised him loose with ease and swung him off his shoulders, depositing him shivering in the shadow of the chimney.

  And there Saul lay.

  He shivered there for several minutes, with the unclear shape of the thin man who did impossible things standing above him, ignoring him. Saul could feel a part of himself going into shock, shaking with a terrible cold out of all proportion to the night wind.

  But the spasm passed, the threat receded.

  Something in the insanity of the night calmed him. What was the point of being afraid? he wondered. He had suspended all common sense half an hour before and, with that gone, he was free simply to immerse himself in the charged night.

  Gradually Saul stopped gasping. He unfolded. He looked up at King Rat, who stood staring at the vast tower block above them.

  Saul braced himself with his hands, then, holding his breath, he rose to his feet, one planted each side of the building’s vertex, wobbling with gusts of vertigo. He steadied himself with his left hand against the chimney stack and relaxed a little. King Rat twitched his eyes over him momentarily, then sauntered a few feet further away, balancing on the apex of the roof.

  Saul looked out over the London skyline. A swell of euphoria gathered in him and crescendoed, he swayed and yelped with incredulous laughter.

  “It’s unbelievable! What the fuck am I doing up here?” He swivelled his head to stare at King Rat, who again stood regarding him with those imprecise eyes. King Rat gestured briefly over the chimney’s bulk, and Saul turned, realizing that those eyes had not been fixed on him at all. The side of the tower block beyond was studded with lights.

  “Look at them,” King Rat said. “In the windows.”

  Saul looked and saw, here and there, minuscule figures bustling past, each reduced to a snatch of color and motion. In the centre of the building one patch of shade remained still: someone leaning out of their flat window, looking over the hillocks and knolls of slate on which Saul and King Rat stood, brazen in their night-time camouflage.

  “Say goodbye to that now,” King Rat said.

  Saul turned his head to face him, quizzical.

  “That geezer there, stopping and staring, that’s as close as you ever got to this before now. The place he’s looking at now—no, he’s not looking at it, he’s caught a glimpse, a hint, it’s teasing him out of the corner of his eye—that’s your gaff now, me old son.” Emotion was disguised in King Rat’s bass snarl, but he seemed satisfied, as if with a job well done. “The rest of it, that’s just in-between for you now. All the main streets, the front rooms and the rest of it, that’s just filler, that’s just chaff, that ain’t the real city. You get to that by the back door. I seen you in the windows, at night, at the close of the lightmans. Staring out, playing look-but-don’t-touch. Well, you’ve touched it now. All the vacant lots and all—that’s your stomping ground now, your pad, your burrow, Saul. That’s London.”

  “You can’t go back now, can you? You stick with me, boy. I’ll see you’re alright.”

  “Why me?” said Saul slowly. “What do you want from me?” he stopped, remembering, for what seemed the first time in hours, why he had been in the police station. “What do you know about my father?”

  King Rat turned and stared at Saul, those features, already so obscured, now invisible in the moonlight. Without taking his eyes from Saul, he slowly sank until he sat straddling the roof ridge like a horseman.

  “Slide over here, cove, and I’ll tell you the story. You aren’t going to like it.”

  Saul lowered himself carefully, facing King Rat, and pulled himself forward until he was only a couple of feet away from him. If anyone could see them, Saul realized, they must look like two schoolboys, ungainly figures from a comic strip, sitting with their legs swinging. Saul’s exhilaration had dissipated with as little warning as it had arrived. He was swallowing with anxiety. He was remembering his father. This was the key to everything, he thought; this was the catalyst, the legend that would make sense of the surreality which had caught him up in its gusts.

  King Rat spoke, and just as it had in the police cell, his voice took on a rhythm, a dislocating monotony like a bagpipe drone. The sense and meaning of what he said crept into Saul’s head as much by insinuation as by conscious understanding.

  “This here Rome-vill, London, that’s my manor, but I been around wherever my little courtiers found grain and rubbish to Tea Leaf. And they did my bidding, because I’m their king. But I was never alone, Saul; that’s never how it was. Rats believe in their Godfers, chuck out broods, the more mouths to filch, the better.”

  “What do you know about your mother, Saul?”

  The question took him by surprise. “The…her name was Eloise… She was, uh, a health visitor… She died when I was born, something went wrong…”

  “Seen any Beechams?”

  Saul shook his head in confusion.

  “Beechams: pictures, photos…”

  “Of course…she’s short and dark, pretty… What’s this about? Where are you going?”

  “Sometimes, me old China, sometimes there are black sheep, ne’er-do-wells, if you clock me. I’d lay good money you and your dad were snarling at each other’s throats sometimes, am I right? Didn’t get on like you might have hoped? Well, do you really think rats aren’t the same?”

  “She was always the gentry mort, your ma. Took to your daddy a whole lot, and he to her. What a beauty she was, luscious, who’d have passed that up?” King Rat finished his sentence with a flourish, twisted his head and looked at Saul from around the corner of his face.

  “Your ma made a choice, Saul. Health visitor! That was a cheeky little joke. Set a thief to catch a thief, they say, isn’t it, and so, likewise, with her. Walk into a place, one sniff of the I Suppose, and your ma knew exactly how many rats was in there, and where. Recidivist, traitor, they called her, but I suppose that’s the power of love…”

  Saul was incredulous, staring and staring at King Rat.

  “She wasn’t built for the likes of you. You bumped her off on arrival. You’re a big strong lad, sonny, stronger than you probably think. There’s a lot you can do you don’t know about. I bet you gawped out of all those night-time windows longer and harder than any of your mates. I think you’ve been scrabbling to get into this city for real for a long time.”

  “You want to know who did the deed on your old man, I know. That’s what you call petulance, that is, that bod smashed out front, in the garden.”

  “The one who did that…he was after you. Your old dad just got in the way.”

  “You’re a special boy, Saul, got special blood in your veins, and there’s one in the city who’d like to see it spilled. Your mum was my sister, Saul.”

  “Your mum was a rat.”

  F

  O

  U

  R

  With that insane allegation hanging in the air, King Rat rocked back onto the flesh of his arse and fell silent.

  Saul shook his head and struggled between incredulity and excitement and disgust.

  “She was…what?”

  “A…fucking…rat.” King Rat spoke slowly. “She crept out of the sewers because she fell for your dad. More tragic than Romeo and Juliet. And her of royal blood, too, but still she went. Couldn’t get shot of me, though. I used to come see her on the nows and thens; she’d tell me to sling my hook. Wanted all that behind her, but with her new nose she stank to herself. Couldn’t shake birthright, you know. Blood’s thicker than water, and rat blood’s the thickest of all.”

  Somewhere in the tar-black below, a patrol car lurched out of the pound spewing blue light.

 
“And since your mum got put in the ground, I’ve been keeping a little eye out for you: trying to keep you out of trouble. What’s family for, Saul? But it looks like things have caught up. Can’t outrun your blood, Saul. Looks like you’ve been rumbled, and your dad had to take a fall.”

  Saul sat still and gazed over King Rat’s shoulder. The words, the deadly understatement delivered with something like a flourish, unlocked a door inside him. He could see his father in a hundred images. And, like a backdrop to all the frozen moments he recalled, Saul could see a powerful fat body pitching in slow motion through the night air, the mouth a distended yawn of shock and terror, eyes rolling in frantic search for safety, thinning hair flickering like candlelight, jowls trembling with gravity’s sudden shift, paddling ineffectually with those thick limbs, jagged scintillas of glass whirling around him as he flew towards the dark lawn, its soil frost-hardened like tundra.

  Saul’s throat caught, and he let out a tiny sound of grief. His tears amazed him with their speed, flooding his vision instantly.

  “Oh Dad…” he sobbed.

  King Rat was incensed.

  “Leave it out now, leave it out, will you give it a fucking rest?”

  His hand snapped out and he slapped Saul lightly across the face.

  “Hey. Hey. Fucking enough.”

  “Fuck off!” Saul found a voice between sniffing, weeping and wiping his nose on the sleeve of the police-issue jumper. “Just stop for a minute. Just leave me alone…”

  Saul relapsed into tears for his father. He beat himself on the head in his loneliness, screwed up his eyes as if he were being tortured, moaned rhythmically as he pummelled his forehead.

  “I’m sorry Dad I’m sorry I’m sorry…” he crooned between his quiet cries. His words were garbled and confused in isolation and terrible inchoate anger. He wrapped his arms around his head, desperate and alone up on the roof.

  Through the gap between his arms, he saw that King Rat was no longer sitting before him, that he had risen without a sound and had somehow reached the other end of the roof, where he stood looking out over London, facing away from Saul whose sadness angered him so much. Saul’s body moved with sobs, as he stared from behind his hands at the strange figure perched between two outcroppings of brick, King Rat. His uncle.

  Saul wriggled backwards, still weeping, until he felt the damp pressure of the chimney on his back. He looked over his shoulder and saw a place where two chimney stacks met near the roof edge, leaving a space between them, a rooftop cubby-hole into which he crept with a quick contortion. He curled up in this little space, insulated from the sky and the sickening drop on all sides, out of the sight of King Rat. He was so tired, exhaustion had soaked into his bones. He lay on his side in the cramped, sloping chamber he had found and covered his head with his hands. He cried some more until his tears became mechanical, like a child who has forgotten what he is weeping for. Saul lay there on the slate slope under the chimneys, without food inside him, in someone else’s ruined clothes, lonely and utterly confused, until, amazingly, he slept.

  When he woke, the sky was still dark, with only a faint fringe of dun in the east. There was no time for a luxurious morning state for Saul, no slow stretches or confusion, no slow remembrance of where he was and why. He opened his eyes onto red brick, and realized with a shudder of claustrophobia that he was surrounded, that curled up around him was King Rat. He started, pulled himself upright out of that passionless, utilitarian embrace. King Rat’s eyes were open.

  “Morning, boy. Bit parky in the small hours. Thought we’d share a bit of warmth to help you kip.”

  King Rat uncoiled and rose, stretching each limb individually. He grabbed the top of the high chimney and hauled himself up with his arms, his legs dangling. He looked slowly from one side to the other, surveying the dim urban sprawl, before hawking noisily and spitting a gob of phlegm down the chimney. Only then did he relax his arms and lower himself to the roof again. Saul struggled to his feet, slipping on the slope. He wiped rheum and rubbish from his face.

  King Rat turned to him. “We never finished our little chat. We was…interrupted last night. You’ve an awful lot to learn, matey, and you’re looking at teacher, like it or not. But first off, let’s make ourselves scarce.” He laughed: a filthy, throaty bark that tickled Saul’s ear. “They were going hell for leather for you last night. No sirens, mind—didn’t want to warn you off, I reckon, but they were frantic: cars and constables running around like the blue-arsed proverbials, in a right old state, and all the time there I am playing at peek-a-boo over their gables.” He laughed again, the noise of it, like all he issued, sounding as if it were just inches from Saul’s ear. “Oh yes, I am a most accomplished thief.” He said this final line with stilted gusto, as if delivering lines in a play.

  He scampered to the edge of the roof, impossibly sure-footed on its steep angle. Clinging on to the guttering, he scouted some distance round the edge, until he found what he was looking for. He turned and gestured for Saul to follow him. Saul edged along the roof ridge on all fours, afraid to expose himself to the wicked-looking gray slate. He reached the spot directly above King Rat, and there he waited.

  King Rat bared his teeth at him. “Slide down,” he whispered.

  With both hands, Saul gripped the little concrete ridge he was straddling, and slowly swung his leg over until his whole body was spreadeagled on the slope above King Rat. At this point his arms rebelled and would not release him. He swiftly changed his mind about his actions, and attempted to haul himself back across the roof ridge, but his muscles were stiff with terror. Trapped on the slippery surface, he panicked. His brittle ringers lost their grip.

  For a long, sick-making moment he was sliding towards his death, until he met King Rat’s strong hand. He was halted sharply, plucked from the roof and swung up and over in a terrifying hauling motion before being dropped hard onto a steel fire escape below.

  The noise of his landing was muffled and insubstantial. Above him grinned King Rat. He still hung on to the edge of the roof with his left hand, his right extended over the stairs where he had deposited Saul. As Saul watched, he released himself, and fell the short distance to the iron mesh of the platform, his big rough boots landing without a sound.

  Saul’s heart was still racing with fear, but his recent undignified precipitation galled him.

  “I… I’m not a fucking sack of potatoes,” he hissed with spurious bravado.

  King Rat grinned. “You don’t even know which way’s up, you little terror. And until you’ve a bit of learning in your Loaf, that’s exactly what you are.”

  The two crept down the steps, past door after door, descending to the alley.

  Dawn came fast. King Rat and Saul made their way through the crepuscular streets. Afraid and excited, Saul half expected his companion to repeat his escapades of last night, and he glanced from side to side at drainpipes and garage roofs, the entrances to rooftop passageways. But this time they remained earthbound. King Rat led Saul through deserted building sites and car parks, down narrow passages masquerading as culs-de-sac. Their route was chosen with an instinct Saul did not understand, and they did not pass any early morning walkers.

  The dark dwindled. Daylight, wan and anemic, had done what it could by seven o’clock.

  Saul leaned against the wall of an alley. King Rat stood framed by its entrance, his right arm outstretched, just touching the bricks, the daylight beyond silhouetting him like the lead in a film noir.

  “I’m starving,” said Saul.

  “Me too, sonny, me too. I’ve been starving for a long time.” King Rat leaned out of the alley. He was peering at a nondescript terraced row of red brick. Each roof was topped with a dragon rampant: little flurries of clay enthusiasm now broken and crumbled. Their features were washed out by acid rain.

  That morning the city seemed made up of back streets.

  “Alright then,” murmured King Rat. “Time for tucker.”

  King Rat, a figure skulk
ing like a Victorian villain, stepped carefully from his point of concealment. He lifted his face to the air. As Saul watched, he sniffed loudly twice, twitched his nose, turned his face a little to one side. Gesturing for Saul to follow him, King Rat scampered down the deserted street and ducked into a gash between two houses. At the far end was a wall of black rubbish bags.

  “Always follow your I Suppose.” King Rat grinned briefly. He was crouched at the end of the narrow alleyway, a hunched shape at the bottom of a brickwork chasm. The surrounding walls were inscrutable, unbroken by windows.

  Saul approached.

  King Rat was tearing at a plastic sack. The rich smell of rot was released. King Rat plunged his arm into the hole, and fumbled inside in an unsettling parody of surgery. He pulled a polystyrene box from the wound. It dripped with tea-leaves and egg yolk, but the hamburger logo was still evident. King Rat placed it on the ground, reached inside the bag again, and pulled out a damp crust of bread.

  He thrust the sack aside and reached for another, ripped it open. This time his reward was half a fruitcake, flattened and embedded with sawdust. Chicken bones and crushed chocolate, the remnants of sweet corn and rice, fish-heads and stale crisps, the bags yielded them all, disgorged them into a stinking pile on the concrete.

  Saul watched the mound of ruined food grow. He put his hand over his mouth.

  “You have got to be joking,” he said, and swallowed.

  King Rat looked up at him.

  “Thought you was peckish.”

  Saul shook his head in horror, his hand still clamped firmly over his mouth.

  “When was the last time you puked?”

  Saul furrowed his brow at the question. King Rat wiped his wet hand on his trenchcoat, adding to the camouflage-pattern of stains hidden in its dark gray. He poked at the food.

  “You can’t recall,” he said, without looking at Saul. “You can’t recall because you’ve never done it. Never spewed nothing. You’ve been ill, I’ll bet, but not like other Godfers. No colds or sneezing; only some queer sickness making you shiver for days, once or twice. But even then, not a sign of puke.” He finally met Saul’s eye, and his voice dropped. He hissed at him, something like victory in his voice. “Got the notion? Your belly won’t rebel. No sicking up Pig’s, no matter how plastered, no sweet sticky chocolate bile on your pillow the night after Easter, no hurling seafood across the tiles, no matter how dodgy the take-away. You’ve got rat blood in your veins. There’s nothing you can’t stomach.”