Then, as he steadied himself and gripped the flute once more, ready to strike, he heard a thin, desperate keening from the pit that was opening.
A child’s voice.
Saul froze, aghast. The Piper was still. He did not release Saul’s gaze. He did not stop smiling. The split behind his back was a foot wide now, and he began to wriggle his way into it, holding Saul’s eyes all the time. The pathetic wail stopped abruptly.
And just as abruptly a chorus of terror welled out of the darkness, hundreds of tiny voices screaming, stripped raw, mad with fear.
The lost children of Hamelin could see the light.
Saul fell back in a paralysis of horror.
His mouth was stretched wide but only tiny noises burst out. He reached out to the split in the wall, powerless, useless.
The Piper saw him crumple, and winked.
Later, he mouthed, and put his hands to each side of the split, gave a little wave.
A growling thing shoved into Saul at a fierce speed and tore the flute from his hands.
King Rat gripped the flute with both hands and leapt at an impossible angle from Saul’s lap to the Piper’s side. His teeth were clenched, his feral roar barely contained. His overcoat whipped in the vortex of wind. The Piper looked up at him, stupid and confused.
King Rat’s growl burst, became a frenzied bark, he drew back his arms, holding the flute like a spear.
He punched it into the Piper’s body with an animal strength.
The Piper gave a shout of amazement, ludicrously bathetic with the music and the wails of the children behind him.
The flute punctured him like a balloon, shoved deep into his belly. His face went white under the blood, and he gripped King Rat’s arms, clinging to them with all his might, holding the hands that held the flute close to him, staring into King Rat’s eyes.
Everything was poised, for a moment. Everything hung in the balance.
The Piper fell backwards into the dark.
King Rat fell with him.
All Saul could see was the curve of King Rat’s back, which lurched forwards and stopped abruptly. The slit was suddenly closing around him; the voices of the children were more and more plaintive and distant.
King Rat’s back wriggled and his arms emerged above his head, holding the great rent open for half a second more as he braced himself and shoved back from the brink, falling across Saul.
The two sides of the rip met and resealed with a faint crunch.
The Piper had gone. The cries of the children had gone.
Only the Drum and Bass could be heard.
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Saul lay still, exhausted, listening to King Rat breathe.
He rolled away, crawled across the stage. He surveyed the room.
The disco lights still spun and stuttered pointlessly. The wreckage of the hall did not seem real. It was a carnage of blood and sweat, dead rats, crushed spiders, collapsed dancers. The walls were foul with a thousand different stains. The floor was slippery and vile. The dancers shuffled like revivified corpses from side to side, ruined, their eyes closed, shifting their weight from foot to foot, as the beat of Wind City droned on, and the flute continued to degrade. All over the hall dancers were falling.
Saul stumbled across to the decks and ripped the lead from the DAT player. The speakers went dead. Instantly, all around the room, the dancers dropped, fainting where they stood, as still as the dead. It looked like the aftermath of a massacre.
The spiders and rats still dancing when the music stopped were still for a moment, then bolted. They quit the hall and disappeared into the London night.
Saul looked around the hall, searching for his friends.
There, under the heavy body of a huge dancer, lay Natasha. He tugged her free, crooning.
“Tash, Tash,” he whispered, wiping the blood from her face. She was scratched and ripped, her skin welted with the poison of a million tiny spiders, covered with bruises and rat-bites, but she was breathing. He hugged her very hard as she lay there, and squeezed his eyes tight closed.
It had been so long since he had held one of his friends.
He put her gently down, searched for Fabian.
Saul found him lolling out of the hole King Rat had pushed through the stage. He almost wept to see him. He was badly damaged, his face crushed and broken, his skin as ruined as Natasha’s.
“He’ll live.”
Saul looked up sharply at King Rat’s harsh voice.
King Rat stood over him, taking his weight on his left leg, regarding Saul’s ministrations to Fabian.
Saul looked back down at his friend.
“I know,” he said. “His heart’s beating. He’s breathing.”
It was difficult to talk. His throat was constricted with emotion. He looked up at King Rat, gesticulated at the wall.
“The children…” he couldn’t say any more.
King Rat nodded sharply. “The little fuckers whose parents clapped us out of town,” he spat.
Saul’s face twisted. He could not speak, could not look at King Rat. He shook with anger and disgust, clenched his fists. He could still hear the pathetic cries echoing up from the dark.
“Fabian,” he whispered. “Can you hear me, man?”
Fabian moved gently but did not respond. It’s better, thought Saul suddenly. I can’t talk to him now, here, I can’t explain all this. He needs to be out of this. He mustn’t see this. Saul could not bear the loneliness. He wanted his friend so much, but he knew that he must wait.
Time enough soon, he thought and tried to be brave.
He stood, limped his way to King Rat. The two looked warily at each other, then fell forward, catching each other’s forearms, gripping each other. It was a long way from an embrace or a reconciliation, but it was a moment of connection. Like exhausted boxers leaning on each other, still enemies, but each granting the other a moment’s respite, and each grateful.
Saul breathed deep, stepped back.
“Did you kill him?” he said.
King Rat was silent. He turned away.
“Did you?”
“I don’t know…” The words lingered in the silence of the hall. “I think so…the flute was deep inside him, his throat was crushed… I don’t know…”
Saul ran his hands through his hair, looked down at his heavy torso, smeared with the muck of combat. He felt winded by anticlimax and uncertainty. But, then, he thought suddenly, it doesn’t matter to me. He can’t touch me. He’s dead, or dying, or fucked and wounded, and if he ever comes back, I’ll be whatever I am now, only infinitely more so. He can’t touch me.
“He can’t touch you,” said King Rat and licked his lips.
Anansi’s body had gone. King Rat was unsurprised. He looked from side to side at the carpet of crushed spiders on the stage and the dancefloor.
“You’ll never find him,” he mused.
Saul looked at him and stared around the room. He was trembling violently. The stench of rat-blood was heavy in the air, and with every step Saul walked on the bodies of Anansi’s dead. Some of the dancers were beginning to stir.
Blood decorated the walls like abstract art.
“I have to get out of here,” Saul whispered.
Without words Saul and King Rat climbed to the attic. King Rat went before him. Saul untied his prison shirt and draped it across his back before jumping and grasping the edges of the hatchway, hauling himself up and out.
He looked back once, stuck his head into the huge, silent room.
Red and green and blue lights spun on intricate axes, flashing at random now that the beats had gone. The floor was littered with bodies, a few twitching gently. Saul looked at the stage where he had arranged Fabian and Natasha. They looked as if they were sleeping peacefully side by side. Natasha mo
ved her arm dreamily and it fell across Fabian’s chest.
Saul’s breath caught. He could not look on anymore.
He followed King Rat, emerged blinking from the skylight, sucked at the cold fresh air. It seemed days ago that he had entered by this route, but the sky was still dark and the streets as deserted as they ever were.
It was the small hours, the small hours of the same night. London slept, fat and dangerous and blithely unaware of what had happened in the Elephant and Castle. The crisp ignorance of the city refreshed him. It carried on whatever, he thought. There was a great comfort in that.
King Rat and he were eager to leave these bricks behind. They moved as fast as they could, hauling themselves across the roofs, trailing their bruised limbs and wincing with pain, but high and exhilarated. When they had put some houses between them and the warehouse, Saul stopped.
He was going to call for help for those left behind in the club. God knew how many broken bones and punctured lungs and so on were lying in that hall, and he was very afraid of what they might contract from his troops. He could not contemplate that any would die. Not after that night. To live through that, crazed, possessed and dancing, only to die of ratbite in bed…he could not bear to think of that.
He stood a little way off from King Rat, on the flat roof of a bookie’s shop. Nondescript low-rise housing surrounded them. Saul revelled in the banality of the view, the slate gray, the lacklustre billboard ads, peeling and out of date, the obscure graffiti. He could hear a train pass by somewhere not far away.
King Rat faced him.
“You off, then?” he said.
Saul burst out laughing at the absurd understatement of the parting.
“Yeah.” He nodded.
King Rat nodded back. He seemed very distracted.
“I killed him, you know,” he said suddenly. “I took him out. Not you, you froze up. You’d have let him do a bunk, but not me! I sprung up with my sharp Hampsteads and took the ruffian out!” Saul said nothing. King Rat stared at him, his excitement ebbing. “But nary a rat was there to get a shufti,” he said slowly. “None of my boys and girls. They saw nowt, all dancing, out of it, dead and dying.”
There was a long silence.
King Rat pointed briefly at Saul.
“They’ll think you done it.”
Saul nodded.
King Rat began to quiver. He fought to control himself, shoved his hands into his mouth, beat his sides, but he could not contain the anguish and excitement.
He grabbed Saul’s arms, his hands shaking.
“Tell them,” he begged. “They’ll believe you. Tell them what I did.”
Saul stared at that dark, dirty figure. From where he stood, nothing of London was visible behind King Rat. That wiry, ill-defined face was all he could see, surrounded by nothing but the sky, the faint stars and oily clouds. King Rat was an island in his field of vision, operating under his own rules. The dark spaces in which those eyes hid were fervent, would not release him. The clouds behind King Rat’s head were tinged with red, stained by the city.
King Rat begged for absolution. He wanted his kingdom back.
Saul did not want it. He did not want to be Crown Prince of rats. He was not a rat any more than he was a man.
But as he stared at King Rat’s face he saw a sordid brutality in an alley. He saw a fat old man who loved him falling out of the sky in a deadly rain of glass.
Saul closed his eyes and remembered his father. He wanted him. He wanted to talk to him so much.
He would never ever speak to him again.
He spoke very slowly, without opening his eyes.
“I’m going to tell my troops,” he said, “about how you cowered and begged the Piper for your life, and promised him all the rats he could kill, and how it would have worked if I hadn’t fought past you bravely and shoved him into hell impaled on his flute.”
“I’ll tell them all what a craven lying coward Judas you were.”
He opened his eyes as King Rat began to screech.
“Give me my Kingdom,” he shrieked, and clawed at Saul’s face. “You little cunt I’ll kill you…”
Saul stumbled back from the flailing claws, and pushed King Rat in the chest.
“So what are you going to do?” he hissed. “You going to kill me? Because you know what? I’m not sure you killed the Piper! And if he ever comes back he’ll kill you dead like fucking vermin, and he’ll make you dance and beg for it before you die, but he can’t kill me…”
King Rat slowed down, his frantic flailings subsided. He backed away from Saul, his shoulders slumped, broken.
“See? He can’t touch me…” Saul hissed. He jabbed a finger at King Rat’s chest. “You dragged me into this world, murderer, rapist, Dad, you killed my father, unleashed the Piper on me… I can’t kill you, but you can sing for your fucking Kingdom. It’s mine, and you need me in case he ever comes back. You can’t kill me, just in case.” Saul laughed unpleasantly. “I know how you work, you fucking animal. Self über alles. Kill me and you might be killing yourself. So what do you want to do? Eh?”
Saul stepped back and spread his arms wide. He closed his eyes.
“Kill me. Take your best shot.”
He waited, listening to King Rat breathe.
Eventually he opened his eyes and saw King Rat skulking, moving back and forth, towards him and away again, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“You little bastard,” he hissed despairingly.
Saul laughed again, bitter and tired. He turned his back on King Rat and walked to the edge of the roof. As he began his descent, King Rat whispered to him again.
“Watch your back, you shit,” he hissed. “Watch your back.”
Saul climbed down a curving line of old bricks and disappeared into the labyrinth behind a skip, wound his way along a tiny alley and emerged into South London.
He scoured the streets until he found a darkened arcade of kebab vendors and newsagents and shoe shops, and there at the end a mercifully unvandalized phone box. He dialed 999 and sent the police and ambulances to the warehouse. God knew, he thought, what they would make of the scene awaiting them.
When he had made that call, Saul held the receiver to his chin for a long time, trying to decide whether to act on his instinct. He wanted to make one more call.
He called directory enquiries and got the number for the Willesden police station. He called the operator and told her that his pound coin had stuck in the phone box and he had to make an urgent call. The operator acquiesced with a bored voice designed to let Saul know that she knew he was lying.
The phone was answered by a crotchety sergeant on the graveyard shift.
Saul didn’t suppose that DI Crowley was available. At this time? Was Saul mad? Anything urgent the sergeant could help with?
Saul asked to be put through to Crowley’s answering machine. He stiffened with déjà vu at the sound of Crowley’s measured tones. He had not heard them since his rebirth, the night after his father’s murder.
He cleared his throat.
“Crowley, this is Saul Garamond. By now you’ll know about the fucking carnage in the Elephant and Castle. This is just to let you know that I was there, and to tell you not to bother asking anyone there what happened, because none of them know. I don’t know how you’ll end up writing it up… Fuck it, say it was a performance art piece that went horribly wrong. I don’t know. Anyway, I was calling to tell you that I did not kill my father. I didn’t kill your policemen. I didn’t kill the bus guard, I didn’t kill Deborah, and I didn’t kill my friend Kay.”
“I wanted to tell you that the main culprit is gone.”
“I don’t think we’ll see him again.”
“There’s one more culprit for part of this, Crowley, and I can’t get rid of him, not yet. But I’ll be keeping my eye on him. I promise you that.”
“I want to come back, Crowley, but I know I can’t. Leave Fabian and Natasha alone. They don’t know anything, and they haven
’t seen me. I did everyone a favor tonight, Crowley. You’ll never know the half of it.”
“If we’re both lucky that’s the last we’ll hear of each other.”
“Good luck, Crowley.”
He hung up.
Tell me about your father, Crowley had suggested, all those weeks ago. Ah, Crowley, thought Saul, that’s just what I can’t do.
You wouldn’t understand.
He walked into the dark streets, heading for home.
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Deep under London, in a rough chamber off a tube line abandoned for fifty years, accessible from the sewers and the pipes of a hundred buildings, Saul told the rats the story of the Great Battle.
They were spellbound. They ringed him in concentric circles, rats from all over London, here a survivor of that night, licking her scars ostentatiously, another boasting of his exploits, others chattering in agreement. It was dry and not too cold. There were piles of food for everyone. Saul lay in the centre and told his story, showing off his healing wounds.
Saul told the assembled company about King Rat’s Betrayal, when he had abased himself in the dirt and offered the life of every rat in London if only the Piper would spare him. Saul told the story of how he himself had heard the cries of the dying and had broken the Piper’s spell, shoved him into a void with his infernal pipe embedded in him, and he told them how he had stamped on King Rat in contempt as he did so.
The rats listened and bobbed their little heads.
Saul warned the rats to be vigilant, to keep a watch for the Piper, and to avoid the lies and seductions of the Great Betrayer, King Rat.
“He’s still in the sewers,” warned Saul. “He’s on the roofs, he’s all around us, and he’ll try to win you over, he’ll tell you lies and beg you to follow him.”
The rats listened intently. They would not fail.
When Saul had finished the story, he sat up on his haunches and looked into the ring of faces. Row upon row of anxious eyes, gazing at him, demanding that he command them. They oppressed him.
There was so much that Saul wanted to do. He had a letter to Fabian in his pocket. Fabian would be leaving hospital soon and he would find it waiting for him, some tentative overtures, hints at explanation and a promise to contact him when things had calmed down.
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