China Miéville - King Rat

He could hear her working. The faint thumping of Drum and Bass was audible from the end of the street. As he walked, wheeling his bike beside him, Fabian heard the sound of wings. Natasha’s house teemed with pigeons. Every protuberance and ledge was grey with plump, stirring bodies. A few were in the air, hovering nervously around the windows and gables, settling, dislodging their peers. They shifted and shat a little as Fabian stopped at the door directly below them.

Natasha’s rhythm was loud now, and Fabian could hear something unusual, a clear sound like pipes, a recorder or a flute, bursting with energy and exuberance, shadowing the bass. He stood still and listened. The quality of this sound was different from that of samples, and it was not trapped in any loops. Fabian suspected it was being played live. And by something of a virtuoso.

He rang the bell. The electronic boom of the bass stopped cold. The flute faltered on for a second or two. As silence fell, the company of pigeons rose en masse into the air with the abruptness of panic, circled once like a school of fish and disappeared into the north. Fabian heard footsteps on the stairs.

Natasha opened the door to him and smiled.

‘Alright, Fabe,’ she said, reaching up to touch her clenched right fist to his. He did so, at the same time bending down to put an arm around her and kiss her cheek. She responded, though her surprise was evident.

‘Tash,’ he whispered, in greeting and in warning. She heard it in his voice, pulled back holding his shoulders in her hands. Her face sharpened in concern.

‘What? What’s happened?’

‘Tash, it’s Saul.’ He’d told the story so often today he’d become an automaton, just mouthing the words, but this time it was difficult all over again. He licked his lips.

Natasha started. ‘What is it, Fabe?’ Her voice cracked.

‘No no,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Saul’s fine. Well, I guess… He’s in with the pigs.’

She shook her head in confusion.

‘Listen, Tash… Saul’s dad… he died.’ He rushed on before she could misunderstand. ‘He was killed. He was lobbed out of a window two nights back. I… I think… I think the police reckon Saul did it.’ He reached into his pocket and brought out the scrunched-up news story. Natasha read it.

‘No,’ she said.

‘I know, I know. But I suppose they heard about him and the old man having arguments and that, and… I dunno.’

‘No,’ said Natasha again. The two of them stood quite still, staring at each other. Eventually Natasha moved. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘come in. We’d better talk. There’s this bloke here…’

‘The one playing the flute?’

She smiled slightly. ‘Yeah. He’s good, isn’t he? I’ll get rid of him.’

Fabian closed the door behind him and followed her up the stairs. She was some way ahead of him and, as he approached her inner door, he heard voices.

‘What’s happening?’ It was a man’s voice, muffled and anxious.

‘A friend’s in a bit of bother,’ Natasha was saying. Fabian entered the sparse bedroom, nodded in greeting at the tall blond man he saw over Natasha’s shoulder. The man had his mouth slightly open, was fingering his ponytail nervously. In his right hand was a silver flute. He looked up and down at the two in the doorway.

‘Pete, Fabian.’ Natasha waved her hand vaguely between the two in a cursory introduction. ‘Sorry, Pete, but you’re going to have to split. I have to talk to Fabe. Something’s come up.’

The blond man nodded and hurriedly gathered his things together. As he did so, he spoke rapidly.

‘Natasha, do you want to do this again? I felt like we were… really getting into it.’

Fabian raised his eyebrows.

The tall man squeezed past Fabian without taking his eyes off Natasha. She was clearly distracted, but she smiled and nodded.

‘Yeah. For sure. Do you want to leave me your number or something?’

‘No, I’ll come by again.’

‘Do you want my number, then?’

‘No. I’ll just come by, and if you’re not in, I’ll come by again.’ Pete stopped in front of the stairs and turned back. ‘Hope I see you again, Fabian,’ he said.

Fabian nodded abstractedly, then looked into Pete’s eyes. The tall man was gazing at him with a peculiar intensity, demanding a response. The two were locked for a moment, until Fabian acquiesced and nodded more pointedly. Only then did Pete seem satisfied. He descended the stairs, followed by Natasha.

The two were speaking, but Fabian could not make out any words. He frowned. The front door slammed shut and Natasha returned to the room.

‘He’s a bit of a weirdo, isn’t he?’ Fabian asked.

Natasha nodded vehemently. ‘Strue, man, do you know what I mean? I threw him out at first, he was kind of getting leery.’

‘Trying it on?’

‘Kind of. But he was going on and on about wanting to play with me, and I was intrigued, and he started playing outside. He was good so I let him back in.’

‘Suitably humbled, yeah?’ Fabian grinned briefly.

‘Damn right. But he plays… he plays like a fucking angel, Fabe.’ She was excited. ‘He’s the original nutter, you’re right, I know, but there’s something very right about his playing.’

There was a short silence. Natasha tugged at Fabian’s jacket and pulled him into the kitchen. ‘I need a coffee, man. You need a coffee. And I need to know about Saul.’

In the street stood the tall man. He stared up at the window, the flute limp in his hand. His clothes twisted in the wind. He was even paler in the cold, in front of the dark trees. He was quite motionless. He watched the tiny variations of light as bodies moved in and out of the sitting-room. He cocked his ear slightly, pulled his fringe out of his eyes, twisted a lock of hair in his fingers. His eyes were the colour of the clouds. He raised the flute slowly to his lips, played a brief refrain. A little group of sparrows wheeled out from the branches of a tree, circled him. The man lowered his flute and watched as the birds disappeared.

Two eyes stained yellow by death gaped stupidly. All the imperfections of the human body were magnified by utter stillness. Crowley ran his eyes over the face, took note of the wide pores, the pockmarks, the hairs sprouting from nostrils, the patch of stubble under the Adam’s apple that the razor had missed.

The skin folded up under the chin and became a tightly wound coil, a skein of flesh wrung out to dry. The body was chest-down, limbs uncomfortable, and the head was facing the ceiling, twisted round nearly 180 degrees. Crowley stood and pushed his hands into his pockets to disguise their trembling. He turned and faced his entourage, two burly officers whose faces were identical portraits of disbelieving revulsion, scarcely more mobile than their fallen comrade’s.

Crowley paced through the small hall to the bedroom. The flat was full of busy people, photographers, pathologists. Fingerprint dust sat in the air in flat layers, like geological strata.

He peered round the frame of the bedroom door. A suited man crouched on the floor before a figure sitting with splayed legs, leaning against a wall. Crowley looked at the seated man and made a small disgusted noise, as if at rotten food. He stared into the ruinous mess of the other’s face. Blood was smeared across the wall. The dead man’s uniform was saturated with it, stiff like an oilskin coat.

The suited doctor removed his tentative fingers from the bloody mess, and glanced behind him at Crowley. ‘You are…?’

‘DI Crowley. Doctor, what happened here?’

The doctor gestured at the slumped figure. His voice was utterly detached, exhibiting the defensive professionalism Crowley had seen before at unpleasant deaths.