China Miéville - King Rat

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 Saul revelled in the banality of the view, the slate grey, the lacklustre billboard ads, peeling and out of date, the obscure graffiti.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 fiber 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 dialled 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 favour tonight, Crowley. You’ll never know the half of it.’