Saul saw the fat pillars of the Westway loom out at him again.

He turned right, skirting the great dark thoroughfare, wandering slowly west. He did not know where to turn. He turned his eyes to the ground, seeking a manhole. Perhaps he should hide himself from view, seek out King Rat again. He did not know if he could find his way back through the sewers to the throne room. He did not want to see the rats. They had unnerved him with their pleading. They wanted something of him.

A few late walkers pa.s.sed him by. Saul wanted to stop, to sit and think for a while, to eat. He was not tired. He thought suddenly of the policemen who had died in his flat, and he winced.

He was gravitating towards the tangled concrete of the Westway's mid-air junction, a confusion of sweeping curves which hung above the earth like an imminent threat. Below the skeins of steel and tarmac the council had provided enclosures for basketball and 139.

football, a climbing wall and chin-up bars. During the day the area was full of the shouts of young players oblivious to the concrete above and around them, swooping in all directions with functional grandeur, a found stadium occluding direct light, obscuring the sky.

Saul wandered into the darkness between the pitches. He looked up at the underside of the Westway itself. The traffic above sounded very far away.

He meandered into the pa.s.sageways between chain-link fences and football fields. The wind was stilled under the roadway. He stood and listened to it buffet the edges of the secluded ground.

There was another sound.

A faint, quick scampering echoed quietly between the pillars.

Saul turned and moved his head sharply as something circled him. He backed away. Panic bubbled up inside him. The Ratcatcher! he thought, and ran for the faint glow of the streetlamps.

He spun around on his heel, desperately looking for a way out of the darkness. Something flitted across his vision, a black body that swung down from the shadows above him, from the crevices in the underside of the Westway. It swung around him, too quick for his eye to follow, free of gravity's constraints, moving in all directions through the air. Saul's breath came fast as he turned and ran.

Something sailed out of the air above him and flew 140.

overhead in a perfect parabola, with a grace and speed that eclipsed any gymnast or circus performer alive. The dark ma.s.s curved over the Earth and came to rest, landing lightly twenty feet in front of him. The crouching form sprang upright, splaying legs and arms suddenly like a jack-inthe-box.

A tall, fat man swayed before Saul, his arms and legs spread wide as if antic.i.p.ating an embrace.

Saul braked and backed away, turning suddenly and running back into the darkness from which he had come. He tried to remember to hide, to become a rat, but terror had frozen his cunning.

As he ducked behind a tennis court, the fleeting shape pa.s.sed, flying over the net, and the man was there before him again, arms outstretched. A thin cord suspended from somewhere above recoiled from the swing, and brushed against Saul as it returned along its flight path.

Saul changed direction and disappeared behind a climbing frame. He heard something hissing behind him. Saul gasped as he ran, his rat-strength pushing him faster than he had ever moved before. His skin crawled with fear. Ahead of him he glimpsed threadbare trees. There was a thin gap between two of the wire fences, beyond which was the garden to a housing estate.

He raced for the slit and careered along it, making very little sound, when something caught his ankle and he swung like a felled tree towards the concrete.

141.

He was yanked away from the ground before he hit and he hung for a moment in the air. Thin ropes were stretched across his path, tied to the chain links on either side. One had swept away his foot, and another had caught him across the chest. He cursed frantically and struggled to stand, tugging at the rope which had somehow entangled itself around his ankle. He ploughed forward and saw spindly shapes before him: more ropes, a thicket of them across his path. How had he not seen them before?

He struggled to climb over them, but they confused him; some tied so loosely they came away in his hand and wrapped themselves around him, others so tight they vibrated like a ba.s.s string as they repulsed him. He fell again, caught in this cat's cradle. He could not move. He hung suspended at a forty-five-degree angle, head downwards, four feet from the ground.

Saul heard a footstep behind him. He jerked his head, disentangling himself frantically, swivelled in the midst of his mesh to face the way he had come, his back to the morose shrubs he had sought.

The man stood at the entrance to the little pa.s.sageway.

Light from the far-off lamps struggled to illuminate him, glinting faintly on his skin. He wore nothing but a pair of black cut-off shorts on his lanky legs. He seemed unaffected by the cold. The man had very dark skin and a ma.s.sive belly jutting over his belt, but arms and legs that were ridiculously long and thin, every 142.

muscle standing firm with every movement. His stomach was distended, globular but taut as a bubble. It hardly rippled as he moved slowly towards Saul. Saul saw a thick coil of filthy white rope wound around his left shoulder.

'Don't give me no more trouble, pickney, or me gwan mash you up.'

The voice was scratchy and sharp, vibrant with Caribbean intonation. It sounded close in his ear, as King Rat's did.

The man moved in little bursts. He paced quickly forward a few feet, then stopped to investigate Saul, moved forward again. As he approached, he unwound the rope from his shoulder.

Saul shook violently to free himself from the tangles of rope, seemed only to pull them tighter around him. He began to screech.

The man was upon him, fetched him a vicious slap across the cheek that stopped Saul's cry instantly. His head rocked. He was dizzy and his face throbbed.

The tell you fe shut your mouth, bwoy!' The man kissed his teeth.

Saul's head wobbled forward and he blinked hard. The man was bending over him. Saul was deeply afraid. He put up his hands, tried to push them through the ropes to ward off the attack he was sure was coming. He thrashed in his bonds and opened his mouth to scream again.

The man reached down as fast as a snake and 143.

pushed his fingers into Saul's mouth. Saul tried to bite down, but the man spread his fingers and with inhuman strength forced Saul's mouth open. Saul's captor tugged at the rope draped over his shoulder with his free hand. He wound it around Saul's head once, twice, stuffed it into his mouth like a gag.

He muttered to himself in patois.

As he spoke, the man yanked the rope tight and wound it expertly around Saul's head again, obscuring the lower half of his face. Saul mewed frantically from behind this mask as his eyes darted from side to side.

The man pulled at Saul's arms, twisting the rope around them and pulling tight, securing them behind Saul's back. He tugged Saul free of the little alley. Saul stumbled and ran forward till his feet were jerked out from under him and he fell. He had reached the end of the rope which bound him. He slid back across the ' concrete. The man was reeling him in.

Saul was pulled to his feet and turned to face his captor. With his mouth blocked, Saul breathed frantically through his nose, sputtering flecks of snot onto his bindings. Black eyes stared into his own, which were wet with fear.

'You come with me fe see ratty. There some bad obeah loose now.'

He twirled the rope suddenly over Saul's head like a film cowboy. The coils slid down through the air and wound around Saul's body. The man spun him on the spot, tightening the bonds, letting out slack to 144.

constrict him like a top, He bent and ran the rope on down Saul's legs, until his whole body was obscured in a shroud of grubby white cord.

Only Saul's eyes could move. He could feel a hammering in his arms and legs as his heart struggled to push blood past the obstructions cutting into his flesh.

The man bit through the rope and tied the end at Saul's feet. He stood before Saul and looked down at him, nodded.

'No more nonsense and hollering now, innit?'

Saul began to pitch forward but the man caught him and, to Saul's sudden horror, rolled him through the air and onto his back. He pulled Saul into position as effortlessly as King Rat had done. Saul felt like fluff. The man took more rope from his shoulder and wrapped it around his captive several times, attaching him more firmly. Saul was helpless on those broad flat muscles, his eyes facing backwards. His legs were twisted up into a tight bend. He was suspended from the man's shoulders and waist, the rope cutting into his captor's skin, seemingly painlessly. Saul bobbed in a terrifying and undignified fashion as his abductor raced suddenly through the darkness.

He rushed through the underworld below the Westway at a rate of knots, his route violent and oscillating. The hidden byways receded before Saul's eyes. The man beneath him lurched suddenly and Saul saw the dark horizon drop around him. They were 145.

airborne. Saul's eyes widened and he gave a m.u.f.fled yell, spit slithering down his chin behind the ropes.

They flew through the air, paused and swung backwards, then around, a pendulum ten feet from the ground. They were suspended, clinging to a rope, Saul realized. The man began to climb.

He moved easily, the curve of his back suggesting that he was using both feet and hands. The pace was utterly smooth. The sports grounds disappeared below them and, as they swung from side to side, vistas of West London peeked in and out of Saul's vision. The occasional roar of traffic was closer now.

They reached the top of the rope. Saul was facing away from the highway, out over badly lit sidestreets. The man clung to the barrier and scampered along the side of the Westway. Saul's stomach drummed with fear. There was nothing below his feet. He saw the streets below curve a little closer to him, and he saw the dim light catch on a filament, a thread pa.s.sing up from the chimney of a house fast approaching.

They were opposite the house now, and he caught another glimpse of the thin line of light. It was close by, twisting towards him.

Suddenly he was falling.

But the ground stopped rushing towards him, and he bobbed in the air. He was facing directly down, the Westway growling a few feet above and behind him. The filament he had seen was another rope, tied at one end to the roof and another to the railings of the great 146.

road above. The man was descending the rope now, headfirst, hand over hand, bouncing unnervingly as he slid fast towards the intricate darkness of the roofscape.

Saul prayed that the rope was strong.

And then they were down, and Saul was swung around. He heard a loud snap, and when the man turned again Saul saw that he had broken the rope behind them, obscured their pa.s.sing.

They were off over the tops of houses, another raised race across London. The man swung himself around obstacles, scampering over the slates even faster than King Rat.

Blocks fleeted away below them. Behind them Saul saw the monolithic Westway shrinking.

The man leapt forward and bounced perilously over a road that blocked his path. Saul realized with terror that they were on another rope tied horizontally between buildings, but this time moving on top of it, tightrope-walking faster than Saul could run.

The air was buffeted out of him by the quick motion of his captor and the constricting ropes on his chest. Below them Saul saw a solitary walker moving nervously through the backstreets, oblivious to the mad funambulism above him.

With a jump the dark man left the rope, landed on the opposite roof, snapped the trail behind them.

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They moved like this at a crazy speed over the streets, traversing a network of ropes already laid. They pa.s.sed through gra.s.sland and into an estate, leaping along flat roofs and scampering insanely fast down sheer bricks. Saul was convulsed with terror, unable to see what his captor was doing.

They raced down a bank of scrub onto a railway line, and rushed along the wooden sleepers. Saul watched the tracks curve away behind them.

Again their pa.s.sage was interrupted as the dark man climbed the side of a bridge that pa.s.sed over the railway and the ca.n.a.l that skirted it. They swept through an industrial estate, a collection of low, shabby buildings and motionless forklift trucks. Saul was hypnotized by the breakneck progress over the houses. He had been caught, he did not know by whom, and he did not know what was to happen to him.

The noise of the city became oddly distant. They had entered a yard full of ruined cars crushed flat, piles of them like geological features: strata of old Volvos and Fords and Saabs. The cars teetered around them, leaving only narrow alleys through which to pa.s.s.

They wound through these walkways.

Suddenly the man stopped and Saul heard another's voice: a strange, vain, musical voice coloured with a European accent he could not specify.

'You did find him, then.'

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'Yeah, man. Caught the lickle bleeder down south from here, not far you know.'

There was no more speaking. Saul suddenly felt the ties that bound him slipping, and he fell in a heap to the dust. He was still wrapped tight in his own rope swaddling. The fat man picked him up and carried him in his arms like a bride.

Saul caught a glimpse of the newcomer: thin and very pale, with red hair, a sharp hawkish nose and wide eyes. Saul was borne towards his destination, a huge steel container like a vast skip ten feet high, over which loomed a yellow structure something like a crane.

His eyes flitted about as he was carried, he saw the cars all flattened around him, and he realized that this was a car-crusher, that the lid of the dark container would bear down on whatever was inside, and squeeze it, press it like a flower into two dimensions. And as he was borne inexorably towards it Saul's eyes widened in horror and he began to struggle, to shout through his gag.

He flopped pathetically in the man's arms, tried to roll out of his grip, but the man held him firm and kissed his teeth in disgust, did not break his stride, no matter how Saul emitted frantic humming protests and jack-knifed. The man hauled Saul over his shoulder, Saul staring for a moment into the insane looking eyes of the redhead behind them. Saul was held, bending and unbending at the waist pathetically, 149.

till the tall man heaved him upwards and he sailed over the edge of the ominous grey container ... hung silent and still for a moment... fell, pa.s.sing into the shadow of its metal walls, feeling the air cool and still, slamming into the pitted floor.

He landed hard on the shards of metal and gla.s.s which littered the dark.

Only because he was a rat was he not unconscious or dead, he decided, as he lay moaning. He struggled to sit upright, trickles of blood discolouring the cords which held him. Something approached him, footsteps clanging on the metal floor, and he tried to turn, and fell again, banging his head, only to feel himself grabbed around the shoulders and pulled upright. He opened his eyes and stared into a face glaring balefully at his, a dark face, darker than the shadows in the deadly car-crusher, a face boiling with anger, teeth gritted hard, scoring lines around the mouth, and the familiar stink of old wet animals and rubbish made acrid with anger.

King Rat looked at him and spat in his face.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

The spittle slid down around Saul's nose. His gaze was bouncing off the walls of the crusher, vibrating back and forth, trapped. King Rat stared at him unflinching and angry. Why was he angry, Saul wondered frantically, the thoughts crowding around each other in his head. What was happening? They'd both been caught by the Ratcatcher, that was why they were here, about to be crushed, so why was King Rat still? He wasn't trapped like Saul. Why did he not leap out of the container and save them, or flee?

With his breath fast and ugly in his ears, Saul saw the suspended weight of the lid hovering above them, hideous with potential energy, full of pent-up momentum. King Rat was trying to hold Saul's eyes, was muttering something, but in his panic Saul stared briefly at his uncle, then up at the lid, back down and up again, waiting for it to descend.

King Rat shook him and growled, a quiet bellow of rage.

'What by d.a.m.n do you reckon you're playing ati 151.

Off I go for my const.i.tutional, on the lookout for some victuals, leave you akip like a babe, and what happens? You up and p.i.s.s off.'

Saul shook his head frantically and King Rat impatiently yanked at the rope around his face, tearing it free. Saul spluttered, breathed deeply, spraying mucus and spit and a little blood at King Rat.

King Rat did not move, did not wipe himself clean.

Instead he slapped Saul in the face.

Saul felt so abused, so sore and bloodied, the sting of it was nothing to him, but his anger and confusion overflowed. He exhaled, and the breath turned into a long shout, a yell of incoherent frustration. He wriggled and felt his muscles bunch up against his bonds.

'What are you doing? he yelled.

King Rat pushed his hand over Saul's mouth.

'Stow your parley, you little f.u.c.ker. Don't come the misunderstood. Don't ever be f.u.c.king off on your tod, got it?' He was motionless, staring at Saul, pushing him hard with his hand, driving his point home. 'Care to share the whys and wherefores of your little exhibition, eh?'

Saul's voice emerged m.u.f.fled from behind King Rat's hand.

'I wanted to look about, that was all; wasn't looking for trouble. I've been learning, haven't I? No one saw me, and I climbed like ... you would've been proud.'

'Enough of your c.r.a.p!' King Rat bellowed.

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'Trouble's got its eyes peeled for you, sonny. There's a roughneck out there wants you dead Like I told you, you're wanted, you're prey, someone's out for your hide . .. and mine.'