‘And if,’ said Saul slowly, ‘you can defeat the Piper, you think the rats will come back to you.’
King Rat was silent.
‘He roams around the world,’ said Loplop flatly. ‘He has not been here for a hundred years, since he cast me into the birdcage. I knew he had returned when I called all my birds to me a night not long ago, and they did not come. There is only one thing can make them deaf to my command: the damnable pipe.’
‘Sometimes the spiders rush away from me like them do another’s bidding. The Badman back in town, fe true, and him want the rattymon bad this time.’
‘None’s ever escaped, you see, sonny, except me,’ said King Rat. ‘He let Loplop and Anansi go, after shaming them, letting them clock who’s the bossman, he reckons. But me, he wanted my hide. I’m the one that got away. And for seven hundred years he’s been trying to make good his mistake. And when he found I had a nephew, he came looking for you. He’s on the skedge for you now. Anything to square accounts.’
Anansi and Loplop looked at each other, looked down at Saul.
‘What is he?’ breathed Saul.
‘Him greed,’ said Anansi.
‘Covetousness,’ said Loplop.
‘He exists to own,’ said King Rat. ‘He has to suck things in to him, always, which is why he’s so narked at me for having pulled a disappearing trick. He’s the spirit of narcissism. He’s to prove his worth by guzzling all and sundry in.’
‘Him can charm anything,’ said Anansi.
‘He’s congealed hunger,’ said Loplop. ‘He’s insatiable.’
‘He can choose, see?’ said King Rat. ‘Will I call the rats? The birds? The spiders? Dogs? Cats? Fish? Reynards? Minks? Kinder? He can ring anyone’s bell, charm anything he fancies. Just choose and he plays the right tune. Owt he chooses, Saul, except nor one thing.’
‘He can’t charm you, Saul.’
‘You’re rat and human, more and less than each. Call the rats and the person in you is deaf to it. Call to the man and the rat’ll twitch its tail and run. He can’t charm you, Saul. You’re double trouble. You’re my deuce, Saul, my trump card. An ace in the hole. You’re his worst nightmare. He can’t play two tunes at once, Saul. He can’t charm you.’
‘No, you he just wants to kill.’
No one spoke. Three pairs of unclear eyes transfixed Saul.
‘But no need to panic, sonny. Things are going to change around here,’ King Rat suddenly spat. ‘See, my mates and me are pissed off. We’ve had enough. Loplop owes the Piper for his brain-box that was Tea Leafed off him. Anansi here got tortured, still feels it sore in all his pegs — and in front of his own people. And me… I owe the fucker because he stole my nation and I want it back.’
‘Revenge,’ said Loplop.
‘Revenge,’ said Anansi.
‘Revenge is right,’ said King Rat. ‘Piper-man fucker better steel himself for some animal magic.’
‘The three of you…’ said Saul. ‘Is that how many there are? To take him.’
‘There are others,’ said Loplop, ‘but not here, not to do the job. Tibault, King of the Cats, he’s trapped in a nightmare, a story told by a man called Yoll. Kataris, Queen Bitch, who runs with the dogs, she’s disappeared, no one knows where.’
‘Mr Bub, Lord of the Flies, him a shifty murderer and me can’t work with him,’ said Anansi.
‘There are others but we’re the ones, the hard core, the sufferers, who’ve scores to settle,’ said King Rat. ‘We’re bringing the war back to him. And you can help us, sonny.’
Chapter Thirteen
What woke Kay was the drumbeat of blood in his head. Each stroke that landed on the back of his skull sent vibrations of pain through the bone.
His eyes cracked a seal of rheum. He opened them and saw nothing but black. He blinked, tried to focus on the vague geometry he could glimpse in the shadows. He felt that something stretched away in front of him.
Kay was freezing. He groaned and raised his head, a motion accompanied by a crescendo of aches, rolled his neck and tried to move. His arms hurt and he realized they were stretched out above him, held fast, and stripped of clothing. He opened his eyes more and saw coils of thick dirty rope around his wrists, disappearing into the gloom above him. He was suspended, his weight dragging him hard, pulling the skin of his armpits taut.
He tried to twist his body, to investigate his position, but he was suddenly constrained, his feet refusing to obey. He shook his groggy head and looked down. He saw that he was naked, his cock shrivelled and tiny in the cold. He saw the same rope around his ankles, spreading his legs. He was caught tight in a petrified star-jump, he was an X hovering in the dark, the pain in his wrists and ankles and arms beginning to register. Gusts of wind pulled at him, raised goosebumps.
Kay winced, blinked hard, tried to work out where he was, lowered his eyes again to his feet. As the cold air began to cut through the muck of pain in his head he became aware of the dim diffuse light around him. Shapes clarified in the shadow below his dangling toes: sharp lines, concrete, bolts, wood. Railway tracks.
Kay’s head wobbled up. He tried to throw it behind him, to see over his shoulder.
He gave a yell of shock which bounced back and forward in its enclosed environs.
Behind him, illuminated by half-hearted little bulbs dribbling beige light, stretched an underground platform covered in dust and small pieces of rubbish. The darkness before him stopped sharp above Kay’s head, where the bricks of the tunnel began. Those bricks arced down on both sides of him. To his right was a wall, to his left the platform edge. The ropes which bound him stretched out to that arch, wound around huge nails driven roughly into the old brickwork.
He hung cruciform at the entrance to the tunnel, from where the trains emerged.
Kay’s scream echoed around and around him.
He shook ineffectually, tried to wriggle from his bonds. His fear was complete. He was utterly vulnerable, suspended nude in the path of the locomotives.
He screamed and screamed, but no one came.
He twisted his head around as far as he could. Kay’s eyes frantically skipped from surface to surface, searching for some clue to tell him where he was. The trimmings of the station were black; the line above the poster spaces — all empty — was black. This was the Northern Line. At the edge of his limited field of vision he saw the curved edge of an underground sign, the tell-tale red circle bisected by a blue line containing the name of the station. He pulled his head over, ignoring the pain in his neck and skull, trying to push his shoulder out of the way with his chin, desperate to see where he was. As he vibrated to and fro the sign moved in and out of his view. He caught glimpses of the two words it contained, one above the other.
gton ent… ington scent… rnington rescent…
Mornington Crescent. The ghost station, the strange zone between Euston and Camden Town on the decrepit Northern Line: the odd, poky little tube stop which had been closed for repairs sometime in the late Eighties and had never opened again. Trains would slow down as they passed through, so as not to create a vacuum in the empty space, and passengers would glimpse the platform. Sometimes posters would apologize and promise a swift resumption of service, and sometimes obscure pieces of equipment to cure ailing underground stations lay scattered on the abandoned concrete. Often there was nothing, just the signs proclaiming the name of the station in the faint light. It lived a half-life, never being finally laid to rest, haunted by the unlikely promise that it would one day open for business again.
Behind him Kay heard footsteps.
‘Who’s there?’ he yelled. ‘Who’s that? Help me!’
Whoever it was had been standing on the platform, out of his sight when he had tried to turn round. Kay’s head was twisted as violently over his left shoulder as he could manage. The steps approached him. A tall figure strolled into view, reading something.