Chapter Fifteen
For a long time Pete had been asking Natasha to take him to a Jungle club. She found his pesterings irritating, and asked why he could not just go by himself, but he made noises about being a newcomer, being intimidated (which was, in all fairness, entirely reasonable given the atmosphere at many clubs). His hectoring stayed just on the right side of whining.
He made one or two good excuses. He did not know where to go, and if he were to follow Time Out’s appalling recommendations, he would end up a lonely figure at a hardcore Techno evening or some such fate. Natasha, by contrast, knew the scene, and could walk into any of the choicest evenings in London without paying. Just cashing in favours, calling in accounts set up in the early days of the music, by knowing the names and the faces, talking the talk.
Something was rumbling in the Elephant and Castle. The AWOL posse were getting together with Style FM in a warehouse near the railway line.
Everyone was going to be there, she started to hear. A DJ she knew called Three Fingers phoned her and asked her to come along, bring a tune or two; he’d play them. She could spin a few if she wanted.
She wasn’t going to take him up on that, but maybe just turning up wasn’t such a bad idea. It was a month since she’d last been out on a serious night, and Pete’s clamouring made for a decent excuse to move. Three Fingers put her ‘plus whoever’ on his guest list.
Fabian immediately said he would come. He seemed pathetically grateful for the idea. Kay remained incommunicado and, for the first time since he had disappeared a week or more previously, Natasha and Fabian felt the beginnings of trepidation. But for the moment that was forgotten as they made preparations for the foray into South London.
Pete was ecstatic.
‘Yes yes yes! Fantastic! I’ve been waiting for this forages!’
Natasha’s spirit sank as she saw herself being shoehorned into the role of Junglist Nanny.
‘Yeah, well, I don’t want to disappoint you or anything, Pete, but so long as you know I’m not looking after you there or anything. Alright? We get there, I listen, you dance, you leave when you want, I’m leaving when I want. I’m not there to show you around, d’you know what I’m saying?’
He looked at her strangely.
‘Of course.’ His brow furrowed. ‘You’ve got some odd ideas about me, Natasha. I don’t want to cadge off you all evening, and I’m not going to… to leach any of your cool, OK?’
Natasha shook her head, irritated and embarrassed. She was concerned that having a pencil-necked, white bread geek padding after her was going to do her credentials as an up-and-coming Drum and Bass figure no good at all. She had only been vaguely conscious of the thought, and having it pointed out with frank good humour made her defensive and snappy.
Pete was grinning at her.
‘Natasha, I’m going because I’ve found a new kind of music I never knew existed, and it’s one which — for all I don’t look the part — I think I can use, and I think I can probably make. And I presume so do you, because you haven’t stopped recording me yet.’
‘So don’t worry about me making you look less than funky in front of your mates. I’m just going to hear the music and see the scene.’
After the last bout of arguing, Anansi had disappeared. Loplop had remained in the area for another day or two, but had ultimately followed the spider into obscurity.
King Rat had slumped into a foul mood.
Saul hauled himself into the sewers, careful not to spill the bag of food he carried. He picked his way through the tunnels. It was raining in the streets above, a steady dribble of filthy, acid-saturated water which raced into the tunnels, swirled around Saul’s legs, tried to pull him down, a stream nearly two feet high, fast-moving and dilute, the usual warm compost smell mostly dissipated.
King Rat had done nothing about finding food, and Saul, impatient with his self-pity, had left the throne room and gone scavenging. King Rat’s leash on him was loosening. The neurotic hold he had kept for so long was almost gone. As his mood grew worse, his determination to keep Saul in his sights weakened.
Saul knew what this meant. His worth for King Rat was not measured by blood. He had not been rescued because he was a nephew, but because he was useful; because his peculiar birthright meant he was a threat to the power of the Piper. As the campaign against the Piper dissolved in petty fights and squabbles, cowardice and fear, Saul’s existence meant less and less to King Rat. Without a plan of attack, how could he deploy his chosen weapon?
As Saul picked his way through the saturated tunnels he heard a sound. In a crevice in the concrete stood a waterlogged rat, her babies blind and squealing in the darkness behind her.
She stood uncertainly on the grey lip, overlooking the rush of water. She was only six inches or so above the rising stream, and the comfortable hollow in which she lived was on the verge of becoming a water sealed tomb. She looked up across the tunnel. On the far side from where she stood was another hole, an accidental passageway slanting up away from the depths.
The rat raised herself on her hind legs when she smelt Saul, and she let forth a peculiar cry.
She bobbed up and down in the darkness, avoiding looking him in the face, yet clearly aware of his presence. Again the she-rat made a sound, a lengthy screech, purged of the sneer which usually coloured rats’ voices.
He stopped just before her and hoisted his plastic bag over his shoulder.
The rat was pleading with him.
She was begging him for help.
The tone of the squeal was beseeching, and Saul was reminded of the profusion of rats who had followed him a fortnight previously, rats which had seemed animated by hunger and desperation, and which had been eager to show him respect.
Not here, was the sentiment pouring out of the bedraggled rat as she cringed below him. Not here, not here!
Saul reached out to her and she hopped onto his hand. A cacophony of infantile rat squeaks poured out of the holes in the concrete, and Saul plunged his hand further into the depths of the rotting stone. Little bodies were pushed onto his hand, where they lay squirming. He closed his fingers gently into a protective cage and drew out his hand, on which the little family lay shivering as the water level rose.
He crossed the tunnel and placed them on the ledge where the mother could pull the babies out of danger. She backed away from him bobbing her head, the pitch of her sounds changed, her fear gone.
Boss, she said to him, Boss, before turning and pulling her family out of sight into the darkness.
Saul leaned against the soaking wall.
He knew what was happening. He knew what the rats wanted. He did not think King Rat would like it.
By the time he arrived at the entrance to the throne room, the water was moving faster and the level kept on rising. He fumbled under the surface for the brick plug hiding the chute, pulled it open with a sudden explosive burp of air, and slipped through the cascade of water into the dark room below, pulling the door closed behind him.
He landed in the pool, splashed briefly onto his arse, before standing and walking onto the dry bricks. Behind him water dribbled into the room and down the wall from the imperfectly fitting brick entrance, but the chamber was so large and the hidden sluices so efficient that the moat around the room’s central island of raised brickwork became only a little fatter. It would take days of ceaseless rain truly to threaten the air in the throne-room.
King Rat sat brooding on his grandiose brick seat.
Saul glared at him. He delved into the plastic bags.
‘Here,’ he said, and threw a paper package across the room. King Rat caught it in one hand, without looking up. ‘Bit of falafel,’ said Saul, ‘bit of cake, bit of bread, bit of fruit. Fit for a king,’ he added provocatively, but King Rat ignored him.