The doctor looked at Crowley in silence. Crowley nodded his thanksand rejoined his companions. Herrin and Bailey were still staring atthe implausible figure of Constable Page.

Herrin looked up as Crowley approached. ‘Jesus fucking Christ,sir, it’s like that film…’

‘The Exorcist. I know, Constable.’

‘But like all the way round, sir…’

‘I know, Detective, now give it a rest. We’re leaving.’

The three ducked under the twists of tape which sealed the flat,and made their way down through the bowels of the building. Outside,a large patch of grass was still surrounded with the same tape thatclosed off the flat above. Vicious droplets of glass still litteredthe earth.

‘It doesn’t seem possible, sir,’ said Bailey, as they approachedthe car.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I saw Garamond when he came in. Quite a big bloke but noSchwarzenegger. And Jesus, he didn’t look capable of…’ Bailey spokequickly, still deeply shocked.

Crowley nodded as he swung the car round. ‘I know you’re neversupposed to let yourself make judgements about who’s "the type" andwho’s not, but I’ve got to admit, Garamond’s shocked me. I thought,"Fine, no problem. Argues with the dad, struggle, shoves him out thewindow, in shock, goes to bed." Bit odd that, I admit, but whenyou’re drunk and freaked out, you do odd things.’

‘But I certainly didn’t have him down for the little Houdini heturned out to be. And as for this…’

Herrin was nodding vehemently.

‘How did he do that? Door open, cell empty, no one sees him, noone hears a thing.’

‘But all this,’ continued Crowley, ‘this is a real… surprise.’He gobbed the word out with disgust. He spoke slowly, his quiet voicehalting momentarily between each word. ‘What I interviewed last nightwas a scared, confused, fucked-up little man. Whatever escaped fromthe station was some sort of master criminal, and whatever killedPage and Barker was… an animal.’

He thinned his eyes and gently thumped the steering-wheel. ‘Buteverything about this is weird. Why did none of the neighbours hearanything going on between him and the dad? His camping story checksout?’ Herrin nodded. ‘We can put him in Willesden at about ten, MrGaramond hit the ground at about ten-thirty, eleven. Someoneshould’ve heard it. How’s it going with the rest of the family?’

‘Series of blanks,’ said Bailey. ‘Mum’s long dead, you know, andshe was an orphan. His dad’s parents are dead, there’s no uncles, anaunt in America no one’s seen for years… I’m moving on to hismates. Some of them have already been calling in. We’ll go chase themup.’

Crowley grunted assent as they pulled in at the station.Colleagues slowed as he walked past, gazed at him unhappily, wantingto say something about Page and Barker. He pre-empted them by noddingsadly, then moved on. He had no desire to share his shock.

He returned to his desk, sipping the crap from the coffee machine.Crowley was losing his grasp on what was going on. It was disquietinghim. The previous evening, when he had discovered that Saul hadwalked out of his cell, he had been filthy angry, livid — but he hadmade the right noises, done the right things. There’d been some majorfuck-up obviously, and he would have serious words with a few people,just as the governor had had words with him. He had sent men outdelving into Willesden’s darkness; Saul could not have got far. As aprecaution, he had sent Barker to join Page in the boring task ofwatching over the crime scene, just in case Saul should be so stupidas to return home.

Which it seemed he had done. But not the Saul he had interviewed,he would not believe that. He accepted that he made mistakes, couldmisjudge people, but not like that, he could not believe it.Something had demented Saul, given him the strength of the unhinged,and changed him from the person Crowley had interviewed into thedevastating assassin who had brought such carnage to the smallflat.

Why had he not run? Crowley could not understand. He shoved hisfingers into his eyes, kneaded them till they ached. Saul hadreturned, he pictured it, disorientated and stumbling, to the flat;to atone, perhaps, to try to remember, perhaps; and when he openedthe door on the men in uniform he should have run, or fallen to thefloor crying, denied all knowledge, snivelled.

Instead he had reached out towards Constable Page, taken his headin his hands and torn it around in less than a second. Crowleywinced. His eyes were closed but that was no respite from the brutalimage.

Saul had quietly dosed the door behind him, had turned toConstable Barker who was surely gazing at him in momentary confusion,had punched him back five feet, following the suddenly limp body, andbeaten his face systematically into a broken, bloody, shatteredthing.

Constable Page was a stupid stocky man, quite new to the force. Hewas talkative, forever telling idiot jokes. They were often racist,although his girlfriend, Crowley knew, was of mixed race. Barker wasa perpetual footsoldier, had been a constable for too long, but wouldnot get the message and change his career. Crowley had not knowneither of the men well.

There was an unpleasant sombreness about the station: not so muchshock as a tentative uncertainty about how to react. People wereunused to death.

Crowley put his head in his hands. He did not know where Saul was,he did not know what to do.

Greasy-looking clouds slid above the alley in which King Rat andSaul sat digesting. Everything seemed dirty to Saul. His clothes andface and hair were smeared with a day and a half’s muck, and now dirtwas inside him. As he drew sustenance from it, it coloured what hecould see, but he looked around at his newly tarnished world as if itwere a cynosure. It held no horror for him.

Purity is a negative state and contrary to nature, Saul had onceread. That made sense to him now. He could see the world clearly inall its natural and supernatural impurity, for the first time in hislife.

He was conscious of his own smell: the old acridity of alcoholsplashed on these clothes long ago, the muck from the gutter of theroof, rotting food; but something new underneath it all. A taste ofanimal in his sweat, something of that scent which had entered hiscell with King Rat two nights ago. Maybe it was in his mind. Maybethere was nothing beyond the faint remnants of deodorant, but Saulbelieved he could smell the rat in him coming out.

King Rat leaned back against the rubbish sacks, staring at thesky.

‘It occurs,’ he said presently, ‘that thee and me should scarper.Full?’

Saul nodded. ‘You’ve got a story to tell me,’ he said.

‘I know it,’ said King Rat. ‘But I can’t exercise myself on thatparticular just yet. I’ve to teach you to be rat. Your eyes aren’teven open yet; you’re still such a mewling little furless thing.So…’ He got to his feet. ‘What say we retire? Grab a bit oftucker for the underground.’ He pushed handfuls of leftoverfruitcake into his pockets.

King Rat turned to face the wall behind the rubbish sacks. Hemoved to the right-angle of brick where the wall met one side of thenarrow alley, wedged himself within it in his impossible way, andbegan to scale the wall. He teetered at the top, twenty feet up, hisfeet daintily picking between rusting coils of barbed wire as thoughthey were flowers. He squatted between them and beckoned to Saul.

Saul approached the wall. He set his teeth and jutted out hislower jaw, confrontational. He pushed himself into the corner space,as hard as he could, feeling his flesh mould itself into the space.He reached up with his arms. Like a rat, he thought, squeeze and moveand pull like a rat. His fingers gripped the spaces between bricksand he hauled himself up with a prodigious strength. His faceballooned with effort, his feet scrabbled, but he was progressing upthe wall in his own undignified fashion. He let out a growl, andheard an admonitory hissing from above him. He pushed his right armup again, the dank smell of rat-sweat more evident than ever beneathhis arms. His legs failed him, he quivered and fell, was caught andpulled into the thicket of crumbling wire.