Then suddenly it heard a quick whistling, a jaunty marching tune,and it stopped running, filled with wonder and amazement. Thewhistling segued gently into the sounds of sex, and the slopping ofrich, fatty food falling to the ground, and the rat turned andmarched in the direction of the sound, eager to find all these goodthings.

Then the whistling stopped.

The rat was staring into a man’s eyes. Its body was held fast.Frantic, it bit down, drew blood, savaged the fingers which grippedit, but they did not relax.

The eyes gazed at it with a lunatic intensity. The rat began toscream in terror.

There was a brief and sudden motion.

The Piper slammed the rat’s head against the wooden floor againand again, until it had lost its definition, become just a flaccid,indistinct appendage.

He held the little corpse up to his face, pursed his lips.

He reached down for the small ghetto-blaster on the floor, andlowered the volume still further. Wind City could still be heard, butnow it was almost subliminal.

Fabian and Natasha turned simultaneously, looked at him inconfusion and surprise.

‘I know, I know,’ he said, mollifying. ‘You’ll have to listenreally hard. I have to turn it down a bit. We’re attractingattention. We don’t want to do that yet, right?’ He smiled. ‘Savethat for the club. Right?’

He moved the ghetto-blaster closer with his foot. Spent batterieslay all around it, moving uneasily with the current.

Natasha and Fabian subsided into their previous poses.

Fabian sank back and began to paint.

Natasha continued to play Wind City. They both strained their earsa little, and heard what they were looking for.

Warily, the Piper lifted a corner of the cloth. His pale eyesscanned the darkness around the boat.

No one was passing by on Albert Embankment; Pete saw by the lightsof the Houses of Parliament.

He reached out and dropped the rat’s body into the Thames.

It circled, one speck of dirty darkness among many in the water.The current pulled it slowly, tugging it beyond Westminster, carryingthe little cadaver way out to the east.

Jungle night.

It was in the air. The sharp-dressed youth who congregated on theElephant and Castle could taste it.

The clouds were low and moving very fast, ruddy with street lamplight, billowing up from behind the skyline. London looked like acity on fire.

Police cars swirled ephemeral through the streets, streaking pastthose other cars that prowled towards Lambeth, stereos pumping. Thestrains of Dancehall and Rap, blunted and languorous, and everywhereDrum and Bass, febrile and poised, savage and impenetrable.

The drivers leaned their arms out of open windows, nodded lazilyin time to the music. These cars were full, bursting with designerclothes and basslines. For the cruisers, the evening kicked in at thezebra crossings and red lights, when they could stop, engine idling,beats pounding, visible in all their finery. They drove from junctionto junction, searching for places to be still.

A hundred slogans boomed out of a hundred car windows, the samplesand shouted declarations of the classic tracks being played, ahundred preludes to the evening.

Mr Loverman, came the shouts, and Check yo’self. Gangsta.Jump.Fight the Power. There is a Darkside.

I could just kill a man.

Six million ways to die.

They only had eyes for each other that night. They drove andwalked the streets like conquistadors in Karl Kani, Calvin Klein andKangols. In wafts of cologne the homeboys and rudegirls, the possesand massives claimed the streets south of Waterloo, striding past theintimidated natives as though they were shades.

Touching fists and kissing their teeth, the massed ranks moved inon the venue. Irish boys and Caribbean girls, smooth Pakistani kids,gangstas in huge coats muttering into mobile phones, DJs with recordbags, precocious kids aping the studied nonchalance of the elders…

They made their way into the Jungle.

Here and there the police lurked in corners. Sometimes they werejudged worthy of a contemptuous glance, a sneer, before the lightschanged and the drivers moved on. The police watched them, whisperedto their radios in garbled code. The air teemed with their electronichisses, warnings and prophecies, unheard by the gathering, swamped byurban breakbeats.

The night was fraught, full of looks held too long.

In the dark streets the warehouse shone. Light spilled from itscrevices as if it were a church.

Lines stretched out before the entrance. The bouncers, vast men inbomber jackets, stood with arms folded like grotesque gargoyles.Feudal hierarchies asserted themselves: the serfs in line, clamouringat the gates, staring enviously at the DJs and the hangers-on, themovers and shakers of the Drum and Bass scene, who sauntered casuallypast them and murmured to the guards. For the noblest of them, evenchecking the guest list was unnecessary.

Roy Kray and DJ Boom, Nuttah and Deep Cover, familiar from ahundred CD covers and posters, were waved in without demur. Even thepreposterously proportioned bouncers showed their obeisance, as theirimpassivity became momentarily more studied. Droit de seigneur wasalive and kicking in the Elephant and Castle that night.

If any of the assembled had looked up they might have caught aglimpse of something lurching across the sky, seemingly out ofcontrol. A bundle of rags as big as a man, buffeted through the air.It was not at the mercy of the wind: no wind changed direction asviolently or as fast as the shapeless mass, no wind could carry suchbulk.

Loplop, the Bird Superior, arced and wheeled above the streets,staring down at the dirty map below him, staring up into the nightstained orange by diffuse light, falling, rising, his ears filledwith ringing.

He could not hear the city. He could not hear the predatorygrunting of the cars. He could not hear the thud thud thud emanatingfrom the warehouse. The intricate hairs and bones in his ears hadburst, and the canals were blocked with dry blood.

Loplop had only his eyes, and he searched as best he could,weaving silently between buildings, perching on weathervanes andspringing into the sky.

The air was slowly thickening with birds. The few that had beenawake as Loplop sped by had cried out, pledged their fealty, but hehad not heard them. Confused, they had risen from the eaves and thebranches of trees, had followed him, screaming out to him, frightenedby his wild flight and his ignoring of them. Huge ponderous crowscircled him. Loplop saw them and shouted wordlessly, clutching at theauthority he had lost.

The birds wove elegantly around each other, their numbers growing.Their eyes darted from side to side in confusion. In the midst oftheir slow wheeling, Loplop rose and sped and zigzagged and fell — awild card.

The birds could not obey their general.

Elsewhere in London, other armies were also massing.

The walls and corners of houses were emptying out. From crevicesand holes all over the city, the spiders streamed. They scuttled intheir millions, little smudges racing across dirty floors and throughgardens, descending on threads from building tops. They crawled overeach other, a sudden, nervous mass of blacks and browns.

Here and there their squadrons were seen. In children’s bedroomsand backstreets, the night was punctuated by sudden screams.

Many died. Crushed, eaten, lost. Ruined chitin and smeared bodiesmarked their passing.

Something sparked deep in the spiders tiny brains. A sensationthat was not the hunger or fear or nothingness that were previouslytheir lot. Trepidation? Excitement? Vindication?