Roofworld

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘I couldn’t see anyone over there.’ Rose had returned from the far side of the bandstand, where she had been searching for Simon, their contact.

  ‘I guess he could turn up at any time between eight and nine.’

  ‘If he appears at all.’

  Just then, the clicking of boots on concrete made them both look up across the park toward the river. Silhouetted against the lamps lighting the embankment was a gangling figure festooned in rags and chains.

  ‘My God, it’s Marley’s ghost!’ whispered Rose, drawing in closer to Robert as he approached. The figure came to a stop in front of them. He was tall and thin, with an eggshell-pale face that had seen about seventeen summers, apparently from indoors. His hair alternated with shaved and tattooed patches, thrusting out in dirty blue spikes. His eyebrows, if he had ever had any, had been shaved off. A circular anarchy symbol was tattooed on his throat. The ragged remains of an old black denim jacket clung precariously to his shoulders.

  ‘Hello. I’m Simon. I was asked to look out for you.’ Simon held out his hand. His speech was so refined that he could have freelanced as a speaking clock. Robert and Rose stared in amazement. ‘You’re surprised by the accent.’ Simon looked apologetic. ‘People always find that funny. Goes against the preconceptions, doesn’t it? Upsets the balance. Funny thing, fixed beliefs. Everyone has them. Like, you know, always imagining that lesbians only drink pints, or that stockbrokers give a fuck about poor people. Which of course they don’t. But then these days who does. Anyway.’

  Robert and Rose looked at each other, then back at Simon.

  ‘Can’t be helped. I had a good education, I just rejected it.’ He seemed affable, but in a dangerous way, speaking too fast, offering friendship too quickly.

  ‘It must be a bit of a stigma,’ ventured Rose, ‘what with you being a punk and all.’

  ‘Who said I’m a punk? Another fixed belief, see? It’s bad enough being called Simon without sounding like a public school fuck-up.’

  ‘Perhaps you should use your middle name.’

  ‘Nigel. Don’t really think so.’

  As Simon and Rose talked, Robert looked around at the damp, malignant trees in annoyance. He was beginning to wonder what on earth he was doing hanging around in this miserable little park holding a meeting with a potential psychopath.

  ‘He’s Robert and I’m Rose.’ She held out her hand and Simon shook it.

  ‘Rose. That’s a very middle class name.’ There was mistrust in his voice.

  ‘Yeah, but I had really common parents. They always put the milk bottle on the table.’

  ‘My parents never put the milk bottle on the table. I don’t think they know what a milk bottle looks like. Only ever see milk in a jug. They don’t give a fuck about anything but collecting shares. That’s what people on the ground do now, isn’t it, spend their time stockpiling share certificates, designer fucking Filofaxes and electronic gadgets, as if they could get it into the boat with them when the time comes to cross the Styx.’

  An uncomfortable silence descended over the trio as Robert and Rose tried to decide who should speak. Behind them, a tramp belched and threw a bottle at a wall. Finally, Simon turned to them. ‘I’ve been standing here for five minutes now and you haven’t even tried to convince me to take you up.’

  ‘Well, it’s difficult for us. We don’t know what’s involved.’ Rose looked cautiously at Robert, who remained silent.

  ‘Well, don’t worry. I was going to anyway. I’ve got instructions from above.’ He pointed mysteriously at the sky. ‘Normally, you wouldn’t be allowed to meet with us just because you need to locate someone. But things aren’t normal any more. Given the present situation, they’d probably even waive initiation for you.’

  ‘Initiation?’

  ‘It’s necessary for you to pass some kind of test as a gesture of good faith. Give me a cigarette, would you?’

  Rose handed him one. In the flare of her match, Simon’s face seemed almost translucent.

  ‘Would we be required to do anything that breaks the law?’ asked Rose.

  ‘Maybe.’ Simon slowly blew smoke into the air. ‘I’ve been told to warn you that it can be an upsetting experience, which is why you’ll be asked to take an oath of silence after. The one thing you won’t be able to do is go back once you’ve started.’

  Rose turned to Robert, whose continuing non-verbal communication was becoming noticeable. His confidence of the previous evening seemed to have dissipated.

  ‘You still want to do this, Robert? You don’t seem to be too sure.’

  Simon looked over at Robert suspiciously. ‘If he’s got any doubts, he shouldn’t have come here in the first place, should he?’

  ‘Hey, listen, I’d just like to know what we’re getting into,’ said Robert. ‘Is going along with you likely to help us find our friend?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that.’

  ‘Then maybe we can talk to someone who does.’ Robert kicked irritably at the asphalt path.

  ‘That’s exactly what you’re going to do. Have some patience. Christ, no wonder ground people are so fucked up if they’re all like you.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that,’ said Robert angrily.

  ‘Listen, it’s getting cold,’ said Rose. ‘Shouldn’t we be thinking about leaving? I mean, if you’re going to take us with you.’

  Simon shrugged, then turned and headed off through the park. As Rose ran and caught him up, Robert trailed further behind.

  ‘Where to now?’ he called out.

  Simon turned with a sickly grin on his skull-like face and slowly pointed one bony finger to the sky. ‘Up in the air,’ he said. ‘But first we’ll go north, towards Euston. You have to meet some people.’ His smile faded. His eyes, wide and browless, became disturbingly difficult for Robert to look into.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re expecting to happen,’ he said in a theatrical whisper, ‘but whether you like it or not you are going to be taken into a different world. You might find it exciting. You might get killed. I don’t know.’

  Simon whirled about, his head tilting back, his eyes to the sky. He spun on the heel of his boot, a flailing scarecrow. ‘There’s another side to this city, see, a side that people like you know nothing about.’ He reached out and placed a spidery arm around Rose’s shoulders. ‘And soon it may be gone forever. Along with you and me and just about everybody else worth saving.’

  With his puzzled recruits at either side, Simon led the way north.

  Chapter 18

  Heights

  From the rising glass elevator, the busy London streets slowly revealed themselves in perspective. To the right stood the glass-faceted column of the British Telecom Tower, its summit adorned with radar dishes like clusters of mushrooms. Beyond it, the rows of busy restaurants centred around the lower part of Charlotte Street were filled with Christmas partygoers.

  Rose moved to the front of the glass elevator. Just in front of them, traffic rushed and divided at the brightly lit head of Tottenham Court Road. To the left lay the gloomy Georgian terraces of Bloomsbury and directly below they could see the filthy, windswept no man’s land that was Euston. The three of them stood shoulder to shoulder facing out in the tiny lift as it rose in its glass shaft. They had entered the mirrored office block facing Euston Tower simply by unlocking one of the small glass side doors and passing by the deserted reception desk.

  ‘Isn’t it a bit risky, just walking into a private building like this?’ asked Rose. Before she left home that evening, she had slipped Charlotte’s notebook into a small shoulderbag, mindful of what Robert had said about it being their ‘bargaining power’. ‘I mean, it’s not that late. There could still be people working in their offices.’

  ‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ answered Simon. ‘Most of the nightwatchmen are ours. There’s one guy who’s a pain in the ass, but he misses this section of the building during the early part of the evening because he’s watching TV on the thi
rd floor. We keep files on all the main gates.’

  ‘Gates?’

  ‘Buildings which provide access to the Roofworld. We’re here.’ The elevator slowed and came to a stop. Ahead was a short flight of stairs leading up to the roof exit. Simon pushed on the steel bar across the door and swung it open. The top of the building was smooth, clean and flat. The breezes which crossed it were hardly fresh, carrying traffic fumes from the crossroads below, but they were strong enough to have dried away all signs of the day’s earlier rainfall.

  Two young men, both dressed in grey sweatshirts and black jeans, stood waiting for them. One had cropped blonde hair which swept out from beneath a black woollen cap in a rockabilly quiff. Simon informed them that his name was Jay. The other was shorter, swarthy and serious, vaguely Oriental-looking. He was called Lee and seemed to be the more high-ranking of the two. On either side of them, tall metal hoists stood at the edges of the roof. Jay motioned that Robert and Rose should sit at the foot of one of these. He remained standing as the small group gathered around.

  ‘What have you told them?’ he asked Simon.

  ‘Not my job to tell them anything,’ said the punk who hated to be called a punk, as he folded his long legs beneath him and squatted down on the edge of the roof.

  ‘Better to show them than tell them, I would have thought,’ he muttered. ‘Not that anyone listens to me.’ Jay ignored him, turning back to the newcomers.

  ‘You’re up here tonight on the condition that certain codes of honour and secrecy are respected,’ he began. It was obviously not the first time that he had delivered this speech. ‘What is happening up here is not a game. It’s very real and it’s now become very dangerous. I don’t know what you’ve heard about us from the outside, but it’s more than likely wrong. The only ones with enough knowledge to discuss our activities with strangers are people we turned away in the first place.’

  Robert turned and looked at Rose. His backside was freezing on the concrete roof. He felt more than a little silly, sitting here being lectured to by some screwed-up kid. Rose seemed to be taking it all in though, her attention focused solely on the boy in front of her.

  ‘Let me tell you something about us. For years this has been a closed world.’

  ‘Won’t be for much longer,’ said Simon under his breath.

  Jay leaned back and rested his head against one of the hoist’s metal columns. Behind him, six floors below, came the distant sound of cars revving and braking.

  ‘This is a working alternative to your ground system. We have our own laws and our own justice, a network which extends across the city in every direction…except downwards. Your paths and ours need never have crossed until now.’

  He pointed out over the roof in the direction of Tottenham Court Road, where miniature figures paused before brilliant store windows and milled from the pubs to the cafes like insects caught in endless courting rituals. ‘It’s important that you understand our priorities are different to the ones they drum into you at ground level. We live by the rules we have created—no one else’s.’

  Cold and unconvinced, Robert felt as if he was about to be duped into buying a lifestyle-improving doctrine by members of an oblique arm of the Krishna-ites. He raised his hand to ask a question. ‘How many of you are there up here?’

  ‘These days we have people from all walks of life, university graduates, punks, Rastafarians….’

  ‘Yes, but how many?’

  Jay sighed and leaned back against the metal post again. He looked up into the sky.

  ‘You’re going to have to tell them, Jay,’ said Simon.

  ‘There were hundreds of us. Back in the twenties there were very nearly a thousand….’

  ‘The twenties?’

  ‘A lot of people below the poverty line were willing to give up what little they had and start over.’

  ‘But you can’t keep something like this secret for long,’ protested Robert. ‘Didn’t anyone ask questions?’

  ‘You got any idea how many people go missing in this country every year?’ asked Jay. ‘They didn’t keep tabs on you back then. There were no computers to check your address or the name of your bank. In those days the Roofworld wasn’t just a way out, it was a sanctuary for anyone who needed to drop out of sight.’

  ‘You still haven’t told me how many of you there are now.’

  Another hesitation followed. Robert shot a puzzled glance at Rose, who seemed not to notice. Jay seemed reluctant to reveal any further information. Perhaps he had already said more than he had intended to say. Robert decided that it would not be advisable for him to reveal what he and Rose already knew of the Roofworld themselves, in case it proved that they too had transgressed some secret law, like Sarah Endsleigh may have done.

  ‘I guess there are about thirty of us left. Maybe fewer. And by dawn on Sunday most of us will be gone.’

  ‘How? Why?’

  ‘I’ve said enough. You may be told more after your initiation. It’s up to Zalian.’

  ‘But what do you do up here?’ asked Rose. ‘How do you travel around?’

  ‘One thing at a time. Lee will have to teach you to cross the rooftops. It’s easy once you know how, thanks to the architecture of this city. I hope you don’t have trouble with heights.’

  ‘Me, I’d have made a great cat burglar,’ said Rose, with an uneasy laugh. She looked across at Robert and something began to bother her. He appeared uncomfortable, his face slick with sweat. Rose frowned. He couldn’t be scared, could he? These guys were strange, but they hardly seemed to be dangerous.

  ‘OK, let’s get the travelling sorted out now. Then you can do your initiation. After that, we’ll take you to one of the stations and somebody will explain what we can do to help each other. Lee, take over.’

  Jay sat down next to Simon as his partner took over. Lee rose and gave a broad white smile to Rose.

  ‘Sometimes they call me Mr Fix, ’cause I come up with a lot of the equipment which keeps us movin’ around up here. It’s basically the same as they used to use back in the old days, ’cept that a lot of the old stuff was really dangerous. The only way to find out if a cable would take your weight back then was to hang on it. I’ve updated as much as I can using modern lightweight materials, throwing in a few safety devices along the way. First off, everyone gets to wear one of these. Ya never take it off unless ya have to, like if you’re having a bath or somethin’.’

  He pulled up his sweatshirt and pointed at his waist. Around it was a thin black leather belt, fitted along its length with small metal hoops. Above and below it, cut into the leather, ran a fine nylon cable.

  ‘Stan’ up a second, honey.’ Lee unclipped his belt and passed it around Rose’s waist, buckling it at the front. ‘After initiation, you’ll be issued with one of your own. Now come with me.’

  They followed Lee to the far corner of the roof. The edge of the next building, a grimy Victorian office block which faced out onto the Euston Road, lay about fifteen feet away. Rose looked down and saw a narrow alley separating the two blocks.

  ‘Some gaps are wide enough to jump. This one obviously is not. Look across to the next wall and you’ll see a small steel bar. You have to look real hard.’

  Rose leaned forward and squinted through the gloom at the opposite wall, where a shiny metal bar about three inches long, rather like a miniature towel-rail, stood out from the brickwork.

  ‘The more you look, the more you’ll see of our handiwork across the city,’ said Jay, picking up a slim black nylon bag and opening it. He produced a device which looked like a modified hand-gun with an extra-wide barrel and aimed it at the bar.

  ‘It works on air pressure,’ he said, squeezing the trigger. ‘The ones they used to have were fired by a mixture of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulphur. Apparently used to blow your tits off if you got the ratio wrong.’ There was a pop and something shot out of the nozzle, clattering against the wall opposite.

  ‘Nice shot,’ said Rose.


  ‘Comes with practice, like everything else.’

  Locked firmly over the bar was a small steel ring, attached to which was an almost transparently thin nylon cord. The other end of the cord extended back into the barrel of the gun. Lee detached this end and clipped it to a second metal ring.

  ‘The way it works is simple. The bar you see on that wall over there has a spring-hinge in the middle. The ring that’s fired from this gun is top-heavy, so that the weighted side always hits the bar, kicks open the hinge and locks in place.’

  ‘Don’t you have to be an incredible shot to hit a bar that small?’

  ‘You probably would if the bars weren’t magnetic,’ Lee agreed. ‘Normally it takes a while to teach this stuff, but we’re going to have to crash you through the basics tonight.’ He reached over the edge of the building and clipped his end of the cord to a matching bar set about a foot down the wall. He then tightened the line with a tiny steel ratchet, the slack vanishing inside the steel ring until the line was taut.

  ‘There are all kinds of ways to do this. One is to hook the line onto the opposite wall and connect the other end to a reeler.’ He held up a shiny steel disc about five inches in diameter and just over an inch thick. ‘It fixes to your belt. You drop to the other wall, landing with your feet against it, and the disc reels in the line and pulls you up. It’s really just for short distances and you can only use it when there aren’t many people about, ’cause it’s kind of noisy.’

  ‘Not to mention ostentatious,’ said Simon.

  ‘I can imagine,’ said Rose. ‘A bit like Errol Flynn.’

  ‘A lot of buildings are hard to cross even when they’re terraced, because you’ll suddenly come to one with an extra floor, or a steeply sloping roof. That’s when the disc comes in useful. In some areas nearly all of the buildings have been fitted with these special bars. The older ones have a tendency to rust up, which stops their hinges from working. We try to replace them whenever we can, but there’s not many of us left who still know how to. Other areas have specific “runs”, fast travel routes mapped out through the town. These runs have permanent lines strung up and pass through a number of junction points called “stations”. There’s at least one station in every part of the city.’