‘The ratcatcher?’
‘That’s me.’
The man was lean and brown with a sharp face and two long sulphur-coloured teeth that protruded from the upper jaw, overlapping the lower lip, pressing it inward. The ears were thin and pointed and set far back on the head, near the nape of the neck. The eyes were almost black, but when they looked at you there was a flash of yellow somewhere inside them.
‘You’ve come very quick.’
‘Special orders from the Health Officer.’
‘And now you’re going to catch all the rats?’
‘Yep.’
The kind of dark furtive eyes he had were those of an animal that lives its life peering out cautiously and forever from a hole in the ground.
‘How are you going to catch ’em?’
‘Ah-h-h,’ the ratman said darkly. ‘That’s all accordin’ to where they is.’
‘Trap ’em, I suppose.’
‘Trap ’em!’ he cried, disgusted. ‘You won’t catch many rats that way! Rats isn’t rabbits, you know.’
He held his face up high, sniffing the air with a nose that twitched perceptibly from side to side.
‘No,’ he said, scornfully. ‘Trappin’s no way to catch a rat. Rats is clever, let me tell you that. If you want to catch ’em, you got to know ’em. You got to know rats on this job.’
I could see Claud staring at him with a certain fascination.
‘They’re more clever’n dogs, rats is.’
‘Get away.’
‘You know what they do? They watch you! All the time you’re goin’ round preparin’ to catch ’em, they’re sittin’ quietly in dark places, watchin’ you.’ The man crouched, stretching his stringy neck far forward.
‘So what do you do?’ Claud asked, fascinated.
‘Ah! That’s it, you see. That’s where you got to know rats.’
‘How d’you catch ’em?’
‘There’s ways,’ the ratman said, leering. ‘There’s various ways.’
He paused, nodding his repulsive head sagely up and down. ‘It’s all dependin’,’ he said, ‘on where they is. This ain’t a sewer job, is it?’
‘No, it’s not a sewer job.’
‘Tricky things, sewer jobs. Yes,’ he said, delicately sniffing the air to the left of him with his mobile nose-end, ‘sewer jobs is very tricky things.’
‘Not especially, I shouldn’t think.’
‘Oh-ho. You shouldn’t, shouldn’t you! Well, I’d like to see you do a sewer job! Just exactly how would you set about it, I’d like to know?’
‘Nothing to it. I’d just poison ’em, that’s all.’
‘And where exactly would you put the poison, might I ask?’
‘Down the sewer. Where the hell you think I put it!’