Nero paced his cage, his large pads slapping down on the hard floor. A serious grunt emanated from his throat with each tread. He was impatient. And hungry.
He moved up and down the length of the cage, his head and eyes always fixed on the point where the staircase opened out on to the roof terrace. There was a click, followed by a scraping noise as a metal door was drawn backwards. Then there was the sound of footsteps on the metal stairs.
Nero stopped moving, his shining black eyes concentrating on the opening through the mesh of the cage.
Unusually, two men appeared instead of one.
Nero recognised the first one by his smell: the aftershave and the cigar smoke complemented by alcohol fumes. It was an aroma Nero loved — but only because there was the pleasure of food associated with this human being who was also his owner.
The first man up the stairs was carrying a coolbox.
Nero knew this contained his food for the day.
The first man walked confidently up to the cage whilst the second man hesitated in the background, hovering nervously. Nero picked up on this. The man smelled very much like the first one — smoke, aftershave and alcohol — but there was something else there which sent a tremor of excitement down the great beast’s spine.
Fear.
‘ Hey, Nero, look what I got for you. ’ The man held up the coolbox and rapped his knuckles on it.
A deep roar emanated from the beast’s throat, like thunder approaching.
‘ The best horsemeat money can buy,’ the man said. He walked up to the cage and placed the box on the floor next to a specially constructed sliding tray at ground level. He pulled the flap open and dragged out the metal tray.
Nero’s pace grew quicker, up and down the cage, impatience showing. He was hungry. He wanted food.
The man at the cage glanced over his shoulder at his colleague who had remained at the top of the steps, ready to bolt. He’d lit a cigarette. Shaking fingers placed it between his lips. Jesus, the lion scared the hell out of him. He spent as little time as possible on the roof.
‘ Hey, come over here, you soft bastard.’
‘ I’d rather not, if you don’t mind. Frightens the shit out of me.’
‘ We all have our fears, Loz. We’ve all got to come to terms with them.’
‘ I don’t mind coming to terms with normal things, but a fucking lion? No way.’
Nero snarled. The man at the cage looked at him and smiled. ‘It’s OK, pal. You’ll have some din-dins in a minute.’ He turned back to Loz. ‘C’mon,’ he coaxed, encouraging him to come across the divide with a gesture of his fingers. ‘You gotta do this. It’ll be good for your soul.’
The man called Loz, short for Lawrence, shook his head.
‘ I said c’mon,’ the first man said more firmly.
Loz’s mouth dried up. His eyes narrowed. What the hell was this about? he wondered. ‘No, look I-’
‘ Get your fucking arse over here,’ the first man said fiercely. Then his tone lightened. ‘I mean, who the hell’s going to look after this baby while I’m away? You, Loz — you — so you’ve got to get used to feeding him.’
‘ Just so long as I don’t have to take him for a walk.’
‘ That’s the spirit.’
Loz stomped on his cigarette, blew a lungful of smoke into the clear Atlantic night and dragged himself reluctantly across the roof to the cage. His eyes never left Nero; his imagination never moved away from being ripped to shreds by those paws which were as big as shovels and teeth which were as sharp as nails.
The first man was kneeling down by the coolbox, having prised off the lid. Two hands went in and eased out a dripping horse steak, the size of a dinner-plate.
‘ A Frog would give his right arm for this,’ the man joked. ‘Now, this is the tricky bit,’ he explained to Loz. ‘Making sure Nero don’t get the chance to tear your hand off.’
He dropped the meat into the sliding tray and pushed it under the cage to the waiting lion. Nero grabbed it immediately between his teeth, reared back and with snuffling grunts of pleasure, padded to the far corner of the cage and began to tear at it. He held it between his paws and ripped it with his teeth and licked it with his massive, rough tongue.
‘ What a brilliant animal,’ the man said. He loved the lion.
‘ Yeah,’ Loz answered uneasily. ‘Brill.’ Something was pricking at Loz’s mind — something the other man had said, about going away. It was the first time he had even mentioned it and Loz wondered why it should suddenly come up here, at two in the morning on the rooftop whilst feeding that bastard of a lion. Something did not fit right here, Loz’s instinct warned him.
‘ You give him the next piece, eh? When he’s finished that one.’
Loz shrugged. ‘Whatever you say, boss.’ His eyes bored into the back of the man’s head while he tried to figure out what his employer was up to. Loz couldn’t get a handle on it. Why had Billy Crane asked him up here tonight?
Crane spun round quickly and caught Loz looking at him.
‘ Problem, Loz?’
The younger guy shook his head.
Nero had devoured the first piece of horseflesh. He knew there was more to come. He rose to his feet, his belly only partially filled, and strolled back across to the two men. He was not as impatient now; the first steak had taken the edge off his craving.
‘ Everything go all right at the airport this morning?’ Crane asked conversationally.
‘ Yeah, no probs.’
‘ Good, good.’ Crane held up the palms of his hands and inspected them; they were still covered in blood from handling the meat. ‘So we should be fifty grand richer pretty soon, shouldn’t we?’
Loz’s senses tingled alarm bells. ‘Yeah,’ he said, brow furrowed. ‘Should be.’
‘ That’s good.’ Crane sniffed, then indicated the next piece of meat in the coolbox. ‘Grab that, Loz.’
Loz took a breath, steeled himself and delved into the box.
Behind the mesh of the cage, Nero regarded both humans expectantly, the short, dark, vertical stripes of the inner corners of his eyes virtually pointing at them. Loz could see the lower canines jutting out of the lower jaw like mini, sharpened tusks, but yellow, with off-brown bases, as thick as a grown man’s thumb. Nero smelled all lion too: bad breath which was overpowering, a strong mustiness emanating from him and, of course, the thick smell of urine. It was a combination which made Loz want to retch.
Swallowing hard, he wrapped his fingers around the slimy piece of meat which he carefully lifted out, trying to get as little blood as possible on his hands.
‘ You said you were going away, Bill. Where to?’
‘ Back home for a while. Got something to do.’
‘ Urgent?’
‘ Necessary, shall we say?’
Loz looked at the meat in his hand. That, too, stunk. Obviously not the freshest meat in the world. Not that a lion would care.
‘ What should I do now?’ There was an expression of distaste on his face.
Billy Crane groaned with annoyance. ‘Give it to me, you pathetic git!’ He snatched the meat from Loz’s hands and said, ‘Here I’ll show you.’
He made a show of weighing the meat in his hands, then without warning he slammed it into Loz’s face and wound it round like a custard pie, smearing blood all over Loz’s face. Before the other man could react in any way, Crane had thrown the meat down and gripped Loz’s throat crashing him hard up against Nero’s cage, rattling the mesh.
Nero was stunned by the flurry of movement. He roared.
The fingers of Crane’s right hand circled Loz’s throat and lower jaw, pinning him against the cage, squeezing, distorting Loz’s face like a cinematic special effect. Crane’s left forearm was crushing Loz’s throat, using his victim’s shoulder as a lever to apply pressure and make him gurgle.
Loz’s eyes were wide and terrified. The thought of Nero only inches away behind him made him twitch
