Real Tigers / C00
Chapter 0
Summary
Before dawn on a foggy weekday morning, Paul Lowell waits on a platform above the arch on London Wall, dressed as Spider-Man. He has come to unfurl a hand-painted banner reading a fair deal for fathers, hoping the build-up of traffic and the news cameras will carry his message; his suit is too small and his protest is as much about being heard as about changing anything. A second figure, Batman, climbs onto the platform, a stranger recruited anonymously through a message board, and Lowell, thrilled, offers his hand. Batman punches him instead, stamps at him as he rolls away, then hauls him to the platform’s edge and lets him fall to the road. The banner unwinds on the tarmac and soaks up rain and blood, becoming exactly the newsworthy image the pair had intended, though Lowell does not see the broadcasts that follow. Batman is gone before anyone arrives. The chapter opens the novel with an attack staged as street theatre, framed by the narrator’s observation that corruption begins with men in suits. The prologue never says whether he lives; C09 establishes that he did.
Beats
- C00S01 · Paul Lowell — Paul Lowell, dressed as Spider-Man, waited before dawn on a platform above the arch on London Wall to unfurl a protest banner demanding a fair deal for fathers. A stranger in a Batman costume, recruited anonymously through a message board, climbed up to join him and, ignoring his handshake, punched him and dragged him to the edge. Batman dropped him to the road, where the unwound banner lay soaking in the rain, and left before anyone came.
People
- Paul Lowell — campaigner in a Spider-Man costume, dropped from the platform above London Wall; survives the fall (C09)
Lines worth keeping
“Like most forms of corruption, it began with men in suits.” — Narrator, opening line of the novel
“Ignoring Spider-Man’s outstretched hand, Batman punched him in the face.” — Narrator, the attack begins
“For pity’s sake” — Paul Lowell, dangling over the edge
“As for Batman, he was long gone.” — Narrator, after the fall
Threads
- Plants: The meeting was arranged anonymously through a message board, so the man in the Batman costume was chosen by someone Lowell never met.; The narrator frames the attack as a form of corruption that ‘began with men in suits’, pointing beyond the costumed attack.
- Continuity: Paul Lowell is dropped from the platform above the arch on London Wall before dawn; C09 establishes he survived (’the guy hadn’t actually died’), and that the attack was in the winter, months before the heatwave.; His banner reads a fair deal for fathers and ends up on the road as a strip of carpet.; The attacker leaves the scene and is not identified.; C09 identifies the man in the Batman costume as Sean Donovan, acting on Monteith’s instructions.