Running on the Cracks

by Julia Donaldson

  ‘Not without any money, he can’t.’

  This put a stop to the dance. Finlay understood: Mary’s benefit money must have all been spent on biscuits and banquets.

  ‘It’s OK – I’ll pay,’ he said recklessly.

  Mary started singing again, fitting her words to the new song that was now playing:

  ‘Sherlock’s gonnae pay! Sherlock’s gonnae pay! And I’ll let that lonesome whistle blow my hair away.’

  ‘Well?’ said Finlay to Leo. He half hoped she would say ‘Don’t be silly.’ His generous but hasty offer had pushed the electric guitar back to an even more distant horizon. But, ‘All right, then,’ said Leo. ‘Do you know where the shop is?’

  At the sound of the word ‘shop’, Zigger barked and started to wag his tail. He wriggled free from Mary’s ballroom hold and raced into the sitting room.

  ‘He thinks “shop” means “walk”,’ said Mary with one of the cackles that were beginning to get on Finlay’s nerves.

  Sure enough, Zigger came running back with his lead in his mouth.

  ‘Hey, Prospect! Get us a six-pack and some Buckies!’ called out the President.

  ‘He can’t. He’s under age,’ snapped Leo. She shoved the shopping list into one of Finlay’s hands and the end of the lead into the other.

  Talking to the Birds – 3

  There – it wasn’t for long, was it? Daddy’s back home now. Caitlin’s been changing your water, hasn’t she? She’s been giving you lots of nice seeds. Caitlin’s a good girl. We didn’t tell Mummy, did we? We didn’t tell Flo. Flo’s a silly girl, she’s got a silly little friend. I was only talking to her. You like it when I talk to you, don’t you? Say Clemmy! Say Clever Clemmy! It was the child lock. I was going to unlock it. Who likes their swing? You do, don’t you? See Saw Marjorie Daw. Don’t be sad – Daddy’s back now. He’s got a clue. He’s going to find her before they do. She’s not silly. She’s not like Flo’s silly little friend. She knows I was only looking.

  Shopping List for Village Dumplings

  Finlay – Chinatown

  Finlay felt hard-done-by as he walked – or was rather dragged – towards the bus stop. He had heard of dogs walking their owners, but this was taking things to extremes: Zigger pulled so hard on the lead that you’d think his collar would have strangled him by now.

  But it wasn’t the dog that had put Finlay in his bad mood. It was Leo. It wasn’t fair of her to blame him for telling the Missing People lot that he’d seen her in Glasgow. That was before he’d met her properly; it was when she was just the doughnut thief. Anyone would do the same – specially when there might be a reward.

  And that wasn’t the only thing. What really made Finlay’s blood boil was the way Leo treated him like a ten-year-old kid brother. Like yesterday, when the President and those others were round at Mary’s, drinking and smoking. Leo acted as if Finlay would instantly become an alcoholic just through having a few swigs of beer.

  ‘I’ll show her,’ thought Finlay. Yes, he’d show her that he wasn’t just a little kid who couldn’t get anything right.

  But maybe that was true. The only thing he had got right seemed to be alerting the world to the fact that Leo was in Glasgow. No, that wasn’t all: he had tracked her down too, hadn’t he? He was a good detective, just like Mary said. Well, now he would prove it to Leo too – he would track down her gran and granddad for her. That would wipe the haughty big-sister look off her face. He would make a start now!

  But how? Leo had a list of all the Glasgow Chans, and Finlay wondered about going back and getting it. No, better to keep it a surprise. Where had she got that list anyway? It must be photocopied from the phone directory.

  The library was just across the road from the bus stop. They had phone books in there, and a photocopier. Quick thinking, Sherlock, Finlay said to himself. (He secretly liked Mary’s nickname for him.)

  ‘That’s not a guide dog, is it?’ said the librarian. For a split second Finlay considered pretending to be blind, but his life was already quite complicated enough without that. He tied an indignant Zigger to the hook outside the swing door of the library.

  When he came back out with the photocopied pages of Chans, the dog was straining and barking furiously at a little girl in a lilac hooded top. The girl was clutching her mother and refusing to walk past Zigger and enter the building.

  ‘Sorry, I think he thinks you’re a burglar,’ said Finlay. He untied the dog and pulled him away.

  Zigger was surprisingly docile on the bus – at first, anyway. He sat at Finlay’s feet, and when a woman sat down next to them and patted the dog’s silky head, Finlay felt a pride akin to ownership.

  Now was a chance to look at the Chan list. No less than three of them were in Geddes Street, which Finlay was sure was very near the Chinese supermarket. He should be able to check out numbers 6, 42 and 59, and still have time to do the shopping.

  The woman got off and a man in a knitted hat sat down in her place. Immediately, Zigger started to growl and bare his teeth.

  ‘Watch it,’ said the man, edging away.

  ‘He’s just trying to make friends,’ said Finlay unconvincingly. The bus was slowing down, and he added, ‘We’re getting off here anyway, aren’t we, Zigger?’ though it wasn’t in fact his stop.

  He cursed not just Leo but Mary as he walked along Sauchiehall Street, with Zigger zigzagging ahead on the taut lead. ‘Fancy making me take you out – you’re as crazy as her and her friends.’ His fingers were beginning to feel raw from having to grip the lead so hard. And every now and then Zigger did his growling-and-teeth-baring act at some innocent-looking passer-by. What made him single them out?

  Finlay was having second thoughts about the Chan quest. Maybe that would be best for another day. But here was Geddes Street, and it did lead directly to the Chinese supermarket. And here was number 59, and yes, one of the buzzers had a label saying ‘Chan’ beside it! Supposing he got it right first go? Statistically Leo’s grandparents might just as well live here as at any of the other addresses. That would change the look on her face, wouldn’t it? Finlay rang the bell. He tried to imagine Leo’s face lit up by astonishment and admiration, and failed.

  There was no answer.

  Number 42 didn’t come to the door either, but while Finlay waited, a Chinese woman approached the house, key in hand.

  ‘Excuse me, are you Mrs Chan … or Miss Chan … ?’

  ‘No, Chan top floor. Flat 4/2. But not in.’

  The woman was about to let herself in. Finlay seized his chance. ‘Do you know them – the Chans?’ he asked.’

  Yes, I know them. Mrs Chan my sister. If you want I can give message.’

  ‘Thank you. Er … have they lived here a long time?’

  ‘My sister husband come in 1970. Come

  from Hong Kong.’

  ‘And do they have any children?’

  ‘No, no children. What is message please.’

  ‘Oh, that’s all right. There’s no message. I think it’s the wrong family.’

  ‘That is no problem,’ said the woman, looking unperturbed, as if Chan-seekers came every day to the house. She let herself in.

  Finlay was disappointed, but at least that was one Chan he could cross out.

  Zigger pulled him relentlessly along Geddes Street. Outside number 6, a couple of boys were sitting on the low wall, drinking Coke and eating crisps. One of them looked Chinese and was fiddling with a baseball cap.

  With the briefest of warning growls, Zigger rushed up and seized the cap in his jaws.

  ‘Bad dog!’ said Finlay. He tried to tug the cap from Zigger’s mouth but the dog just growled and clung on for dear life. Luckily, the boys started laughing.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Finlay.

  ‘It’s cool,’ said one boy. The other one said, ‘Watch this,’ and held out a crisp for Zigger.

  Faced with the choice between cap and crisp, an expression of terrible indecision came over the dog’s face, but when the boy ma
de to withdraw the crisp Zigger hastily dropped the cap and snatched it. The boys laughed again, Finlay too.

  ‘Cool dog,’ said the first boy, who was now sitting safely on his cap. ‘How old is he?’

  ‘I don’t know – he’s not mine,’ said Finlay. ‘I’m just taking him for a walk.’

  ‘Do you live round here?’ The boy didn’t have a Chinese accent, but he didn’t sound Scottish either.

  ‘No,’ said Finlay. ‘No, I’m just looking for someone – someone called Chan.’

  The boy grinned. ‘That’s me!’ he said. ‘Or was it my mum or dad you wanted?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. I’m looking for some older people.’

  ‘What, my granddad, you mean? He’s not here yet – not till next month. He’s still in Manchester.’

  Of course. That was the accent. It made Finlay think of Coronation Street, his mum’s favourite television programme.

  ‘So is that where you’re from?’

  ‘Yeah, we just moved here six months ago.’

  Another cross on the list then.

  ‘Who are these old folk you’re looking for anyway?’ asked the Chinese boy.

  ‘Oh, they’re … my grandparents.’

  The boy seemed surprised. ‘You don’t look very Chinese.’

  ‘No.’ Finlay was stumped, but only for a second. ‘No, it’s funny, isn’t it? I take after my mum. She’s Scottish. My dad left us when I was a baby, and I’m trying to track down his mum and dad.’

  ‘Wouldn’t they still be at their old house? Like, where your dad lived when he was a kid?’

  ‘But I don’t know where that is.’

  ‘You don’t know much, do you?’

  ‘I do know that my dad used to go to the music college.’

  ‘You should ask there then,’ said the other boy, who had been too busy feeding crisps to Zigger to join in the conversation. ‘It’s just down the road.’

  ‘Good idea. Thanks,’ said Finlay.

  But first there was the shopping to do.

  The Chinese supermarket was in a sunken area by a motorway flyover. Finlay tied Zigger up outside, noticing that there was a pets’ hospital opposite. ‘Be good or you might end up in there,’ he told him.

  He took Leo’s scrawled shopping list out of his pocket and couldn’t help thinking of the witches’ cauldron in Macbeth. There were no eyes of newt or toes of frog on the list, but a lot of the things sounded almost as weird: bok choi, tofu, dim sum – what were they all?

  Bok choi was clearly some kind of vegetable. There were various strange-looking ones to choose from. One kind was very long and thin and white; another kind looked a bit like a hedgehog. But Leo had written ‘leafy’ in brackets. Finlay found a heap of green leaves in a box. He picked one up and nibbled it; it had a slightly unpleasant bitter taste.

  ‘Is Asian pennywort,’ said a small elderly man, appearing beside Finlay. ‘Good for bladder. Make into tea. Bladder will be very strong. Also liver. Use just a little.’

  That didn’t sound right. In the end the man pointed out the bok choi, which looked a bit like spinach but with thick white stalks. But there were two slightly different kinds. Which was the right one, and how much to get? ‘One from north, one from south,’ said the man, which wasn’t much help either. Finlay took a handful of each and hoped for the best.

  What about the next item on the list: ‘half a cake of tofu’? Finlay found a fridge full of white cheesy-looking stuff in different-sized packets. The shopkeeper confirmed that this was indeed tofu but looked blank when asked which one was a ‘cake’. Finlay played safe and chose a large block.

  It took a long time, searching among the shelves of seaweed and sauces, to find the other ingredients, and when he asked for prawns the shopkeeper pointed him out of the building, saying, ‘Fishmonger. Round corner.’

  There were two kinds of prawns – dead pink ones and crawling-about grey ones. Finlay had a sneaky feeling that the crawling-about kind were the ones he should get but he couldn’t bring himself to buy them. They’d probably start crawling all over the bus.

  That is, if there was enough money left for the bus. What with buying two alternatives for some of the things, Finlay was horrified to find that the whole lot came to nearly all his wages.

  ‘We might have to walk home, Zigger,’ he said, as he rejoined the dog outside the shop. Zigger barked and wagged his tail at the sound of his favourite word. A scrawny woman was standing nearby, observing them with folded arms. Why did she look so disapproving?

  And then Finlay smelled it – not a Chinese smell this time; just plain disgusting dog poo, coming from the sole of his foot.

  ‘Zigger! You bad dog!’ Finlay scolded as he did his best to wipe his foot on the edge of the kerb.

  The woman said nothing but pointed to a notice outside the pets’ hospital. Finlay screwed up his eyes and could just make out the words: ‘Poop scoops available within’.

  Intimidated, he crossed the road and followed the signs to the entrance. Inside, a receptionist handed him a pack containing a cardboard shovel and a bag labelled ‘whoopsiebag’ with a picture of a guilty-looking dog on it.

  Nearly retching and still under the scrawny woman’s scrutiny, Finlay scooped up the poo and deposited it into the whoopsie-bag.

  ‘You’re a nightmare dog,’ he scolded Zigger, though maybe nightmare wasn’t quite the right word; the whole outing felt more like one of those endless tiring dreams where you have an impossible task to complete and everything goes wrong.

  The onlooker was still looking on. She seemed to be better at pointing than speaking. This time she indicated a bin attached to a nearby lamp post. Finlay dumped the smelly bag into it, congratulating himself on not throwing away the bok choi or the tofu by mistake, which he would have done in one of those dreams. But turning round, he found that Zigger had discovered the prawns and was helping himself to a whiskery mouthful.

  At that moment Finlay wished he’d never met Leo. He wished he was at home, with a cup of tea and a plate of toast.

  ‘But we’re not going to give up now,’ he told the unrepentant Zigger as he untied him, turned his back on the scrawny woman and headed towards the music college.

  The wonderful smell of fresh coffee wafted down the stairs into the modern entrance hall with its walls of pale orange bricks. There must be a café up there. Too bad there was no money left. Hoping that his foot didn’t still smell of poo, Finlay went up to the enquiry desk. A man in uniform was reading a newspaper.

  ‘Excuse me, I’m doing a school project about musicians,’ he lied. ‘I need to find out about where one of your old students used to live. But maybe your records don’t go back that far. This would be about twenty years ago.’

  ‘Twenty years – that’s nothing,’ said the man. ‘Our records go back to the 1950s. Earlier in some cases.’ He spoke proudly, as if he personally had written every student’s name and address into an ancient volume.

  ‘Oh good, well this guy was called something Chan. I don’t know the exact dates he was here, but he played the flute and …’

  ‘Just a minute, sonny. I didn’t say we could divulge any information about anyone.’

  ‘But I thought …’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you thought – it’s the Data Protection Act, see. We can’t divulge any information about anyone.’

  ‘But this man’s dead now. It’s not like I’m going to stalk him or anything.’ The man looked unimpressed so Finlay changed tack. ‘In any case, it’s not him, it’s his parents I’m trying to track down. And they weren’t students here, were they? You don’t need to protect them, surely?’

  ‘That’s not the point. The point is the Data Protection Act. It’s against the law to—’

  ‘To divulge any information about anyone?’

  ‘Aye.’ The man looked put out to have his favourite words taken away from him.

  ‘Oh.’ Finlay was unwilling to accept defeat so easily. He thought about his mum, who had
an embarrassing habit of complaining in shops. What would she say next?

  ‘Can I speak to the manager?’ Finlay asked.

  The man laughed. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’ he said. ‘If you mean the Records Officer, she’s off today. But she’d just tell you the same thing. It’s all to do with the—’

  ‘Data Protection Act?’

  ‘Aye.’ The miffed expression again.

  ‘Well, thanks anyway.’ Finlay turned to go. He oughtn’t to leave the disastrous dog outside for any longer.

  But the man relented and called after him, ‘There’s one thing you could do.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘You could write a letter care of us, and we could forward it.’

  ‘I see.’ Finlay toyed with this idea. He’d have to ask Leo first, and maybe she’d think it was too risky …

  ‘That’s what I told the other guy.’

  ‘What other guy?’

  ‘The other guy who came asking about this Chan student. Was it your teacher, maybe? No, I think he said he was some kind of relation. He didn’t look Chinese, mind.’

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘I can’t say – except for the glasses. Very thick glasses, he had – those magnifying ones. And some sort of hat – aye, a flat hat.’

  ‘I see,’ said Finlay. In his normal cheeky mood he might have said, ‘I thought you weren’t supposed to divulge any information about anyone.’ But he didn’t, because he suddenly felt cold.

  Uncle John’s Letter

  October 5th Flat 1b, 19 Pusely Place, Bristol

  Mr and Mrs Chan

  C/o The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama

  100 Renfrew Street

  Glasgow G2 3DB

  Dear Mr and Mrs Chan,

  Although we have never met, I am a relation by marriage of your family.

  Your son, Matthew Chan, was the partner, or common-law husband, of Harriet Watts. Miss Watts’s sister Sarah is my wife.

  I do not know if you are aware of the tragic death in an air crash of your son and Miss Watts, when they were on their way home from an orchestra tour in Spain three months ago. My wife and I extend our heartfelt sympathy to you both. We would have notified you at the time, but we had no address for you, and it was only recently that we thought of contacting you via the music school which your son attended.