Cat's Paw

by Nick Green

  Anglepoise lamps stood like metal birds, peering light. Among them sat two children, a boy on a plastic chair and a girl on a stool. Both had bloodshot eyes, as if they had stayed awake all night. Apart from a small cupboard and a half-empty crate of cola cans, there was little else in this poky room to tell what kind of place it might be.

  Cramp or no cramp, his arms were killing him. He found they were tied to the leg of a wooden desk which dug into his back. The desk itself was attached to a wall tiled like a bathroom. Wriggling into a sitting position he saw a door, also made of wood. It had a steel lever-handle and a roll-blind that might have covered a glass pane.

  The girl whispered, ‘He’s awake.’

  Her skin matched the porcelain tiles, milky pale behind curtains of lank dark hair.

  ‘Thomas, he’s awake. We should tell.’

  ‘It’s four in the morning. Kevin would kill us.’

  ‘But he said to tell. When he. . .’ The girl flapped her hands at Ben.

  ‘Who–’ Ben’s mouth felt rough. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Perhaps you could give him a gentle shake,’ said the boy.

  ‘No! You got to come with me.’

  ‘Someone has to stay on guard duty.’

  ‘I’ll stay,’ said the girl.

  ‘That would mean leaving you alone with him. He might be dangerous.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Ben.

  ‘I’m not waking Kevin up,’ whimpered the girl.

  ‘He’s quite reasonable sometimes, Hannah.’

  ‘You said he’d kill us.’

  Ben took a deep breath. ‘Excuse me–’

  ‘He’s known you longest,’ said the boy.

  ‘But Thomas–’

  ‘Oi!’ yelled Ben. A stunned silence settled on the pair. ‘Talk to me!’

  ‘Quiet.’ The boy folded his arms. The movement jogged Ben’s memory. He was one of the three bag snatchers. The smaller boy who’d played dead on the rails so his friends could spring a trap.

  ‘I tried to help you,’ Ben snapped.

  ‘Sssshhh!’ The girl pressed fingers to her lips. With a clunk of lock the door flew open. Ben’s guards shrank before a tall, powerfully built boy with a mane of conker-red hair and freckles on his cheeks. His bare feet, T-shirt and frayed tracksuit trousers looked like clothes that someone might wear to bed.

  ‘Are you deaf or just stupid, Thomas?’ He seized the boy and girl by their collars as if to crack their heads together, although he didn’t. ‘I told you to come and get me. What have you said to him?’

  ‘N– nuffink, Kevin.’

  ‘He’s literally only just this minute come round,’ Thomas pleaded.

  Ben sat up straighter. ‘Leave them alone.’

  Kevin turned. Ben, remembering too late that he was helpless, smiled weakly. Kevin ripped a can from the crate of fizzy drinks. Ben was so thirsty that he actually dared to hope, before Kevin popped the ring and shook the contents all over him. Cola seethed down his neck.

  He tried to speak calmly. ‘If you let me go now, you won’t get into trouble.’

  Kevin fetched a second can, shaking it.

  ‘Think!’ said Ben. ‘I didn’t come home last night. My dad’s already called the police.’

  The drink spurted, soaking his clothes. Something splashed in a foamy puddle. His phone. On the screen, a text message: Hi Dad. Staying tonight at Yusuf’s house. Hope it’s OK. Ben. When had he sent that? Then he twigged: he hadn’t. Someone had ransacked the address book, finding his name and a likely friend. With one lucky guess they’d robbed him of a whole night.

  Still he rallied. ‘My dad won’t believe that. I’d never stay at Yusuf’s, he lives in. . . Scotland.’

  ‘Stoke Newington.’ Kevin sniffed. ‘Your dad already rang. I can’t play you the message as there’s no signal down–’ He broke off. ‘But he’s cool about it. What great parents you have.’

  Ben strained furiously at his bound wrists. What was this place? What had he stumbled upon? Fizzy liquid stung his eyes.

  ‘Kevin.’ The boy called Thomas yawned. ‘When’s the next guard shift? Only Hannah’s really sleepy.’

  ‘Then slap her. You’ve got three hours till dawn. If you want to eat tomorrow, you’ll stay awake.’ Kevin trod on Ben. ‘Back for you later. Don’t get comfortable.’

  The door locked behind him. Ben sat in his wet clothes. The damp became a sticky, itchy varnish. He imagined ants on his skin.

  ‘Tell me what is going on,’ he sighed.

  His young guards blanked him. Ben searched for a less uncomfortable way to slump. His legs went to sleep so often that it became a way of marking time: ten minutes between the pins and needles. Twice he shut his eyes and tried marshalling his catras. If he could summon up Mau claws, those brief ghostly blades might cut his bonds. It was no good. His fingers had no feeling. He flexed his legs for the seventeenth time.

  The girl slipped off her stool and began pacing the floor. After a few laps she picked up a packet of tissues, scurried over to Ben and began to wipe his face and neck. The cola had evaporated long ago, but Ben almost choked with surprise and gratitude.

  ‘I’m really thirsty,’ he murmured.

  She hesitated, then brought him a can. Oh well, if there was nothing else. Hannah did her best to tip it into his mouth, mopping up the rest with more tissues.

  ‘You know,’ said Ben, ‘sooner or later my parents will wonder where I am.’

  That got no reaction. He tried again. ‘Do your folks know you’re here?’

  Hannah said, ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Maybe?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Hannah shrugged. ‘I lost them.’

  ‘We can’t talk,’ said Thomas.

  ‘Your mum and dad died?’ said Ben.

  ‘No. I don’t know. Maybe they–’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Thomas gave her a warning glare.

  ‘Mm.’ Hannah nodded. ‘I got a new family here. This is our family now. And yours.’

  ‘Not mine.’

  ‘Don’t antagonise Kevin, and you might get breakfast,’ said Thomas. ‘It’s smashing at the weekend, there’s usually eggs.’

  Who was this kid? His accent stood out like a salad in a chip shop. Thomas talked like someone from an expensive school, even posher than the one Tiffany went to. What was he doing here? What were any of them doing here? Where was here?

  ‘How about your parents, Thomas? Are they lost?’

  ‘No. I see my daddy.’

  And who said daddy these days?

  ‘Several times a week,’ said Thomas, then shut his mouth.

  Ben had no patience for riddles. ‘Just untie me.’

  The silence stretched. They weren’t going to answer. He lolled against the desk, cooling his brow on the white tiles. He had seen these white tiles before, he was sure. Only not in a bathroom, not in a house or a shop or a school. Somewhere else, somewhere that had rows and rows of tiles, white and blue and green, curving round corners, soaring in arches, dry winds billowing through them. . . A kick in the calf jerked him awake.

  ‘I said don’t get comfortable.’ It was Kevin, dressed now in clothes that resembled combat fatigues, dyed in the shades of concrete and asphalt. A pen-knife glinted in his hand and Ben felt it cut in jerks through his bonds. In one smooth movement Kevin helped him to stand while putting him in a half-nelson. ‘Move.’

  Grey gloom waited on the other side of the doorway. Ben shuffled towards it, one arm tingling back to life, the other twisted in a new and painful way. He caught a whiff of stale air, fresh enough after the suffocating room. Feeling a wider space around him, he had what his mum would have called a rush of blood to the head. He couldn’t let a teenage thug push him around. He did pashki, for heaven’s sake.

  Pretending to trip, he turned it into a Corkscrew Flick. Clumsy as it was, it broke the arm-lock and he spun clear of his captor and ran. Or tried to. Three strides later came a crippling pain in his neck, Kevin’s fingers, hard as pincers. He fell to his
knees and out came all his breath in one whoosh. Kevin knelt on his chest, pointing the knife.

  ‘Let’s try again,’ Kevin panted.

  Now that wasn’t meant to happen. For a moment Ben could only lie there in shock. It was as if he had tried to eat a cupcake and broken his teeth. He didn’t even struggle as Kevin hauled him upright.

  A shove forced him forwards into the twilight ahead. Some sort of broad passage. It looked a bit like a street at night. Lighting came from desk lamps, table lamps or orange workmen’s lamps, spaced between shapes like tumbledown houses. They were dens, built from cardboard boxes and bundled with blankets. Some of the bundles snored. Other nests lay empty, littered with sweet wrappers, socks and the occasional comic or children’s book. The floor was concrete and, oddly, just half the width of the passageway. A deep ditch ran alongside, cutting them off from the left-hand wall, which curved up to become the roof. At last he understood what he was looking at.

  ‘It’s a platform.’

  ‘Platform 2,’ said Kevin.

  ‘This is a Tube station.’ Wonder distracted him. There was the platform edge; the rails; the doors to staff offices. A blank oblong where he would expect to see a Tube map. And there, upon his left hand side, was the familiar roundel: the red circle with the blue crossbar that bore its station’s name in neat white letters.

  HERMITAGE

  Ben searched his brain. ‘Hermitage? There’s no such station as Hermitage!’

  ‘Then you can’t be here. Get it?’

  His eyes ran across the tiles, patterns of blue and grey punctuated with signs. White words on black told him NO SMOKING. Around the next corner a larger banner pointed back TO THE TRAINS. Every detail was stranger for being so familiar. He was staring at a black arrow and the words PLATFORM 1 when Kevin pushed him through an archway labelled NO WAY OUT.

  They entered an even dingier space. Ben recognised it as an escalator hall. He looked for the escalators and saw twin ravines sloping up into darkness, gutted hollows where the metal steps should have been. A tall black girl bounded from the shadows. From her trainers to her baseball cap she wore more brands than a shop window, her jacket still sporting its price tag. The only garment without a logo was her black silk headscarf, which gave her the look of a pirate.

  ‘Hey Kev. Is this him?’

  Kevin tightened his hold. ‘Stay there, Antonia. He’s a live one.’

  ‘Yeah, I heard. Jeep says he hurt Alec. Kicked him or somefin’.’

  ‘That’s not all. He followed their team into the tunnel. Jeep managed to take him down but Alec’s still walking funny.’

  She laughed. ‘So what is it? This guy’s like us?’

  ‘No. You can tell he’s not. But there’s something about him. I have to show him to the Ferret.’

  The girl flicked her springy hair. ‘Na. He’s in one of his Pits. Seeing no-one.’

  ‘Except me, he means. He always sees me.’

  ‘I seriously wouldn’t.’

  ‘Oh, get a spine. Come and stand sentry.’

  He dragged Ben by the collar to the far side of the escalators and stopped outside a door that was set into the wall beneath the stairs. ‘Stand there. Face that wall. Antonia’s watching you.’

  Kevin twisted the doorknob and went in. Ben dithered. Should he run? As puny as he felt right now, he could surely fight his way past one girl. Then he changed his mind.

  He had never heard the scream of someone being murdered, but it probably sounded much like this. His skin gathered itself up in bumps. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Antonia cowering. The shriek tore the darkness, more animal than human, yet the real terror came when the echoes returned from the tunnels and he caught the mangled remains of two words: ‘GO AWAY.’

  Kevin stepped from the doorway and shut it. He looked different. Ben realised this was because his freckles had disappeared. Now his face was a single shade of pale.

  ‘Okay.’ Kevin’s voice was husky. ‘He’ll see you later.’

  He grabbed Ben by the sleeve and dismissed Antonia with a grunt. All the way back to the stationmaster’s office that was serving as his jail cell, Ben could feel himself trembling. And he didn’t know whether it was comforting, or more frightening still, that most of this quivering seemed to be coming not from him, but from the grip of Kevin’s own hands.

  SLEEPWALKING

  Tiffany had been in airing cupboards less stuffy than this travel agency. Watching her mum browsing a whole quilt of holiday brochures, she was seized by a yawn that made her jaw crack.

  ‘Not boring you, I hope?’ said Dad, who looked bored himself.

  ‘Maybe she didn’t sleep well last night.’ Stuart smirked. ‘You look terrible.’

  Tiffany sighed, ‘S’my impression of you.’

  ‘Oi. Squabbles will cease,’ said Mum. ‘Give me ideas. Where do you fancy going?’

  ‘Disney World!’ said Stuart, as always.

  ‘We did mention Italy,’ said Dad.

  ‘Devon,’ mumbled someone. Tiffany realised it was her.

  ‘Devon?’ Mum scoffed.

  ‘Uh. . . Cornwall?’

  ‘Dearest, I don’t work all hours for the Mayor of London just to go on British beach holidays. Pass me the California one.’

  ‘No, Florida,’ pleaded Stuart.

  ‘There’s always pony trekking in Dartmoor.’

  ‘Please ignore my daughter.’ Mum managed to scowl at Tiffany while beaming at the flustered travel agent. ‘Her brain has got jammed in one corner of England.’

  In the end they packed the brochures in bags and drove them home. All the way, Tiffany yawned.

  ‘Busy night?’ murmured Stuart.

  She looked at him sharply. ‘Rufus kept me awake, if you must know. Miaowing.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Probably he was only baiting her. In truth, she had slept much less than her cat. Squirming among wrinkled sheets, she had skidded around on the surface of sleep unable to break through. A nameless dread lay in her stomach. By 1a.m. she could barely close her eyes. In despair she grabbed some tracksuit leggings and a sweatshirt and spent an hour walking rooftops, returning only when she lost sight of her own. It didn’t help. By the time dawn seeped through the curtains, she was just about throttling her pillow.

  Dad set to marinating salmon for dinner while Mum studied the brochures. All this talk of holidays jogged Tiffany’s memory.

  ‘I have to take in my cheque on Monday. For Paris.’

  Mum paused. ‘Paris?’

  ‘You know. My school trip.’

  ‘I thought that wasn’t till Easter?’ said Dad.

  ‘Yes, and they need the money now.’ The conversation missed another beat. Tiffany smelt a rat. ‘You said I could! You promised!’

  ‘Let’s discuss this without going berserk, okay?’ said Dad.

  ‘We already did discuss it.’

  ‘You know there was a school trip recently,’ Mum remarked, ‘where a boy got drowned by a freak wave because his teachers were too busy playing beach volleyball.’

  Tiffany was going to ask how many freak waves struck Paris when Dad chimed in.

  ‘You’ve never stayed away from home by yourself before, Truffle. At least, not – Ouch! Blood and sand.’ He had grated away a sliver of his knuckle on the lemon zester. As he ran the bleeding finger under the tap, the unspoken end of his sentence hung in the air. Not intentionally.

  ‘All the French sets are going,’ Tiffany pleaded. ‘Everyone is.’ Everyone included Susie, Yusuf and Olly from Cat Kin. Yusuf had been helping her get ready. Being outrageously good at languages (he often answered his home phone in Arabic) he had forced Tiffany to improve by speaking only French when they met at lunchtimes for a chat.

  ‘Well.’ Mum thinned her lips. ‘We’ll look into it some more.’

  ‘They need the cheque on Monday!’ She was talking to brick walls. Tiffany flounced out of the kitchen. It made her feel righteous, so she flounced up the stairs too, through her bedroom door, a
nd with one last flounce flopped down on her bed. Oh, to have the one cat talent that eluded her: sleep. She was exhausted. Only this wasn’t just tiredness. It was an itching of the mind, a sense that something, somewhere, was terribly wrong.

  ‘Ben... Doesn’t answer. Please leave a message at the tone.’ She must have absent-mindedly picked up her phone and dialled Ben’s number. But wait a minute. He still hadn’t said he was sorry, had he? Let him be the one who called. Dropping the phone on her bedside table, she happened to glance through the window. She saw a man.

  He was standing quite still on the opposite pavement, looking up at her. Well, surely not at her, but at this row of houses. He stood with one hand hooked in his jeans pocket, pushing aside the hem of the black leather jacket that hung below his belt. Moppish brown hair, flecked with grey, tumbled to his collar. With his stubbly face he might have been a tramp, but somehow Tiffany knew he wasn’t. Their eyes met and she caught a glint of blue, and then he was walking off down the street. She stared after him, feeling cold, then came to her senses. Perhaps he hadn’t been staring up here at all. Perhaps he’d stood there only a moment, reading a For Sale sign or something. She had to stop being so jumpy.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Tiffany Maine?’ she said to her wardrobe mirror.

  The wardrobe creaked in reply.

  She yanked open the door and pulled Stuart out by the nose. ‘You! You had your warning.’

  ‘Leggo! Ow! You mustn’t, I’m an invalid –’ Stuart’s squeals were muffled by the duvet she bundled over his head, really very gently in spite of her temper. When he was trussed at the foot of the bed she glowered over him.

  ‘Spies are being shot.’

  Stuart cringed. It unnerved her. He looked genuinely frightened.

  ‘Okay, I’m not going to eat you. You shouldn’t earwig, that’s all.’ She waited for his cheeky retort. It didn’t come. ‘Sorry. Was I too rough?’

  ‘I saw you.’ It was a whisper.

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Last night. Coming home.’ Stuart took a breath and plunged in. ‘Across the roof.’

  Tiffany stood silent for a long time.

  ‘Ah,’ she said.