by Nick Green
‘Let me tell you something,’ said Geoff. ‘Felicity and I were once so close that, even hundreds of miles apart, we could look up at the same new Moon, at the same moment, and we would know. But now. . .’ His voice went over a bump. He stared out at the dark sky, sniffed the breeze through the window, turned his head as if to listen with each ear, seeming to reach out with every volt of his senses before sinking back into himself. ‘Nothing. I can’t feel her. We’ve drifted too far. That’s what happens, Tiffany. The closest ties you have, they decay, they wither away if you let them. And the people you loved become strangers.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Tiffany.
Geoff touched her forehead, where the M of her face paint faintly tingled.
‘Don’t be. All I want is for you to understand. What you think will make you happier may end up doing the opposite. It can be better to let go.’
She bit her lip.
‘Forget the Oshtian Compass,’ said Geoff. ‘Focus on the friends you still have.’
‘But – I can’t just forget –’ Her reply fell apart as she heard her phone wailing. ‘Ohmygod! What’s the time? My dad’ll be waiting outside the church hall!’
‘That way.’ Geoff pointed. ‘Go dead straight and skip over the wall. Remember to scrub your face.’
Tiffany caught the pack of tissues that he tossed to her, grabbed her bag and hightailed it out of the door.
Top speed and some reckless grave-hurdling meant she was only ten minutes late, so all she got was a lecture. By Sunday, Dad had calmed down enough to let her go out again. Cecile and Susie would meet her at the cinema to see Croftville, the hilarious new Scottish rom-com. After twice losing her nerve, Tiffany rang Ben to invite him too. He couldn’t, he said. He had plans. She tried not to sound disappointed.
Today, she had decided, she would be normal. Her inner voices, however, were having none of it. All the way to Leicester Square they pestered her. You know the catras, don’t you? You know how they work. Geoff wouldn’t teach her the Oshtian Compass and had even warned her not to try. Yet she had done it before, unaided.
Her Tube train rattled its rhythm on the rails, awakening a rhyme in her mind.
Ptep is my head, the balancing blue sky
Mandira is my green all-sensing eye
Kelotaukhon, copper maw, my mystery
Golden chest of Parda strongly glows
Lower crimson Oshtis feels and knows
Nimble tail is Ailur, indigo.
So. How did you make the Oshtian Compass? Start with Oshtis, she supposed – no prizes for guessing that. She remembered roving the rooftops in her unknowing search for Ben, feeling the blood-red pulse of Oshtis in her stomach. Yet there had to be more to it.
Kelotaukhon? That was the most enigmatic catra and the one she used least. She tried it now, picturing a copper eye to blend with the red one. Ugh, that just felt weird. She ran over the rhyme again. Mandira is my green all-sensing eye. Sensing. Surely the Compass was a kind of sense?
Waiting on a sunny bench near the Odeon, she gave in to temptation. On her mind’s dark screen she projected the red eye of Oshtis, then steadily turned up her Mandira. A flutter in her solar plexus suggested she was on to something. Okay. She would try to predict where Susie and Cecile were coming from. Imagining their faces, she concentrated. From the right, she decided. They would come from the right.
‘Boo!’ cried Susie, in her left ear. ‘Dozing off?’
Tiffany snapped her eyes open, embarrassed. So much for that idea.
‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Want to get a burger before the film?’
‘Dunno if we should see it now.’ Cecile seemed excited or anxious. ‘Daniel called.’
‘To say what?’
‘Ben’s been caught by the polecats.’
‘What?’
‘It’s okay.’ Susie nodded vigorously. ‘It was planned.’
‘Planned?’ Tiffany stared from one to the other. ‘I don’t understand. Who planned it?’
‘They did,’ said Susie. ‘Geoff and Ben.’
For a moment Tiffany couldn’t think. Then her hand shot out and grabbed Susie’s jacket with such lightning speed that a flock of pigeons took flight.
‘Start telling me stuff now,’ Tiffany hissed.
GOING UNDERGROUND
Ben had been riding the same route all morning and had seen neither hide nor hair of a polecat. Knowing his luck they had probably taken the day off. In an effort to keep alert he had flicked through every newspaper littering his train, then read rows of advertisements for everything from vitamin pills to religious cults. Now he was left with just the door sign at the end of his tube carriage: Risk of death if used while train is moving. He was still reading it when the door opened.
Red-haired Kevin came first. Then the gangly Alec, no longer limping from that lucky kick in the dark. Behind him, a boy Ben had never seen – he would have remembered such a big nose. At the rear, sporting sweatbands on his tattooed arms, was Jeep. Their eyes browsed the busy carriage as if it were a rack of DVDs. Ben took deep breaths. So far they hadn’t seen him. There was time to change his mind.
‘I couldn’t plan a steak lunch in a slaughterhouse,’ Geoff had confessed to him on Friday evening, before Tiffany arrived at the chapel. ‘I don’t do strategy. So tell me if I’m daft in the head.’
Geoff said this had kept him awake day and night. In a single week the polecats had made over thirty thieving raids. That was far more than they needed, for riches meant nothing to Martin Fisher. Geoff suspected the polecats were hoarding, stockpiling supplies of money, food, clothes and valuable items. It all pointed to some sort of plot.
‘Fisher’s a natural planner,’ said Geoff, with a hint of envy. ‘For years he had nothing else to do. If he has a scheme on the boil we need to know what it is. I can think of only one way to do that. Ben, you’re not going to like it.’
Kevin, Jeep, Alec and Big Nose were sidling along the carriage. Passengers pulled feet and bags out of their path. The boys clearly enjoyed the ripple of fear they pushed before them, daring people with their eyes. Ben waited till it was fractionally too late. Then he rose from his seat and hurried away from them down the aisle.
‘Kev, look, it’s him!’
Ben fumbled with the carriage door until he felt hot breath on his neck. The four boys crowded him into the corner. He tried to look afraid and succeeded.
‘Small world, isn’t it?’ said Kevin.
‘What do you want with me?’
‘It was very rude, running off like that,’ said Kevin. ‘You wanna guess how much hell you caused me? Totally blew my morning schedule. Now you’re coming back with us.’
He seized Ben’s right arm and Jeep took the left, painfully bending his fingers. Ben pretended to struggle. It was an Oscar-winning performance.
‘You lads! What are you doing to him?’ A balding man with a shopping bag got to his feet. Ben’s heart didn’t know whether to leap or sink.
Without slackening his grip, Jeep half-turned and slashed with the knife that appeared in his hand. The carrier bag split and a plush grey elephant tumbled out, spilling the stuffing from its trunk.
‘Shut,’ Jeep snarled, ‘up.’
The man sat as if the knife had cut his backbone. The train’s windows blurred with reds and blues as they rushed into Oxford Circus, slowing sharply.
‘Here’s our stop,’ said Kevin. ‘Come on, Ben. . . you got a last name?’
Ben said nothing.
‘You don’t. Good. Let’s go home.’
Kevin led them off the train, his three henchmen hustling Ben between them so they looked like one friendly group. Through the station’s airless passages they shuffled, flowing with the crowds that followed the blue signs towards the Victoria line.
‘I see your point, Geoff.’ Ben had picked his words with care. He hadn’t wanted Geoff to think him a coward. ‘But think about it. There’s no way I can join Fisher’s gang.’
‘I understand.’ Geoff
paced the chapel’s nave. ‘It’s not that you’re afraid. You’re thinking of your family. I forget how it is. I never really had one myself.’
‘You know what would happen if I went missing,’ said Ben. ‘My parents would–’ He couldn’t imagine it. And there was no reason to imagine it, because it was not going to happen. ‘It’s all right for people like you and Mrs Powell. You sort of. . . don’t exist. But I’m in Year Nine!’
‘Easter holidays coming up,’ Geoff remarked. ‘Ah, forget it. I can’t ask this of you. I’m just saying what needs to be done. After all, Fisher stole those children from their families.’
‘Can’t you do anything?’
‘I haven’t been sat eating pies,’ Geoff snorted. ‘I’ve gone back to the Hermitage five or six times. It’s not easy spying on folks who have sharpened senses. I wouldn’t fancy my chances if I got nabbed. Even in the old days Martin fought almost as well as me.’ He cracked his knuckles and winced. ‘I haven’t found out much, but I’ve caught a scent. And something’s rotten. This may be about more than saving a few missing kids.’
That was when Tiffany had stepped through the chapel doorway, and they stopped talking.
Later, tired and aching, he flung down his kitbag in the hallway of Dad’s flat – home, he reminded himself – and pondered dinner. Dad let him choose his own meals, so now he lived off crispy pancakes, seafood pizzas, spicy chicken drumsticks and ice cream. This was ideal – wasn’t it? Without Mum around there was no-one to tell him courgettes were full of vitamins, or claim that bananas were desserts. He never had to chop at little trees of broccoli or shovel pebbly soya beans. All the same, it was puzzling. Although he would never choose such foods for himself, dinner without them didn’t taste like his dinner any more.
He laid a wedge of frozen fish among chips on a baking tray. On an impulse he added a second fish and upped the chip count. Dad was out on an emergency call, a localised power-cut, and had probably forgotten to eat. Ben set an extra place at the table and lined up two cans, one of Coke and one of beer. By the time Dad’s key scraped in the lock the whole flat was simmering with a golden smell.
‘Mm! You’ll make me hungry now.’ Ray Gallagher put down his toolbox with a clank. He saw the two sets of cutlery. ‘What’s this? Special occasion?’
‘Not partic’ly.’
‘Nice one, son. You’ll make someone a lovely wife one day.’
Ben served up. No peas, he noticed, then pushed the thought away. He put on the CD they both liked and set the volume to stun. When all was gobbled up except for three burnt chips, Dad finished his beer and went on a dessert hunt. There was a long-uneaten Christmas pudding gathering dust, so they had that.
Lying stuffed on the sofa, Ben remembered he had a letter from school. Dad read it while surfing TV channels.
‘Parents’ evening,’ exclaimed Dad. ‘What a drag, eh. I remember hating that as a kid. The oldies poking their noses in.’
Actually Ben had never minded it much. He enjoyed showing Mum and Dad round his classrooms, as if welcoming them into his den. School was like another secret life, one he could, occasionally, share with them.
‘Mum says to tell you she can’t make it this year,’ said Ben. ‘She has to work the evening shift.’
‘That must be a relief, eh?’
Ben wasn’t relieved so much as disappointed. He had hoped Mum would get to see his art project, a modrock sculpture of a pinball machine that had real flashing lights. He was particularly pleased with this idea.
‘Well, I know you do well at school,’ said Dad. ‘I don’t need your teachers to tell me that. Why don’t we say I’m busy as well?’
‘Er. . .’
‘Your friends’ll be so jealous!’ Ben sighed. ‘Suppose so.’
‘Let’s play safe, though. You’d better tell your mum that I am going. We don’t want you getting into trouble with her, do we?’
‘Suppose not.’ Ben picked up a blackened chip and chewed it. Bitterness filled his mouth. A memory came back to him: arriving home at daybreak after his escape from the Hermitage, having been missing two nights and a day. He’d expected to see police cars outside. All he’d found was Dad having a lie-in, and instead of a telling-off he got a jokey reminder to phone the next time he planned a sleepover. At the time he’d felt glad: Dad was so cool. Now he wondered how long it would have taken Ray Gallagher to remember he had a son, and what might have become of him, were it not for Geoff White.
That stung him into saying what he said.
‘Dad, I’ve decided. I want to go and stay at Mum’s this weekend. And, uh, stay there until after the Easter holidays. I can travel to school from there in the meantime. See how it works out.’
As he spoke he realised it was a test. Everything depended on how Dad reacted.
‘Oh.’ Dad frowned a moment. He rubbed his upper lip. ‘Okay, Ben. If she agrees, I guess that’s fine with me too.’
Ben watched him. Dad was supposed to argue, to ask questions, or be upset. Instead he just picked up a TV guide and began reading it with intense concentration. And there was silence. Nothing more to be said.
Ben cleared the dinner plates. Fine, if that was how things were. If Dad wasn’t bothered, he would find someone who was. He went to his room and dialled the newest number on his phone.
‘Okay,’ he said, when Geoff picked up. ‘I’ll do it.’
The test had become the first step. To carry out Geoff’s mission he’d have to disappear, for at least a week, without his parents wondering. Impossible – unless you had a family like his. Dad would think he was staying with Mum. Mum could be told he was at Dad’s. Only from each other could they find out the truth, and (here was the beauty of it) they no longer spoke except through Ben. The final spanner in the works – school – was easy. A phone call from Geoff, posing as Ray Gallagher, explained to Ben’s form teacher that he had tonsillitis. That covered the week until the holidays.
But planning it and doing it were very different things. On the Victoria line train he sat sandwiched between Kevin and Big Nose, facing Jeep’s and Alec’s mocking sneers. Trying to stare past them he locked eyes with his reflection in the opposite window, a ghost that blurred when the jolting train rattled the panes of glass.
They braked into Euston. He must have tensed, for Kevin pinned his left wrist to the arm rest. Passengers disembarked and boarded. A young man in a rugby shirt took the seat next to Kevin, settling down with his earphones yammering. Doors clunked and they moved off.
In two minutes they’d be at King’s Cross. Then onwards to Islington, on through Finsbury Park, then the long, long tunnel in the depths of which hid the station that appeared on no map. Already his home – wherever that was – felt far away.
I don’t understand. This morning’s phone call to Mum still hurt. Ben, what’s the matter? We agreed you’d spend the holidays with me.
I want to stay in London this Easter. Where my friends are.
It was done now. He had to forget their conversation. Those lies he had told were to spare her from worry.
Are you cross with me, Ben? Because I moved out of London?
No.
I hoped you could come with me. I still do.
He shook his arm free of Kevin’s, ignoring the warning glares. It did nothing to silence the voices in his head.
I’ll come in the summer holidays.
Will you though? You say you’ll come at weekends and you don’t. You don’t even call much. I’m scared, Ben.
Scared? Why. . . why should you be?
I get this feeling. You’re drifting. Out of my reach. Like I’m never going to see you again.
Ben met the stare of his spectre in the window, hurtling through emptiness. This was wrong, this was mad. Guilt rose in him and kept on rising, pounding him into submission. He couldn’t let Mum think those things. Geoff was asking too much. He hadn’t thought this through at all.
Highbury and Islington. The doors chirruped and clunked.
H
e had to escape. As the train gathered speed his mind raced with it, getting flashes of a crazy plan. He rode on this route at least once a week, knew every bump and swerve. There was something about this stretch of the line. . .
Rat-tat-tat-ah-ratta. The man with the earphones must have been deafened, his music louder than the clash of steel wheels. Ben stole a glance past Kevin. The iPod lay upon the guy’s knee, the wire snagged on the collar of his rugby shirt. The pieces of Ben’s plan fell into place. But Finsbury Park was only minutes away. It was now or never.
He shut his eyes and invoked his catras, one after the other, his Mau body bristling awake. He lingered on the last, Ailur for agility. He was going to need it.
‘Kevin,’ he said. ‘That last name you asked about? It’s Gallagher.’
As Kevin turned his way, Ben reached past him, his left hand darting as fast as a cat’s paw. He grabbed the young man’s earphones and jerked his iPod up like a fish on a line. It landed in Kevin’s lap, blaring into thin air.
‘What the – ?’ Too slow to have seen Ben move, the man rounded on Kevin. ‘Give that back you – !’
Kevin knocked the grabbing hands away, and right on cue all hell broke loose. Jeep and Big Nose sprang to help their leader as he struggled with the burly man. The carriage’s other passengers cringed in alarm and it was left for Alec to yell, ‘He’s getting away!’, which Ben heard from the far end of the carriage. Hoping Alec was right, he ran to the connecting door (Risk of death if used while train is moving) and yanked it open to the smell of metallic winds.
A horrified shout came from behind him. He looked back and saw the man in the rugby shirt clutching his blood-soaked right hand. Jeep’s knife flashed a second time and Kevin caught his arm.
‘Leave it! He’s the one we want.’
White-faced the bleeding man slumped into a seat. Ben felt sick. That had been his fault. Tearing his eyes away he slipped through the door and edged his body into the gap between the train cars. With every bend the cars flexed around their couplings, squeezing him when they turned left. He had a moment’s terror. If the bend got any sharper, the bunching carriages might crush him.