Cat's Paw

by Nick Green

  Daniel poked him in the back. He wanted a better view. Ben gave him a glare to curdle milk.

  Fisher was hunting them. The knowledge settled on Ben like six feet of earth. He could smell Fisher, so Fisher would certainly smell him. Geoff had said that the young Martin Fisher could sniff out a coin in a dark room. Nor was that the worst of it. If he had tracked Ben to this floor, he might detect another familiar scent.

  Geoff must have shared his fears.

  ‘On my signal, go for the stairs.’ His whisper barely stirred the air. ‘So long as he’s looking in the other flats–’ He clammed up as the tall shape reappeared in a doorway.

  They were trapped. What now? Would they have to fight their way out? It was four against one. One of their four was Geoff White. Then Ben remembered the other polecats. If they appeared it would be four on four. In his mind he squared up Daniel against the likes of Jeep. That was not happening.

  Fisher roved the landing, sniffing the air. Ben felt a nudge and saw Geoff drawing in the dust with his thumb. Letters and symbols appeared like an equation:

  IF I MF = U RUN

  Ben solved it and his stomach clenched. If I attack Martin Fisher then you run. He watched as Geoff traced beside it: OK?

  Geoff would cover their escape. He would battle Fisher so that they could get away. Well, Daniel and Cecile could. Ben wasn’t clear what he was meant to do. Return to Kevin and hope to maintain his cover? Slink away and go back home to Dad or Mum? Both these options boiled down to one thing: leaving Geoff, deserting him, abandoning him here.

  Fisher made a strangled whining noise. Geoff tapped the floor-marks impatiently. OK?

  Ben nodded, sick inside. This could end only one way. Fisher had learned mustel-id at Geoff’s own hands. He was younger, bigger, stronger than Geoff. He burned inside with murderous hate, and he hated the White Cat worst of all. Ben stole a glance at his teacher’s face, shiny with sweat, wondering if he would see it again.

  I’m not such a bad bloke, am I?

  No. Not at all.

  You’re a great kid. You remind me of me, when I was young.

  Except that Geoff would have stayed to fight by his master’s side. Ben was convinced of that. Part of him wished for the courage to stay, while a darker part, the scaredy-cat, whispered that it would do no good, that he would only get in the way and die for nothing. Any moment now Fisher would be upon them. He would see Geoff and Geoff would have to attack. But what if–?

  What if he saw someone else?

  Wriggling on his stomach, Ben squirmed into the doorway and stood up. The dead silence behind him, he knew, was Geoff trying not to gasp in amazement. Ben stepped out onto the landing as Fisher approached.

  ‘I’ve finished this floor.’ He unfolded the sheet of paper from his pocket, guessed a number and wrote it down. ‘Two hundred and sixty holes.’

  Fisher looked at him.

  ‘Toni – Antonia – might be on the next floor up. We’re doing different ones to save time. I can call her down if you want.’ Ben was gabbling. Anything beat silence.

  ‘I smell him,’ said Fisher.

  Ben ran out of words.

  ‘The traitor,’ said Fisher. ‘The one who left me. Why do I smell the White Cat?’

  ‘It’s me.’ Ben gulped. He prepared to receive the blow that would snap his neck. ‘You’re smelling him on me. I was Geoff White’s pupil. Remember? Maybe it’s… rubbed off.’

  It was gobbledegook. Yet Fisher did not scream. Rather he gazed down almost tenderly, the tattoos on his face like giant teardrops. He bent till he was nuzzling Ben’s sleeve, while Ben fought not to flinch. Fisher drew a deep breath.

  ‘Yes.’ He sniffed again. ‘The mark of him is on you. Not good.’

  ‘It’ll fade,’ said Ben. ‘I’ll stay with you and it’ll fade.’

  ‘Yes. We will be rid of him.’ Fisher held him tight.

  ‘You must be washed. Washed clean.’

  What happened then made his insides heave. Fisher bent over his arm and gave it a long lick, rasping his tongue from the wrist up to the shoulder. He did it again before turning to the other arm, then to the flesh of Ben’s hands, licking them front and back, while Ben shut his eyes, knowing that if he shuddered then both he and his friends would be finished. Just before the cry escaped him, Fisher stopped.

  ‘Better?’

  Ben nodded. The stony eyes gleamed on. He said, ‘Yes. Better.’

  He wiped his hand behind his back. Still Fisher awaited something more. Could it be…?

  ‘Thank you,’ said Ben.

  Fisher cocked his head. Then he gave a dazzling smile, which Ben felt horribly sure had been copied, muscle by muscle, from a photograph in a glossy magazine.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Martin Fisher.

  BEAST OF THE MOORS

  Tiffany lay on Susie’s bed reading something out of Mrs Powell’s bookcase. It was a fat historical novel that wouldn’t let her past page five. The cottage’s wonky rafters creaked in the sunshine. She was, to her surprise, still here.

  Yesterday morning, after the others surfaced, Mrs Powell had offered them a lift in her Land Rover to fetch their stuff from the hostel. The lonely grey building was closer than Tiffany had thought. After checking out, she supposed they would now head for Exeter station, and London, with a twinge of sadness at leaving so soon. She was delighted, if surprised, when Mrs Powell spun the wheel and drove home along the jolting stony trails.

  ‘Smell that heather!’ Susie’s whole top half leaned out of the bedroom window. ‘Come for a hike?’

  Hike was her new word for walk. Something odd had happened in the last twenty-four hours. Susie, who used to shudder at the country air, was now stuffing her face with it.

  ‘Another one?’ Tiffany wiggled her blistered bare feet.

  ‘Indoors on such a lovely day.’ Susie sounded like someone’s mum. ‘See you later then.’

  Tiffany curled against the pillows, sucking one set of toes. She heard the creak of the front door and Susie singing to herself, dwindling into the woods. Sun dapples on the wall danced with the breeze. No wonder they had stayed here a second night. Time passed like sleep in this place, and for long moments it slipped her mind why she had come here in the first place. It was all too easy to relax and feel that things could take care of themselves for a while.

  She closed her eyes, savouring the previous day. Mrs Powell had introduced them to her friends. The woods behind the cottage hid a series of clearings, each separately fenced with wire mesh. Though smaller than the enclosure they had entered on Monday night, these were generous compared with the pens at London Zoo – and after the hellish cages of the cats’ former lives, they must have been heaven.

  ‘Charlie and Jane.’ Mrs Powell pointed out a pair of sunbathing lynxes. The larger lolled its head to notice them, his face framed in mutton-chop sideburns like a Victorian gentleman. All he needed was a top hat, thought Tiffany, but then he would have covered those gorgeous ears, tapering to smoky wisps.

  Yusuf would have stared until sunset had Mrs Powell not coughed meaningfully. They moved on to a pen containing three ocelots. Marvellously, Mrs Powell fetched one out, draped over her shoulder. It looked so much like a spotted housecat that Tiffany, stroking its neck, imagined that she had simply got smaller. In a clipped patch on its flank she saw a puckered oval scar, but this was the only sign of what an evil man had once done.

  It was feeding time. Yusuf insisted on helping, tossing gobbets of meat to far-flung bushes and boulders to avoid causing ocelot squabbles. In a bigger enclosure a solitary tawny cat stalked imaginary prey. Susie asked, was it a lioness? Mrs Powell said ‘Puma,’ and Yusuf said ‘Cougar,’ and even the puma-or-cougar looked round, shocked to see Mrs Powell laughing. The next pen was the largest of all.

  Tiffany approached the fence as if it were high voltage. She was awfully afraid. Her legs still ached after their flight from the jaguar, yet she had no fear of it anymore. Rather, she feared that she would look th
rough the wire and see something hateful and ugly. Was this cat ruined for her forever? And then the leaves rustled and her mouth fell open.

  ‘Cubs!’ she cried. ‘Mrs Powell, how did you keep that a secret? Your jaguar’s had babies!’

  ‘Four weeks old,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘Now you know why Frieda was so tetchy.’

  It would almost be worth the risk to run in there, pick up those cubs and cuddle them. Almost. There were three, fluffy as toys, their spots smudgy as if they’d been playing with crayons. The nearest cub lolloped after a grasshopper, while the others pounced on their mother’s twitchy tail. Frieda looked worn out.

  ‘Don’t suppose she gets much help from the daddy,’ said Yusuf.

  ‘Absent.’

  ‘You re-homed him?’

  ‘No. I only ever had one jaguar.’

  Susie drummed her fingers, as if to say she was tired of riddles.

  ‘Before Christmas,’ said Mrs Powell, ‘Frieda escaped. For weeks she wandered the moors.’

  ‘People must have seen her!’ Tiffany broke in. ‘My brother found reports. It’s what put us onto Dartmoor in the first place.’

  ‘Perhaps. Anyway, I tracked her down and – with great difficulty – led her back here. Not long after that she started getting, well, fat. And now I have four jaguars.’

  ‘Are you saying,’ Yusuf said slowly, ‘that somewhere out there, on the moors where we’ve been walking…’

  ‘Flippin’ heck!’ said Susie.

  Mrs Powell shrugged. ‘I’m only mildly surprised. There have always been stories of odd beasts round here. Exotic pets that escaped years ago. Don’t worry, I doubt they eat ramblers. Walking boots are hard to chew.’

  Tiffany laughed to make sure that was a joke.

  ‘Good job you came along when you did,’ she said. ‘Or you’d have been flossing me out of Frieda’s teeth. If you hadn’t scared her with that starting-pistol…’

  ‘Starting-pistol?’ Mrs Powell frowned. ‘Oh, I see. No, that wasn’t a gun. It was this.’

  A noise split the air. Tiffany, Susie and Yusuf flinched. The jaguar raised her hackles and her cubs scampered.

  ‘That was ptah,’ said Mrs Powell. Only now did Tiffany understand that the astonishing sound had come from her mouth. ‘Some call it the pashki stun-gun. That’s what cats are really doing when we say that they’re spitting. What they spit is a blast of sound. Ptah can freeze an enemy in its tracks. It may buy you a few seconds.’

  She demonstrated again, her features screwing up in a scary snarl before the bolt of noise came like a dent popped out of metal. Tiffany felt as well as heard it, a physical impact. Rufus often did a similar thing, usually when she was holding a worming tablet. She tried it herself.

  ‘Yuck!’ Susie wiped phlegm from her jeans. Yusuf burst out laughing.

  ‘Blend Parda with Kelotaukhon,’ Mrs Powell advised, ‘and keep practising.’

  Tiffany, giggling, wiped her mouth. She watched the cubs stalk and chase and wrestle.

  ‘Shame they don’t have a dad,’ she said. ‘Couldn’t you have tracked him down?’

  ‘Who’s to say I’d find the right one?’

  ‘Risky,’ Yusuf agreed. ‘Another male would kill any cubs that aren’t his own.’

  Tiffany made a face. ‘Why does nature have to be so…’

  ‘Inhuman?’ said Mrs Powell.

  ‘Icky, I was going to say.’

  The largest cub cuffed at the head of the smallest, with club-like paws that foreboded how big it would grow. Tiffany winced again.

  ‘He’ll claw his little sister’s eyes out.’

  ‘Brother. Actually that’s not as dangerous as it looks. They won’t use their claws on each other.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘Instinct,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘Cubs of the same litter fight with their claws sheathed. Domestic kittens are the same.’ She curled up her own fingers to demonstrate. ‘One of nature’s nicer tricks. The bond between them is so strong, I doubt they could scratch each other if they tried.’

  Now Tiffany, curled upon Susie’s bed with the unread book on her knees, heard these words replaying in her head. Oh, of course! That time when she sneaked into the Hermitage. Ben, on a reflex, had struck at her with his Mau claws, and she’d suffered not a scratch. At the time she had dismissed it as mere luck. Now it made sense. Were the two of them like the jaguar cubs? Protected from each other’s claws because of something between them? Some special link or force, perhaps the very same one that drew the needle of the Oshtian Compass.

  She sat up as if a bucket of water had tipped over her. Oh no! What day was it? What was she doing here, sprawled in a guest room drowsing to birdsong? With a rush of guilt, Tiffany realised something. She had been so consumed with her wish to try and find Mrs Powell again, and so overjoyed with the miracle of actually succeeding, that she had let herself lose sight of her most important reason for doing it. Tiffany bounced off the mattress, flung the book aside and thundered down the stairs.

  ‘Ben needs your help.’

  She found her teacher at the kitchen table tinkering with the radio.

  ‘Whoever christened this contraption a wireless?’ Mrs Powell murmured. ‘I can see enough wires from here.’

  Jim trilled a greeting and butted Tiffany’s calves, rubbing at her jeans as if she were a balloon he wanted to stick to the wall.

  ‘Mrs Powell,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry. I’ve let everyone down.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  Tiffany repeated the whole story: the polecats, the fears she had for Ben. Maybe the other night she hadn’t made it clear. Only when she had trailed into silence did Mrs Powell speak.

  ‘You want me to go back with you.’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘You think Geoff’s bitten off more than he can chew.’

  ‘Maybe. I just want all the help we can get.’

  Mrs Powell rolled a screwdriver back and forth on the tabletop.

  ‘Geoffrey wouldn’t accept my help.’

  ‘Why? I thought you were friends.’

  Mrs Powell said nothing. She rattled the screwdriver to and fro. Tiffany reached out and pinned it to the table.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘I need to fix this.’

  ‘Fix it while you tell me.’

  Mrs Powell plucked out one of the radio’s vital organs.

  ‘All right. Pass me that wire-stripper. Geoffrey and I…’ she squinted at her work. ‘You know most of the story, I take it. He was my first pupil and then, when he returned from his training abroad, my associate. A useful chap to have around. I’ve never known such a fighter. Claws that could splinter pine doors. He could pick locks with the damn things. We made a formidable pair. He had the brawn, I had–’ She chuckled. ‘We both had brains, of course. So what if he respected mine more.’

  Tiffany watched her unravel an endless wire coil. Where was this leading?

  ‘We were colleagues,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘From Asia and the Far East to London’s East End. Comrades. Friends.’ She paused. ‘Just friends. But when you are alone in a wide, wide world, with only one constant companion, well. Things happen. Like they happened with Frieda.’

  Jim rustled between the chairlegs, playing with a curl of cut wire.

  ‘We were travelling through China when I realised I was pregnant. I didn’t tell Geoffrey. I had decided what to do. I’d messed up motherhood once before, as you know. I saw no sense in trying again.’

  ‘But–’ said Tiffany.

  ‘I invented an excuse to hurry back to England, where I had a termination.’

  ‘You got rid of the baby?’

  ‘It wasn’t a baby at that stage,’ Mrs Powell snapped. ‘I don’t have to justify my decision. It would have been unfair on any child to have us two as parents.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘And it would have tied me to Geoffrey too much. Besides, I was a lot older than him. In my mid-forties, though I dare say I didn’t look it.’

  ‘That’s not too
old to have a baby.’

  ‘It was for me.’ Mrs Powell held her gaze but blinked first. ‘And I had more reasons.’

  So much for not justifying her decision, thought Tiffany.

  ‘You might not think it,’ said Mrs Powell, ‘but Geoff, he’s got a temper on him. He was always too hot-headed, too much ruled by his feelings. On two occasions I had to intervene to stop him killing the poachers we had apprehended. He’d beat the daylights out of them, and all the time he’d be yelling that they deserved it for what they’d done. I’m not sure I’d have wanted that man to be the father of my child.’

  It didn’t sound much like the Geoff that Tiffany knew. ‘So you just…?’

  Mrs Powell nodded. She started to wind up the wire coil. ‘I never said a word to Geoffrey. Unfortunately, his Mau was sharper than I realised. He’d sensed that I was carrying his… that I was pregnant. And when I had it sorted out, he knew that too.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Not much.’ Mrs Powell shrugged. ‘Nothing was said openly. But the frost set in. He and I saw less of each other. We met only occasionally, and then… then we didn’t.’

  She pushed aside Jim, who was sitting on the radio’s detached rear casing.

  ‘So that’s why Geoff didn’t want me to look for you.’

  ‘Whatever ties I had with him, they withered long ago,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘We couldn’t work together now. It was Geoffrey’s decision to take on this Martin Fisher. He must deal with the consequences.’

  ‘But what about–’

  ‘It’s up to him,’ Mrs Powell repeated. ‘And you, of course. There’s always you, Tiffany.’

  Tiffany drew breath to protest. Then the radio crackled and began to sing a Take That song. Mrs Powell tapped it. ‘A-ha. Good as new.’

  PEST CONTROL

  Ten hours’ sleep out of forty-eight was too little for a teenager and nothing like enough for a cat. Ben was knackered. He could almost feel grumpy claws scratching in his head as something tried to curl up in there. Another broken night. He only hoped he could get upstairs without waking anyone else.