But it wouldn’t be over until he had taken care of that cat, that sodding monster. And the kid. The kid must be keeping it shut up somewhere. If the cat got free, it would come back here. It had nowhere else to go. It would come looking for Ingrid – and then he’d have it.
What if it didn’t? What if the kid kept holding on to it? No, he couldn’t do that, not for long. Sooner or later, he’d have to let the cat out. And then the cat would return, back to the scene of the crime. One side of his mouth twitched upwards in an unpleasant smile. Just what he was doing himself, of course. And with the same excuse – they both lived here – or had.
He looked back across the street at the house where he would not live much longer. The three men who had been the earliest arrivals were talking together now, ignoring the newcomers who had just driven up in an outside broadcast TV van and were doing their best to pretend the others were not there.
The first three suddenly banded together and swung off in the direction of the nearest pub. The new crowd shuffled along the pavement, viewing the house from different angles, obviously trying to decide where to make a start. One of them looked across the street hopefully, seeking someone, anyone, to interview.
Nils drew farther back and began moving away, using the hedge for cover. This house was empty, as were the houses on either side of his own across the street – the occupants all belonged to the same social club and were off on a group junket to the Caribbean. The media would search in vain for someone to interview. That was why he had chosen this opportunity to do away with Ingrid – there was no one around to hear her screams.
He could cut through the back garden here with no danger of being observed and out into the street running parallel with this one. As he moved along, another squirrel darted across his path and scurried up the nearest tree. They must have a nest there.
Damn animals! All animals!
At least, he congratulated himself, he had never mentioned the bloody cat to the police. An oversight easily explained by his state of shock, if anyone required an explanation. He’d been in such a state, it would be no surprise if it were weeks before he even remembered the existence of a cat.
Meanwhile, he would keep searching. The cat would lead him to the kid – the witness. Then he could dispose of both of them.
No one knew it, but Leif Eriksson was the ace up his sleeve.
13
‘Sheets …’ Auntie Mags muttered wildly. ‘Pillowcases … decent teacups …’ She rampaged around the room, scavenging for funds: pulling a fiver from a drawer and shaking some pound coins out of the jam jar where Josh dumped his spare cash. Finally, desperately, she caught up the jacket he had left draped over the back of a chair and began going through the pockets.
Robin backed a little farther up the stairs, keeping well out of her way. She’d been like this since hanging up the telephone after Granna’s call.
‘Hah!’ Mags found a twenty in the top inside pocket and waved it triumphantly before another thought blotted out the triumph. ‘Oh, God! Towels!’
She stared around frantically, then pounced on a CD, extracting another twenty from inside its sleeve. She shook out a few more CDs, but the first had been a lucky guess; there was no more money concealed.
She gave a loud unsteady sigh that sounded more like a sob and dashed out of the room, out of the house. The front door slammed shut behind her.
Robin waited for a minute, then descended the stairs slowly as the reverberations died away. At the foot of the stairs, he hesitated, cocking his head for the sound of any returning footsteps. But Auntie Mags had gone shopping and it was obviously going to take her quite a while. Josh wasn’t likely to return soon, either; he had to be at the radio station a couple of hours before airtime in order to check everything out and update his script with any last-minute ideas or developments in the breaking news.
He had the house to himself.
He sighed deeply and went into the dining-room, feeling weighed down by the problems he carried on his shoulders. He dragged a chair over to the Welsh dresser, climbed up on it and stretched on tiptoe for the tea caddy. Lifting the lid, he frowned down into the container. There weren’t as many cigarettes in it as there had been before.
How many did he dare take? Definitely, three to replace the three he had given to Jamie. But, after that …?
He sighed again. The weight of the world settled over him. No matter what he did, he was in trouble.
Josh would kill him if he caught him. But it was the only way he could think of to placate Kerry. Not that Kerry would really expect him to produce Leif Eriksson after what had happened to Mrs Nordling. He could just look Kerry in the eye and claim that he hadn’t got round to trying to steal the cat yet, and now, of course, there was no chance. Even Kerry couldn’t expect anyone to go through a police barrier and into a house where a woman had been murdered.
He pulled his thoughts away abruptly. He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to remember. He must never allow anybody to suspect how much he knew.
He tried not to notice that his hand was shaking as he carefully extracted six more cigarettes. The remaining cluster of cigarettes clearly showed up the gap that was left. He hesitated, but had already decided that he couldn’t offer Kerry fewer than the six extra. That ought to be enough to make him happy and, with luck, distract him from any idea of setting Robin an alternative unpleasant task to perform.
Robin shook the tea caddy experimentally, spilling the cigarettes out of their neat rows and tumbling them against each other. Yes, that looked better. You couldn’t see quite how many were missing now. He shook it again. Yes, a lot better. And Josh would think he’d tumbled the contents around himself the next time he pulled down the tea caddy. He might not even notice how many were missing, or be sure that he hadn’t smoked them himself. He hoped.
He replaced the caddy and jumped to the floor, even remembering to wipe his footmarks off the chair before returning it to its place. He was getting awfully good at covering his tracks; maybe he was cut out for a life of crime.
The house seemed colder when it was so quiet. He wished that Mum had allowed him to stay in their old flat. He’d have been all right by himself and his friends could have come to visit, so he wouldn’t have been lonely. He didn’t really see why he couldn’t have stayed there, even though Mum had explained that she was putting it up for sale. He could have helped; he could have shown people around just as well as any estate agent. Better. He could have shown them the bit of the windowsill that lifted up, revealing a secret space between the inner and outer walls, just right for hiding a few comic books, or the loose floorboard beneath which valuables could be concealed. Or …
He didn’t like this house. Josh didn’t want him here. Why couldn’t things have stayed the way they were? It was bad enough when Dad went away, but he’d still had Mum. Now she’d married Steve, his ‘new Dad’, she’d told him, but then they’d both gone away and left him. Where would they live when they came back? If they came back? Would they still want him to live with them?
He shivered. This house was getting colder by the minute. And maybe Mags or Josh would return unexpectedly because they’d forgotten something. He had to get upstairs and hide these awful cigarettes until he could deliver them to Kerry tomorrow.
Tomorrow … He shivered again and trudged up the stairs slowly, his feet dragging on every step. Maybe he could run away. It was not the first time the thought had come to him, but he had always been able to recognise it for the false hope it was. He was too young, too small, to have that option. They’d catch him right away and then he’d be in worse trouble, with everyone mad at him. Maybe in three or four years, when he was into his teens and almost grown-up, he could get away with it. Eleven was such a nothing age, into double digits so he wasn’t a little kid any more, but not yet into the teens, not for another year and a half. If he could stand the way things were for that long …
In the press of other troubles, he had momentari
ly forgotten the cat. He pushed open the door incautiously and heard a high sharp yowl of protest.
‘Oh, no!’ He saw the cat skitter back as he entered. ‘I’m sorry, Leif. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ The cat must have come to meet him and then been rewarded with a blow to its sensitive nose. ‘I’m sorry.’
Leif was a forgiving cat and the blow hadn’t been very hard, probably it had startled him more than hurt him. He inched forward slowly, nose twitching, eyes on the possible bounty clutched in Robin’s hand.
‘Not for you,’ Robin apologised. ‘Let me put them away and then I’ll open a tin of catfood for you to eat.’
‘Eat’ seemed to be a word Leif recognised. He reared up on his hind legs to sniff at Robin’s hand, then dropped back on all four legs and backed away sneezing.
‘Told you,’ Robin said absently, looking around for a safe hiding place. There weren’t many in this bedroom and he didn’t dare go outside the room where someone might stumble over his hoard. With an increasing feeling of uneasiness, he had to settle for putting them at the back of the dressing-table drawer, alongside Mrs Nordling’s bracelet.
The cat leaped to the top of the dressing-table and advanced to its edge, peering down into the drawer and watching intently as Robin rearranged his underclothes to hide the contraband.
‘You’re feeling better!’ Robin felt a glow of relief. ‘You’re getting lively.’
Only … the relief gave way to a fresh anxiety. A lively inquisitive cat would not be willing to stay cooped up in one small room for very much longer. If Leif was getting over his shock and bruising, it wouldn’t be long before he wanted to begin exploring more of his new surroundings, perhaps even go out-of-doors where he might be seen. That could be disastrous – for both of them.
‘Just be patient,’ he pleaded. ‘I promise you, we’ll work something out.’
14
Josh was up to something. Or perhaps he’d been fired again and was working round to a good moment to break it to her. Mags lowered her eyelids and observed him through her lashes. He wasn’t fooling her, but he was fooling himself if he thought she might be upset at having to leave this dump. Why couldn’t he just spit it out? But he never did anything the easy way.
He was hunched over the computer keyboard, moodily stabbing at the keys. Random words flashed up on the screen and then disappeared again with varying degrees of speed. He was talking to himself on that thing. Doodling, he called it. She could follow the pattern of his thoughts as words came and went.
Outrage … disgrace … evil … our fair city – No, that one was too much, even for Josh, it disappeared instantaneously. Not safe … he tried again … in our own beds …
She had it then. The Nordling murder. Josh was planning to make a big thing of it on his show. And why not? It was the biggest thing to hit this town since … since …? She shrugged mentally. She had no knowledge of the history of this town if it had one. It was just a town, like so many others they had lived in since she had linked up with Josh and joined him on his downward spiral. This one was a seaside town, that was the only difference. Otherwise, it was just as seedy, crumbling, downmarket and boring as any of the others.
Deserted house … abandoned … empty windows like hollow eyes … what memories of horror? … Josh was well away now. He picked up speed as he continued with notes to himself. Grieving widower incommunicado … get interview first … hardhitting late-night stuff … Get him to vow revenge? … Push to tears? …
‘You’d better be careful,’ Mags warned. ‘The last time you pushed an interviewee too hard, he complained to the Broadcasting Authority and the Press Council and threatened to sue the station – and you got the push yourself.’
‘Don’t worry.’ Josh did not even glance at her. ‘I can handle it. This is our ticket out of here.’
Find Nordling … Gone to ground … Where? …
‘You promise?’
It probably would be, but which way? Josh thought it would be upwards, towards that media heaven of his own London-based television show – or national radio, at least. Mags knew from bitter experience that he could antagonise everyone in sight and everything could go wrong again. That caravan on the far side of a sea of mud flickered mockingly on the horizon.
Sometimes she thought the only reason she didn’t leave him was because she wouldn’t give her mother the satisfaction of being able to say, ‘I told you so.’
Her mother! Sooner or later, she was going to have to break that news to Josh. Later, everything inside her cried, much later. Only she couldn’t wait until Mummy turned up on the doorstep. That would really provoke him into one of their blistering rows – in front of Mummy or not.
‘Josh …’ she cleared her throat and tried again. ‘Josh, I have to talk to you …’
‘Talk away.’ His abstracted tone betrayed that he wasn’t listening and, no matter what she said, he wasn’t going to listen to it.
‘Josh …’
There was a thump in the hallway, as of someone who could not resist jumping the last two steps to the ground, then Robin appeared in the doorway, clutching an armload of books.
‘Auntie Mags? I’m going to the library. Maybe I’ll be a long time. I have to look up a lot of stuff.’
‘Take all the time you want,’ Josh muttered. ‘In fact – ’
‘Josh!’ Mags cut him off. Robin had shrunk back defensively, only too well able to finish for himself the sentence Josh had started.
‘That’s all right, Robin.’ The smile she sent him tried to make up for Josh’s hostility. ‘You run along.’
‘Do you want me to bring anything back for you?’ Robin offered. ‘I used to do all sorts of errands for Mum. I could do any shopping you wanted. Or bring back a book for you – ’
‘Not right now, thank you.’ He was trying so hard to be helpful. Her heart twisted, he shouldn’t feel the need to justify his presence here. That was another thing she had to talk to Josh about.
‘Anything she wants, I can get for her,’ Josh said. He turned back to his computer, dismissing both of them.
And that was another thing: he might at least offer Robin the use of the computer once in a while – the money Eva had given them for Robin’s lodging had helped to update it. On the other hand, it was a good idea for Robin to learn to use the library properly – and he probably welcomed the excuse to get out of the house.
‘I’m going out myself shortly,’ she told Robin. ‘Perhaps you can shop for me another day.’
He nodded and made his escape with obvious relief. Mags decided to do the same. Josh was so deeply immersed in working on his rant that he wouldn’t even notice she had left.
15
Robin stopped running after he had rounded the corner, his heart still pounding, but not because he had been running. Josh hated him – and he hated Josh. How had a nice woman like Auntie Mags got herself mixed up with a dork like that?
One of the mysteries of grown-up life.
That was what Mum had always said to him when he asked a question she couldn’t – or wouldn’t – answer. It was marginally better than Nothing to worry your little head over, but not much. There was nothing but worry these days.
He clutched his books tighter and turned towards the library. He had to get rid of these books before he faced Kerry and the gang and told them that he’d never had a chance to get near the cat before Mrs Nordling had … died.
He hardly noticed that he had begun running again. As though he could outrun the memory of that awful night. If it bothered him that much, how could Mr Nordling live with himself? He was the one who had done it, after all. Didn’t he have even worse memories … more dreadful nightmares?
Even the cat twitched in its sleep sometimes and emitted little distressed mews. Robin was sure Leif was having nightmares, too. But the books were no good at telling him anything he could do about that. Maybe he could find a better book today, one that could really help him to help Leif.
Inside the library,
Robin scanned shelves earnestly, wondering if he could find something more informative on the adult shelves upstairs. But librarians were awfully rigid about not allowing children into the adult section. Even if they did allow him, they would be sure to pay particular attention to any books he wanted to take out. And, anyway, he couldn’t take a book to the meeting of the gang. If he found one, he’d have to come back for it later.
The familiar prickling at the back of his neck told him that he was being watched again. He turned slowly and was not surprised to find Jamie Patel observing him.
Instinctively, Robin moved on to the next section of shelves, with elaborate casualness, as though he had just stopped in front of the Pets section by accident.
This brought him in front of the Hobbies section and he frowned at the books displayed as though trying to decide which one really interested him. Nothing caught his attention and he was relieved – even if something had, he couldn’t carry it to the meeting. The gang already knew too much about him, he did not want to let them find out his real interests. If he had any.
A vague uneasiness swept over him as he looked at the crowded shelves. All those books about all those subjects – and every one of vital all-consuming interest to someone.
But not to him. What was wrong with him? Why didn’t he have a hobby, a real interest? He turned away impatiently and, as he had expected, found Jamie waiting for him.
‘Going to the meeting?’ he asked.
Jamie nodded glumly, showing as little enthusiasm for the encounter as he felt himself. For a brief moment, he wondered why they were bothering, then common sense reasserted itself.
If they didn’t join the gang, they would have no proper identity at school. They’d just be the ‘new kids’, forever hanging around on the fringes of whatever was going on. Worse, if they were to back out now, after agitating to join the gang, they would become the target for its bullying and life would be even more miserable. Better to be with the gang than seem to be against them.
To Catch a Cat Page 7