The First of Nine

by James Barrie

  She picked up the brown envelope from the door mat and removed its contents. There were two sheets of A4 paper. A pink post-it note was stuck on the top one.

  ‘Thought these might be useful,’ her mother had written on the heart-shaped post-it note.

  One photocopied sheet contained a breakdown of the Cabbage Soup Diet, the other the Dukan Diet.

  Evidently her mother had noticed that she’d put on a bit of weight in the last few weeks, since Peter Morris’s death. She went and put the papers into the recycling bin.

  Back in the front room, she noticed the red LED on her telephone flashing, telling her someone had left her a message. She knew it would be her mother.

  She played the message: ‘Did you get the leaflets I left you,’ her mother said. ‘I thought they might be useful. I went to the library today…

  ‘This new boyfriend of yours,’ she went on, ‘I hope you have done a full police background check on him. You never know these days. And did you say he was a geologist? I bet he has grubby fingers… Oh your father wants to say hello.’

  ‘Hello’, her father said. The answer phone beeped. Then there was just the silence of her front room.

  The uneasiness in her stomach had become a general dissatisfaction with her life. She hated her job. She was now ill at ease in her own house, and did not even feel comfortable in her own skin. If only she had another quarter of crispy duck, but now it was too late.

  She finished the bottle of wine, poured herself a glass of water and went upstairs.

  She lay in bed and thought of her neighbour who had been arrested for killing the pigeon man and later released. He was probably sleeping on the other side of her bedroom wall contemplating who he was going to kill next.

  She thought of the Turkish woman, Zeynep, and her missing cat, Bal. She thought of her own cat Theodore, who had been accused of taking that stupid pigeon by Wendy Morris. She thought of Peter Morris, who had had his head bashed in. She reached under the bed and reassured herself that her hockey stick was there.

  She wished Jonathan was with her. She texted him: ‘Hello, are you awake?’ and when he didn’t respond after ten minutes she understood that he was no doubt sleeping in his hotel room on the other side of the country. She turned over and began to cry into her pillow.

  Downstairs Theodore lapped at the aromatic duck grease that coated the tin foil container left on the floor. Then he heard Emily crying to herself from the bedroom upstairs. He finished the last droplets of grease and padded upstairs.

  ‘Oh, Theo,’ Emily said, when he settled on the pillow beside her. ‘What’s happening to me?’

  Theodore tried to reassure her. I’ll find out, he purred. I’ll get to the bottom of it.

  The Art of the Mundane

  Theodore was sitting on the boundary wall of Michael’s house, within a tangle of overgrown ivy. The sash window at the back of the house was open a couple of inches, and Theodore could hear classical music. Michael was working on his drawing.

  Theodore watched as Michael added tiny pencil marks to an incredibly detailed sketch of the back alley, looking down from the top of the hill to the church at the bottom. He was now working on the clematis that hung over Theodore and Emily’s back wall. He used the little wooden mallet as a rest, so that he wouldn’t smudge his work. So that’s what the mallet’s for, thought Theodore.

  Michael took a break. In the kitchen he poured himself a glass of green liquid. He winced as he swallowed the wheatgrass and Theodore winced with him.

  Neither man nor cat was meant to eat greens, thought Theodore. They were only good for clearing out your digestive tract. Even dogs knew that. He watched as Michael drained the contents of the small glass, his face screwed up.

  Michael turned and faced the kitchen window, his face still contorted. He spotted Theodore perched in the ivy and hissed through his teeth at the cat. He returned to the lounge and began to apply delicate shading to the clematis.

  Theodore closed his eyes. He wasn’t overly fond of Michael either.

  He opened his eyes again when he heard a door slam.

  Michael swore. A thick black pencil line now extended from the clematis down to the hexagonal cobblestones outlined in the foreground. He took a deep breath, snapped his pencil into two and threw both pieces at the wall.

  ‘What’s up?’ Philip said, entering the room.

  ‘Look what you’ve made me do.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Philip, surveying the picture. ‘It’ll rub out, won’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Michael said. ‘I think I can fix it. But do you have to slam the door every time you come in?’

  ‘Sorry Mikey,’ Philip said. He walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge. ‘Who’s going to buy a drawing of a back alley, anyway?’

  ‘Somebody who appreciates art,’ Michael said. ‘That’s who.’

  ‘So how many of these pictures have you actually sold?’

  ‘It’s not all about money,’ Michael said. ‘If it were, I’d be a stockbroker or something, you know, in the City...’

  ‘I just can’t see you becoming famous drawing pictures of back alleys.’

  ‘It’s about seeing the beauty in the mundane,’ Michael said.

  ‘Mundane being the appropriate word,’ Philip said, pouring a glass of milk.

  ‘One day I will be appreciated. You wait… They will know who I am.’

  ‘I saw a nice pair of trainers in town,’ Philip said, changing the subject. ‘Two hundred pounds though.’ He sucked in air through his teeth.

  ‘You’ve got a new pair of trainers,’ Michael said, looking down at Philip’s feet.

  Philip was wearing a pair of bright red trainers.

  ‘Yes, but these were yellow,’ Philip said. ‘I don’t have a pair of yellow ones.’

  ‘Do you need a pair of yellow ones?’

  ‘Well, I don’t need a pair of yellow trainers,’ Philip said. ‘I just thought they looked good. They would go with that silk shirt you bought me the other week…’

  Philip sat down at the table in the lounge. He took a drink of milk. He looked out of the back window.

  ‘Every time I come round here,’ he said, a thin milk moustache on his top lip, ‘I think about what happened that morning. That poor old man being killed. They still haven’t caught him, have they?’

  ‘No,’ Michael said, his pencil poised above the paper. ‘It was a terrible thing to happen.’

  ‘Yes, terrible,’ Philip said. He looked again out of the window, his eyes narrowed to slits. ‘A terrible thing to happen.’

  From within the ivy Theodore yawned. He was wasting his time investigating this pair. He couldn’t imagine either of them hurting a fly; let alone a little old man.

  The Loneliness of the Undercover Cat

  As any seasoned detective will tell you, surveillance work is tedious and tiring. The endless hours spent listening to conversations. Never knowing when something pertinent might slip from an unguarded mouth. Never knowing when a fragment of conversation may become relevant to the investigation later. The hours spent enduring the shifting weather. Not being able to slip home for a bite of food or sip of water for fear of missing a slip of the tongue.

  It was essential but dull work.

  Anyone passing would think that Theodore was just a cat sitting on a wall, and not a detective carrying out covert surveillance. He understood that this was what made him superior to the police. If a police officer was sitting on your back wall, staring at you through your kitchen window, you would probably have something to say.

  Theodore jumped down into the back alley and up onto the top of the wall on the other side. Through the trellis he saw the pigeon loft, its white paintwork glistening in the spring sun.

  He counted only three pigeons. They flitted in and out of their roosts, fluttered over the yard and rested on the eaves of the houses. There had been half a dozen. Now there were only three. They were restless.

  What was happening to the pigeons? Theodore
wondered.

  Through the trellis he watched as Irene and Wendy ate dinner at the kitchen table. A radio on the kitchen windowsill was tuned to Minster FM. The women chewed on their food as the news headlines were read out.

  New plans had been announced for the old Terry’s chocolate factory, located to the south of Clementhorpe; alcohol-fuelled violence had erupted in York city centre following yesterday’s horse racing, and finally a multiple pile up on the A64 was causing delays on the eastbound carriageway, back to Tadcaster.

  There was no mention of Peter Morris’s murder, noted Theodore. There had been no developments. Nothing new. It was no longer news.

  Wendy stood up and approached the window. She turned off the radio and returned to her dinner.

  ‘Who’d have thought it?’ Irene said. ‘They’ll be building houses at Terry’s.’

  ‘Better than it being left derelict,’ Wendy said.

  ‘Aye,’ Irene said. ‘It’s been closed a few years now.’

  ‘I knew the factory would close as soon as they stopped making them chocolate oranges,’ Wendy said. ‘It was only a matter of time.’

  ‘Aye,’ Irene agreed. ‘It was only a matter of time.’

  Irene’s husband had been forced into redundancy before he’d reached sixty, after the production of chocolate oranges had moved to Poland. Too old to find another job, he’d idled around the house for a few months before breathing his last during a particularly eventful Crimewatch.

  Wendy was bent over a plate of leftover chicken, and chips Irene had bought from Mr White’s fish and chip shop. Crumpled newspaper and greaseproof paper lay on the kitchen side.

  ‘He’s struggling,’ Irene told Wendy Morris. ‘I was the only one in.’

  ‘He can’t compete with those Chinese.’ Wendy said. ‘When they started doing fish and chips, it was the beginning of the end for Frank White.’

  Irene sighed and forked a chip into her mouth.

  ‘It’s only a matter of time before he sells up,’ Wendy went on, chewing on a mouthful of chicken and chips. ‘It’ll be a kebab shop by the end of the year, mark my words.’

  ‘The Wongs cook everything from frozen,’ Irene said. ‘They import their fish from Russia. They serve their chips in polystyrene trays.’

  ‘He can’t afford to keep going,’ Wendy said. She took a mouthful of tea to clear her mouth.

  ‘The chips from the Chinese don’t taste the same, I tell you,’ Irene said. ‘It’s like I’ve always said…Two Wongs don’t make a White...’ She slapped the kitchen table, laughing.

  ‘That joke wasn’t funny the first time you told it,’ Wendy said deadpan.

  After they had finished their tea, Wendy took their mugs to the sink, and adding them to the greasy plates, filled the sink with hot water. She pulled on her pink rubber gloves. She took the chicken carcass from the fridge and, with the aid of a small, sharp knife, began to strip the remaining meat from the carcass. She added the chicken meat to a plastic margarine tub on the side. She then slid the carcass into her kitchen bin. She began to wash the dishes.

  ‘So the police are no closer to finding out who did it?’ Irene asked.

  ‘There’s no new leads,’ Wendy said, her back to Irene. ‘That’s what they told me.’

  ‘When they found the murder weapon I thought that would be it.’

  ‘Maybe it was that Craig Foster. But there was no evidence to place him at the scene,’ Wendy said. ‘And no motive.’

  ‘Sometimes people don’t need a motive,’ Irene said. ‘They kill for the sake of it. There are some strange ones about these days.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Wendy.

  ‘Whoever did it must have planned it,’ Irene said. ‘That’s why they couldn’t find any fingerprints. They would have worn gloves.’

  Wendy Morris turned round. Suds fell from her pink rubber gloves onto the linoleum floor.

  Theodore stared at the pink clad hands which continued to drip suds onto the floor. Had Wendy clobbered her husband wearing those pink rubber gloves?

  ‘I think it’s time for our soap,’ Wendy said.

  Theodore got to his paws and stretched. He walked along the wall. Ahead of him a stocky black cat blocked his path. Theodore stopped in his tracks and held the other cat’s stare for a moment.

  They knew each other by sight. They knew each other by scent. They were enemies, and always would be. Arthur, the black cat, was not going to make way for Theodore.

  Arthur looked across at the remaining pigeons. He looked at Theodore.

  Arthur was an unneutered tom. Like all civilized cats Theodore was neutered. He looked on Arthur as some sort of primitive species, driven by baser instincts. As Theodore held the intellectual high ground, he understood enough to make way for this coarse feline.

  Theodore jumped down onto the cobbles of the back alley and padded towards his own house. Without turning round, he jumped up onto his back wall and a second later was back within the safety of his own territory.

  From the front of the house he heard Emily’s Beetle pull to an abrupt halt and Leonard Cohen come to a stop mid-lyric (‘But I swear by this song…’).

  A few seconds later he was at the front door, ready to greet her.

  Fortune Monkey: No Good

  ‘I still can’t get through.’

  Emily paced the living room, her mobile phone pressed to her ear, her sandals clacking on the laminate floor.

  ‘Why can’t we just call another takeaway?’ Jonathan said. ‘I’ve got some numbers on my phone.’ He was sitting on the sofa, remote control in hand – flicking through the endless television programme listings.

  Emily slumped down on the sofa beside him causing him to rise a couple of inches. She said, ‘They can get really busy. That’ll be why they’re not answering… Maybe they have stopped doing home deliveries… I think we should walk over there. It won’t take long.’

  Jonathan had been up at half past five that morning, and had spent all day in the bright sunshine of a car park in the Midlands, logging tubes of soil returned to the earth’s surface by a small percussive drilling rig. He didn’t want to walk half a mile back across South Bank, only to stand and wait for a takeaway when they could easily telephone another takeaway and have it delivered in minutes. But Emily had already got to her feet.

  He reluctantly got up from the sofa, pulled on his boots. He drained his glass of wine. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and get some crispy duck!’ straining to sound upbeat.

  He followed Emily out of the house and, taking her hand in his, they began to walk to the top of Avondale Terrace, his feet sweaty and sore within the confines of his boots.

  As he walked he felt his palm grow damp. He could feel the heat emanating from Emily’s palm. He removed his hand from hers, hoping she didn’t notice.

  Theodore followed, keeping at least two cars behind, so that they didn’t realize they were being tailed. He would find out the source of the crispy duck, he thought. He might even get to swipe a whole portion for himself. He licked his lips.

  The road was lined on both sides with parked cars, but compared to the back alleys, he felt exposed. He trotted between the cars, breaking into a gallop in any extended gaps.

  When Emily and Jonathan got to the top of Avondale Terrace, he waited until they were at least thirty yards ahead before sprinting across Southlands Road. His technique for crossing roads was simple: run across as fast as you can: the less time spent crossing meant the less chance of getting run over.

  The evening sky was overcast and the air heavy with a storm that would not break until the early hours of the morning. Emily felt the tension building in her head, as the atmospheric pressure rose. She hoped it would not develop into a migraine.

  She was sweating and she regretted not putting on deodorant before Jonathan came round. Fortunately she was wearing a white linen blouse which she hoped did not show the damp below her arms. She’d started to sweat more than she used to. She’d gone back on the pill and th
at was probably the reason.

  They walked down Nunthorpe Grove, a wide residential street lined with squat 1930’s semis. The locals call the road the Big Dipper, as it goes up and down like a camel’s back.

  Where there were long gaps in the parked cars, Theodore took to the front gardens, darting and diving through gaps in hedges and fences, keeping a safe distance behind Emily and Jonathan. There was definitely an art to not being seen, he thought, as he dashed across a gravel driveway and under a transit van.

  There were streetlights on either side of the road. On each mast there was an A4 sheet of paper, contained within a plastic envelope. The makeshift poster read:

  MISSING CAT

  HER NAME IS BAL

  PLEASE CALL ZEYNEP ON 07515 623070

  FOR ANY INFORMATION

  LITTLE REWARD

  There was a photograph of the blue-eyed Birman cat below the text.

  ‘She still can’t have found her cat,’ Theodore heard Emily say.

  ‘She won’t if she is offering little reward,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘I think she means a small reward, stupid.’

  Jonathan pointed out two houses near the top of Nunthorpe Grove. ‘They had to be rebuilt,’ he said. ‘The original houses were destroyed by a German bomb that was dropped nearby.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Emily said.

  ‘The houses were badly damaged,’ Jonathan went on. ‘They were on fire, so the fire brigade came and put out the fire.’

  ‘Was anybody hurt?’

  ‘There were seven young female cadets billeted in the house,’ Jonathan said, as they approached South Bank Avenue. ‘But they could only account for six. When they drained the bomb crater of firewater, they discovered the body of the seventh. She’d drowned…’

  From behind them, there was the screech of brakes.

  They turned and saw a pastel blue Fiat that had come to a stop in the middle of the road. Then they saw Theodore flattened against the road. The smell of burnt rubber hung in the air.