Cat's Paw (18 page)

Cat skills learned in an after-school club were no match for the real thing. Her one advantage was a human brain, only hers was too terrified to work. She ran for the nearest tall tree. No
– if it climbed after her, she’d be trapped. There was one option left. She whirled around.

The jaguar gripped the earth in its paws while its wasp-coloured eyes sized her up. Tiffany prepared to leap over it again. Then her courage died. The beast was ready. It knew what she would do.
Steadily, one step at a time, it closed the distance between them, its body bunching, ready to spring.

‘P- please,’ she whispered. ‘I helped you.’

She had no time to scream as the jaguar lunged.

It jerked back as if caught on a leash. A queer sound, sharp as a pistol shot, rang off the tree trunks. A human shape dropped from a tree, dim behind bars of sunset and shade. The jaguar fanned
its whiskers and growled. The sound spat out again, oddly metallic, the noise of someone flicking an empty can. The cat flinched.

‘Frieda. Tsss!’

The figure waved an arm. The jaguar u-turned, as if remembering an appointment elsewhere, and vanished into bushes. On a high branch a bird whistled.

Tiffany peeled herself off the tree that had become stuck to her back. She squinted through the twilight. The figure was slender, dressed in paint-smeared jeans and a red top that looked like a
Liverpool football shirt. Its hair was in a ponytail. The woman turned towards her and the words broke from Tiffany like a sob.

‘Mrs Powell!’

She was the same. Always smaller than Tiffany remembered, lithe and straight as a sapling, betraying her age only in her lined face and grey hair. And alive. Tiffany’s last lingering
doubts disappeared.

‘Mrs Powell!’

She ran to her teacher, arms wide to hug her. Mrs Powell stepped backwards.

‘Ah. Sorry.’ Tiffany let her hands fall. ‘I suppose you don’t do hugs, do you.’

‘What do you want?’

‘Well, I –’ Tiffany composed herself. ‘I’m
here
. I came to find you. And I did it!’

‘I can see that.’

Undergrowth crashed. Susie and Yusuf burst through.

‘Tiffs! You’re safe. You should have a medal for –’ Susie broke off. ‘Oh wow – it’s her! I mean, it’s you! Yusuf, she’s really
here!’

‘Hi,’ said Yusuf, shyly.

‘Is that the lot?’ Mrs Powell cut in. ‘You haven’t invited your whole school, I trust?’

‘No,’ said Tiffany. ‘Just us.’ What was wrong here?

Mrs Powell blinked her cold green eyes.

‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing,’ she said. ‘But this is private property. I’ll thank you to leave.’

She walked away.

‘Wait!’ Tiffany cried. ‘Mrs Powell! I– I don’t understand. We’ve come so far and… and I missed you. And –’

‘You made a mistake.’ Mrs Powell’s voice faded as she withdrew into the trees. ‘Now go. Go away.’

The last drop of sunlight drained from the wood. Branches crowded black against an opal sky and a crow cawed upon a nodding spray of twigs. The air felt dank.

Yusuf breathed an Arabic curse.

‘Tiffany? Are you going to stand for that?’

She stared into the darkness.

‘No, Dad. Nothing’s wrong. Just thought I should call.’

‘Your mum’s okay, is she?’

‘Seems to be.’

Ben had just got off the phone to her. She hadn’t seemed okay.

‘You coming back home at the end of the week?’

‘Mm. ’Spect so.’

‘Bet you’re bored out there with none of your friends around.’

‘Sort of. But Mum likes having me here.’

‘Ben,
I
like having you here. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Ben. ‘I didn’t mean–’

‘Maybe I should have a word with her. Can you pass her the phone?’

‘Er… no.’ Ben thought fast. ‘No, she’s having a nap. One of her migraine heads.’

‘Better not then.’ Dad sniffed. ‘Well. Ring again tomorrow, won’t you?’

‘If I can.’

Ben shut the phone. Thomas climbed off the H of HMV and onto the window ledge beside him.

‘That was Kevin,’ said Ben. ‘Checking up on us.’

Thomas gave him a funny look and carried on climbing towards the roof of the music store. Ben followed, eaten up by worry. What if Dad phoned Mum himself? No, he wouldn’t. They never
phoned each other direct. But what if they
did
speak? After thirty seconds of confusion they would know that he was missing. For the first time in his life he willed them to stay cross with
each other.

His first week among the polecats was at last behind him. For most of it he’d been stuck inside the Hermitage, eating there, sleeping there, going quietly spare. Each day he tried to sand
away the hours in the library or the games area, and each night he awoke to the sleep-moans of his bunkmates. When he wasn’t scared he was bored. The only things to look forward to (apart
from takeaway Big Macs) were the daily mustel-id classes. These broke the monotony and wore off his pent-up energy, but left him feeling more infected than invigorated. Also they made him stand
out. The exercises, which had names like Mesmerise and Whip Strike, felt awkward, like writing with his left hand, and he kept lapsing into pashki. Sometimes he caught Jeep watching him.

Martin Fisher rarely showed his face, but the station creaked with his presence. When he did speak it was mostly to Kevin, but sometimes, when the Hermitage was emptier, in the pit of silence
between passing trains, a muttering would seep from the walls. In his den below the stairs Fisher was ranting to himself. Ben would creep as close as he dared and every time his nerve failed him
before he was halfway to Fisher’s door. Even with cat hearing, the only clear word he had picked up so far was
river
.

At least he was allowed out now. When they weren’t robbing trains in rabbiting raids, off-duty polecats were allowed to roam the streets in small groups. It was here that Ben remembered
the phone Dean had given him to use as an alarm clock. A stolen pay-as-you-go, it had some credit left. Slinking out of earshot he had dialled his parents in turn. It was to double-check that they
still believed his cover stories, not, he told himself, not because he ached to hear their voices.

Like abseilers without ropes, the gang swarmed down the side of a pub into an alley off Oxford Street. Ben was impressed at how the polecats could climb. Although mustel-id could boast nothing
like Mau claws, it had a technique called the martengrip, which locked the finger joints until bare hands hardened into grappling hooks. Most of these kids could scale a shop-front with ease.

They clustered outside a newsagent’s. Anyone daring to go in for a paper ran a gauntlet of taunts, chewing-gum missiles and the occasional banger. Ben, trying to blend in, was dumping
ice-cream down some poor girl’s neck when he saw Thomas, staring through the window of a television shop on the corner of Tottenham Court Road. Of course, it was Sunday afternoon, when they
showed the
Eastenders
omnibus.

Thomas wouldn’t talk about his actor father. It was hard enough getting him to admit that he’d ever had a father. However, by working on him night after night, Ben had learned a few
things. Thomas was an only child. Taught at home by someone called Phoebe, he’d never gone to school. He wasn’t allowed television, except for
Eastenders
and other things Daddy
was in, and his friends were three cousins two or more years younger. Then one day Phoebe took him to McDonald’s for the first time. Thomas had insisted on it as his birthday treat. There he
met a boy named Alec. Alec was exciting. When Phoebe got up to buy apple pies for pudding, Thomas left the restaurant with Alec’s gang.

Now television light washed over his face. Ben watched him watching a dozen identical screens. Did he follow the story, or merely hunt for scenes that featured Keith Grogan, played by Tony
Sherwood? Did Thomas see the character or his dad?

Shrieks of laughter nearly took Ben’s ears off. Hanging out with this gang was murder. Earlier this afternoon Gary had started a contest to see who could grab the most live pigeons.
Although Alec won, two of his seven birds had died, so Gary said he was disqualified. Alec went for him, ramming him into the window of Selfridges, which cracked, at which point security guards
rushed out of the department store and everyone fled. Jeep outdid them all. This morning he had stolen boxes of bangers from a firework shop. All along Oxford Street he’d moved sniper-like
from roof to roof, igniting the squibs with a plastic cigarette lighter and lobbing them down onto streets thick with shoppers. Screams of shock only goaded him on, until he was making machine-gun
noises and spreading his arms like a bomber’s wings.

They were all mental. Ritchie marched into shops to eat Easter eggs off the shelves. No-one tried to stop him. At last he’d been sick in a slimy brown splash on the pavement, which
explained the laughter. Ritchie laughed too, wiping his chin, and carried on necking his chocolate milkshake –

‘Ben!’ Hannah’s nails raked his forearm. ‘Stop him!’

Bewildered he turned. Thomas was running off down the street.

‘I tried to– He just –’ Hannah babbled. ‘He saw his dad on the telly and then… Ben, we got to stop him!’

For a full second Ben stood there. So Thomas was escaping. Good. He would go back home, home to his father, home to Phoebe, whoever she was. Ben felt a surge of triumph, of pure happiness.

And then he was running. He was running after Thomas along the busy pavement, guided by his Mau whiskers through gaps in the crowds, weaving without slowing as only a cat can. Thomas saw him and
veered into the road. From the right and the left a white van and motorbike were closing. Ben could hardly bear to watch, and so it was with blind instinct that he plunged through the stream of
traffic, neatly hurdled the motorcyclist and knocked Thomas out of the van’s path with something that was half pounce, half rugby tackle. They fell against a bus shelter.

‘Wait,’ Ben gasped. Thomas was scrambling to his feet. In desperation Ben hit him. It was a gentle enough stomach-jab that Dad had once taught him, but it winded Thomas nicely.

‘No,’ Ben hissed in his ear, as he doubled over. ‘Not yet.’

‘Let me go. Or I’ll tell. You were talking. To your dad.’

Fear gave Ben heartburn.

‘If you want to go home,’ he growled, ‘trust me. Please. Now play along. It’s all right–’ he called to the gang, who were catching them up, ‘he thought
the shop guy was calling the police. Just freaked out.’

‘Police!’ Gary scoffed. ‘Grow up.’

Maybe they guessed what Thomas had really been trying to do, for the gang’s mood darkened after that. There were no more fights or jokes. After an hour’s slapdash shoplifting it was
time to go back. They piled aboard a bus heading out of the city centre. Ben sat so he didn’t have to look at Thomas. They were rumbling through Islington Green by the time he noticed who had
sat beside him. It was Hannah.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured.

Ben said nothing.

‘You had to,’ said Hannah. ‘If he’d gone, we’d of got it so bad. Like when you left, only worse.’

‘At least he’d be home.’

Hannah gave him an I’m-with-stupid look.

‘Ben, no-one makes it home. Mad Ferret finds them.’

‘So he says.’

‘It’s true. I’ve seen proof. We all thought Hayden had got away until–’

‘Hayden? Who’s he?’

Hannah didn’t answer. The bus sailed along the shore of Clissold Park. Out of habit Ben glanced across the street into the road where he used to live. It looked as distant as a picture on
television.

‘Why?’ said Ben.

‘Why what?’

‘Why are you with Fisher? What are any of you doing here?’

‘Same as you, I suppose.’ Hannah shrugged. ‘’Cos no-one else wants us.’

‘Did you
mean
to join?’

‘Martin took me in when I was lost,’ said Hannah.

‘Lost?’

‘Couldn’t find my way home, could I? I was only like, six or seven.’

‘What happened?’

‘Can’t remember. We was visiting. My mum came to London for the shops, I think. We lived a long way away. A place called Cambridge. I don’t know where that is. She let go of my
hand in the Disney toy shop and…’ Hannah’s pale face crinkled. ‘I went outside to look for her. That’s where I met Kevin. He said he’d take me to someone
who’d look after me. That’s it really.’

No. That absolutely could not be it.

‘Parents don’t just lose their kids,’ said Ben. ‘They look for them. They call the police. They don’t give up and go home.’

‘Kevin said people do. After a while.’ Hannah got up. The bus had stopped and the gang was shoving its way off. ‘I asked if we could put an advert on the telly, but Kevin said
that was expensive. And we couldn’t use the internet because… I can’t remember why not. For a while I thought Mum would ring Martin up to say she was coming to fetch me. But she
never did.’

Ben almost walked into a litter bin. The bus drove off.

‘Too late now,’ said Hannah. ‘It must have been four or five years. And anyway–’ she recollected herself, ‘I’ve got a new family here.’