Catscape (7 page)

After a few more clicks of the mouse, the front page of the
Edinburgh Evening News
dated 14 August 1931 appeared on the screen. The article towards the bottom of the page had the headline, “Inventor Buys Underground Property.” Jessie read aloud, “Edinburgh saw one of its more unusual property sales last week as local businessman and inventor Charles Crockett purchased six of the shop vaults underneath Raeburn Place. Local residents were bemused by the sale. One stated that “It’s a bit of a white elephant,” while another said “He’s got more money than sense.” Crockett who owns the Watches and Clocks shop on Raeburn Place was said to want the extra space
for the inventions that have led to his increasingly eccentric reputation.”

His face had been glued to the screen a matter of seconds before, but on reading this Murdo leapt up and disappeared. There was a loud rustling of paper from the hallway and moments later the plan from the kitchen table appeared with Murdo’s legs underneath it.

“I thought we should match up the latest findings with Jessie’s plan,” said Murdo.

“Yes, just where is Crockett’s in relation to here?” said Jessie helping Murdo to flatten out the plan on the coffee table. They found that Crockett’s was situated between the Copper Kettle Café and Stein’s Fish Shop. Although some way from the manhole cover, they concluded that it was possible that the six sets of vaults bought by Charles Crockett belonged to the shops between the Watches and Clocks shop and the manhole cover, including the one that now housed the cheery Warren and Capital Computing.

“Okay, so if the vaults below the manhole cover outside here belong to Mr. Crockett then why would standing above the cellar of a clock shop make your watch go backwards?” asked Fergus.

“Well,” said Murdo who had not been put off by his last explanation being cut short, “maybe the combined power of all the watches and clocks stored in Crockett’s shop generates some sort of powerful collective time-force that gets channelled through the vaults and surfaces at various points around the city, and grips each watch it meets in a
vice-like
stranglehold that squeezes seconds out of it and …”

Murdo looked up to find that he was alone in the living room. He could hear giggling from the hall and realized that Jessie and Fergus had sneaked out while he was in full flow. Murdo shook his head in exasperation at the fact that his good ideas seemed to be ignored so often. Fergus and Jessie then had to convince
him that they were just having a bit of fun and that his idea was certainly one they would come back to, although they took care not to say when. The three then pondered on what to do next and it was Jessie who once again decided that a direct approach was the answer.

“I’ve been meaning to have this fixed for years,” she said pointing to the wall clock with its long motionless pendulum. “I could get Bob Crockett round to look at it and we can get chatting. That way there will be no interruption from customers.”

So the plan was set and Jessie made the call. She had been a customer at Crockett’s for many years and the boys could hear her chatting on the phone to someone at the shop.

“He’s coming tomorrow in his lunch hour,” said Jessie triumphantly as she came off the phone. “Right, I think we’ve done all we can on the watches until tomorrow so we should get back to the cats. Let’s not forget there are two mysteries to be solved here.”

“We could do some brainstorming,” said Murdo enthusiastically.

Fergus realized he was rolling his eyes again at the thought of more of Murdo’s “blue sky thinking.”

“Okay,” said Jessie, spotting Fergus’s reaction but forging ahead anyway. “I can’t believe that so many cats can be disappearing for any natural reason. It isn’t normal. I just have a hunch that someone, somewhere, is up to something.”

“But who would have a grudge against cats?” said Murdo.

Jock pricked up his ears.

“A demented dog lover?” suggested Fergus.

“Someone who’s allergic to cats and wants to get rid of them all?” said Murdo.

“The Society for the Protection of Garden Birds?” said Fergus.

“I don’t know,” pondered Jessie. “I don’t think we’re on the
right track here.”

“I suppose it depends what someone was doing with the cats,” said Fergus. “We’re assuming that something bad has happened to these cats.”

“Yeah,” said Murdo. “It could be someone who has a particular interest in cats.”

“Or maybe someone is pinching them to sell them on?” said Fergus.

“Yes, maybe someone is gaining by the fact that they are going missing,” said Jessie walking over to the window as if she was looking for inspiration.

“How do you mean?” said Murdo.

“Could someone profit from their disappearance?” she continued.

“Wait a minute, that’s the way we have to think — is there someone or something that would benefit from cats disappearing?” said Fergus.

They all fell silent for a while and Jessie sat back down as if the moment for bright ideas had slipped by.

“Well, I’m sure the many Cat Search Agencies out there are very busy,” said Murdo sarcastically. “Who on earth could profit from cats disappearing?”

“Someone trying to sell other kinds of pet?” suggested Fergus.

“That’s more like it,” said Jessie, “That’s the way we need to think.”

“So we need to find a pet shop that specializes in anything other than cats,” said Murdo, being less than helpful.

“It still doesn’t feel right,” said Jessie. “Maybe it’s not their disappearance that causes the profit. Maybe we need to think about where they are being taken, or what is happening to them when they get there.”

“It’s too vague … too many what’s and where’s,” said Murdo, getting increasingly irritated with the fact that the discussions
seemed to be going nowhere.

“Well, we can’t think of a good reason why someone just keeps cats away from the rest of the world, so there must be a ‘what happens.’ Something must be happening to those cats … oh my poor Jasper,” said Jessie, momentarily distracted at the thought of what might be happening to her cat.

“But what could anyone be doing with dozens of cats?” asked Murdo, beginning to go red in the face with frustration. “Playing with a giant ball of wool?”

“Are you going to come up with
any
useful ideas today?” asked Fergus. Murdo looked like he might begin to sulk.

“Cats don’t do that much other than eat, sleep and play about a bit,” said Murdo defensively, “So what on earth can someone be doing with them that makes a profit?”

“Okay then,” said Fergus deciding to act as a peacemaker before Murdo’s impatience got the better of him. “Let’s agree with Murdo. Whoever is taking the cats isn’t doing it just to play with them, and you can’t make much money out of a sleeping cat, so that just leaves eating.”

“CAT FOOD!”

The boys jumped as Jessie shot to her feet far quicker than anyone of her age should try to do. “Cat food!” she shouted again, looking at the boys with a wild glint in her eyes and not seeming to have suffered any ill effects from her sudden movement.

“Jessie, have we ever told you that it’s a bad habit to shout out random words without explanation?” said Murdo, his pulse beginning to slow again after the shock of the shout.

Jessie ignored the comment and began to pace with a slight limp around the room, her cardigan flapping as she went. “You see, you’ve cracked it. Murdo’s right — all cats do is eat, sleep and play about a bit. Fergus is right too. No one can make any money from sleeping and playing cats. So the only thing left is “eating.” What do cats eat? Cat food! It must be big business
judging by the number of adverts on the telly.”

“So what are you getting at?” said Murdo, liking Jessie’s train of thought so far, but not seeing quite what station it was about to arrive at.

“I don’t know, I don’t know, but this feels right,” said Jessie sinking back into her armchair again, frustrated that they had hit another dead end. “Someone must know what kind of food cats like. Maybe that would help us move this along a bit.”

“Wait a minute!” This time it was Fergus. He was sitting bolt upright on the settee with a fiery purpose in his eyes. The next second he leapt up, vaulted the coffee table and sat at the computer, clicking on the mouse.

“Jessie is right, someone does know what kind of food cats like,” said Fergus firmly as he clicked into an internet search engine.

“Here we are,” said Fergus.

Murdo and Jessie were standing behind him, looking at the computer screen. Fergus had run a search on “Cats and Edinburgh” to reveal the results they had looked at a few days before. He clicked on the fourth option and the screen changed.

“Well, well, well,” murmured Jessie, “that is a development. Well remembered, Fergus.”

Murdo read the screen aloud. “Study into the Formation of Feline Eating Habits, University of Edinburgh, 1995, Dissertation by Davidson Stein.”

“I knew we’d seen something about cats and eating before,” said Fergus. “Maybe this will tell us something about why cats like certain foods.”

Fergus went into the research project file and scrolled through the numerous pages of the document. It was solid text with the occasional graph or table of numbers. “Wow, this has nearly put me to sleep already it’s so boring,” said Fergus, disappointment creeping into his voice.

Headings like “Taste Formation in the Juvenile Cat” and “Personality and Preference Development in the Maturing Cat,” were highlighted in bold as Fergus scrolled through the document trying to find something that looked easy to read.

“Try going to the end to find the Conclusion,” suggested Jessie.

Fergus tried this but ended up in something called a bibliography.

“List of books,” explained Jessie.

“So I see,” said Fergus going back up the list of authors and
journals to the top of a Conclusions paragraph.

“Right, what does our friend, Davidson, conclude?” asked Jessie leaning into the screen again.

“Cats are very particular about their choice of food,” read Murdo. “Blah, blah, blah. The preference for particular tastes is formed at a very young age, namely in the first three to six months.

“Well, I think we may be heading in the wrong direction. Cats form their eating habits young and it’s not kittens that are disappearing, it’s cats of all ages. According to this they would all have decided what food they like long ago.”

“My Jasper is certainly no spring chicken,” said Jessie, “But there’s something about this idea. I like it.”

“Just imagine if someone cornered the cat food market. How much would that be worth?” said Fergus.

“Millions?” speculated Murdo.

“Billions?” added Jessie.

“Gazillions,” said Fergus emphatically. “Imagine if someone could make sure that cats only liked one brand of cat food. They would be laughing all the way to the bank.”

“So,” said Murdo joining in on the act, “All you would have to do would be to kidnap loads of cats and somehow convince them that eating one brand of cat food was the thing to do. Maybe it’s hypnosis. Can animals be hypnotized?”

For the first time that day Murdo’s idea was taken seriously by Fergus and Jessie, who both nodded at the possibilities that his question had posed.

“So where do we go from here?” asked Murdo.

“Let’s find out if there are any cat food suppliers or manufacturers in Edinburgh,” said Jessie.

Fergus went back to the search screen and typed “cat food,” “Edinburgh” and “suppliers.”

Some of the same answers came up as before, but so did two company names, Kitty Kitchen and Petfood Products.

Fergus clicked on “Kitty Kitchen” and Murdo read out, “‘Specialist food for your special friend.’ Pee-uke.” The wording on the website went on to be as pink and flowery as the site itself.

“I think we’ve got the gist of that,” said Jessie. “Try the other one.”

Petfood Products had a much more technical looking website. “Nine Lives: Cat Food for the 21st Century,” read Murdo. “A diet for the modern cat — Internet sales and delivery — Service to be launched this autumn.” There was only an email address for those wishing to receive an information mailing on the cat food. Jessie leaned over Fergus and quickly typed, “I am interested in further information on your products and services. Please send details by return. With thanks, Mrs. J. Jenkins.”

Their internet activity was interrupted by the phone ringing and Fergus suddenly realized that time had flown by with all of the morning’s activities. Sure enough his mum was checking that everything was okay and that the boys weren’t getting in Jessie’s way. “They are no problem at all, Fiona, although I’ll send them back up the hill shortly as I’ve promised a friend I’ll help her with something this afternoon,” said Jessie.

As Jessie hung up, two bleeps announced that messages had arrived in her inbox. Firstly there was a reply from Precision Customer Services noting that they had received no other reports of DataBoys going backwards and recommending returning the malfunctioning watch to the shop it was purchased from, as the first step towards diagnosis and repair. “Well, no great surprise there,” said Jessie deleting the response.

The other email was an automated response, which noted that Jessie had now been added to the customer mailing list for Nine Lives, which would be launched at the end of the month, when more details would follow.
The next morning the boys were once again at Jessie’s, this time finishing off inputting the information gathered by Murdo into
the database. Murdo read out the details from his big folder of lost cat posters as Fergus typed them in. This gave them a welcome distraction from the eagerly anticipated appointment with Mr. Crockett. While they worked away, Jessie sat in her armchair reading Murdo’s diary of the investigation, although the boys soon spotted that she had not only fallen asleep while doing so but was snoring deeply.

“Oh dear, I’m sure we told her it would be an interesting read,” said Fergus.

“I’m very concerned she’s not taking this seriously enough,” said Murdo. “If she starts drooling on that diary I will not be happy,” he added.

As the boys keyed in the last entry, a shadowy figure appeared through the net curtains and at precisely one o’clock the doorbell rang.

Jessie sat up as if she’d been electrocuted. “What?!.. Oh dear, oh my goodness … is that the time? … Must have dozed off … Boys, you should have woken me … Dear me, dear me.” She eased herself out of her chair and walked stiffly to the front door.

The boys could hear a man’s voice as Jessie led the visitor into the hall. “Not at all, Mrs. Jenkins — I remember you mentioning this clock before.”

“I’ve got two of my friends here at the moment,” said Jessie as she entered the living room. She was followed by a small, round man who was using a comb to move an invisible strand of hair over his gleaming bald head.

“Fergus and Murdo, this is Mr. Crockett,” said Jessie.

“Ah the DataBoy,” said Mr. Crockett, pocketing the comb, the buttons on his jacket straining as he did so. Fergus raised his eyebrows in surprise at the shop owner’s ability to remember his customers.

“Has it been as good as you hoped, young man?” he asked, leaning towards Fergus, his eyeballs magnified by his thick
round glasses.

Fergus resisted the temptation to say, “Yes, apart from the times it goes backwards when I’m standing on the manhole cover outside.” That wasn’t part of the planned script for this stage of the investigation and he kept his answer to a polite “yes thanks” instead.

“So let’s have a look at this then,” said Mr. Crockett who had spotted the clock on the wall by the fireplace and bustled over to look at it. He had to stand on tiptoes to peer into the workings, which the open sides of the clock casing revealed.

“It’s not worked for years,” said Jessie. “My husband actually bought it at your shop but long before you would remember. I think it might have been your grandfather who was in the shop at the time.”

“Ah, the great inventor,” said Mr. Crockett with a thin smile as he produced a tiny brush from his pocket and dusted carefully at the exposed cogs.

“We’ve been doing a local history project,” chipped in Murdo, “and we read about him in some old newspapers. Did he ever invent anything useful?”

Still peering into the clock, Mr. Crockett gave a short clipped laugh as he continued to investigate the mechanism. “He would say so, but nothing has exactly become a household object.” Distracted momentarily from the timepiece, Mr Crockett removed his glasses to polish them with a large, white hanky. As soon as he replaced them his eyeballs zoomed back to giant size. “Let me see, what were some of his better efforts?” he said. “The telescopic table leg, the vibrating mixing bowl, the spring-loaded bookends and the marmalade dispensing gun. They’re not exactly as famous as the microwave oven or the telephone are they?” he said, turning his attention back to the insides of the wall clock.

“Is it true that he bought vaults from other shops for all of his inventions?” asked Fergus.

“Yes, that’s right,” said Mr. Crockett, his eyebrows rising up his shiny forehead in surprise at Fergus’s level of knowledge. “He bought the vaults from about half a dozen shops I think, and then filled the space with all sorts of junk. I expect my grandmother was quite pleased that it wasn’t in the house any more.”

“So what do you use all that space for now?” asked Jessie innocently.

“Well, we only use a little for storage and we lease the rest to our neighbours,” said Mr. Crockett. “I didn’t carry on my grandfather’s inventing habits so we don’t have much need for those rooms.”

The boys looked at each other, both thinking back to the list of shops they had built up which would tell them who Mr. Crockett’s neighbours were.

“The Copper Kettle?” said Murdo quickly.

“I’m sorry?” said Mr. Crockett momentarily confused.

“You said you leased the vaults to your neighbours,” said Murdo, trying not to sound too anxious for an answer. “Isn’t that the Copper Kettle Café?”

“Oh no, the other side,” said Mr. Crockett. “My grandfather was probably turning in his grave as I signed the papers, but they wanted the extra space for big freezers and things like that.”

“Who’s on the other side?” said Jessie.

“The Fish Shop,” said Mr. Crockett and Fergus at the same time.

“Yes, the owner there and myself are both in the unusual position of taking on our grandfathers’ businesses,” said Mr. Crockett.

“Who’s the owner now?” asked Jessie.

“Davidson,” said Mr. Crockett. “Davidson Stein.”

Ten minutes had passed since Mr. Crockett had left, saying that
he would need to order some parts in order to repair Jessie’s clock. There was still a state of high excitement in Jessie’s living room. Fergus wondered how he had ever thought that this room seemed old and dusty because there was now a buzz about the place. As he thought back to the clock shop manager’s visit, he wondered if Mr. Crockett had noticed that they suddenly didn’t seem interested in Jessie’s damaged clock. As soon as he had mentioned that the vaults were leased by a man who was an expert in cats’ eating habits, they had all had difficulty concentrating. Once Jessie had closed the door on the departing Mr. Crockett, Murdo went into overdrive with theories about what a fish shop might want with the vaults under Raeburn Place.

“Just how much storage space does a fish shop need?” asked Murdo, pacing up and down the living room. “Six vaults? Six vaults? You could fit a lot of cats in six vaults you know. A lot more than forty-four,” he said, picking up and waving his file.

“We started asking about the vaults because of the watches, but we’ve ended up with something that points to the cats. Could there be a link between the investigations? Why would missing cats make watches go backwards? It’s not making sense!”

Murdo’s brow was furrowing so deeply that Fergus began to get concerned that he would do himself some permanent damage and decided it was time to change tack.

“What do you know about Stein’s Fish Shop, Jessie?” asked Fergus. “You’ve lived here the longest.”

“Well, I have, but I can’t really help you,” said Jessie. “Stan hated fish, you see, so if there’s one shop that I’ve not been into in Raeburn Place in all my years in Comely Bank, it’s Stein’s.”

“Mum buys our fish at the supermarket so we’ve never been in either,” said Fergus.

“Our prime suspect, the one shop that we need information on and our local sources have drawn a blank!” Murdo slapped his hand to his forehead. “Well, we’ll have to find out about it
if we want to go any further at all. If only we could do things properly and pull Davidson Stein in for questioning,” said Murdo thumping a pudgy fist into the palm of his other hand.

“Well, we could do another thing that often happens when you have a suspect,” said Jessie. “I think it might be time for you to stake out Mr. Stein’s.”

Murdo stopped in his tracks and a grin split his large face. Fergus thought that he could hear Murdo’s brain whirring into action.