Grimm (19 page)

“Wow! … and have you found any of the cats so far?” he asked, squatting beside Murdo and slowly turning over the pages in the folder.

“Not a single one. These cats have just disappeared into thin air,” said Murdo. “Listen, why don’t we go for a coke and I’ll fill you in? I’ve been dying to tell someone about all this for ages.”

An hour later, having delivered some bruised onions, dented milk, a crumpled magazine and a hurried explanation to his mother, Fergus was perched on a window seat in the Copper Kettle Café on Raeburn Place. His head was reeling but it was no longer a result of being upended by Murdo. He was now trying to come to terms with information on cats of every name and description. At the same time his stomach was spinning in a different direction with the after-effects of two cokes, two doughnuts and a vanilla slice.

Murdo had been on “the case,” as he kept calling it, for three months, initially spending time at weekends, but now using every day of the summer holidays to try and make some progress in finding even one of the missing cats. He had certainly been very busy. He had visited all forty-three “lost cat owners” and had recorded descriptions of their cats and details of where and when
their cats had gone missing.

Murdo kept mentioning his “Incident Room,” which he described as the “nerve centre” of his lost-cat operation. Fergus was already excited at the idea of trying to solve what seemed like an intriguing mystery, and had agreed to visit Murdo’s Incident Room at the earliest opportunity.

“What’s the time?” asked Murdo. “I think I’d better be getting home.” Fergus pulled up his sleeve.

“That’s a DataBoy!” said Murdo, his eyes widening.

Before Fergus could say anything, Murdo disappeared off his seat and started rummaging in one of his rucksack’s many pockets. A moment later he pulled out a rather scratched looking DataBoy, which had only one piece of its strap attached. “They’re brilliant, aren’t they?” he said flourishing his watch. “This hasn’t lost a second in ten months, even though I’ve given it a bit of a hard time,” he said ruefully looking at the missing strap and chipped glass. Fergus realized that he had been so absorbed in the story of Murdo’s investigations that he had quite forgotten about his watch’s timekeeping problems.

“I didn’t tell you why I was looking at that manhole cover,” Fergus said, making a snap decision that Murdo might be someone who would believe his curious story. Sure enough, Murdo listened intently as Fergus described how his new watch had developed a curious habit of going backwards.

“Well there’s only one thing to do,” said Murdo. “Let’s go and test my DataBoy in the same place!”

Fergus grinned and without delay the boys paid up, collected Jock from outside and headed back to the scene of their collision.