The Great Escape (17 page)

‘Maybe I’m wrong,’ she said hopefully. ‘Maybe—’

‘You’re not wrong,’ said Jake. ‘It’s the only explanation that fits, isn’t it? Playmatic are paying money to Arthur Shepard, he’s using it to hire a
laboratory, where they’re operating on stolen cats and giving them voices, for no other reason we can think of. And at least two of us are really smart, so if you two can’t think of it,
it’s because it isn’t there to be thought.’

Millie looked slightly confused, but Ben had had more practice at following Jake’s trains of thought.

Jake went on: ‘Playmatic wouldn’t invest money in this for a laugh, would they? They’re a business, and a business in need of some help, from what we’ve read. Why else
would they be paying Arthur Shepard, and what other interest could they possibly have in animal experiments? It’s not like they’re bringing out a line of cosmetics, is it?’ He
looked sternly at Millie, who couldn’t think why – she didn’t own so much as a lip-gloss. Sometimes, she couldn’t even find a hairbrush.

‘But who would want such a horrible . . . not that I’m calling you horrible,’ Jake added hastily, trying to placate Max, who didn’t seem to be really listening to what he
was saying anyway. ‘Who could possibly want . . .?’

There was a long pause.

‘Me,’ said Ben.

‘
What?
’ Millie and Jake were shocked.

Max still sat in total silence.

‘Shut up, Ben,’ said Jake, flushed with embarrassment.

‘No, I mean, I wouldn’t want Max to have been kidnapped. I wouldn’t want him to have been brought miles away from home and kept in a cage; I wouldn’t want him to have
been operated on without his consent; I wouldn’t have wanted that to happen to any of the cats, even Ariston, and he sounded horrible. I just mean, if I didn’t know all that, if
Playmatic had just announced in November that you could have a talking pet, I would have wanted one more than anything, more than a Plastidroid, more even than a really cool new laptop.’

‘I
said
, shut up,’ snapped Jake, as Millie whimpered. ‘I’m really sorry about him. He’s just a kid.’

‘He’s quite right,’ said Max, so quietly they could barely hear him, especially since Ben was now crying.

Millie tilted her head, asking him a silent question. She looked like a bird when she did that, Max thought. Although not the kind he would eat, obviously. The other kind.

‘He’s right. That’s how it would have worked, isn’t it? Children love animals. They would have gone crazy for the idea of a talking cat. They wouldn’t have thought
about the thefts, the imprisonment, the torture; they would just have seen the most exciting pet they could ever have hoped for.’

‘That’s true,’ said Jake, patting Millie and Ben awkwardly on the shoulder with each hand. ‘When I was a kid, I wanted a woolly mammoth, like, a miniature one. About the
size of a small dog. I would have given anything for one of those, if they’d worked out a way to make them small.’

‘And transport them through time,’ added Ben.

‘Yeah, that too, obviously.’ Jake tried to look like someone who knew that woolly mammoths were extinct. He had always vaguely assumed that they lived in China or somewhere.

‘But, surely . . .’ Millie seemed unable to grasp it at all ‘. . . surely they couldn’t have expected people to believe that talking cats had just appeared out of thin
air? People would have realised that secret research had gone on, that these animals had been given unnecessary surgery. They would have been appalled, wouldn’t they? There would have been an
outcry, like there was about testing cosmetics on animals. Like there is about fur.’

‘Is there?’ asked Jake bitterly. ‘You can buy fur in loads of shops nowadays, even in Britain, and we’re supposed to be a nation of animal lovers. We once went into a
department store in Paris and they had a whole fur section. We were going to take paint and throw it on them, but Mum rumbled us.’ He looked at Ben, and they both eyed a state-of-the-art
water pistol on one of Ben’s shelves and sighed sadly at another wasted opportunity for criminal damage. ‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘they sell fur in half the shops on the high
street now. People aren’t as high-minded as you think, Millie. If they’ll wear the skin of a dead cat – sorry,’ he said to Max, who nodded to show that he understood that
Jake wasn’t trying to be rude, ‘they won’t think twice about buying one that’s been mucked around with, will they?’

‘But’ – Millie was at a loss – ‘surely the cats would tell their owners that they’d been tortured?’

‘You’d do it to kittens,’ said Ben pragmatically. ‘Operate on them when they’re really tiny, too small to remember anything, and then sell them when they’re a
few months old. Sorry.’ He winced as he caught Max’s expression.

‘Is there time to do that?’ Jake asked. ‘Between now and Christmas, I mean?’

Ben thought for a moment and nodded. ‘I think so. Max is a prototype. I really am sorry.’ He grimaced. ‘So they’ve finished the experimental stage of the
process.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Jake.

‘Max talks perfectly. The other cats all did too,’ said Millie dully.

‘They don’t need to do any more testing,’ said Ben. ‘They need to breed kittens. And then they need . . .’ He paused and looked at Max, who gave a tiny nod. Ben
sighed and continued: ‘They need a production line.’

‘So they
could
have kittens for sale in time for Christmas?’ Jake said. ‘How long does it take to make a kitten?’

They all turned to Max.

‘Er . . . maybe two months?’ he hazarded.

Ben clicked on his mouse. ‘Was that a guess?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ admitted the cat, who hadn’t ever thought about kittens much.

‘You were right.’ Ben smiled at him. ‘It fits perfectly. They’ll start breeding the cats at the end of this month. The kittens’ll be born at the end of October.
They’ll operate on them in November and sell them in December . . .’

‘Just in time for Christmas,’ finished Jake.

‘But they’d know that the cats had been experimented on, and that it was cruel. Max is the end of the process, isn’t he? How many cats died in that laboratory, do you think,
before they got the surgery right? How many do you think they botched?’ Millie was almost in tears.

‘Millie,’ said the cat, jumping up onto Ben’s desk, so he could look her straight in the eyes, ‘other people are not like you. They wouldn’t think about the ugly
history, the cruelty or anything else. They would see the shiny – well, furry – new toy, and they would want it. That is how people behave the world over – they see what they want
and they take it. They don’t think about anything else. Animals are the same, you know – they just have fewer opportunities for kidnap and financial gain, and so on.’

Millie looked at him sadly. ‘I suppose so,’ she said, sounding uncertain.

‘Anyway, how else would it have worked?’ asked Max. ‘Shepard and his friends wouldn’t have done it if they hadn’t thought it was an idea that would sell.’

‘I know you’re right,’ said Millie. ‘I’m just so sorry that anyone could do this to you. I feel bad being part of the same species.’

‘Millie, you shouldn’t feel bad. Humans are not always good. But you are a good person. And so are you two.’ Max looked at Jake and Ben. ‘You have risked a lot to help
me, and to help a lot of other cats you hadn’t even met. Some of whom weren’t even grateful. One of whom was really quite rude.’

‘Well, no wonder,’ said Millie, who now felt so bad about everything that she was beginning to come round to Ariston’s way of thinking. ‘I would have been angry with me
too, in their position.’

‘A few people don’t make a species bad. They just make themselves bad.’

‘Why did you say humans weren’t good people, then?’ asked Ben.

‘If I hadn’t met you three,’ said Max, ‘I might have hated people too, after the past few months. But you have been kind and helpful, and now you are going to help me
even more.’

‘Are we? How?’ Ben was eager for more plans.

‘By destroying Playmatic. And Arthur Shepard,’ said Millie.

‘But first we must find and rescue Celeste,’ Max reminded them.

‘Uh oh,’ said Jake, looking at the clock in the top right-hand corner of Ben’s computer screen. ‘Look at the time.’ It was almost two
o’clock.

‘Oh, no,’ said Ben. ‘I’m afraid we can’t do anything else now. Can you come back tomorrow?’ He looked pleadingly from Millie to Max.

‘Er . . . yes,’ said Millie, confused. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Mum’ll be home in a few minutes,’ said Jake gloomily. ‘The boy wonder has a piano lesson on Thursdays at three.’

Ben was a picture of misery.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I should have said I was ill or something this morning. But then she’d probably have changed it to a doctor’s appointment, and I’d still
have to go out.’

‘Mum’s a bit pushy,’ confided Jake.

‘Are you good at music?’ asked Millie, who played the violin only slightly better than Max could sing.

‘Terrible,’ Ben sighed. ‘I’m really, really bad. Aren’t I?’ He looked to Jake for confirmation.

‘Dreadful,’ said Jake. ‘His Mozart sounds like someone being beaten slowly to death.’

Ben nodded. ‘It does. And that’s my best piece. I’m so sorry. Can you come tomorrow? Can you be here at ten? We’ll have all day then.’

‘Sure,’ said Millie. ‘We’ll spend this afternoon trying to work out where Shepard’s taken Celeste. We’d better clear off now before your mum gets back, so we
don’t have to answer any questions.’

‘God, yes,’ said Jake. ‘We’d never hear the end of it if she found out that we’d had a girl round.’ He went suddenly red.

‘Can I take these?’ asked Millie, to cover up the rather awkward silence that had just fallen over them. She picked up the pile of papers that Ben had been systematically printing
out all morning.

‘Of course,’ said Jake. ‘Have a look at it all again tonight. You’ll get much more out of it than I will, and Wolfgang here will be practising all evening. Actually, I
might go out,’ he added thoughtfully.

‘Don’t blame you,’ said Ben dolefully. ‘I really am bad.’

Millie gathered up the papers and stuffed them in her bag. She and Max ran downstairs, Jake and Ben in tow.

‘You’ll come back tomorrow?’ Ben said, sounding increasingly panicky, presumably, Millie thought, because he had spent the last few days helping her and Max, rather than doing
any piano practice.

‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘Tomorrow, here, ten o’clock. See you then.’

She and Max waved goodbye, and they set off on the ride home.

‘Are you OK?’ Millie asked Max, as she pushed her bike up to the side of her house.

‘Yes,’ he said, jumping out of the basket and weaving between her feet as she opened the front door. ‘Can we do some reading now?’

‘Of course,’ said Millie, trying not to sound too amazed. She hadn’t got the impression that Max was a big fan of the research side of things, since he wasn’t a great
reader.

‘We must make a plan to get Celeste back,’ he said firmly. ‘The sooner, the better. That’s what you say, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Millie. ‘It is. And you’re right. We do need to get her back, and I’m sure we can work out where she is. We just need to do some thinking.’

Max nodded, hoping he looked more confident that he felt.

Millie and Max spent the afternoon going over and over the documents Ben had produced. They ruled out hiding places for Celeste, one after another. She couldn’t be at the
second lab, the one that Arthur Shepard had planned to send all the cats to, because they had seen the van driver leave without her. Besides, it hadn’t seemed like Shepard was all that keen
to do business with them after their driver had inadvertently released all but one of his cats into the wild. Millie was almost equally sure that he wouldn’t have taken Celeste home.
Everything she knew about Arthur Shepard made her think he would keep secrets from his family, and wouldn’t trust his children an inch. She didn’t have an address for him anyway, as he
had proved resistant to Ben’s investigations so far, so she hoped she was right. His security guards, according to Ben’s research, lived with wives and children, too. Millie offered to
bike past their houses, to see if she could find anything out, but Max wouldn’t hear of it. He agreed that Celeste was unlikely to have been placed in a family home, without tight security.
After all, they had only managed to break the cats out last night because of careful planning and a lot of help, not because Shepard had been lax in arranging security guards and cameras.

Millie chewed her lower lip in frustration. They were both pretty sure that Arthur Shepard wouldn’t trust one of the thugs Max had watched searching Millie’s home to look after an
expensive research prototype. Even though Max hated thinking of Celeste that way, he realised they had to think, at least a little, like Arthur Shepard if they were to work out where she might
be.

‘I don’t know,’ said Millie regretfully, as she put the last page on the pile in front of them. ‘Could she be with the head of Playmatic? His home address’ –
she shuffled through and consulted a sheet – ‘is two hundred miles away. I can’t see it, can you? I think he wants to keep her nearby.’

‘Yes,’ Max agreed. ‘Also, he probably hasn’t told them yet what has happened.’

‘No.’ Millie thought for a moment. ‘No, I bet he hasn’t. He’ll be hoping to use Celeste in place of you all and get himself out of trouble that way. I mean, she can
talk, can’t she? She does what they want. He’ll probably just . . .’ She trailed off.

‘Just what?’ asked the cat.

‘Just be planning to steal some more cats and set up a breeding and surgery lab somewhere else,’ said Millie, looking rather queasy.

‘We
have
to find her,’ said Max.

They looked at each other. Millie turned over the pile of papers and began reading again from the beginning.

At two minutes past ten the next morning, Millie knocked on Jake and Ben’s door. She didn’t feel a great deal less tired than she had yesterday – she had
slept badly again, racking her brains for any clue she might have missed that would lead them to Celeste.