Cat's Paw (12 page)

Today, she had decided, she would be
normal
. Her inner voices, however, were having none of it. All the way to Leicester Square they pestered her.
You know the catras, don’t you?
You know how they work.
Geoff wouldn’t teach her the Oshtian Compass and had even warned her not to try. Yet she had done it before, unaided.

Her Tube train rattled its rhythm on the rails, awakening a rhyme in her mind.

Ptep is my head, the balancing blue sky

Mandira is my green all-sensing eye

Kelotaukhon, copper maw, my mystery

Golden chest of Parda strongly glows

Lower crimson Oshtis feels and knows

Nimble tail is Ailur, indigo.

So. How did you make the Oshtian Compass? Start with Oshtis, she supposed – no prizes for guessing that. She remembered roving the rooftops in her unknowing search for Ben, feeling the
blood-red pulse of Oshtis in her stomach. Yet there had to be more to it.

Kelotaukhon? That was the most enigmatic catra and the one she used least. She tried it now, picturing a copper eye to blend with the red one. Ugh, that just felt weird. She ran over the rhyme
again.
Mandira is my green all-sensing eye.
Sensing. Surely the Compass was a kind of sense?

Waiting on a sunny bench near the Odeon, she gave in to temptation. On her mind’s dark screen she projected the red eye of Oshtis, then steadily turned up her Mandira. A flutter in her
solar plexus suggested she was on to something. Okay. She would try to predict where Susie and Cecile were coming from. Imagining their faces, she concentrated. From the right, she decided. They
would come from the right.

‘Boo!’ cried Susie, in her left ear. ‘Dozing off?’

Tiffany snapped her eyes open, embarrassed. So much for that idea.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Want to get a burger before the film?’

‘Dunno if we should see it now.’ Cecile seemed excited or anxious. ‘Daniel called.’

‘To say what?’

‘Ben’s been caught by the polecats.’

‘
What?
’

‘It’s okay.’ Susie nodded vigorously. ‘It was planned.’

‘Planned?’ Tiffany stared from one to the other. ‘I don’t understand. Who planned it?’

‘They did,’ said Susie. ‘Geoff and Ben.’

For a moment Tiffany couldn’t think. Then her hand shot out and grabbed Susie’s jacket with such lightning speed that a flock of pigeons took flight.

‘Start telling me stuff
now
,’ Tiffany hissed.

Ben had been riding the same route all morning and had seen neither hide nor hair of a polecat. Knowing his luck they had probably taken the day off. In an effort to keep alert
he had flicked through every newspaper littering his train, then read rows of advertisements for everything from vitamin pills to religious cults. Now he was left with just the door sign at the end
of his tube carriage:
Risk of death if used while train is moving
. He was still reading it when the door opened.

Red-haired Kevin came first. Then the gangly Alec, no longer limping from that lucky kick in the dark. Behind him, a boy Ben had never seen – he would have remembered such a big nose. At
the rear, sporting sweatbands on his tattooed arms, was Jeep. Their eyes browsed the busy carriage as if it were a rack of DVDs. Ben took deep breaths. So far they hadn’t seen him. There was
time to change his mind.

‘I couldn’t plan a steak lunch in a slaughterhouse,’ Geoff had confessed to him on Friday evening, before Tiffany arrived at the chapel. ‘I don’t do strategy. So
tell me if I’m daft in the head.’

Geoff said this had kept him awake day and night. In a single week the polecats had made over thirty thieving raids. That was far more than they needed, for riches meant nothing to Martin
Fisher. Geoff suspected the polecats were hoarding, stockpiling supplies of money, food, clothes and valuable items. It all pointed to some sort of plot.

‘Fisher’s a natural planner,’ said Geoff, with a hint of envy. ‘For years he had nothing else to do. If he has a scheme on the boil we need to know what it is. I can
think of only one way to do that. Ben, you’re not going to like it.’

Kevin, Jeep, Alec and Big Nose were sidling along the carriage. Passengers pulled feet and bags out of their path. The boys clearly enjoyed the ripple of fear they pushed before them, daring
people with their eyes. Ben waited till it was fractionally too late. Then he rose from his seat and hurried away from them down the aisle.

‘Kev, look, it’s him!’

Ben fumbled with the carriage door until he felt hot breath on his neck. The four boys crowded him into the corner. He tried to look afraid and succeeded.

‘Small world, isn’t it?’ said Kevin.

‘What do you want with me?’

‘It was very rude, running off like that,’ said Kevin. ‘You wanna guess how much hell you caused me? Totally blew my morning schedule. Now you’re coming back with
us.’

He seized Ben’s right arm and Jeep took the left, painfully bending his fingers. Ben pretended to struggle. It was an Oscar-winning performance.

‘You lads! What are you doing to him?’ A balding man with a shopping bag got to his feet. Ben’s heart didn’t know whether to leap or sink.

Without slackening his grip, Jeep half-turned and slashed with the knife that appeared in his hand. The carrier bag split and a plush grey elephant tumbled out, spilling the stuffing from its
trunk.

‘Shut,’ Jeep snarled, ‘up.’

The man sat as if the knife had cut his backbone. The train’s windows blurred with reds and blues as they rushed into Oxford Circus, slowing sharply.

‘Here’s our stop,’ said Kevin. ‘Come on, Ben. . . you got a last name?’

Ben said nothing.

‘You don’t. Good. Let’s go home.’

Kevin led them off the train, his three henchmen hustling Ben between them so they looked like one friendly group. Through the station’s airless passages they shuffled, flowing with the
crowds that followed the blue signs towards the Victoria line.

‘I see your point, Geoff.’ Ben had picked his words with care. He hadn’t wanted Geoff to think him a coward. ‘But think about it. There’s no way I can join
Fisher’s gang.’

‘I understand.’ Geoff paced the chapel’s nave. ‘It’s not that you’re afraid. You’re thinking of your family. I forget how it is. I never really had one
myself.’

‘You know what would happen if I went missing,’ said Ben. ‘My parents would–’ He couldn’t imagine it. And there was no reason to imagine it, because it was
not going to happen. ‘It’s all right for people like you and Mrs Powell. You sort of. . . don’t exist. But I’m in Year Nine!’

‘Easter holidays coming up,’ Geoff remarked. ‘Ah, forget it. I can’t ask this of you. I’m just saying what needs to be done. After all, Fisher stole those children
from
their
families.’

‘Can’t you do anything?’

‘I haven’t been sat eating pies,’ Geoff snorted. ‘I’ve gone back to the Hermitage five or six times. It’s not easy spying on folks who have sharpened senses.
I wouldn’t fancy my chances if I got nabbed. Even in the old days Martin fought almost as well as me.’ He cracked his knuckles and winced. ‘I haven’t found out much, but
I’ve caught a scent. And something’s rotten. This may be about more than saving a few missing kids.’

That was when Tiffany had stepped through the chapel doorway, and they stopped talking.

Later, tired and aching, he flung down his kitbag in the hallway of Dad’s flat – home, he reminded himself – and pondered dinner. Dad let him choose his own meals, so now he
lived off crispy pancakes, seafood pizzas, spicy chicken drumsticks and ice cream. This was ideal – wasn’t it? Without Mum around there was no-one to tell him courgettes were full of
vitamins, or claim that bananas were desserts. He never had to chop at little trees of broccoli or shovel pebbly soya beans. All the same, it was puzzling. Although he would never choose such foods
for himself, dinner without them didn’t taste like
his
dinner any more.

He laid a wedge of frozen fish among chips on a baking tray. On an impulse he added a second fish and upped the chip count. Dad was out on an emergency call, a localised power-cut, and had
probably forgotten to eat. Ben set an extra place at the table and lined up two cans, one of Coke and one of beer. By the time Dad’s key scraped in the lock the whole flat was simmering with
a golden smell.

‘Mm! You’ll make me hungry now.’ Ray Gallagher put down his toolbox with a clank. He saw the two sets of cutlery. ‘What’s this? Special occasion?’

‘Not partic’ly.’

‘Nice one, son. You’ll make someone a lovely wife one day.’

Ben served up. No peas, he noticed, then pushed the thought away. He put on the CD they both liked and set the volume to stun. When all was gobbled up except for three burnt chips, Dad finished
his beer and went on a dessert hunt. There was a long-uneaten Christmas pudding gathering dust, so they had that.

Lying stuffed on the sofa, Ben remembered he had a letter from school. Dad read it while surfing TV channels.

‘Parents’ evening,’ exclaimed Dad. ‘What a drag, eh. I remember hating that as a kid. The oldies poking their noses in.’

Actually Ben had never minded it much. He enjoyed showing Mum and Dad round his classrooms, as if welcoming them into his den. School was like another secret life, one he could, occasionally,
share with them.

‘Mum says to tell you she can’t make it this year,’ said Ben. ‘She has to work the evening shift.’

‘That must be a relief, eh?’

Ben wasn’t relieved so much as disappointed. He had hoped Mum would get to see his art project, a modrock sculpture of a pinball machine that had real flashing lights. He was particularly
pleased with this idea.

‘Well, I know you do well at school,’ said Dad. ‘I don’t need your teachers to tell me that. Why don’t we say I’m busy as well?’

‘Er. . .’

‘Your friends’ll be so jealous!’ Ben sighed. ‘Suppose so.’

‘Let’s play safe, though. You’d better tell your mum that I am going. We don’t want you getting into trouble with her, do we?’

‘Suppose not.’ Ben picked up a blackened chip and chewed it. Bitterness filled his mouth. A memory came back to him: arriving home at daybreak after his escape from the Hermitage,
having been missing two nights and a day. He’d expected to see police cars outside. All he’d found was Dad having a lie-in, and instead of a telling-off he got a jokey reminder to phone
the next time he planned a sleepover. At the time he’d felt glad: Dad was so cool. Now he wondered how long it would have taken Ray Gallagher to remember he had a son, and what might have
become of him, were it not for Geoff White.

That stung him into saying what he said.

‘Dad, I’ve decided. I want to go and stay at Mum’s this weekend. And, uh, stay there until after the Easter holidays. I can travel to school from there in the meantime. See how
it works out.’

As he spoke he realised it was a test. Everything depended on how Dad reacted.

‘Oh.’ Dad frowned a moment. He rubbed his upper lip. ‘Okay, Ben. If she agrees, I guess that’s fine with me too.’

Ben watched him. Dad was supposed to argue, to ask questions, or be upset. Instead he just picked up a TV guide and began reading it with intense concentration. And there was silence. Nothing
more to be said.

Ben cleared the dinner plates. Fine, if that was how things were. If Dad wasn’t bothered, he would find someone who was. He went to his room and dialled the newest number on his phone.

‘Okay,’ he said, when Geoff picked up. ‘I’ll do it.’