Cat's Paw (17 page)

Each morning they would get up, raid the hostel kitchen for someone else’s cornflakes, choose a village from Yusuf’s map and climb back on the bikes. Tiffany led, and with every push
at the pedals she silently wished. She wished for the feeling to kick in.

She remembered how it had taken hold of her, that night on the rooftops. A feeling somewhere between butterfly nerves and the ache from a punch to the stomach. Sending her out in search of Ben
when she didn’t even know he was missing, homing in on him with an urge as strong as pain. Now she willed it to come again. She pedalled, she willed, she pedalled harder. But through mile
after mile of chocolate-box countryside her heart’s radar screen stayed obstinately blank. Was anyone really here to be found? Or was she only chasing her tail?

On Sunday afternoon, on their way to a new hostel closer to the moors, it bucketed down. Come Monday they were damp, weary, saddle-sore and poor. Their Paris spending money hadn’t
stretched as far as expected. Unable to face the bikes this morning, they plodded to the bus stop and waited. And waited.

‘No buses, no tube trains,’ Susie grumbled. ‘Not even any black cabs. You’d think they’d have black cabs.’

‘We could hitch hike,’ said Yusuf.

‘I’m not getting in some yokel’s Land Rover,’ Susie snapped. ‘I’ve seen films. They’d lock us in a barn and pitchfork us and turn us into cattle
feed.’

‘We’re only in Devon,’ said Tiffany.

Susie shuddered.

‘Uh-oh, my friends, here comes the rain.’ Yusuf ducked under a tree.

Surrendering, they trudged back through Dunsford. Halfway to the hostel the rain became a power-shower, forcing them to shelter in the local tea shop. By now Tiffany was thoroughly miserable and
could only sniff at Yusuf’s gift of a cream tea. When she filled her cup, her flattened hair dribbled rainwater into the milk jug.

The lady who ran the shop brought their scones.

‘Spread the clotted cream on first, then top it with the strawberry jam,’ she instructed. ‘In Cornwall they do it the other way round, but we don’t talk about
that.’

Tiffany ate three scones and tried to feel better.

‘It’s no good.’ She wiped cream off her nose. ‘I’m sorry I dragged you out here. This is ridiculous. It’s like looking for a needle in a haystack when you
don’t even know if there
is
a needle.’

‘Finding a needle in a haystack’s easy,’ Yusuf remarked. ‘All you need is a magnet.’

‘Yes,’ said Tiffany. ‘And I don’t have one. I’ve tried to make the Oshtian Compass every way I can think of. I know it must be the Oshtis catra plus Mandira. It has
to be. But it doesn’t work. I don’t get any. . .’ She had to stop and swallow a mouthful of tea. ‘She’s not here, is she?’

‘It was a good guess,’ said Yusuf softly.

‘Wishful thinking. She’s gone. I’m never going to see her again.’

Her tea spilled in the saucer. It reminded her. Mrs Powell used to pour tea into a saucer for her silver cat Jim to lap. She’d been funny that way. All ice and steel on the outside,
melting with warmth underneath. You could never tell when she was joking, never knew if it was safe to laugh. Tiffany remembered the night she’d opened up, confessing the story of what had
happened to her son, her green eyes bright with unshed tears. And how she’d tried to say goodbye, taking back her harsh words from before:
I do care. I care very much indeed
. How Mrs
Powell had nurtured talents in her that no-one else could see. The smiles that said
well done
, as rare and reviving as January sunshine.

Memories came like cramps, welling inside her until she wanted to burst. Mrs Powell saving Olly from falling in the woods. Mrs Powell fearlessly facing a gun. Mrs Powell being shot down. . .
They truly did hurt, pulling at her insides, pulling –

Tugging
.

She sat up with a gasp, startling the others.

‘Tiffany?’

As these memories scoured through her, it was as if they left something behind. Trails of force, gently tingling. What had Stuart said about making a compass? She should have listened.
You
have to magnetise the needle. . . You get a magnet and you stroke the needle with it, over and over.
Could it be as simple as that?

She shut her eyes. In the darkness Oshtis glowed ember-bright, Mandira flared emerald, and the pair fused at once into a bar of red and green. Even in the heartache of remembering, she
exulted.

‘Where is it? Where’d you put it?’

Yusuf recoiled in alarm as she scrabbled at his coat.

‘Your pocket map!’ Tiffany cried. ‘Give it, give it now!’

‘Take it easy!’ Yusuf fended her off with it. The tea-shop lady had paused in mid-cake arrangement to stare. Tiffany’s fingers tore through page after page.

‘Hey,’ Yusuf protested.

‘We have to go.’ Tiffany struggled to get the words out. ‘Mrs Powell’s not here.’

Yusuf and Susie shared a glance.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Susie. ‘We didn’t want to be the ones to say it.’

‘No.’ Tiffany slapped the map on the table and planted her finger in the heart of Dartmoor National Park. ‘She’s
there
.’

They couldn’t check out of the hostel fast enough for Tiffany. There were bills to pay, bikes to return and bed sheets to hand in to the laundry, and the other two wanted lunch, though she
couldn’t swallow any. Despite their dwindling funds she phoned for a taxi. By the time it had carried them along the moorland roads and up the lonely track to their new hostel, a grey stone
building that Susie said looked like an orphanage, it was mid-afternoon.

‘We’ll start a search tomorrow,’ said Yusuf, and Tiffany nearly bit off his head. She was terrified her new-found sense would fizzle out. Packing essentials such as
waterproofs, drinks, cereal bars and an ordinary walker’s compass, they struck out on foot along a track cut by walking boots and horses’ hooves. Very soon Tiffany strayed off the path,
across the face of the hill on their left.

‘West-north-west,’ said Yusuf.

The view from the hill’s crest was like the surface of the Moon, if the Moon had grown lichens and moss. It plunged and rose and rumpled every way until it fused with the sky, three
hundred square miles if you believed the guide book – it looked like more. Tiffany felt a fleeting despair, then her feet moved again, carrying her down towards a shallow valley that sank
under a veil of trees.

They walked for an hour. Often she changed course wildly, once nearly doubling back, deaf to all protests. By the time they reached the valley floor, their shadows were stretched long and the
light had the quality of weathered copper.

‘I’m done in.’ Susie gulped water. ‘Let’s head back. Or we’ll be walking in the dark.’

‘Which bothers us how?’ Tiffany peered hard at the woods on their right. The spring foliage gleamed in the lowering sun.

‘It bothers me,’ said Yusuf. ‘Haven’t you seen The Hound of the Baskervilles?’

‘Where?’ Susie glanced all around.

Tiffany made for the trees. They could follow if they liked. Her Oshtian Compass was thrumming, its needle quivering. She was close. As Yusuf and Susie caught her up, grumbling and stumbling,
all three were nearly driven off their feet by a gust of wind that rolled along the edge of the wood, making the newly minted leaves roar.

Susie said, ‘We’re not supposed to be here.’

Tiffany hesitated, pricked by the same thought. But the pull of the wood was stronger. She walked among the trees, under a leafy canopy which seemed to be held up by a scaffolding of sunbeams.
There were no real paths, only breaks in the thicket. The leaf mulch underfoot cushioned her step and her feet sank beneath a sea of bluebells. Wading more and more as if through a dream, she
almost blundered into the chain-link fence that stretched between the tree trunks.

‘What’s this doing here?’ asked Susie.

‘Must be private property,’ said Yusuf. ‘Someone wants to keep us out.’

The fence was more than twice Tiffany’s height and woven of stout wire that wouldn’t bend. It curled away from them at the top to create an overhang. Something about this struck
Tiffany as odd. She slipped off her rucksack and threw it over the barrier.

‘You’re kidding,’ groaned Yusuf, sounding very American. Tiffany climbed the chain-link and swung her legs over. A Pounce Drop and the soft soil landed her light as an acorn.
The others followed reluctantly, awkward in their walking clothes. They pressed on deeper into the wood.

Squeezing through a corridor of shaggy leaves they came to a glade where the air tasted moist. Yusuf sank to one knee. His fingers traced an impression in the mud: a triangle with rounded
corners, crowned by four dimples. Susie crouched beside him.

‘Is that what I think it is?’

‘Uh-huh. A footprint.’

Tiffany’s mind flicked to rewind. That fence they had scaled. Now she realised what was odd about it. To deter trespassers, the overhang should have been on the outside. Instead it bent
inwards. So it wasn’t designed for keeping people out. It was there to keep something in. In here.

‘It’s not the Hound, I hope,’ said Susie, trying to giggle.

‘I think it might be worse,’ said Yusuf.

‘A big cat!’ cried Tiffany. ‘I knew it! She’s here somewhere, Mrs Powell, I’ve really found –’

Yusuf dragged her to the ground and covered her mouth.

‘Could you please not shout.’

The penny dropped. She sat bolt upright, her eyes scurrying back and forth, scanning for movement in the leaves. The shrub layer seemed to bulge with menace.

‘We’re in a big cat enclosure!’ Susie whimpered.

‘There!’ Yusuf pointed.

‘What is it?’

‘Not sure. Something. There it is again. Behind those bushes.’

‘What –’ Tiffany wetted her lips. ‘What did it look like?’

‘Spots. Black spots.’

‘It’s a leopard?’

‘I think worse.’

Susie gaped. ‘Worse than a leopard?’

Movement flashed across the clearing downwind of them, a tangle of shadows solidifying and then melting into wispy grasses.

Yusuf’s eyes glazed over. It was as if he had one of his cherished natural history books in front of him.

‘Its name comes from the native South American,
yaguara
,’ he murmured. ‘It means
The beast that kills in one bound
. Although most cats bite prey in the neck,
these kill by crushing the skull. Pound for pound it’s the strongest mammal in the world.’

Susie’s voice was a squeak. ‘What
is
it?’

‘It’s a jaguar,’ said Yusuf. ‘Very slowly. Move.’

Staying in a crouch, Tiffany shifted her weight to the tips of her toes. The beast had to know they were here. Was it choosing its moment? Was it bunching its hindquarters and shimmying, like
Rufus before he rushed at a bird?

‘Can we climb a tree?’

‘No better than it can,’ said Yusuf. ‘Maybe those brambles. Over there. Might slow it down.’

Lifting their feet with agonising stealth they Eth-walked towards the thicket. Tiffany sensed a change in the texture of the air, her Mau whiskers stirring.

‘It’s following. We have to split up.’

‘Bad idea,’ said Yusuf. ‘Prey animals stay in herds. Better protection from predators.’

‘Listen to him, Tiffs,’ said Susie. ‘He knows his stuff.’

‘No, listen to me,’ Tiffany snapped. ‘I know why animals herd together. It’s so the hunter will pick off the weakest one. All in favour?’

They digested this.

‘I want to go to France,’ Susie whimpered.

‘We have to outwit it. Force it to chase the hardest target.’ Tiffany swallowed. ‘Which is me. As soon as it comes, go opposite ways. Get up trees. It’ll see me on the
ground.’

Yusuf said, ‘I am never–’

‘If you want any of us to live,’ snarled Tiffany, ‘you’ll do as I say.’ Her gaze caught on a knot of trees, their trunks choked with rhododendrons. The waxy weeds
convulsed and vomited a shape into the glade. ‘Go!’

They didn’t need telling twice. Yusuf and Susie sprang apart, vanishing into the wood. The thing running at them faltered, before locking on to its new target.

When Tiffany thought of something beautiful, she thought of a cat – any cat. But if she had to name a hideous one, this jaguar was it. That head, like something made for ramming down
doors. That shovel jaw, more bulldozer than animal. Where a leopard would have dapper spots, this beast had blotches. It covered the distance to her in a blink.

She slung her rucksack at it and leaped, as high and far as she could, launching herself over the jaguar’s head. Even so surprised, it reacted. Like a kitten after a moth it sprang
straight up in the air, all paws and jaws, and she had to tuck in her feet to snatch her shoelaces from its grasp. A stunning roar hit her. Falling headfirst she landed on her palms, somersaulted
to her feet and ran for her life.

Her only thought was to lead it away from her friends. As for herself, she had to hope that it would tire or lose interest. That it wasn’t hungry, only curious. Because this much was
immediately clear: she wasn’t going to outrun it. In and out of the trees she wove, over a hollow log, smashing a shell of blue-green fungus as she dodged behind a stump. Slithering down a
steep ditch that might have been a brook, though it held mostly mud, she flung herself up the opposite bank with the jaguar’s hot breath sawing in her ear.