Cat's Paw (10 page)

Ben shaded his eyes. The chapel’s rose window was flowering, the intricate stonework catching sunbeams through the firs, so that it sprinkled green-gold light. The effect lasted seconds
before the angle was lost, but its magic lingered in a sweet breeze that wafted down the aisle. Ben heard the bark of a dog outside, the giggle of young children, a pair of parents strolling a
nearby path. He had a sudden longing to be elsewhere.

It was Tiffany who said it. ‘You know where he is now.’

‘I tried to track him,’ said Geoff. ‘He gave me the slip. For years he’s been off my radar.’

‘Then he found that empty station,’ said Yusuf.

‘He was bound to go somewhere like that,’ said Geoff. ‘All over the Underground there are stations that are no longer used – Aldwych, Down Street, City Road. Martin would
have liked the name Hermitage. A home for a loner.’

‘Did you see him, Ben?’ asked Daniel. Ben shook his head. Somewhere deep inside him that scream was echoing still.
GO AWAY . . .

‘All these years,’ Geoff mused. ‘He must be thirty by now.’

Susie looked doubtful. ‘If this loony is such a hermit, what about the other people Ben saw down there? Those weird kids?’

‘Martin can’t bear human company,’ said Geoff. ‘But he must have found that loneliness is worse. So he recruited children and he trained them, just as I trained him.
Maybe he thought he could tolerate humans if they too lived the way of the polecat.’

‘Good job it was Mrs Powell’s advert that we saw!’ said Olly.

Geoff glared, not amused.

‘Olly’s got a point, though,’ ventured Ben. ‘Martin didn’t put adverts in the Hackney Gazette. Where did his pupils come from?’

‘And how could anyone want to live like that?’ Susie demanded.

‘Think about it,’ said Geoff. ‘Not all are as lucky as you. Everywhere you see broken families, latch-key kids, waifs and strays. Kids whose lives came apart. I used to be one
myself. There’s boys and girls out there who feel lost, with no-one to care. Until they meet Martin.’

Ben fidgeted. For a moment Geoff’s words had felt uncomfortably close to home. But then, who was he to feel sorry for himself? Mum and Dad might be cut off from each other, but they
weren’t cut off from him. His was a happy life compared to some. What had that girl said about her family?
I lost them. I got a new family here.
Hannah and Thomas, his oddball guards.
Both so distant, so afraid, so
lonely
. The way they stood trying to block his escape, pitifully defiant, threatening and beseeching him not to leave. Their faces of dread as he slunk out of
the door.

‘We should do something.’ His own voice startled him. ‘We have to try and help them.’

Geoff looked at Ben as if he’d lost his mind.

‘But of course we do,’ he said. ‘Why else do you think I came to find you?’

‘Tiffany. Tiffany?’

It was like hearing a dripping tap beneath a waterfall. Tiffany pictured a green cat’s eye and drew more deeply on Mandira, the face catra that governed the senses. It took a moment to
tune in.

‘–we can walk to Covent Garden–’ ‘–amazing film that was–’ ‘–grab a coffee in the Square–’

The clamour of the ticket hall broke into its component parts, each one twinkling and clear. Her ears panned through the muddy mass of chatter, flick-flacking barriers and thrumming escalators,
straining to find the voice saying her name.

‘Tiffany, any luck?’

‘No,’ she sighed. ‘If I had more idea who I’m looking for. . .’

‘You know them when you see them. They wear black bandanas. And there’s this feeling they give you.’

‘Speak up!’ Susie’s voice floated on the din. ‘I didn’t catch a word of that.’

‘Nothing,’ said Tiffany, glad for once that Susie’s listening skills needed practice. The seven of them were spread across the donut-shaped concourse of Leicester Square tube
station. Daniel and Yusuf loitered near the exits while Susie, Tiffany, Olly and Cecile leaned at intervals around the circular office in the centre. A tense and twitchy Ben prowled everywhere
else. Thanks to cat hearing they could talk across the noisy space, with only a little confusion from Chinese Whispers.

People poured in from the streets above. Escalators pumped crowds from below. Daytrippers surged in search of films, shows, fast food and Sunday shopping, ebbing and flowing in a ceaseless tide.
Tiffany stifled a yawn. She could feel her weekend trickling away while thousands around her had fun. But Geoff insisted this was their best chance to watch Fisher’s children outside their
lair.

‘He needs cash to keep everyone fed,’ Geoff had explained. ‘So he sends them out on thieving raids. The Tube is like a rabbit warren, which happens to be a polecat’s
favourite hunting ground. They’ll target the busiest stations, the tourist traps. I want to know where they go, how far they range, how many there are – as much as you can tell me. And
look for the misfits, the unhappy ones. They may come in useful.’

Tiffany was puzzled. It should have been exciting to work with the Cat Kin in such a good cause, a slightly dangerous cause at that. Why, then, did she feel so reluctant? Of course she wanted to
help those poor kids, as much as anyone did. What she didn’t much like, she decided, was Geoff White telling her to do it.

Was she being a brat? It wasn’t as if Geoff was a bad pashki teacher. She no longer minded that he had taken over her class. He had awesome skills, a real sense of fun and a bucketload of
patience to match. In fact there was nothing about him to dislike, except for the fact that he wasn’t Mrs Powell.

Daniel piped up: ‘Anyone else hungry?’

‘Yes,’ said Olly.

‘
Your
hearing’s improved,’ said Ben. ‘Okay. Let’s make it short.’

They climbed the steps into Leicester Square and felt the pull of an ice cream parlour. Tiffany got the last tub of Chocolate Midnight Cookies flavour and shared it with Cecile, who had brought
no money. Perched on a window seat she let her eyes loose on the house-sized posters that crowned the cinemas, wondering which film she was missing most. An odd conversation made her turn
round.

‘Mustelids form one of the broadest families in the order Carnivora,’ said Yusuf. ‘While some eat fruit, most have strong jaws that can slice or crush bone.’

‘What’s that? Cecile looked at the book Yusuf had opened on the table. ‘“
We are the Weasels: A guide from badger to zorilla.
” What’s a
zorilla?’

‘Sounds like an ape with a sword,’ said Olly. ‘You know, like Zorro?’

No-one laughed.

‘Got it from the library,’ said Yusuf. ‘It can’t hurt to know a bit about these creatures, can it?’

‘Creatures?’ Ben poked the book with his plastic fork. He had a tub of vanilla that was still untouched. ‘We can’t think like that. Those kids aren’t polecats any
more than we’re really cats.’

‘I know.’ Yusuf looked at him oddly. ‘I’m talking about the animals. We read up on the polecat family to try and understand Fisher’s gang. That’s all I
meant.’ He turned a page. “‘The ferret and the polecat are close cousins, ferrets being the domesticated form. Some experts joke that ferrets are just polecats with
addresses.”’

Ben picked at his ice cream. Tiffany could tell his mind was elsewhere. His gaze kept wandering through the window.

‘“Ferrets are commonly used as hunting pets-”’

‘There!’ Ben pointed, sending Susie’s sorbet flying. ‘Over by the Odeon.’

A squad of four figures was breaking through the crowds of cinema-goers, moving with one wilful stride. They circled round a busker with a banjo and on past the Vue cinema towards Charing Cross
Road.

‘That’s them.’ Ben pulled Olly and Daniel from their chairs. ‘Come on!’

‘I was still eating that,’ protested Susie.

Tiffany slurped one last chocolate chunk and flicked her tub sadly and accurately across the room towards the bin. They piled out after Ben into the Square.

‘That guy with the messy hair is Gary. The girl’s called Antonia. I don’t recognise the other two.’

The gang crossed the road. Ben and Yusuf broke into a run, following them across the road and into the Tube station. Tiffany, lagging behind the others, made her way down the congested steps and
got sour looks from all the people Ben had barged aside.

She was surprised to see that the four youths – the polecat kids, as she now thought of them – were still in the ticket hall, loitering outside a tacky souvenir shop. Ben had gone
into full shifty mode, lurking near a ticket machine and casting suspicious glances. Yusuf did better by burying his head in his book.

‘“Like cats, ferrets are insatiably curious, a trait which gets them into no end of trouble,”’ he read. ‘“Sadly, unlike cats, ferrets have very little homing
instinct, so a lost pet rarely survives as a stray unless some kind person takes them in.”’

Tiffany pretended to study her nails so she could stare at the group through her fingers. The three boys wore wolfish grins and had an aura of danger that cleared space around them. The willowy
black girl watched the crowds. She wore her bandana as a head scarf, while her companions had tied theirs round their necks. These were masks, Tiffany reminded herself. Bandit masks.

‘Are they waiting for someone?’ Susie hovered at her side.

‘Look,’ Cecile murmured. ‘They’re splitting up.’

Two of the boys ambled towards the gateway to the Piccadilly line.

‘“The American fisher,
martes pennanti
,”’ read Yusuf, ‘“resembles a very large mink. An adult male can weigh as much as a terrier dog. They don’t
actually fish; their name comes from fitch, an old word for polecat.’”

A logjam of tourists was forming at the top of the escalators. They appeared to be foreign students. Some fiddled in purses or wallets for unfamiliar Travelcards, while the more confident
filtered through the barriers into the ticket hall. Tiffany’s keen ears plucked a thread of their conversation.

‘Il est pour ma mère. Maman aime des ours.’

A girl with a brown fringe and glasses was holding a teddy that wore an I Love London T-shirt. A gift for her bear-loving mother – Tiffany understood that much. She’d been working
hard at her French, supposedly for her school Paris trip which Mum and Dad were still umming and ahhing about. The happy faces of the French students made her wince. They were having fun in her
city, while she would probably never visit theirs.

‘“Fishers are exceptionally fierce and agile predators,”’ Yusuf read. ‘“They can outclimb a squirrel and are one of the only animals able to kill
porcupines.” Hey, this is good. “The fisher’s cry is notorious, often mistaken for a human scream. Shaken Boston residents have even imagined it to be the sound of a child being
murdered–”’

‘Shut it, Yusuf,’ said Ben. ‘I think something’s happening.’

The two boys had lapped the hall and were now strolling back towards Gary and Antonia, quickening their pace. The barriers were now clogged with bemused Europeans, forcing an inspector to unlock
a side gate.

‘“As well as preying on everything from mice to small deer, fishers have been blamed for slaughtering domestic cats–’

‘I said that’s enough!’ Ben tried to snatch the book and so missed the moment. Tiffany felt a spark jump between the polecat pairs. The four pulled their masks over their eyes.
Then they moved like the wind. They really did, for they themselves were harder to see than the path they blew through the crowd. Tiffany’s cat vision slowed other moving figures to a crawl
as her eyes tracked the attackers. The leading pair shoved people hard, knocking them off balance long enough to let the others breeze past and harvest purses, phones, money-belts and iPods. What
most witnesses might later describe as a random smash-and-grab was in actual fact an elegant and orderly dance. Someone screamed. The girl with the teddy bear groped on the floor for her
glasses.

Dreadlocks flying, the boy named Gary vaulted the ticket barriers, two handbags and a plastic carrier hooked in his right arm. He had hardly hit the ground before his friends leaped over. The
whole strike, from first nod to breakaway, had taken all of five seconds. Tiffany stood dazed for the sixth. Then:

‘After them!’ Ben cried.

‘We can’t go down there,’ Tiffany blurted, ‘we haven’t bought tickets–’

Ben cleared the barrier in one bound. Susie was right on his tail, flinging herself aloft with the help of both hands. Tiffany heaved a sigh, called on her inner cat and leaped. She landed on
the other side in the path of a cross mother’s pushchair, skipped aside with a quick apology and grabbed the nearest shoulder, Olly’s.

‘What’s he playing at? Geoff said to watch, not chase them.’

‘Uu-uh.’ Olly gulped. ‘This looks hairy–’

The packed escalators hadn’t slowed the thieves’ escape. The polecat kids had jumped onto the partition between the staircases, making its sloping surface into a slide. As for Ben,
his splayed shape was already halfway down it and dwindling fast, with Daniel and Susie close behind. Olly shut his eyes, whooped and hurled himself after them.
Hey ho
, thought Tiffany,
why not?
As soon as she was plummeting she remembered why not.