Cat's Paw (13 page)

The test had become the first step. To carry out Geoff’s mission he’d have to disappear, for at least a week, without his parents wondering. Impossible – unless you had a
family like his. Dad would think he was staying with Mum. Mum could be told he was at Dad’s. Only from each other could they find out the truth, and (here was the beauty of it) they no longer
spoke except through Ben. The final spanner in the works – school – was easy. A phone call from Geoff, posing as Ray Gallagher, explained to Ben’s form teacher that he had
tonsillitis. That covered the week until the holidays.

But planning it and doing it were very different things. On the Victoria line train he sat sandwiched between Kevin and Big Nose, facing Jeep’s and Alec’s mocking sneers. Trying to
stare past them he locked eyes with his reflection in the opposite window, a ghost that blurred when the jolting train rattled the panes of glass.

They braked into Euston. He must have tensed, for Kevin pinned his left wrist to the arm rest. Passengers disembarked and boarded. A young man in a rugby shirt took the seat next to Kevin,
settling down with his earphones yammering. Doors clunked and they moved off.

In two minutes they’d be at King’s Cross. Then onwards to Islington, on through Finsbury Park, then the long, long tunnel in the depths of which hid the station that appeared on no
map. Already his home – wherever
that
was – felt far away.

I don’t understand.
This morning’s phone call to Mum still hurt.
Ben, what’s the matter? We agreed you’d spend the holidays with me.

I want to stay in London this Easter. Where my friends are.

It was done now. He had to forget their conversation. Those lies he had told were to spare her from worry.

Are you cross with me, Ben? Because I moved out of London?

No.

I hoped you could come with me. I still do.

He shook his arm free of Kevin’s, ignoring the warning glares. It did nothing to silence the voices in his head.

I’ll come in the summer holidays.

Will you though? You say you’ll come at weekends and you don’t. You don’t even call much. I’m scared, Ben.

Scared? Why. . . why should you be?

I get this feeling. You’re drifting. Out of my reach. Like I’m never going to see you again.

Ben met the stare of his spectre in the window, hurtling through emptiness. This was wrong, this was
mad
. Guilt rose in him and kept on rising, pounding him into submission. He
couldn’t let Mum think those things. Geoff was asking too much. He hadn’t thought this through at all.

Highbury and Islington. The doors chirruped and clunked.

He had to escape. As the train gathered speed his mind raced with it, getting flashes of a crazy plan. He rode on this route at least once a week, knew every bump and swerve. There was something
about this stretch of the line. . .

Rat-tat-tat-ah-ratta
. The man with the earphones must have been deafened, his music louder than the clash of steel wheels. Ben stole a glance past Kevin. The iPod lay upon the guy’s
knee, the wire snagged on the collar of his rugby shirt. The pieces of Ben’s plan fell into place. But Finsbury Park was only minutes away. It was now or never.

He shut his eyes and invoked his catras, one after the other, his Mau body bristling awake. He lingered on the last, Ailur for agility. He was going to need it.

‘Kevin,’ he said. ‘That last name you asked about? It’s Gallagher.’

As Kevin turned his way, Ben reached past him, his left hand darting as fast as a cat’s paw. He grabbed the young man’s earphones and jerked his iPod up like a fish on a line. It
landed in Kevin’s lap, blaring into thin air.

‘What the – ?’ Too slow to have seen Ben move, the man rounded on Kevin. ‘Give that back you – !’

Kevin knocked the grabbing hands away, and right on cue all hell broke loose. Jeep and Big Nose sprang to help their leader as he struggled with the burly man. The carriage’s other
passengers cringed in alarm and it was left for Alec to yell, ‘He’s getting away!’, which Ben heard from the far end of the carriage. Hoping Alec was right, he ran to the
connecting door (
Risk of death if used while train is moving
) and yanked it open to the smell of metallic winds.

A horrified shout came from behind him. He looked back and saw the man in the rugby shirt clutching his blood-soaked right hand. Jeep’s knife flashed a second time and Kevin caught his
arm.

‘Leave it! He’s the one we want.’

White-faced the bleeding man slumped into a seat. Ben felt sick. That had been his fault. Tearing his eyes away he slipped through the door and edged his body into the gap between the train
cars. With every bend the cars flexed around their couplings, squeezing him when they turned left. He had a moment’s terror. If the bend got any sharper, the bunching carriages might crush
him.

But the track straightened. The carriages parted on his side, freeing him enough to climb. Scraping paintwork with his Mau claws he dragged himself, gasping, to the train’s curved roof.
The noise stunned him. He had thought tube trains were loud inside, but out here, hemmed in by echoing walls, it was like being in the throat of a roaring Tyrannosaurus rex.

The tunnel’s brick roof would shear off his scalp if he rose out of a crouch. He crawled along the top of the carriage, into the wind. Wheels rasped on rails and it was hard to hear
himself think. Why had he come up here? Because. . . because he hoped to do something so stupidly dangerous that even the polecats would think twice about it.

All his life Finsbury Park had been his local station. Nobody knew their back garden better. It served two lines, the Piccadilly (great for getting to the cinemas at Leicester Square) and this
one, the Victoria. To switch from one to the other you had to walk across the platforms, for the two lines ran through separate tunnels. There was only one point where those tunnels joined.

Knowing he shouldn’t, Ben looked back. A spark from the electric track whitened the walls, and he saw Kevin’s red hair, the flash of Jeep’s bared teeth. They were clambering
onto the carriage roof behind him. Kevin shouted something, lost in the roar. Ben ducked his head and kept crawling. Thirty seconds more was all he needed. Thirty seconds and luck.

Something zinged off the bodywork near his hand. Flying gravel? He looked round again. His pursuers were closer. Jeep held something in his outstretched hand. A T-shaped thing. With a lurch of
dread Ben recognised the mini-crossbow. Kevin was still bawling as if someone had pressed his mute button.
Stop. Stay there.
Ben clung on as the train rattled and bounced. This was it
– this was the place. But the thing he had banked on was not happening. His plan collapsed. What a mad gamble it had been. He’d trusted his life to London Transport.

And then it appeared.

For a magical moment it seemed as if the tunnel was walled with mirrors. A second tube train, all lit up, was cruising alongside. In this short stretch of tunnel, where the two lines briefly
merged, he’d often stared out of the window to see this synchronised train, bound on a slightly different course. A different course that he now had the power to take.

Jeep rose to one knee. He levelled the crossbow, squinting along the shaft. Kevin yelled inaudibly. Ben caught the gleam of amazement in his eyes. Maybe he couldn’t quite believe it, but
Kevin had guessed.

On rushed the trains to the fork where the track began to pull apart like a giant zip. Ben leaped. Parda, the strength catra, burst golden in his mind, catapulting him across the widening gap.
He crashed onto the roof of the parallel carriage and pinned himself to it with his claws. In the same instant the trains dived into their separate tunnels, carrying Ben to one side of Finsbury
Park and the polecats to the other.

His train pulled into the platform, just one of dozens every day. Passengers spilled out. Ben peered down on the tops of their heads. The doors stayed open an agonisingly long time. He knew that
his last-second leap had only bought him breathing space. Should he make a dash for it through the station, or stay put? Running seemed too risky. Staying on this tube line would take him farther
away from the Hermitage, and right now that was all he cared about.

The train moved off. Ben crawled to a gap between the cars and let himself in through the door he wasn’t supposed to use. He found a seat and let a station go by, getting off at the next,
Turnpike Lane. There weren’t many people around. Ben headed for the escalators. Any of the buses that went down Green Lanes might get him home in time for lunch with Dad. He could say
he’d changed his mind –

‘One more step,’ hissed a voice behind him, ‘and it’s a bolt in your back. I’ll do it.’

Ben stood as still as he knew how.

‘Turn around.’

He obeyed. Jeep stood half-hidden in an archway, the arrow of his crossbow pointing at Ben’s heart.

‘Yeah,’ said Ben. ‘I know you would.’

Slow handclaps rang off the tiles. Kevin stepped from another arch.

‘Nice one. That was class.’ He closed until he and Ben were face to face. ‘Really, you’re one slippery guy. A shame you can’t outwit me. Especially not on the
Tube.’

Ben took deep breaths, trying to calm his Mau body down. There was a real danger that the wildcat inside him would make him do some dumb cat thing, like trying to fight his way out.

‘Kev, you’re in my firing line,’ said Jeep.

‘And you’re in my slapping line. Gimme that stupid bow before you poke someone’s eye out.’ Kevin peered at Ben. ‘Okay, jumping Jack Flash. Who taught you that
stuff?’

Ben counted his remaining options. Just the one, it seemed. Fortunately it was the one Geoff had prepared him for. Time to go back to the script.

‘I learned it from a guy I used to know,’ said Ben. ‘But he went off and left me.’

‘He left you? What was his name?’

This was it. The magic words. ‘He called himself the White Cat.’

Kevin and Jeep blinked.

‘No way,’ said Jeep. ‘That’s the guy who taught–’

‘Not
Geoff
White?’ said Kevin.

‘Might have been.’ Ben shrugged. ‘I ain’t seen him for months and I don’t want to.’

Kevin took him by the elbow with a firm but not unfriendly grip.

‘There’s someone you really have to meet,’ he said.

‘Your mum and I have been having a talk,’ said Peter Maine. Tiffany paused with her sardines on toast half-chewed. That phrase could mean a divorce or simply that
her room needed hoovering.

Mum started laying two places for dinner. ‘We’ve discussed that Paris trip, and we think it’ll be good for you to go.’

‘You what?’ Tiffany spat crumbs. ‘Duh! It’s no use saying yes
now
. They did the bookings ages ago.’

‘I phoned Mr Devereux on Friday,’ said Mum. ‘There’s a spare place. One of your classmates had to cancel.’

Of course. Jason Wilks had busted his ankle playing rugby.

‘So, I can go to Paris now?’

Dad took a lamb joint out of the fridge. ‘
Mais oui!
’

Tiffany felt peculiar. Happy, of course, yet in a distant way. School trips, Easter holidays, these seemed alien things at the moment. She remembered to smile back and look
tres heureux
,
but inside she was stewing.

For starters, she was furious with Ben. She was furious with everyone, herself included. All the Cat Kin had known about the plan except her.

‘How could you?’ she yelled at Geoff, as soon as she arrived at the chapel that evening. Geoff didn’t even take Sundays off, and now held Cat Kin meetings whenever anyone could
make it. Tiffany had told her parents she was round at Cecile’s to watch a DVD – well and truly scraping her barrel of excuses. ‘How dare you send him back there?’

‘Send him? You can’t send Ben out for a pint of milk.’ Geoff looked tired, his stubble scraggier. ‘This is something he wants to do. For him the Hermitage is unfinished
business. He has to go back. And I have to find out what Fisher is up to.’

‘Mrs Powell never sent us into danger on our own,’ Tiffany retorted. ‘She’d have handled it herself.’

‘No doubt.’ Geoff stretched towards the chapel ceiling. ‘But then, Mrs Powell wouldn’t have this problem in the first place. Mrs Powell would never mess up the way I did.
Mrs Powell is perfect, isn’t she, Tiffany?’ He dropped his arms with a hiss of spent air. ‘But I’m not. So cut me some slack.’

Tiffany smarted from his words until Cecile caught her at the end of the class.

‘Sometimes,’ said Cecile, ‘you can be a clot.’

‘’Scuse me?’

‘Around Geoff. He misses her too. Maybe more than you do. Don’t you see?’

Yes, she did. Geoff slouched in the corner, trying to unknot a lank of his hair, scratching inside one ear. Had she passed such a man on the street, Tiffany might have given him her loose
change.

‘He’s sore talking about her. It’s obvious,’ said Cecile. ‘And you keep picking at it.’

‘Tell him I’m sorry, then. It doesn’t change the facts. Think, Cecile, where is Ben? What’s happening to him right now?’