Catscape (12 page)

Unperturbed by the onslaught, Fergus went for a closer look at the hole in the van’s floor that had appeared when the Capture Plate was lowered. By crawling on to the plate and squeezing his body upwards Fergus was able to get himself through the narrow
gap and into the van — something that anyone of Murdo’s size could only have dreamt about.

As he poked his head through the floor and into the inside of the van, Fergus silently apologized to his friend as he realized that sometimes even his wilder ideas might just have the possibility of being true.

“I can see you, I can see you,” said Murdo’s now muffled but clearly excited voice through the van wall. Fergus could certainly see why Murdo could see him. There were tiny cameras in every corner of the van. Most of the inside was taken up by rectangular cages which were stacked five high against the walls. At a quick guess Fergus reckoned there were about fifty cages in total.

Along the edge of the cages ran a small conveyor belt and there was a hoist which sat in one corner like a tiny crane. Fergus could see that the cages could be moved around the back of the van on the conveyor belts to fit over the Capture Plate. This meant that from the driver’s seat Beanface had complete control not just of driving the van but of what went on in the back of it too. He could tour the streets, attracting cats to come under the van by appealing to each of their senses. A quick press of the right buttons and any cat would be captured by the closing walls on the side of the plate, lifted up and caged in the van in a matter of seconds. The fish shop van was a one-man cat-capturing machine.

“This is amazing. Anything else of interest where you are?” called Fergus. Murdo’s voice came back through the van wall. “Not really, although there is a number on a bit of paper stuck to the dashboard that might be useful. If you’d let me bring my notebook and pen I could have written it down. Can you remember it? You’re better than me at those things. It says ‘Access Code: 51329.’”

“I’ll use my watch,” said Fergus, keying the number into the memory of his DataBoy. Fergus had just finished when the
phone rang loudly in his earpiece.

“Boys, your time is nearly up, I want you to get out in the next sixty seconds,” Jessie’s voice crackled.

“Jessie says time up and no buts, Murdo.”

“But …” began Murdo before realizing that Jessie had anticipated his reaction.

“I’ll go back the way I came in,” said Fergus through the wall to Murdo, “then you’d better raise the Capture Plate again and leave everything as you found it.”

Fergus squeezed himself through the gap in the floor of the van as quickly as he could, edging his way onto the Capture Plate and back to the road. As he crawled out from under the van, the mechanism for the Capture Plate began to buzz and whirr again and the device disappeared back into the underside of the van. Fergus hooked his left foot around the football which was still wedged waiting to be rescued. Anyone who had been watching might well have wondered why it had taken a boy fifteen minutes to get his ball out from under a van.

As Fergus brushed himself down, Murdo hopped out of the van, closing the door behind him. The alarms on the two DataBoys went off in unison.

“Time up! A perfectly executed operation!” said Murdo looking at his watch and grinning from ear to ear.

Fergus waved the ball. “Game of football, Murdo?”

“Don’t mind if I do, Fergus!” replied Murdo.

“Let’s just see if Jessie wants a game first,” said Fergus trotting back across the road to Jessie’s flat.

Over the next few minutes they recounted the tale of the successful operation to Jessie who remained in position at the window to keep an eye on the last stage of events. Murdo described the findings at the van as “cast-iron evidence” that linked the fish shop to the cats’ disappearance. Fergus meanwhile kept rubbing at his face which he was convinced stank of fish.

Jessie interrupted them, as Beanface finally emerged from Beryl’s front door looking distinctly hot and bothered. The boys crowded in to peer through the net curtains with her. According to Murdo’s DataBoy, he had been in there for twenty-three minutes and forty seconds and his face was almost the colour of his colleague Beetroot’s. Beryl gave a heavy wink in the direction of Jessie’s flat as she waved him off. Beanface accelerated away angrily, the white van roaring off down Comely Bank Avenue.

As they speculated on just how many cats might have been captured in the van over the last few months and taken to the fish shop, Fergus realized that Murdo had drifted out of the conversation. In fact he was sitting very quiet and was somehow looking smaller, almost as though he had shrunk in on himself. He had also gone very pale.

“Murdo, are you feeling all right?” asked Fergus.

“Er, I don’t think this operation has been quite the success that we thought,” said Murdo.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” said Jessie.

“Did we miss something?” asked Fergus.

“I left something important in the van,” said Murdo.

Fergus looked expectantly at Murdo and waited to hear him mention a piece of equipment. He was certainly not expecting what Murdo said next.

“Jock.”

“He must have fallen asleep. He just curled up on the passenger side when we climbed in. When the call came to get out I completely forgot that he was there.” It was Murdo’s turn to pace the room looking utterly perplexed. His arms were one wave and a clutch away from tearing his hair out.

Fergus swallowed hard. It wouldn’t have taken Beanface long to realize that there was a dog in the van and even less time to make a connection with the recent dog incident in the shop. It seemed that each time they found out more about Stein’s shop they gave something else away about themselves.

Jessie looked equally concerned. “I feel that this takes us into new territory. We certainly mustn’t do anything rash. I think that it may be time to call your friend Gill again. After all we need to tell her about that van and what it’s being used for.”

“I’ve got to go and find him,” said Murdo completely caught up in his own world. “It won’t do any harm just to have a look around down at the shop. He might be wandering about looking a bit lost. I mean maybe he hid from Beanface and he’s escaped. He’s very resourceful you know.”

Fergus smiled weakly. Smart though Jock was, it seemed more likely that he would have started some frenzied barking rather than made a cunning decision to hide when Beanface got back into the van.

“I’ll call Gill,” said Fergus feeling a bit more confident about using his contact now and keen to do anything to help Murdo calm down. The message he got a minute or two later however put the dampers back on the day.

“She’s not at work for another three hours,” he said glumly as
he put the phone down.

“Boys, I think you should sit tight until then. She is the main person that could help to negotiate with this one. You can call her in a few hours and tell her all about the van and get her to help with Jock. Now I’m going to have to get ready. I’ll be heading off soon as my lift arrives in about half an hour. You keep that mobile phone for now, Fergus, and listen to me carefully …”

The two boys sat on the settee looking up expectantly at Jessie. She leaned forward in her armchair and looked at them firmly. “You boys must not do anything until you get hold of Gill. We don’t know for sure what Stein is up to, but I know he’s someone not to be trifled with. Do you hear me? You need to promise me you won’t go marching off and start something that you can’t predict the finish of.”

“Yes,” mumbled Fergus, conscious that Murdo seemed to be looking in a different direction, intent on not taking part in this conversation and certainly avoiding promising Jessie anything.

A few minutes later Jessie showed them out of her flat past two bulging bags in the hall. “Sorry, I’m leaving you to it, but this trip has been booked for a long time,” she said. “Now remember what I said.”

“Well that’s that until later,” said Fergus as they headed out on to Comely Bank Avenue. “I’m sure that Jock will be alright for a few hours,” he said, trying to convince himself as much as Murdo.

“I can’t leave him there with that animal thief! He likes an adventure but that’s taking it too far!” cried Murdo. “We have to do something. I’m not waiting around for half a day!”

“Jessie told us not to do anything until later. You heard her. She thinks it’s getting too risky. Don’t forget she met Stein. She seems to think he’s got a nasty streak.”

Fergus’s words seemed to go nowhere as Murdo said flatly, “I’m going to the shop, Fergus. You can come if you want to and
you can stay if you want to, but I’m going to find Jock.”

Murdo began to walk off, his rucksack bobbing on his back as he went.

After some debate, Fergus managed to convince Murdo that the best plan was to keep it simple. This meant having a look around near the shop to see if the van was there and seeing if there was any immediate sign of Jock. So, with a feeling of trepidation rather than excitement, they headed off once again, as quickly as they could, to the fish shop. Fergus glanced back as they went almost expecting to see Jessie wagging her finger disapprovingly at them.

There was a buzz of shoppers around when they arrived and it seemed to be a normal working day on Raeburn Place with Stein’s doing a steady trade.

The boys slipped through the archway and round the lane to the back of the shop. There was no sign of the van or any other vehicle. The metal shutter was down and locked and the only other thing of note was a neat pile of large white plastic boxes stacked up on one side of the courtyard.

“Let’s see if that door is locked as tightly as it was on Sunday morning,” said Murdo. Before Fergus could caution him about going too close, Murdo was off and running, and seconds later was rattling the door, finding it unsurprisingly shut tight.

As Murdo turned away disappointed, the roar of a rapidly approaching engine began to fill the courtyard. There was a split second as the boys stared at each other wide-eyed before they dived for cover behind the stack of white containers. A second later the boys peeked out to see the familiar white van pulling up to the metal shutter.

“That was close,” whispered Fergus.

“Very,” said Murdo, large beads of sweat breaking out on his round face. He squeezed out of his rucksack straps and wafted his shirt in an attempt to cool down.

The boys could hear the sound of the van’s engine idling and the driver’s door being opened and closed. The next noise was the rattle of locks and then the protesting scrape of metal on metal. The boys nodded in silent agreement that the shuttered door had just been rolled back. Then the van engine cut out, there were some footsteps and all became quiet. The boys looked at each other and shrugged. The only sound now was the distant buzz of cars on Raeburn Place.

“Was it Beanface driving?” asked Murdo.

“I suspect so,” said Fergus adjusting his crouching position, “although I couldn’t see properly. I was too busy going headfirst to get out of the way.”

“Why’s it so quiet?” said Murdo.

Fergus took a deep breath and peeked around the corner of the stack of white containers. The van had reversed up to the shuttered door which was now open. Everything was still.

“There’s no one there and the doors are open.” Even as he said it Fergus realized that he had made a mistake in giving such an accurate description.

Murdo’s eyes lit up. “Right, I’m going to have a look.”

“That’s not a good idea,” said Fergus firmly. “Beanface would never leave that door open for long. He’ll be back any minute.”

“It has to be done! It might be our only chance to look for Jock.” Murdo was already on his way as he finished the
sentence, in such a rush that he left his rucksack lying on the ground.

“Jessie would not be happy with this,” was the main thought running through Fergus’s mind as he hesitated, then put on the rucksack and followed Murdo towards the open shuttered door. Up ahead Murdo looked through the driver’s window into the van but didn’t see anything worth breaking his stride for.

“Jock!” he whispered urgently as he tiptoed towards the open shuttered door. “Jock?”

There was no reply. Fergus was now level with Murdo, his heart thumping so fast that it seemed to have moved up to his ears. The boys were just inside what was a gloomy loading bay. As their eyes adjusted to the dim light they could see that there were lots more white containers and not much else of note. Murdo started lifting the lids on a few of the containers as if expecting Jock to suddenly appear from one of them. Fergus couldn’t imagine that the little dog was in any of these and looking around the area, he felt that they were also in the wrong part of the building to have any chance of finding him.

He glanced back to the pile of boxes that they had left behind. They suddenly seemed a long long way off. If they needed to dive for cover again, they would have to sprint some distance first and Fergus began to feel very exposed.

As he looked out into the yard there was a flash of colour to the left of the boxes where they had hidden a moment or two before. It came and went so quickly that if he had blinked he would have missed it but it seemed to him that there was something else out there. He turned to ask Murdo if he had seen anything but suddenly remembered that they were in mid-trespass.

“We should get out,” said Fergus. “This isn’t the place to look. Beanface will be back any second.”

“I’m just going to check the back of the van,” said Murdo, giving up on the boxes and paying no attention to Fergus’s
concern. “You look in some more of these containers.”

Fergus shook his head in exasperation as Murdo went off to the van.

“This is not good,” Fergus muttered to himself, but he quickly started to look around in the slim hope that Jock was nearby. Everything seemed as a loading bay should be. Brick walls, a concrete floor, lots of containers and certainly no sign of a stray dog. Glancing up he realized that Murdo had disappeared from view. The back door of the van was slightly open and he could just see Murdo through the crack.

Fergus looked back at the containers beside him and a flash of blue amidst the white plastic caught his eye. Looking more closely he reached down and pulled out a plastic clipboard which appeared to have slipped between two of the containers. A single sheet of paper was attached to the metal clasp at the top, and on it was a long list of place names: Dumfries, Dundee, Falkirk, Newcastle, Perth, Stirling. Beside each was a number.

Fergus tried to make sense of the list. “Dundee 35, Falkirk 24?” he mused, distracted from the fact that he was standing somewhere that he shouldn’t be. “Well, Dundee supporters would be happy.”

Fergus looked up to see if Murdo was anywhere nearby to help him puzzle this one through, when suddenly he froze as he heard a door close. There was the sound of footsteps approaching from the other side of a door at the back of the loading bay that led towards the shop. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up.

“Quick! Someone’s coming!” he called towards the van, realizing that whoever was approaching was already only a matter of steps away and was about to appear.

“Murdo, get out now!” said Fergus as loudly as he dared towards the van, sliding the clipboard back between the containers. There was now no time to get out of the loading bay
unseen and with seconds to go Fergus dived for one of the white containers which was standing open with its lid to one side. In a flash he was inside it, clumsily falling in because of Murdo’s rucksack. He pulled the plastic lid over his head just in time as he heard the door at the back of the loading bay open.

Fergus breathed heavily and tried to control his racing heart pounding in his ears. He didn’t know if Murdo had heard his warning but as the footsteps of whoever had just entered the loading bay passed by and headed out to the courtyard, there seemed to be no way that his friend would have got out of the van in time.

Fergus buried his head in his hands. He couldn’t believe that the rescue attempt had ended with no clue as to Jock’s whereabouts, Murdo caught and him stuck in a plastic box. They had hit a new all time low.