by Nick Green
‘The White Cat abandoned you, didn’t he?’ he whispered. ‘He abandoned me too, Ben. It is what those cat-people do. They always do.’ His eyes glimmered. ‘But I will never leave you. Only turn around and I will be behind you. When you sleep I will watch over you. And wherever you are, I will–’ his voice rose to hiss, ‘I will always find you.’
The rest of the day passed in a blur. At one point he imagined he was coming down with flu. He remembered eating a hamburger and fries, which Lisa reheated for him in the makeshift kitchen upstairs. Then an evening that seemed never to end, sitting stiffly on a chair watching the others play pool and table football in the games area, while music hammered and consoles flashbanged around him. He couldn’t have joined in even if he’d wanted to. He was too strung-up looking around for Fisher, and the fact that Ben never saw him didn’t mean that Fisher wasn’t there.
Down on Platform 2 he queued for the toilet. Glad as he was of the flannel, towel and toothbrush that Kevin had pressed on him, telling him hygiene was important, he didn’t see anyone else washing. He scrubbed his hands and face over and over, stopping only when someone thumped on the door.
He bedded down among his silk shirts and fur blanket, propping his boxes into a flimsy fortress of solitude. It was like camping, he persuaded himself, closing his eyes. He heard Antonia yell that she’d lost a shoe. Next-door to him Dean and Gary were guffawing at a brain-dead joke. Alec and Ritchie played cards with someone else. Lisa sat rocking back and forth to tinny pop songs from her phone. Other music blared from other players. And every few minutes Kevin yelled at them to go to sleep. Ben covered his ears. Camping? More like the sleepover party from hell.
It was pashki that saved him from going mad. Curled in a despairing ball, he slipped by accident into the Omu meditation. If cats had one great talent, it was sleep: any time, any place. He lay in the O shape and a shell of calm coiled around him. The noise that continued to fill his ears no longer stirred his mind, so that he had the odd sensation of sinking into sleep while hearing everything that went on. The thunder-gusts of night trains came farther and farther apart, the children’s voices grew wearier, falling away one by one, and the jumble of music petered out, until nothing remained except a faint stain of sound upon the blackness.
He awoke.
The platform was swaddled in gloom. Filaments glowed in the low-burning bulbs. Ben blinked at his watch. It was half-past-three on a Monday morning, and felt like it. He lay still, a railway sleeper in the long line of slumbering forms. What had woken him?
Gary shifted in the bed next to his, muttering without sense – it sounded like water and water and water and water. Dean’s hands knotted at his blankets as he huffed and sighed. Ben became aware of a background murmur. The hairs rose on his neck when he realised what it was. All the kids were talking in their sleep. Someone was whining – it was Antonia – please, pleeeaaase. A deep voice, surely Kevin’s, cracked high as it yelped No! No! before gurgling to silence. Others mumbled fragments too obscure to make out. It all flowed together into a hum, a meaningless conversation in which every voice was alone.
He couldn’t close his eyes to that lullaby. He crawled from his box nest and stumbled along the platform, groggy with sleep. Even in the escalator hall the murmur followed him, borne along the passages. Maybe he could sleep in the wardrobe. He was setting foot on the stairs when he stopped short.
Now he remembered. One sound in particular had awoken him. A squeal, a shriek. Lines from Yusuf’s library book came back to him. The fisher’s cry is notorious. . . like a human scream. He revolved upon the ball of one foot until he faced the platform again, his Mau whiskers probing the air. He felt a ripple, the stealthy passing of a body. He Eth-walked to the lip of an archway and pressed his goosebumped back to the wall. Had a shadow moved in the corner of his eye? He stiffened, his heart pounding, the Mau claws springing unbidden from his fingertips. He peered round the pillar.
Something touched his arm.
‘Gaah!’ Ben lashed out and hit it.
‘Ow! Pack it in.’ The shadow shrank away and took shape.
‘Tiffany!’
His amazement turned to dismay.
‘Tiffany, oh no – are you hurt?’ He grabbed at his right hand with his left. ‘I didn’t know it was you. I had my Mau claws out. Let me see.’
Tiffany stepped into a puddle of light. She examined her forearm, squinting through her tabby face-print.
‘Don’t think I’m cut. Maybe you snagged my sleeve.’ She brushed at the sleek black of her pashki kit. ‘No. Not a mark. Lucky me. Lucky you, pal.’
Ben’s relief was huge but it didn’t last long.
‘You idiot!’ he whispered. ‘Why’d you come here?’
‘I’m making up for last time,’ said Tiffany. ‘Now let’s go.’
‘Go? I don’t need rescuing. Didn’t Geoff explain? He sent me here on purpose. To find things out.’
‘Oh. So you’re a spy.’
‘Yes.’
Tiffany considered him.
‘Nice pyjamas.’
‘What?’ Ben looked down at his Calvin Kleins. ‘Oh. Er. They gave me these. They’ve got tonnes of stuff. It’s all nicked.’
‘Ben, you shouldn’t be doing this. I’m afraid.’
‘Yeah, well. Live with it.’
‘Come on, get out of here. This is wrong.’
Ben bit at a thumbnail that had almost nothing left. The sleepers’ burblings were louder. He had a sudden urge to check his blind spots.
‘Escaping isn’t the problem,’ he whispered. ‘I could walk out now. Martin Fisher is the problem. He’ll come looking. He’d hunt me down.’
‘Thanks to Geoff.’
‘Geoff’s trying to sort it,’ Ben snapped. ‘But he needs our help. You could have wrecked everything by barging in.’
That earned him a catty glare.
‘Sorry,’ he sighed. ‘And thanks. I am glad to see you. Really.’
A new and awful sound pulled him up short. Someone on Platform 2 had started to cry. And this wasn’t snivelling. It was sobbing, wailing, moans and howls. Ben’s first fear, that the noise would wake everyone, was swamped by deeper terrors that had no name. The boy was clearly not awake, he was weeping in his sleep, blubbing out prayers of despair to the darkness. Tiffany stood still beside Ben as if the same icy spear had pierced them both. At length the cries dissolved into the general whimpering. She let out her breath.
‘Are you sure you want to stay here?’
‘When I was here before,’ said Ben, ‘there was this boy and girl. They were sort of. . . nice to me. They said they’d get in trouble if I escaped. I told them to come with me but they wouldn’t. And now they aren’t here.’
‘What do you think’s happened?’
‘You see? I have to stay. If only so I know what I did to them.’
He found Tiffany holding his wrists, as if arresting him.
‘Whatever happened isn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything.’
‘Exactly.’ He took his hands back. ‘I did nothing. And if I walk away now, I’ll be doing nothing.’
Instead of replying she prowled an ever-shrinking circle in a way Ben knew well. It meant she was thinking.
‘Ben. I could do something else.’
He guessed what she’d say. She would offer to join the polecats herself to keep him company. A sweet thought, but a ridiculous one.
‘I think. . .’ She hesitated. ‘I know that, somewhere out there, Mrs Powell is still alive.’
‘Thanks, but I’m– What did you say?’
‘I even have a rough idea where. Sort of a hunch.’
Ben was getting a hunch too, an ominous one.
‘If I can persuade Geoff to help me–’ Tiffany spoke faster, ‘I could track her down. Geoff can teach me the Oshtian Compass and I’ll find her. I’m sure I could, I, I. . .’ her Adam’s apple bobbed, ‘I think about her every day. So it ought to work.’
This was too much to take at f
our in the morning.
‘Tiffany, I know you miss her. But what’s that got to do with the mess I’m in?’
‘Because when you leave this place, Fisher’s going to come after you. Do you think Geoff can stop him alone? Because Geoff doesn’t, I can tell you that now. I say we need Mrs Powell as well.’
‘Why stop at her? Go and fetch James Bond too. If you can find him.’
Tiffany’s face twitched and he realised he’d hurt her without meaning to. He looked away, fumbling for the right words to say sorry. He heard her shuffling feet.
‘Ben.’
‘I know. You have to go.’
‘School in five hours. Haven’t been to bed yet.’ Tiffany rubbed her temples. ‘I had to wait in that stinky tunnel until you lot fell as– aslee. . .’ She gave a cavernous yawn.
Ben had to smile.
‘Go then. Don’t worry.’
‘I’ll worry all I like.’
‘I’ll be okay.’
He crept with her to the mouth of the tunnel. She took two steps into the gloom and returned.
‘Here. I brought your stuff.’
She threw him a drawstring bag. Inside was his bundled pashki kit, along with his face-print and a vial of paints.
‘I can’t keep this here.’
‘Hide it,’ said Tiffany. ‘Even if you never use it. It’ll remind you.’
She gave him a hard look and stalked off between the rails.
‘Tiffany!’ Ben hissed after her. ‘Remind me of what?’
Only her gleaming eyes were visible.
‘Who you are.’
If it hadn’t been a sunny day she might have fainted during history. Luckily the weather had let her cat-nap on the gymnasium roof at lunchtime, so that now she only felt a little bit rubbish.
Mum and Dad were downstairs tutting at a programme about London youth crime. Stuart had fallen asleep after visits from both his physiotherapist and his maths tutor. Tiffany sat on her bed, holding the letter and the cheque she had forgotten to take in today. Mr Devereux had assured her that tomorrow would be fine, if she still desired to come.
The letter paper was Mum’s personal stationery. We would be delighted for Tiffany to join her classmates on their visit to Paris next week. . . Please find enclosed cheque for the full amount of. . . Her mind thrilled with place-names she knew only from textbooks, Louvre, la Tour Eiffel, les Champs-Elysees, Versailles, stirring to life like delicate winged creatures. She thought of Stuart’s map with its cluster of black pins in the corner. The choice wavered in the balance.
Tiffany dragged her right hand across the letter. Her fingertips tingled, and the letter and the cheque fell in ribbons to the floor. Then she had a good cry.
SECRET AGENTS
Kevin woke Ben with a cup of tea. Fortunately it was cold.
‘Yurgh!’ Ben sat up, mopping his face. ‘What was that for?’
‘You overslept.’ Kevin dropped the crushed paper cup in Ben’s lap. ‘We get up at six. Routine is important.’
Six? Six? Ben peeled off his soggy bedclothes. Dean, already dressed and lacing his trainers, chuckled.
‘Got to catch the rush hour commuters. Here, set the alarm.’ He tossed Ben a battered mobile phone.
It was like waking up in an army barracks, or perhaps a submarine: the long, tubular hall, the uniforms, the pale faces pickled in cold electric light. He laid out his tea-stained pyjamas to dry and made a show of tidying his cardboard bed, checking that his pashki kit was well hidden among the shawls. It was his only evidence of Tiffany’s visit, which already had the texture of a dream.
He washed and brushed his teeth in the old staff toilet cubicle, found a cereal bar and a carton of juice in the kitchen, then went to scrounge some clean clothes from Lisa in the storeroom. He got socks and boxer shorts wrapped up in a T-shirt, along with a pair of grey combat trousers. She also gave him a black silk scarf with eye slits cut in it, and showed him how to fold it into a bandit mask.
‘You’ll get used to Martin,’ Lisa assured him. ‘Everyone thinks he’s a bit funny at first.’
‘How long have you been here?’ Ben asked.
Lisa held up his bandana. ‘There. Now you can wear it round your neck.’
Ben sat for hours among the bits of his bed, feeding his head with an iPod. Not even his favourite songs tasted right, so in the end he listened to passing trains. The place felt emptier. Most of the gang had caught southbound tubes for what Dean called ‘rabbiting raids’. As for the rest, he could only guess. Already his skin itched to feel sunlight. Tonnes of London clay were piled above his head, and he seemed to be breathing yesterday’s air. New recruits had to stay in the Hermitage for the first week, Kevin had explained, ‘to give you time to adjust.’
Taking a stroll upstairs he felt sick and dizzy. He fought an insane urge to try and burrow through the walls with his bare hands. He shut his eyes, lost his balance and had to sit down, gasping, on the floor. There was no way out. No escape. And no-one knew. Dad thought he was at Mum’s. Mum thought he was at Dad’s. He could be buried here and they’d never know. Panic rose in him before he remembered. Tiffany knew. And Geoff. Geoff would not abandon him.
He grew calmer. It was as if his teacher stood just behind him, a hand on his shoulder. He ran a hand through his hair, the way Geoff did with his long, stringy locks. Ben pictured him there, almost within reach, a comforting phantom smelling of roof tiles and beer.
Something’s rotten, Geoff had said. If Fisher has a scheme on the boil we need to find out what it is. He was here for a reason. That thought too was comforting. He returned to the escalator hall and pondered the wooden doors he had supposed were utility cupboards. Two of them were marked Danger, High Voltage, a third warned Private and the fourth was blank.
First making sure the hall was empty, Ben tried each door in turn. They were locked. He looked to see if there were any more doors and found the one beneath the staircase. His fingers were closing on its handle when he remembered in the nick of time. This was the door to Fisher’s room. He let go as if he’d been burnt and fled upstairs.
Up in the games area he collapsed onto a beanbag and watched cartoons on TV.
The morning crawled by so slowly that he had to call 11 o’clock lunchtime. In the kitchen he found microwaveable hotdogs and ate them alone on a plastic chair. With a full stomach he felt brave enough to get back to spying. He investigated an office stuffed with books of all kinds. In one dogeared pile he found a hardback he’d read years ago, an omnibus of Redwall tales, full of talking ferrets and stoats. Before he knew it he had retreated to the stool in the corner and blotted out the whole afternoon. Coming to his senses he closed the book and stiffly got up. Smells drew him towards the kitchen. A couple of other kids were there now, preparing a single tub of Pot Noodles. Ben stopped dead.
‘You!’
‘Ben! You see, I told you he’d come back,’ said Thomas.
‘Did you?’ said Hannah.
‘I thought you were–’ Ben broke off. It didn’t matter what he’d thought. A monstrous weight had lifted off him.
‘You remember,’ Thomas was telling Hannah, ‘last week in the tunnel, when I was helping you hold the drill, and you said you couldn’t do this anymore, and I said they’re only punishing us until Ben comes home, and you cried, and I said he’d be back soon–’
‘No you never.’
‘You were sleepy. I have a distinctly clear memory–’
‘Er. Hello,’ Ben tried.
‘Hiya,’ said Hannah. She and Thomas grabbed plastic forks and attacked the tub of noodles between them. Hannah looked as if she couldn’t shovel them in fast enough. Ben was puzzled. The kitchen was bursting at the seams with snack foods. Why did she seem so ravenous, and why was she having to share?
‘I, er, decided to join you after all,’ he said. ‘Hope I didn’t get you in trouble.’
Thomas paused in his chewing.
‘We got Night Shift. It was okay. Actually it was quite intere
sting. Peculiar seeing the Northern Line so quiet, with no trains.’
‘Scary, though,’ said Hannah.
‘What did you have to do?’
‘Well, when we got past Embankment we had to–’
‘The Ferret made us work especially hard,’ Thomas broke in. ‘But that was interesting too. He’s never spoken much to us before. Have you had your Welcome yet, Ben?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘You’re really staying?’ Thomas gripped his sleeve. Ben saw his fingernails were filthy, clogged with grey-black dust. ‘You won’t leave again, will you?’
‘No. This is my family now.’
Hannah beamed. Ben hid his queasiness by smiling back.
‘By the way. You know that guy who fetched me last time? You never told anyone, did you?’
‘Who was he?’ asked Hannah.
‘Doesn’t matter. You never saw him, okay?’
This idea was having trouble sinking in.
‘Okay?’ Ben repeated. ‘It’s important.’
They looked dubious. He should never have brought this up. He was groping for a way to change the subject when Thomas winced, as if from a sting. Ben heard a familiar soap opera theme tune meandering from the recreation zone.
‘Hey, Thomas!’ Alec called across the hall.‘Eastenders is starting.’
Thomas turned away.
‘It’s okay,’ said Alec, coming over. ‘Kevin says you can watch TV now that Ben’s come back.’
‘Really?’
‘Does that mean I’m allowed dinner tonight?’ asked Hannah excitedly.
‘I suppose.’ Alec returned to the television corner, where Thomas had already nabbed the best seat.
‘Kevin stopped you eating?’ said Ben.
‘Only lunch and dinner,’ said Hannah. ‘I was allowed breakfast and afternoon snack.’
‘But Thomas only got a TV ban?’
‘Yeah, well, y’know. His dad’s Tony Sherwood.’
‘Who?’
‘Keith Grogan. You know him, right?’
