by Nick Green
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.
Cat skills learned in an after-school club were no match for the real thing. Her one advantage was a human brain, only hers was too terrified to work. She ran for the nearest tall tree. No – if it climbed after her, she’d be trapped. There was one option left. She whirled around.
The jaguar gripped the earth in its paws while its wasp-coloured eyes sized her up. Tiffany prepared to leap over it again. Then her courage died. The beast was ready. It knew what she would do. Steadily, one step at a time, it closed the distance between them, its body bunching, ready to spring.
‘P- please,’ she whispered. ‘I helped you.’
She had no time to scream as the jaguar lunged.
It jerked back as if caught on a leash. A queer sound, sharp as a pistol shot, rang off the tree trunks. A human shape dropped from a tree, dim behind bars of sunset and shade. The jaguar fanned its whiskers and growled. The sound spat out again, oddly metallic, the noise of someone flicking an empty can. The cat flinched.
‘Frieda. Tsss!’
The figure waved an arm. The jaguar u-turned, as if remembering an appointment elsewhere, and vanished into bushes. On a high branch a bird whistled.
Tiffany peeled herself off the tree that had become stuck to her back. She squinted through the twilight. The figure was slender, dressed in paint-smeared jeans and a red top that looked like a Liverpool football shirt. Its hair was in a ponytail. The woman turned towards her and the words broke from Tiffany like a sob.
‘Mrs Powell!’
She was the same. Always smaller than Tiffany remembered, lithe and straight as a sapling, betraying her age only in her lined face and grey hair. And alive. Tiffany’s last lingering doubts disappeared.
‘Mrs Powell!’
She ran to her teacher, arms wide to hug her. Mrs Powell stepped backwards.
‘Ah. Sorry.’ Tiffany let her hands fall. ‘I suppose you don’t do hugs, do you.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Well, I –’ Tiffany composed herself. ‘I’m here. I came to find you. And I did it!’
‘I can see that.’
Undergrowth crashed. Susie and Yusuf burst through.
‘Tiffs! You’re safe. You should have a medal for –’ Susie broke off. ‘Oh wow – it’s her! I mean, it’s you! Yusuf, she’s really here!’
‘Hi,’ said Yusuf, shyly.
‘Is that the lot?’ Mrs Powell cut in. ‘You haven’t invited your whole school, I trust?’
‘No,’ said Tiffany. ‘Just us.’ What was wrong here?
Mrs Powell blinked her cold green eyes.
‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing,’ she said. ‘But this is private property. I’ll thank you to leave.’
She walked away.
‘Wait!’ Tiffany cried. ‘Mrs Powell! I– I don’t understand. We’ve come so far and… and I missed you. And –’
‘You made a mistake.’ Mrs Powell’s voice faded as she withdrew into the trees. ‘Now go. Go away.’
The last drop of sunlight drained from the wood. Branches crowded black against an opal sky and a crow cawed upon a nodding spray of twigs. The air felt dank.
Yusuf breathed an Arabic curse.
‘Tiffany? Are you going to stand for that?’
She stared into the darkness.
WAIFS AND STRAYS
‘No, Dad. Nothing’s wrong. Just thought I should call.’
‘Your mum’s okay, is she?’
‘Seems to be.’
Ben had just got off the phone to her. She hadn’t seemed okay.
‘You coming back home at the end of the week?’
‘Mm. ’Spect so.’
‘Bet you’re bored out there with none of your friends around.’
‘Sort of. But Mum likes having me here.’
‘Ben, I like having you here. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ said Ben. ‘I didn’t mean–’
‘Maybe I should have a word with her. Can you pass her the phone?’
‘Er… no.’ Ben thought fast. ‘No, she’s having a nap. One of her migraine heads.’
‘Better not then.’ Dad sniffed. ‘Well. Ring again tomorrow, won’t you?’
‘If I can.’
Ben shut the phone. Thomas climbed off the H of HMV and onto the window ledge beside him.
‘That was Kevin,’ said Ben. ‘Checking up on us.’
Thomas gave him a funny look and carried on climbing towards the roof of the music store. Ben followed, eaten up by worry. What if Dad phoned Mum himself? No, he wouldn’t. They never phoned each other direct. But what if they did speak? After thirty seconds of confusion they would know that he was missing. For the first time in his life he willed them to stay cross with each other.
His first week among the polecats was at last behind him. For most of it he’d been stuck inside the Hermitage, eating there, sleeping there, going quietly spare. Each day he tried to sand away the hours in the library or the games area, and each night he awoke to the sleep-moans of his bunkmates. When he wasn’t scared he was bored. The only things to look forward to (apart from takeaway Big Macs) were the daily mustel-id classes. These broke the monotony and wore off his pent-up energy, but left him feeling more infected than invigorated. Also they made him stand out. The exercises, which had names like Mesmerise and Whip Strike, felt awkward, like writing with his left hand, and he kept lapsing into pashki. Sometimes he caught Jeep watching him.
Martin Fisher rarely showed his face, but the station creaked with his presence. When he did speak it was mostly to Kevin, but sometimes, when the Hermitage was emptier, in the pit of silence between passing trains, a muttering would seep from the walls. In his den below the stairs Fisher was ranting to himself. Ben would creep as close as he dared and every time his nerve failed him before he was halfway to Fisher’s door. Even with cat hearing, the only clear word he had picked up so far was river.
At least he was allowed out now. When they weren’t robbing trains in rabbiting raids, off-duty polecats were allowed to roam the streets in small groups. It was here that Ben remembered the phone Dean had given him to use as an alarm clock. A stolen pay-as-you-go, it had some credit left. Slinking out of earshot he had dialled his parents in turn. It was to double-check that they still believed his cover stories, not, he told himself, not because he ached to hear their voices.
Like abseilers without ropes, the gang swarmed down the side of a pub into an alley off Oxford Street. Ben was impressed at how the polecats could climb. Although mustel-id could boast nothing like Mau claws, it had a technique called the martengrip, which locked the finger joints until bare hands hardened into grappling hooks. Most of these kids could scale a shop-front with ease.
They clustered outside a newsagent’s. Anyone daring to go in for a paper ran a gauntlet of taunts, chewing-gum missiles and the occasional banger. Ben, trying to blend in, was dumping ice-cream down some poor girl’s neck when he saw Thomas, staring through the window of a television shop on the corner of Tottenham Court Road. Of course, it was Sunday afternoon, when they showed the Eastenders omnibus.
Thomas wouldn’t talk about his actor father. It was hard enough getting him to admit that he’d ever had a father. However, by working on him night after night, Ben had learned a few things. Thomas was an only child. Taught at home by someone called Phoebe, he’d never gone to school. He wasn’t allowed television, except for Eastenders and other things Daddy was in, and his friends were three cousins two or more years younger. Then one day Phoebe took him to McDonald’s for the first time. Thomas had insisted on it as his birthday treat. There he met a boy named Alec. Alec was exciting. When Phoebe got up to buy apple pies for pudding, Thomas left the restaurant with Alec’s gang.
Now television light washed over his face. Ben watched him watching a dozen identical screens. Did he follow the story, or merely hunt for scenes that featured Keith Grogan, played by Tony Sherwood? Did Thomas see the character or his dad?
Shrieks of laughter nearly took Ben’s ears off. Hanging out with this gang was murder. Earlier this afternoon Gary had started a contest to see who could grab the most live pigeons. Although Alec won, two of his seven birds had died, so Gary said he was disqualified. Alec went for him, ramming him into the window of Selfridges, which cracked, at which point security guards rushed out of the department store and everyone fled. Jeep outdid them all. This morning he had stolen boxes of bangers from a firework shop. All along Oxford Street he’d moved sniper-like from roof to roof, igniting the squibs with a plastic cigarette lighter and lobbing them down onto streets thick with shoppers. Screams of shock only goaded him on, until he was making machine-gun noises and spreading his arms like a bomber’s wings.
They were all mental. Ritchie marched into shops to eat Easter eggs off the shelves. No-one tried to stop him. At last he’d been sick in a slimy brown splash on the pavement, which explained the laughter. Ritchie laughed too, wiping his chin, and carried on necking his chocolate milkshake –
‘Ben!’ Hannah’s nails raked his forearm. ‘Stop him!’
Bewildered he turned. Thomas was running off down the street.
‘I tried to– He just –’ Hannah babbled. ‘He saw his dad on the telly and then… Ben, we got to stop him!’
For a full second Ben stood there. So Thomas was escaping. Good. He would go back home, home to his father, home to Phoebe, whoever she was. Ben felt a surge of triumph, of pure happiness.
And then he was running. He was running after Thomas along the busy pavement, guided by his Mau whiskers through gaps in the crowds, weaving without slowing as only a cat can. Thomas saw him and veered into the road. From the right and the left a white van and motorbike were closing. Ben could hardly bear to watch, and so it was with blind instinct that he plunged through the stream of traffic, neatly hurdled the motorcyclist and knocked Thomas out of the van’s path with something that was half pounce, half rugby tackle. They fell against a bus shelter.
‘Wait,’ Ben gasped. Thomas was scrambling to his feet. In desperation Ben hit him. It was a gentle enough stomach-jab that Dad had once taught him, but it winded Thomas nicely.
‘No,’ Ben hissed in his ear, as he doubled over. ‘Not yet.’
‘Let me go. Or I’ll tell. You were talking. To your dad.’
Fear gave Ben heartburn.
‘If you want to go home,’ he growled, ‘trust me. Please. Now play along. It’s all right–’ he called to the gang, who were catching them up, ‘he thought the shop guy was calling the police. Just freaked out.’
‘Police!’ Gary scoffed. ‘Grow up.’
Maybe they guessed what Thomas had really been trying to do, for the gang’s mood darkened after that. There were no more fights or jokes. After an hour’s slapdash shoplifting it was time to go back. They piled aboard a bus heading out of the city centre. Ben sat so he didn’t have to look at Thomas. They were rumbling through Islington Green by the time he noticed who had sat beside him. It was Hannah.
‘Thank you,
’ she murmured.
Ben said nothing.
‘You had to,’ said Hannah. ‘If he’d gone, we’d of got it so bad. Like when you left, only worse.’
‘At least he’d be home.’
Hannah gave him an I’m-with-stupid look.
‘Ben, no-one makes it home. Mad Ferret finds them.’
‘So he says.’
‘It’s true. I’ve seen proof. We all thought Hayden had got away until–’
‘Hayden? Who’s he?’
Hannah didn’t answer. The bus sailed along the shore of Clissold Park. Out of habit Ben glanced across the street into the road where he used to live. It looked as distant as a picture on television.
‘Why?’ said Ben.
‘Why what?’
‘Why are you with Fisher? What are any of you doing here?’
‘Same as you, I suppose.’ Hannah shrugged. ‘’Cos no-one else wants us.’
‘Did you mean to join?’
‘Martin took me in when I was lost,’ said Hannah.
‘Lost?’
‘Couldn’t find my way home, could I? I was only like, six or seven.’
‘What happened?’
‘Can’t remember. We was visiting. My mum came to London for the shops, I think. We lived a long way away. A place called Cambridge. I don’t know where that is. She let go of my hand in the Disney toy shop and…’ Hannah’s pale face crinkled. ‘I went outside to look for her. That’s where I met Kevin. He said he’d take me to someone who’d look after me. That’s it really.’
No. That absolutely could not be it.
‘Parents don’t just lose their kids,’ said Ben. ‘They look for them. They call the police. They don’t give up and go home.’
‘Kevin said people do. After a while.’ Hannah got up. The bus had stopped and the gang was shoving its way off. ‘I asked if we could put an advert on the telly, but Kevin said that was expensive. And we couldn’t use the internet because… I can’t remember why not. For a while I thought Mum would ring Martin up to say she was coming to fetch me. But she never did.’
Ben almost walked into a litter bin. The bus drove off.
‘Too late now,’ said Hannah. ‘It must have been four or five years. And anyway–’ she recollected herself, ‘I’ve got a new family here.’
