Cat Flap

by Andrew Osmond

  Chapter Twenty: Friday night

  “On Sunday l6th August 1992, Durham based photographer Phillip Nixon was driving down a country lane accompanied by his son when, close to St John’s Chapel, County Durham, they were surprised to see a large cat standing in the road ahead of them with a dead rabbit hanging out of its mouth. Nixon estimated the cat to be about the size of a border collie dog. He described it as having reddish brown fur, with a stripe near each eye and a very long tail which curved upwards when it moved.”

  It was ten to eight and Art was standing at the base of the tree that had been described to him by Janet, rehearsing in his own mind the questions that he was going to ask of the man who had supposedly seen the Cassiobury Cougar. It was a cold night, misty too, and Art’s breath showed in front of him in white plumes. He stamped his feet up and down in order to keep them warm, and glanced at his watch for the umpteenth time. He had arrived early in the hope that his fellow callers would have done the same, but he realized that he might still have a long wait on his hands.

  Art thought back on his long day, most of which he had spent in the woods, trying to forget the letter he had received the day before, trying to focus on hunting for the puma. After the knock-backs of the previous day, Art was desperately in need of something to give him faith, and the unreserved belief in a local big cat was as solid a religious crutch as any that Art could currently find to hang on to. It was a tenuous support, he was only too aware, one which could give way at any moment, sending him tumbling down in a headlong collision course with harsh reality, but in the absence of anything else it was all that Art was left with. He just hoped that tonight’s meeting would reinforce the foundations of his religious conviction.

  He had called in sick first thing. It was not entirely a misrepresentation of the facts: he had not been able to sleep, his mind constantly mulling over the wording of Amanda’s letter, wondering if he could have possibly misinterpreted her meaning; realizing that her words had been deliberately chosen to be unequivocal. He had woken feeling as tired as when he had gone to bed. Besides, the Library had told him in no uncertain terms the extent to which they valued him: he owed them nothing. A sickie was only his fair due. He had taken Luke around to Helen’s as per normal, omitting to mention to her that he had no intention of going into work that day; she had already agreed to look after her nephew that evening too, and so with a kiss on his son’s forehead and a promise to his sister that he would be back before ten that evening, a responsibility free day stretched out before Art. He knew that he had been calling in a lot of favours lately - with Helen, with Rupa - he just hoped that his search would prove successful, and he could repay those closest to him, with interest. He was conscious, too, that he had not been paying enough attention to Luke, leaving that responsibility to others; it was something that he promised to rectify as soon as he possibly could, reassuring himself that, in the meantime, the small boy was in better hands with his supremely capable sister than he would have been with his habitually distracted father.

  As an alternative to his normal route to the woods, Art had kept to the roads instead, walking over the bridge which crossed the disused railway line, the wooden sleepers of which were steadily being reclaimed by the encroaching vegetation, the embankment at the side of the track clogged by nettles and hawthorn bushes, until he had picked up a footpath which ran alongside the back of a large housing estate, before eventually leaving the urban environment behind altogether and emerging into open countryside. Art knew that the path he was following would eventually reach a point that bisected with the canal, and from there he would be able to gain access to puma country once again, but in the meantime he was just enjoying the peacefulness of the morning walk, away from other people, isolated from the sounds of the working day.

  The track beneath his feet had been muddy in places, and he had to side-step to avoid the largest puddles. Ahead, the highest branches of the trees on each side of the path almost met, creating the illusion that he was walking through an arboreal tunnel; in the summer time, when the foliage was more in bloom, Art was sure that the effect would be complete. He was reminded of his wedding day, of him and Amanda stepping out of the church, of the rows of their guests lining up outside, on either side of the church door, their arms linked overhead forming a makeshift archway of limbs for him and his new bride to walk beneath. It had been a happy occasion. It seemed like a long time ago now.

  The wind had been blowing at right angles to the path he was following, the raised banks on each side of him protecting him from the worst cold; the noise of each fresh gust in the trees though sounded like the sea reaching the shore, rhythmic and unceasing; the sound of a wave sucking at the shingle on a beach, desperate to persuade it to join its watery existence. Art stopped to admire one tall tree, its straight bole mantled by ivy, the araliaceous plant looking like a green tornado spiraling up towards the sky. There was the sound of birds singing, although the feathered songsters preferred to remain largely anonymous in the concealment of the wayside bushes, happy to perform their tunes for an appreciative avian audience, not needing any wider recognition. In the distance there was the sound of cattle lowing. The country footpath had its usual effect upon Art, of once again transporting him into one of Thomas Hardy’s novels of a bygone rural England, a seemingly idyllic existence viewed, as it is now, with the nostalgic hindsight of over a century of time and from the luxurious surroundings of a life that embraces all the creature comforts of the twenty first century. Still, what worth a television set and a DVD player, when you can have fresh air and the innocent pleasures of a life simply led? Art knew that he was deluding himself: if he took a step back in time, he would miss the benefits that so-called progress have brought; he could not imagine living now without the ease of flicking a simple switch to produce light or turning a tap to have hot water; he would miss the telephone and now, of course, the internet; above all else, he couldn’t imagine what he would do without disposable nappies. Life would be impossible. The very opportunity to be able to enjoy a country stroll was a luxury that had been bought by past centuries of toil. For Art, the act of walking was a cathartic pleasure; for his forefathers it was more likely to have been merely a means to an end. Even here, though, the vision of an unspoiled countryside was largely an illusion: the twenty first century crowded in on all sides. Removing the rose-tinted spectacles, Art noticed crisp wrappers in the hedgerow and long-discarded cigarette butts stamped into the earth beneath his feet. There was the white porcelain hulk of a broken sink unit, glistening and out of place in a hollow at the base of a gnarled tree, close to a muddy slide in the embankment side, revealing a possible means of ingress to the houses not so very far beyond, and the blackened and burnt out shell of a motorbike, pushed just off the track but not so well concealed that it could not be seen by every passer-by. Across the fields too, a line of electricity pylons stretched out like Cervantes’s windmills, dominating the landscape, the static buzz from their multiple magnetic coils combining with the wind’s natural overture. All of these elements of urban intrusion were not repulsive to Art though: he was essentially a city boy at heart, having spent almost his entire life in a conurbation of some description: the countryside for him was not the pure, uncharted wilderness of the Scottish highlands or the miles of unspoiled mountains in the English Lake District; for Art, countryside constituted almost any green strip that was wider than his own back garden, and if this just so happened to run alongside a motorway, then so be it.

  As he had predicted the path eventually passed through a small expanse of moor and water meadows, before linking up with the canal once again. From there it was only a relatively short distance to cover before Art was once again standing close to the route to the water cress beds and the line of longboats, one of which Art knew to be Janet’s home. Not wanting to chance being spotted by the young woman so many hours premature of their arranged meeting time, fearful of being taken for a stalker and per
haps ruining any opportunity of being introduced to her contact, Art diverged from the main towpath and followed a rough forest trail up the slope and into the trees. It was where he wanted to be, in any case: away from any possible human contact; alone in the woods, with his thoughts and, just perhaps, the puma.

  Ten hours later and Art’s troubled thoughts had been his constant solitary companion.  Of the big cat there had been no sign.  He had tried to concentrate on the job in hand, to block out distractions of home and work, to focus his energies on the task of spotting minute clues on the ground and in the undergrowth that might just provide the give-away clue to the presence of a large, out-of-place feline in the neighbourhood, but each time he set about his pursuit he was consumed by the futility of the activity, and could not help but allow his mind to wander to thoughts of his wife: of their past; of her present; of his future.  In the end, almost half the day passed by with Art sitting on an uprooted tree stump, blank-eyed and lost in a distant dreamland far from the cold reality of the February woods.  By the time it had begun to get dark, it was hunger as much as anything else that had stirred Art into positive action.  He had brought a thermos flask, which contained some still passably hot soup, which he devoured gratefully, the thick liquid warming and reviving him, lifting his spirits, encouraging him to redouble his efforts searching for the elusive cat in the remaining few hours before he was due to meet Janet.

  The darkness had proved a final impediment to Art’s search. He cursed himself for not having had the foresight to pack a powerful torch in his kit: earlier, he had romanticized the idea of being alone in the woods after the sun had set, at one with nature and the night, somehow imagining that he alone in the twilight world would still be able to see - the landscape perhaps appearing before him in the grainy monochrome that appears to be the norm for documentary makers of nocturnal misdoing, or in adventure movies where the hero is fortunate enough to be equipped with night vision sights. The actual reality was that the blackout was complete, and it was pure chance that navigated Art back to the relative illumination of the main park, rather than any orientation skills on his own part.

  And so it was that Art came to arrive early for his liaison with the young barge woman. His day in the woods could not have been described as a wild success by any stretch of the imagination, but all that had gone before could be forgotten if tonight’s encounter proved to be useful. While Art continued to wait for Janet and her companion to arrive, he was already mentally running through the newspaper headlines that would accompany the article he would write: ‘Face to Face with the Cassiobury Cougar: an Eyewitness Account’ - no, too pedantic; ‘The Eye of the Tiger’ - like it, punchy, although not strictly zoologically accurate, best not to sacrifice any possible scientific credibility for the sake of cheap sensationalism; ‘Big Cat Tales’ - sometimes the old puns are still the best ones; never let corniness stand in the way of a good headline.

  Art looked at his watch again, squeezing in the tiny button on the side of the casing to illuminate the face in a bright bilious-green glow. It was gone eight. Perhaps she wasn’t going to show? Maybe she had forgotten their engagement? What should he do then? Turn up at the barge and knock? Art was wary of the reception he would receive, arriving at a potential stranger’s barge after dark, besides Janet had seemed fairly adamant that it would not be a good idea, that she wished to meet him away from her family home. It would be maddening, though, to miss out on the opportunity of a valuable lead just for the sake of politeness and standing on ceremony. He was hardly likely to receive another invitation. Art made a decision: he would wait until quarter past and then, if there was still no sign of the girl, he would seek her out at the longboat. It had been too long a day to return home empty-handed. As it happened, Art’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of footsteps hurrying along the towpath, crunching the gravel, and turning in the direction of the noise, Art saw a swiftly-moving dark form materializing, as she drew closer, into the recognizable figure of the young woman he had previously met on the barge. Worryingly, she appeared to be alone.

  “Sorry. Am I late? I couldn’t get away,” Janet said breathlessly.

  Art was feeling cold and tired. His words belied his impatience, “Where’s your friend?” Was it his imagination, or did he sense the young woman tense slightly at his question?

  Janet had been rehearsing her elaborate explanation for the non-appearance of her companion as she walked along the towpath to meet Art, but she had not expected to have to launch into her speech quite so quickly. She had hoped to engage the man in a spot of small talk first; use her feminine charms on him and try to get him interested in her as an individual, before having to admit that the person that he was actually hoping to meet was not going to be turning up; didn’t even exist - although hopefully she would not have to confess to that, better to attempt to convince him that her contact had just been delayed: in Janet’s imagination a whole string of future dates could be arranged with this man on the mere promise of meeting the mystery eye-witness. She opened her mouth but found that she could not say the pre-rehearsed script. Sensing Art’s dark mood Janet thought better of attempting to dupe him further; perhaps a measure of the truth would serve her better. In the end she said, “There’s been a slight change of plan.”

  “Oh?” Art sounded annoyed.

  Janet blustered slightly, her lies unwilling to be voiced, “He’s been delayed. Perhaps in the meantime...”

  Art interrupted the young woman, “Is he coming later tonight?” He was already mentally calculating how long he could wait before he would have to head back and relieve Helen, he could not expect his sister to look after Luke all night, and besides, she would be worried as well as angry if he did not turn up at the time he had stipulated.

  “I’m not sure. I mean, perhaps.”

  “Did he ring you?”

  “Yes.”

  Art was beginning to smell that something was suspicious, but the particular animal that he was sensing was definitely of the genus Rattus rather than Felis. “You’ve got a telephone on your barge?”

  “No. I mean, yes. I mean, he left a message.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “That he would be along later. He didn’t say when.”

  Art stared hard at the young woman’s face in the darkness, attempting to interpret the truth from the lies as they were written on her expression, but in the dim light all that he could see was a veil of deceit. The temperature in the woods had decreased appreciably as a thick band of ground mist had settled in the river valley, the dense white air lying on top of the water, gently settling down like someone testing the comfort of a particular chair. Art blew out a deep breath, the expelled air mingling with the white phantasms of mist; a puff of pent up frustration and disappointment released, allowing a new intake of realization and clarity to be drawn in. “There is no witness is there?” he finally asked, his voice quite calm, realizing that any further catechizing was unnecessary.

  Janet did not deny the claim, instead she broke into a long explanation of her own woes, her dialogue becoming increasingly tearful, “I just wanted to teach him a lesson for standing me up. I hoped that you would... you know, that we could... I thought that you might like me if we met up. It was to teach him a lesson. He shouldn’t have stood me up. I thought it would make him jealous if we... you know, if we met here, if he were to see. I’ve got no one else, you see. And tomorrow, mother and me, we’ve got to go away again, father says, although I don’t know why.” Janet broke down altogether now, her loud sobs racking her whole body as she tried to finish her sentence, “I just wanted someone that I could rely upon. It’s not much to ask for, is it?”

  Art gently took hold of Janet’s arm and pulled the young woman towards him, comforting her in his arms until she fell silent again. His thoughts, which had been temporarily diverted from worries of home at the anticipation of the promised evening meeting, once again returned to the c
ontents of the previous day’s letter from his wife. Wordlessly, he answered Janet’s question: no, it didn’t seem much to ask for.

  •••

  In a different age, perhaps in a not-so-distant future, in a technologically advanced society, where there is a vastly expanded and efficiently running equivalent of today’s world wide web, where all known information is accessible to all people at any time, where total knowledge is instantly available at the flick of a switch or upon the prompting of a simple keyword or instruction, one immediate benefit to mankind will be a decrease in the occurrences of insomnia.

  That Friday night, three men, not so far apart from one another in geographical distance, each slept the fitful sleep of the mentally pre-occupied, and each, if they had only known it, possessed a crucial piece of information that could have aided the slumber of one of their fellow sufferers in wakefulness.

  Detective Sergeant James Leigh lay awake until four o’clock, the thought that was uppermost in his mind, the whereabouts of the escaped convict David Sherry.

  Someone that could have supplied the answer to that question currently lay on the thin mattress on the bunk of his barge, but rather than sleeping the peaceful sleep of the blessedly knowledgeable Tal Turner tossed and turned until three o’clock, his mind running over plans and counter-plans, scenarios and counter-scenarios, imaginary conversations and counter-conversations, each with the ultimate aim of bringing about his goal: the seduction of the young woman that he pictured sleeping in her own barge, a mere canal’s width away. The image of Janet was vivid in his mind, and it was only with the aid of some furious manual ministrations beneath the thick blankets on his bed, that Tal was eventually able to bring about his own exhausted escape into oblivion.

  Arthur Madison was aware that the young barge woman, who currently occupied Tal’s waking dreams, would have been prepared to serve herself up on a plate for him if he had so desired, earlier that evening, but this knowledge did nothing to ease his own passage into the realms of Somnus. With Luke snoring softly beside him, exhausted after his day playing with his aunt, and having finally managed to put aside thoughts of both work and of his wife, Art should have been sleeping soundly, but the incongruous problem that was keeping him awake was speculation over the contents of the police report on the death of the traveller’s Alsatian dog.  With almost all his other evidence to support the theory of the existence of a large carnivore in the woods around his home town either discredited, dubious or downright disappearing, the peculiarly large-scale police interest at the scene of the big cat’s first victim, seemed like the only genuine puzzle that he was left with.  It had been the thing that had got him interested in the whole affair to start with; there had been something mysterious enough there to have got the internet user HPL200890 intrigued; and it might yet provide the vital clue to either give his investigation some credence, or to shoot it down in flames once and for all. If only he could see that report: he was sure that the answers would be plainly stated for him to understand. Except what could he do?  He could hardly just walk into the local police station and demand to see their investigation files.  The answer was in the report.  The report was unobtainable.  The answer was in the report.  The report was unobtainable.  The answer was in the report.  The report was unobtainable.  It was a slower cycle than counting sheep, but the monotony of the mantra eventually worked its hypnotic magic.

  It was only the thought of boring bureaucracy, such as the pile of unfiled autopsy and scene of crime reports that currently lay piled up on a corner of his office desk which eventually allowed James Leigh to join Tal and Art in restful slumber.