Cat Flap

by Andrew Osmond

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Sunday

  “Cornish farmer, Rosemary Rhodes filmed a leopard-like animal exhibiting a distinct feline gait and measuring about four feet in length in a field close to Bodmin Moor. The video footage was shown nationwide on BBC2 and the legend of the Beast of Bodmin had begun.”

  Rob shivered.  It was not just the cold and damp of the burrow that made him shake; the man, his captor, had not been back since... when?  He had no very clear way of judging the passing of time, but he estimated that at least thirty hours must have elapsed since his fellow troglodyte had removed the obstruction which effectively sealed off their cave from the outside world, and had disappeared into the darkness beyond, without a further word to Rob as to his intentions or likely time of return, leaving him bound and resealed off, alone in the dark dungeon.  The only positive aspect that Rob had taken from the situation had been that the man had taken his kitten with him, although now that so long had passed without any sign of his return, even this small mercy Rob was beginning to view with somewhat black cynicism: perhaps it was just a sign that he did not intend to come back at all.  It was rather an ironic situation that Rob found himself in, in some ways, should he have known or cared to contemplate it, mirrored by Art currently lying in hospital: Rob’s jailer had become his very lifeline too.  Although it was with a considerable degree of fear that he entertained the company of the unstable escaped convict, the prospect of his non-appearance was an even more terrifying situation to consider.

  Yesterday, he had been sure that he had heard someone outside the entrance to the burrow, a little distance away, but definitely there had been the vibration, more than the sound, of footsteps.  He had shouted for all he was worth, but the earth must have effectively muffled his cries; certainly they were not answered. After that, there had been nothing. Where before he had been free to move around in his underground prison, able to make his way to the verge of freedom, with the possibility of glimpsing the sky above at the entrance of the den, now he had been tethered deep down in the remotest bowl of his subterranean confines, where it was scarcely possible to distinguish day from night. At his bleakest moments, he imagined never being discovered, that this burrow would ultimately prove to be his tomb, that over time the walls would crumble, the dry earth would fall in on him, the entrance would be obliterated by the steady accumulation of fallen leaves and he would be left to rot away, slowly eaten by the worms and the beetles that seemed happy to share his new world. Other scenarios he pictured, no less dismal, were that the decomposing plant matter would cause a massive build up of methane in his unventilated dungeon and that he would suffocate or be slowly poisoned, this though would probably be preferable to the most likely outcome: that he would die a slow and painful death through lack of water. His captor had left no provisions for him, not that he could have consumed them in any case, his hands and legs still being effectively bound. Rob tried to estimate how much longer he could last without water. Sometimes the answer was, too long. He had heard that a large part of survival in extremis is in the mind: if you turn away from life, Death will be there. There were times when Rob felt so lonely and despairing, it appeared that even Death had deserted him.

  •••

  Art was sitting up in bed, draining the dregs of his second cup of tea. He had eaten everything that had been put in front of him for breakfast, but still felt ravenously hungry. That must be a good sign. He had been told that a doctor would visit him later that morning to check that he was all right to go home, and if all was well, he would be free to go by lunchtime. He had been asked if he wanted to ring anyone to arrange to be picked up, but since he only lived a short distance away from the hospital he had said that he thought that he could manage by himself.

  There was nothing to do except wait. He was in a ward of six beds, but three of his fellow confiners still had the curtains screened around their quarters and were not visible to public scrutiny, another bed was empty, the bed covers pulled back untidily, suggesting a rapid departure to a destination unspecified, and the occupant of the final bed was so deeply engrossed in a thick and well-thumbed paperback that Art did not like to interrupt him to make time-killing small-talk. Instead, he searched around in the small cabinet beside his own bed to see if there was anything there that would keep him amused while he waited for his notice of dismissal. He was relieved to see that his rucksack had been stowed away safely, and that all the clothes he had been wearing the previous day appeared to have been neatly folded and were readily available for him to change back into. On top of his possessions, he also discovered a copy of the local newspaper and a hand-written note from Rupa: “Hope you slept well. Sorry not to have anything more interesting to leave you to read, but hope that you will be out and about soon. Call around anytime to collect Luke, or ring if you want anything. Rupa xxx.” Three kisses, not bad. Love and three kisses would have been better, but hey! no need to rush these things.

  The newspaper, as usual, was more than half made up of advertisements, and Art found himself turning over the pages mechanically, not really paying attention to the stories or their contents. He was amused, though, to see an article, accredited to his friend Trevor, on the subject of canine excrement, reporting in sensationalist terms the problem of dog’s muck on the streets of our country, comparing it as a peril only barely second to the threat of Al-Qaida terrorism as a matter of national urgency. The big cat had disappeared without trace, both literally and literarily. It was only as Art had closed and folded the newspaper, ready to discard it again, that the headline on the front cover caught his attention: “Reward offered for missing man”. Skim reading through the story, Art was able to ascertain the basic facts behind the disappearance of Robert Waterhouse, although the main words that he kept on returning to were the ones spelling out ‘ten thousand pounds’, the amount being offered for any information leading to the safe return of the missing youth. Normally, and after the required degree of empathizing with a father thrown in a situation that Art could only ever hope that he, himself, never had to face, he would have thrown away the paper, never to give the article a second thought, but there was something about this piece that was nagging at Art’s mind. Or was it the article, or actually some nugget of knowledge he possessed that was somehow relevant? Perhaps it was just wishful thinking to imagine that he somehow held a clue which could solve the disappearance of the suspected runaway, particularly when so much money was on offer for just such a piece of information. Art studied the photograph of the missing man again. Did he recognize him? Had he seen him before? He didn’t think so. Robert Waterhouse, there was something familiar there, he just couldn’t put his finger on it. Robert. Rob. Rob Waterhouse. Of course. Art sat upright in bed. Rob Waterhouse, it had been the name that the barge girl Janet had said to him, the name of the lover who had not been there to meet her. Well, now the reason for his non-materialization that evening was apparent: he hadn’t just walked out on her, he had walked out on everyone. But why? Janet had sounded so sure that he would have been there for her; Art recalled her tears, as he had tried to console her, the night that she had opened her heart to him, beneath the very tree where she should have met her man. What if he had turned up that night? Perhaps had met with an accident on the way? Art knew only too well the perils of walking around in the woods in the dark: it would be only too easy to slip and fall, perhaps break a limb, perhaps knock yourself out. There were places amongst the trees where a body could lie undiscovered for days. The more Art thought about it, the more sure he was that the woods were the key to the young man’s disappearance. And there was something else too. The persistent, nagging thought that had been clamouring away at the back of his mind, demanding of being noticed, had still not quite formulated itself into coherent expression. What was it? From behind one of the curtained cubicles Art’s train of thought was interrupted by a low moan: it was a sound redolent of both pain and tiredness, emanating from a patient invi
sible behind his modesty screen. That was it! Art suddenly remembered: it had been just before he saw the big cat - saw the average-sized dog, he mentally corrected himself - the previous morning, in the midst of the woods, the mist circling, for a moment he had thought that he had heard a cry, the sound of a human in distress, but, with his mind full of his own miseries, and with the almost immediate sighting of what, at the time, he had thought was the goal of his searching, he had put the incident completely out of his head. Surely, he was not mistaken. And so what if he was? Potentially a life was at stake and, for the time being, that life was in Art’s hands. Climbing out of his hospital bed, and scrabbling around in the cabinet for his clothes with an undue haste that would have resulted in his exposing himself to the whole corridor leading up to his ward, alerted one of the duty nurses that all was not well with patient Madison. The small, efficient woman approached Art as he had his back turned to her and was in the process of pulling his trousers up over his hospital gown.

  “Is there anything the matter?” she asked. “Can I get you anything?”

  Art turned, looking anxious, “Yes, a telephone, please. Dial 999. It’s an emergency.”