To Catch a Cat

by Marian Babson

  ‘She’s right!’ Josh growled, managing to make it sound as though that was a major miracle. ‘This town is the original whited sepulchre! Nobody knows the half of how bad it is! Did you hear my programme last night?’

  ‘I fear not.’ Mummy raised an icy eyebrow, managing to convey the impression that she had been accused of something pornographic.

  ‘Dinner’s almost ready,’ Mags broke in urgently, trying to fend off hostilities. She had been locked in mortal combat with a large free-range chicken most of the afternoon and a rather delicious smell was beginning to waft through the house. ‘Why don’t you go and freshen up?’

  ‘Mmm …’ Josh sniffed the fragrant air and seemed to decide that food came first. He could deal with Mummy later. ‘Right. How long?’

  ‘Ten minutes,’ Mags promised recklessly, knowing that it would be at least twenty.

  ‘I’ll go up and hurry Robin along,’ Mummy declared, heading for the stairs.

  ‘I hope you haven’t ruined his appetite.’ Mags took a slightly wicked pleasure in hurling the familiar accusation.

  ‘Nonsense!’ Mummy paused halfiay up the stairs and looked down at Mags. ‘Nothing can ruin a young boy’s appetite!’

  ‘Not for lack of trying, I’ll bet.’ Josh was right behind Mummy and she was not pleased to realise it. It would not be long, Mags knew, before she got a lecture on the inadequacies of a home with only one bathroom.

  Josh kept moving, intruding on Mummy’s space, crowding her until she was almost running as she reached the landing. She stepped aside to let him go past her and down the hall to the bathroom, but he ignored the opportunity, remaining resolutely behind her. She paused at Robin’s door and tapped imperiously.

  ‘Robin, dear,’ she called. ‘Robin – dinner’s ready.’

  Mags had followed them out into the hallway, impelled by some instinct she could not name. She was being silly, really. They were not about to break out into a knock-down drag-out battle in the upper hallway. They were both too civilised for that. Even now, Josh was waiting, with exaggerated courtesy, for Mummy to finish.

  ‘What was that, dear?’ Mummy’s voice rose. ‘I can’t quite hear what you’re – ’

  Mags heard the click as Mummy turned the knob and swung the door open.

  There was a cry of anguish from Robin, a shriek of alarm from Mummy and a startled bellow from Josh as something furry and low-slung darted past them, out into the hallway and down the stairs.

  Mags yelped involuntarily herself when the thing brushed against her ankles as it dashed past and into the kitchen.

  Three wary heads appeared at the top of the stairs, gazing downwards over the balustrade.

  ‘What in hell,’ Josh demanded, ‘was that?’

  30

  ‘All right,’ Josh said sternly. ‘Suppose you explain that … that … that!’

  Robin looked at the accusing faces … and then at the cat. Leif wasn’t looking his best.

  In fact, Leif was looking worse than when he had last seen him – and he had been looking pretty bedraggled then. Now he looked like a clown cat, a ragamuffin cat, an alley cat. The colours had all blurred in together, all right, but there were glimpses of white in the middle of patches of wet sodden fur. Leif had obviously been distracted in mid-bath when Granna opened the bedroom door and he made his dash for freedom.

  Happily, Leif was unaware of any shortcomings. He stood close to the oven door, nose lifted, inhaling the fragrant aroma, luxuriating in the warmth from the oven. A loud purr reverberated through the kitchen.

  ‘He – he followed me home!’ Robin blurted out.

  ‘Typical!’ Josh radiated disgust. ‘It would happen to you! Other kids get dogs following them home.’

  ‘I like cats,’ Robin said defiantly.

  ‘You would!’

  ‘Followed you home from where?’ Mags intervened anxiously. ‘It might belong to someone.’

  Josh snorted disbelievingly and Mags, on second look, had to agree with him. If that cat belonged to anyone, they had shamelessly neglected it. It would be better off with someone else, anyone else. No wonder it had followed the first person to give it a friendly word.

  ‘It doesn’t belong to anybody … now,’ Robin added under his breath. If, legally, Leif belonged to Mr Nordling, that was just too bad. He wasn’t going to see Leif sent back there to be killed.

  ‘I think she’s rather sweet.’ Granna went on the theory that all cats were female. ‘She’ll look much better when she’s been cleaned up and had a few decent meals.’

  ‘That’s right. She – ’ With a mental apology to Leif, Robin incorporated the change of gender, feeling that it was one more bit of the disguise that would protect Leif from his enemy. ‘She was awfully hungry when I found her. It was behind a restaurant,’ he improvised wildly. ‘She was eating out of the bins. Anything she could find. She was so hungry – ’ he finished in a burst of inspiration – ‘she was trying to eat a teabag. That’s why I call her Tealeaf!’

  Hearing his name, or part of it, Leif ambled over to Robin and chirruped up at him.

  ‘Oh, the poor little thing!’ Mags was won over completely.

  ‘Tealeaf …’ Josh was not. ‘How apt. So now we’ve got a tealeaf in the mouse, have we? Another one.’ He slanted a challenging look at Mags.

  ‘Gibberish!’ Mummy bridled, seeing the by-play and sensing an undercurrent she couldn’t identify.

  ‘Not at all.’ Josh smiled dangerously. ‘It’s Cockney rhyming slang: a tealeaf in the mouse – a thief in the house.’

  ‘Gibberish!’ Mummy dismissed anything Cockney as beneath her notice. Which was fortunate, although it had snapped Mags to attention.

  Robin, Mags saw, had scooped Tealeaf into his arms and gone very quiet.

  Thief! Was that what had been biting Josh these past few days? True, quite a few things had been disappearing from the fridge lately, but Robin lived here, too, and he had a right to help himself if he felt hungry. Or even if he wanted to feed his cat. Josh might get annoyed at not finding any leftovers to nibble on when he returned from his irregular shifts at the station, but it was a bit much to call poor Robin a thief.

  She was going to have to have a word … all right, a fight … with Josh about this.

  ‘She’s rather a charming little creature.’ Granna reached out tentatively and ran a finger lightly behind one of Leif’s ears. Leif twisted his head to be scratched and gave her a loud purr. ‘Quite sweet, really.’

  ‘She’s smart, too,’ Robin said proudly. ‘She’s my friend.’

  ‘You’re collecting too many friends,’ Josh said. ‘This is one you can do without.’

  ‘You can never have too many friends,’ Granna said coldly. ‘His father always had lots of friends. And so did Margaret …’

  Once … hung in the air.

  Mummy pointedly refrained from looking in her direction, but Mags was suddenly miserably aware of how much life had changed. Where were her friends now?

  At university. She knew the answer. Or, more accurately, just leaving university, starting out on their career paths, moving forward into an exciting interesting life.

  When she ran away with Josh, she had been the interesting one. She had been the exciting one. The one to be envied and talked about as the others settled down to the long grind of study and penny-pinching.

  ‘Yeah?’ Josh was always ready to oppose Mummy. ‘Well, that teabag-fleabag is one friend too many. I’m not having that around here. You can take it back where you found it.’

  And that was what had happened to her friends, too – the few who had tried to keep in touch with her. Josh hadn’t passed on messages if they called when she was out. He’d made fun of them, denigrated them, complained about them, slowly but surely separating her from them, until he was the main – the only figure in her life. She had been a fool to let him do it but, at the time, he had seemed such a glamorous figure, he had seemed to be enough.

  ‘If you came to stay with me,�
� the soft silky voice purred to Robin, ‘you could bring Tealeaf with you. I like cats.’

  Mummy was starting her game again.

  ‘That’s not a bad idea.’ Josh would be delighted to get rid of Robin. He’d been in one sulk after another ever since Mags had brought Robin home.

  ‘No!’ Mags said.

  Mummy and Josh both turned and looked at her with varying degrees of surprise and amused resignation. Then their glances crossed and Mags recognised a sudden newly-born complicity.

  ‘He’s started school here.’ Mags tried to make her instinctive protest sound more reasonable. ‘He’s doing well. He’s making new friends. Eva will be back soon. It would be too unsettling to move him again.’

  ‘Young boys are surprisingly tough.’ Mummy smiled at Robin. ‘I don’t believe it would do him any harm. And it might not mean moving schools too often.’

  No, it wouldn’t. If Mummy got Robin into her clutches, into her chosen boarding school, Eva would stand little chance of ever getting him back.

  ‘Anyway …’ Mummy’s smile broadened. ‘Don’t you think that Robin should have a say in the matter?’

  Robin shrank back as they all looked at him. What Mags had said was true, he was just getting used to everything here. He was one of the gang now, Jamie was a good friend, school was as good as school ever got …

  On the other hand, Granna lived a good long distance away. If he went with her, Mr Nordling would never find him … or Leif. They would be safe.

  31

  Hag-ridden … hag-ridden … he had spent his life being hag-ridden. And the hags were still there. Every time he thought he’d fought them off, they whirled about and came at him from another direction. Some of them had Ingrid’s face, but jeering and distorted. Then there were the ones with the menacing, blurred faces, the women he didn’t know, but who knew him – and what he had done. Most of them had Edith’s face, frowning, disapproving, mistrustful. Edith – the current hag-in-residence.

  No, no, that wasn’t quite right. He was the guest in her residence. His breathing quietened, the hags receded as his mind drifted towards consciousness and began trying to make sense of the nightmare visions –

  Here they came again!

  They hurtled towards him, screeching, howling horrible sounds that did not translate into words. They were curses, he knew instinctively – not profanity, but the genuine old-fashioned hell-and-damnation-unto-the-tenth-generation. Or the end of his bloodline – whichever came first.

  No! No!

  One of the Ingrids hurtled towards him, then another. This time they all had the same face. No, not a face, a dripping bloodied mess, splinters of bone and cartilage gleaming through the red, one glittering malevolent eye fixed on him implacably as they swirled closer … closer …

  No!

  He found himself standing in the middle of the room, shaking uncontrollably, the duvet still tangled around his ankles, sweat pouring from him.

  Had he cried out? Screamed in terror? He held his breath, listening for the sound of footsteps hurrying towards his room, for the murmur of concerned voices.

  The house was silent. Only his own ragged breathing disturbed the quiet.

  He kicked away the duvet, stumbled over to the dressing-table and peered blurrily at his watch. Five fifteen. Still dark and dismal outside. Too early to do anything, even if he could think of anything he wanted to do.

  The thought of going back to bed revolted him. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep, would be afraid to even try. The hags might still be waiting, ready to renew their onslaughts.

  His head began throbbing. He couldn’t tell whether it was a prelude to a headache or just the intensity of the blood pulsing through his body.

  Blood … body …

  Don’t think about it! Move! Action! Do something!

  What? Not go jogging, that was just the excuse for going out of the house at odd hours while he searched for his missing witness. He didn’t have to do that now, he knew where she was.

  Rather, he knew where she would be at ten o’clock this morning. Would she be reasonable? He’d scraped together five thousand in cash. She’d sounded very young – the sight of all that money at once ought to impress her.

  How long a deadline would she give him to amass the rest? Would she accept payment in instalments? Blackmailers liked instalments, didn’t they? A dripfeed income for life.

  Whose life? Ah, that would have to be determined, wouldn’t it? She’d been clever about meeting him, she might not be so careful about leaving him. If he could follow her, find out where she lived … Then he could begin to plan.

  Plan what? The ghost-image of a hag swooped at the edge of his peripheral vision. Warning? Threatening?

  Don’t think about it! Don’t think at all! Just fill the hours until ten o’clock with action. Movement. Perhaps some food? No, no, he wasn’t hungry.

  Too cold and dark to go for a walk. Not yet, perhaps later. Too cold to stand here much longer, either. The heating wouldn’t switch on for another hour. Cheese-paring bastards! Why couldn’t they keep the house at a decent temperature all night?

  Shower. He’d take a nice long hot shower. That would warm him up, waste some time and help sluice away the nightmares.

  ‘Edward ... Edward … Edward!’

  It had been possible – just – to pretend to sleep through the whispers, but the elbow jabbed into his ribs made him grunt. That was enough to assure Edith that he was awake.

  ‘Edward, he’s using up all of the hot water … again.’

  ‘Yes … well … it will heat up again …’

  ‘Edward!’

  ‘What can I do about it? Be reasonable, old girl. I can’t go down and turn the water off at the mains, can I? Be a bit too pointed, wouldn’t it?’

  There was a long thoughtful silence, as though she was actually considering the possibility of his doing just that, then a regretful sigh.

  ‘Edward … he hasn’t said a word about it.’ This was what was really preying on her mind. ‘Edward, he hasn’t even mentioned it.’

  ‘Mmmph …’ A non-committal grunt. There were so many things Nils hadn’t mentioned.

  ‘I can’t sleep for thinking about it. And he … he doesn’t even seem to care.’

  ‘Mmmmph?’

  ‘Ingrid … lying there in some morgue. Unburied. It … it isn’t decent! And he’s never spoken about a funeral. I’m sure he doesn’t even have a cemetery plot … and he’s not doing anything about getting one.’

  ‘Planning on cremation, I suppose. That means delay in a … a case like this. Police have something to say about it. They wouldn’t want to release the bo – Ingr – the bo – ’ ‘Oh, God!’ Edith began to cry.

  ‘Easy does it, old girl.’ He turned and gathered her into his arms. ‘You’re still in shock. I’m still in shock. Nils … Nils must be in the worst shock of all.’

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ She clung to him. ‘I just can’t believe it’s Ingrid we’re talking about like this. Someone we knew. A friend. I can’t believe we’re talking about the Nordlings. About Ingrid and – ’

  She broke off. The noise of coursing water thundered through the pipes to the shower turned on to full power.

  She could believe anything about Nils.

  32

  The day was grey and dismal and probably going to get worse. Rain before the end of the morning no doubt and the downpour would continue all day. A restless wind was rising, sending little chill gusts through the slits at the sides of the ill-fitting windows, making her shiver.

  The letter-box rattled and Mags went to collect the post, discovering that the day had worsened already. Two bills for Josh – that would please him, he was in a vile mood now. And a brightly coloured postcard for Robin, showing tropical skies, palm trees and a bustling native market filled with laughing people swarming around stalls heaped high with exotic fruits and vegetables. She gave a faint sigh.

  ‘All right for some,’ Josh sneered as she set
the postcard beside Robin’s plate. ‘Does she say when she’s coming back?’

  ‘I didn’t look.’ Mags winced inwardly as Josh reached over and helped himself to the postcard. ‘I don’t read other people’s mail,’ she said pointedly.

  ‘Mummy taught you better?’ Josh scowled at the brief message on the back. ‘This isn’t mail – it’s a postcard. People never say anything on a postcard they wouldn’t want the world to read. Unless they’re fools. “Missing you dreadfully, darling. Next time you must come with us. Be a good boy. See you soon. Love to all …”’ Josh skimmed the card back across the table where it hit the edge of Robin’s plate and lay face down. ‘Soon – how soon?’

  She wished she could answer that. Mags turned the card up so that the sunny face of it would greet Robin. She had hoped for a letter from Eva but, obviously, that had been too much to expect. One postcard was supposed to be enough for all of them.

  ‘Love to all.’ Love, but no information.

  There was a clatter on the stairs and Robin’s rare laugh rang out. It was echoed by a skittish Meorrrow that sounded as though the cat were laughing, too. Together they charged down the stairs and up to the table.

  ‘You’re late for breakfast.’ Josh regarded them both without favour. ‘And you’re going to be late for school.’

  ‘No, I won’t. I’ll run all the way.’ His eyes lit up as he reached for the postcard from his mother.

  ‘Why don’t you take the card to school with you and show it to your friends?’ Mags slid the bowl of muesli in front of him and watched the brightness fade from his eyes as he read the non-revealing message.

  ‘All right.’ The way he shoved it carelessly into his pocket betrayed that he would do no such thing. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that it would be out of the house and Mummy wouldn’t stumble over it and have fresh ammunition for her tirades about Eva’s inadequacies as a mother.