A limp human leg swung over the side of the mortuary table, followed by another.
‘Whooaaaaa!’
‘It’s working,’ Michael whispered.
Inspector Cheddar stood up.
A flash of lightning illuminated the pickling laboratory.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mrs Cheddar. ‘I think I might have used a bit too much Vita-Vit. It’s stronger than I thought.’
Atticus’s fur prickled. Inspector Cheddar was a terrible sight. His green hair stood on end. His eyes were glazed. The hypodermic needle stuck out at a right angle from his neck. His head jerked this way and that. Slowly he raised his arms and started to walk forward. ‘Mmmmmmwwwwwhhh
hhhhhoooooooooaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh …’
The villains retreated to the edge of the laboratory, all except Pork and Pam, who stood their ground.
‘STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP! STOP!’ Pam shrieked.
Pork bared his yellow teeth.
Inspector Cheddar lashed out with one leg. The two animals sailed through the air.
SQUAWK! Pam landed in the drainage bucket.
CRASH! Pork landed on top of her.
‘The Vita-Vit’s given Dad super strength!’ Michael said in awe.
‘It must have reacted with Zenia’s sleeping potion!’ Mrs Tucker whistled. ‘Whatever happens, keep out of his way,’ she advised.
CRASH! BUMP! BASH! Inspector Cheddar swept his dangling arms along the laboratory shelves. Needles and test tubes rained down, together with lots of bottles and surgical instruments, three magpies and a large ginger cat. ‘Mmmmwwwwhhhoooooaaaaaaa!’
Zenia grabbed hold of Biscuit. ‘Come here, my furry fiend.’
Biscuit didn’t protest. Atticus could see he was terrified.
‘Chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka-chaka!’ The magpies picked themselves up and flapped out of the mortuary. They were in such a hurry to escape they didn’t see the rescuers crouching in the shadows.
‘Which way now, Boss?’ Thug screeched.
‘This way.’ Jimmy led them along the corridor in the opposite direction from the lift.
Suddenly a terrifying figure appeared in front of them. It had long hair and a huge beard-jumper. Its tatty clothes were splattered with disgusting-smelling dung. It limped out of the darkness with a great roar.
‘Another monster!’ Thug screamed. The magpies flapped back the other way.
‘Herman!’ Mrs Tucker exclaimed. ‘About time! Where did you come from?’
‘We’s got in from the landing stage through the sewers,’ Mr Tucker said. ‘That’s why I smells like a pig’s faaarrrrrt.’
Bones hopped out of Mr Tucker’s jacket. Luckily it had kept her dry and she still smelled of the pet spa treatment, not pig fart.
‘What’s going on, Edna?’ Mr Tucker demanded.
CRASH! BASH! SMASH! Inspector Cheddar was still smashing up the pickling laboratory.
Mrs Tucker quickly explained the situation. ‘Whatever you do, don’t go near him. The combination of the Vita-Vit and Zenia’s sleeping potion seems to be pretty toxic. He’s in some kind of a super-strength trance.’
‘We’ll round up the magpies. Come on, Bones.’ Mimi charged off down the corridor with Bones.
Just then Ricardo Butteredsconi squeezed through the doorway from the pickling laboratory and stumbled towards the lift.
‘Mmmmwwwwhhhhooooaaaaa!’ Inspector Cheddar wasn’t far behind him.
‘Run!’ Mrs Tucker yelled. Everyone ran for cover.
Suddenly Atticus remembered the Sleepy-Snooze Smelling Salts. He grabbed the cardboard packet in his teeth.
BASH, SMASH, CRASH! Inspector Cheddar was getting into the lift. There was no sign of Butteredsconi.
‘He must have gone up the stairs!’ Mrs Tucker cried. ‘Come on!’
They raced up the emergency stairs. Mrs Tucker shouldered her way through the heavy fire door into the viewing gallery.
Ricardo Butteredsconi was edging backwards along the metal platform that surrounded the pickling tank, his piggy eyes fixed on Inspector Cheddar.
The Inspector looked even more terrible in the bright light of the gallery. His veins bulged. His green hair was wilder than ever. And his eyeballs were sticking out. ‘Mmmmmhhhhhhhrrrrrrrr!’ he groaned.
‘No! Please!’ Butteredsconi knees gave way. He collapsed against the glass barrier.
Inspector Cheddar took a swipe at him.
SPLASH!
‘Help me, someone!’ Butteredsconi bobbed about helplessly in the pickle tank, waving his arms above him. ‘I can’t swim.’
‘Fish him out, Herman!’ Mrs Tucker shouted.
Mr Tucker produced a fishing rod from his pocket and hooked the pickle giant by the tie. ‘Shall I bash him on the head with me basher?’ he asked as he reeled him in.
‘No, just tie him up,’ Mrs Tucker ordered.
‘Mum!’ Callie shouted. ‘Mrs Tucker! Quick! Dad’s going to destroy the art!’
CRASH! BASH! SMASH! In the next room Inspector Cheddar was already making short work of Ricardo Butteredsconi’s pickled animal collection.
‘What are we going to do?’ Michael cried.
‘We can’t get near him,’ Mrs Tucker said. ‘It’s too dangerous. We’ll just have to wait for the Vita-Vit to wear off.’
‘But the art …’ Callie began.
‘No, Callie,’ Mrs Tucker said firmly.
Mimi rushed up. ‘Is there anything we can do to stop him?’ she said to Atticus.
Atticus put the cardboard packet of Thumpers’ Sleepy-Snooze down carefully. ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘Where are the magpies?’
‘Here!’ Bones stepped forwards, pulling a net full of black and white feathers.
‘Claw!’ Jimmy snarled. ‘I …’
Atticus held up a paw. ‘I know. You’re going to peck my eyes out and make me into a nest snuggler. Look, Jimmy. I haven’t got time for all that. I need your help.’
‘Whatd’esay?’ Thug spluttered.
‘You kidding me?’ Slasher coughed.
‘I want to call a truce.’
Mimi and Bones looked at Atticus in amazement.
‘A truce?’ Jimmy eyed him suspiciously.
‘I want you to take this box,’ Atticus pointed to the Sleepy-Snooze Smelling Salts, ‘and sprinkle it on top of Inspector Cheddar.’ He paused. ‘Then you’re free to go. I promise.’
There was a brief silence.
‘All right,’ Jimmy Magpie said at length. ‘But this isn’t over, Claw. We’ll get our revenge on you one day. You’d better watch your back.’
‘Yeah!’ Thug and Slasher’s beady eyes were on him. ‘You heard the boss!’
‘We’ll get you!’
‘Sure you will,’ Atticus said. He slashed through the net with a sharp claw. The magpies hopped out. Atticus pushed the packet of Sleepy-Snooze towards them. ‘Now do it before I change my mind,’ he growled. ‘It’s hungry work catching criminals, isn’t it, girls?’
‘It sure is!’ Mimi and Bones meowed. Three pairs of gleaming cats’ eyes bore down on the magpies.
With a final evil stare at Atticus, Jimmy Magpie grabbed the packet of Sleepy-Snooze in his beak. The three magpies took off.
‘Look!’ Callie said. ‘Atticus has let the magpies go!’
‘They’ve got the Sleepy-Snooze,’ Michael said.
‘Atticus must have made a deal with them,’ Mrs Tucker whistled. ‘He’s one clever cat.’
‘Are you sure you did the right thing?’ Bones whispered.
‘I don’t know,’ Atticus admitted. ‘But I wanted to try to save the art.’
SMASH! CRASH! BASH!
Mimi squeezed his paw. ‘Whatever happens, Atticus, I’m proud of you,’ she said.
The cats made their way through the remains of the pickled animals into the great hall with the children and the grown-ups.
Atticus could hardly bear to look. He didn’t mind if Inspector Cheddar stamped on his painting of Littleton-on-Sea. He could always do another one. But wh
at if the Pollock is ruined? Or the Mona Lisa? Or all those beautiful statues? They were like the megalodon; there would never be another one of them ever again in the whole entire world. And that, he knew, would be terrible for everyone who never got the chance to look at them and see things differently, like he had. He closed his eyes.
BASH! CRASH! SMASH!
SMASH! CRASH! BASH!
‘CHAKA-CHAKA-CHAKA-CHAKA-CHAKA!’
Suddenly everything went quiet apart from a gentle sound of snoring.
‘It’s all right, Atticus,’ Mimi said. ‘The magpies did it. The art is safe.’
Atticus opened one eye, then the other.
Inspector Cheddar lay on The Camp Bed, sleeping peacefully, surrounded by the fabulous, priceless art. Beside him lay the empty box of Sleepy-Snooze Smelling Salts.
There was no sign of Jimmy Magpie and his gang. They had gone.
‘So what happened then?’
Back in Littleton-on-Sea Atticus was telling the story to the kittens at the local cats’ home. One of them, whose name was Thomas, was so excited by the whole adventure he’d fallen off his cushion.
‘Mrs Tucker called the Commissioner. The police came in a launch and arrested Butteredsconi and Pork. The two of them are in jail.’ Atticus’s whiskers twitched in amusement. ‘I’ve heard they don’t like the food very much.’
Mrs Tucker had put them on a diet of bread and water.
‘What happened to Zenia Klob?’ another kitten asked. ‘And Ginger Biscuit?’
‘Unfortunately they escaped,’ Atticus said. ‘They must have hidden in the sewers until Mr Tucker and Bones were out of the way and then escaped on the hover-boat. Interpol think they’re back in Siberia.’
‘And Pam?’ Thomas asked.
Atticus sighed. ‘Pam is in intensive care at Her Majesty’s Prison for Bad Birds,’ he told them. ‘Pork flattened her with his rump cheek when he fell on top of her. The vets are trying to re-inflate her with a bicycle pump.’ Jimmy Magpie would be pleased anyway, he thought.
Atticus glanced at the clock. Callie and Michael would be here soon with Mrs Cheddar to pick him up. The vet had signed him off sick for three weeks with a sprained paw.
‘Is Inspector Cheddar all right?’ Thomas asked.
‘He’s as all right as he’s ever been, I suppose,’ Atticus grumbled. Atticus had injured his paw undoing the padlocks. It was all bandaged up. But Inspector Cheddar seemed to have forgotten his own advice about the need to elevate sprained limbs, and kept telling him to get off the sofa at home. Atticus almost liked him better when he was a monster.
‘Do you know where the magpies are?’ another kitten asked.
‘No, but I’ve got an idea that they’ll be back causing trouble before too long,’ Atticus said cheerfully. ‘They’ve always wanted to return to their nest under the pier.’
‘Don’t you mind?’ Thomas frowned.
‘Not really,’ Atticus said. ‘It was worth letting them go to save the art. And it’ll give Inspector Cheddar something to do if they go on another crime spree. He’s running around giving everyone speeding tickets at the moment, even if they’re on a bike. The doctor said the Vita-Vit would take a while to wear off.’
‘Will you be doing any more painting?’ another kitten said.
‘Definitely!’ Atticus replied. ‘Which reminds me, Callie and Michael have got a surprise for you.’
The Cheddars’ Ford Focus pulled up outside. Mrs Cheddar got out with the children and Mimi. Zeberdee Cronk was with them. They hurried into the cats’ home with lots of bags.
‘We’ve brought some painting stuff,’ Callie explained to the kittens. ‘We thought you might like to do some paw prints.’
‘Yeah, cat art is the new cool!’ Michael said.
‘Meow! Meow! Meow!’ The kittens followed the children into the kitchen.
‘Hey!’ Zeberdee greeted Atticus. ‘How are you doing?’
Atticus purred contentedly. He was fine, apart from his paw.
‘I was thinking I might take you to visit a few more galleries,’ Zeberdee said. ‘Would you like that?’
Atticus purred throatily. He would love it.
‘Your painting of the beach at Littleton-on-Sea looks great, by the way, in Tate Modern.’
Atticus was pleased. Mrs Cheddar had donated his painting to the gallery. He hoped people enjoyed looking at it as much as he’d enjoyed painting it.
Zeberdee picked him up carefully and took him into the kitchen with the others.
Atticus lay down in one of the kittens’ baskets with Mimi next to him, watching the kittens do their paw prints. They chose all sorts of different colours: red and green and gold and blue, pink and purple and even turquoise. They all had a wonderful time.
‘I like that one best,’ Mimi pointed at Thomas’s picture. ‘I think it’s supposed to be you.’
Atticus squinted at it.
It didn’t look like him, but Atticus knew that didn’t matter! It was black and brown, with a twist of white and a splodge of red in one corner.
‘That’s pretty good,’ Atticus told Thomas, ‘for a beginner.’
Thomas puffed out his chest with pride.
Callie picked the picture up. She grabbed a pen and wrote Thomas’s name in one corner. Then she handed the pen to Michael and in the other corner, beneath the red splodge, he scribbled
Author’s Note
This book owes a lot to the brilliant imaginations of the artists who inspired it. Without Damien Hirst’s pickled shark (The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living), Tracey Emin’s iconic My Bed and Doris Salcedo’s Shibboleth (the crack), Inspector Cheddar would not have been at risk of becoming the world’s ultimate work of art at the hands of an obsessed art-collecting pickle giant and his greedy pet pig.
As you have probably already guessed, Pacific Ocean, The Toenail Tree and Mount Underwear are all my own creations, which no doubt explains why I am a writer and not an artist.
Many thanks to the editorial team at Faber for keeping me on track and giving me the opportunity to explore the world of art with Atticus.
Author biography
Jennifer Gray is a barrister, so she knows how to spot a cat burglar when she sees one, especially when he’s a large tabby with a chewed ear and a handkerchief round his neck that says Atticus Claw. Jennifer’s other books include Guinea Pigs Online, a comedy series co-written with Amanda Swift and published by Quercus, and Chicken Mission, her brand new series for Faber. Jennifer lives in London and Scotland with her husband and four children, and, of course, Henry, a friendly but enigmatic cat.
Copyright
First published in 2014
by Faber and Faber Limited
Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street,
London WC1B 3DA
All rights reserved
© Jennifer Gray, 2014
Illustrations © Mark Ecob, 2014
The right of Jennifer Gray to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–30534–6
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Atticus Claw Learns to Draw Page 11
