Cat Kin (29 page)

Toby fell like an old chimney. Ben rolled clear, cradling his left shoulder, praying it wasn’t broken. Crouched low, he wheeled, looking for Cobb and Stanford. They were gone. He heard,
echoing through the arches, running feet, shouts and curses. Whatever was happening now, he guessed, it was between those two and no-one else.

‘Ben! Oh, Ben!’

Tiffany pounded at the bars with her fists. Ben ran to Cobb’s desk and ransacked the drawer until he found a key. Tiffany burst out of her cage with a sob. Ben clutched her arm to steady
her.

‘Easy. You’re safe now.’

‘Out. Please. I can’t stay in this place, Ben.’

‘It’s okay.’ Ben tried to coax her to walk. ‘I’ve got a plan. Yusuf’s sorting it.’

‘Ben. Don’t let us die in here.’

‘No-one’s going to die. Come on. Tiffany—’ he pulled at her, ‘you’ve got to help me. I can’t carry you!’

At last she snapped out of it, enough to take a step forward, then another. Her nails hurt his hand as he pulled her towards the goods lift. Then his skin prickled and he knew eyes were upon
them.

‘There they are! Head ’em off!’

Green Suits were closing in. But the alarm had come too late. Four more strides would put them in the lift. Ben saw a lever, pushed up into Stop mode. Was it his imagination, or were both of the
ropes quivering with tension?

‘Get in!’

Tiffany stopped in the entrance. She had just escaped one cage—she wasn’t stepping into another. She shook her head feebly.

‘Tiffany, please!’

A guard burst from an alley of crates, swinging his night-stick. A great shadow was suddenly thrown against the office wall. Ben shoved Tiffany into the lift, yanked the lever down and dived in
after her.

Yusuf had done his job well. With a whine the car shot upwards so sharply that Ben bruised his knee on the floor. Then the car tilted and a groan shuddered the mechanism.

Toby, white-eyed and foam-mouthed as a rabid Rottweiller, was clinging to the lift, climbing in. Tiffany screamed. Ben shrank out of reach as the huge arms grabbed at him. The car swung, rising
in sluggish jerks against the man’s great weight. Steeling himself, Ben swiped at Toby’s hands and bloodied face. Instead of driving the monster back it only made him madder.
Ben’s Mau claws wouldn’t come; it was like trying to strike wet matches. Then Toby was in there with them.

Ben would rather have been trapped with a bear. He feinted, kicked, squirmed and even bit, trying to use Ten Hooks to fend the brute off and keep him away from Tiffany.

‘Come ’ere!’

A fist clubbed him to the floor. Stunned, he lay on his back and tried to rake his enemy with his feet. Still the car creaked higher. Toby picked him up and slammed him down, once, twice, once
more. Sure he had been shattered to pieces, Ben hardly felt a thing as he was seized a fourth time, shaken like a rat and hurled out of the lift.

The world spun around him, bricks, ropes, girders, a grey floor rushing nearer. But every second was suddenly like five, as his mind shifted into that inhuman higher gear in which water-drips
could fall slow as feathers and the fastest pinball drifted like a bubble. Ben pivoted automatically, putting his feet lower than his head, kicked clear of the gantry and rebounded off the wall.
Heeding a tingle in his Mau whiskers, he snatched at something that checked his fall. Or not quite. He was still falling, just more slowly than before.

He’d grabbed a rope. The counterweight rope, rattling down as fast as the lift was rising. The car soared out of reach. Tiffany was in there with Toby. Ben stared up in despair. He had
failed her. Fear had got the better of him. He’d let her down.

Let her down…

Below his dangling feet the ground was racing to meet him, three heartbeats away. No time to worry about that. Down there, bolted to the rope, was the counterweight cradle, stacked with enough
iron ingots to outweigh the lift car and its occupants put together. There was one last thing he could do to save Tiffany, and he had half a second left in which to do it.

This time, when he tried, Mau claws erupted from his fingertips. He reached down and hewed at the rope. The taut cord exploded at his touch, scattering fibres like chaff. The weight cradle
crashed to the concrete. Ben gripped the severed rope with both hands, knowing what was about to happen.

Shorn of its counterweight, the lift car stopped rising and hung motionless for the time it takes to blink. Then it plummeted like a yo-yo. Ben, hanging from the other end of the cable, shot
upwards. Down came the lift, unstoppable as a train. Ben let go with his left hand and stretched out as far as he could.

‘Tiffany!’ he screamed, not knowing if she could hear him, or was able to obey. ‘
Felasticon!
’

The lift twisted on the thrashing cable. Tiffany was suddenly there, throwing herself from its open doorway, reaching for his reaching hand. As the car plunged past with a whump of displaced
air, his fingers closed on her wrist and she grabbed his.

A crash shook the gantry from top to bottom. The lift had hit the floor. Afterwards, Ben would have no clear memory of flying upwards, somehow clinging on with each hand, then tumbling through
space as the whiplashing rope threw him off, his grip broken by Tiffany’s weight. All he would remember was being sprawled face-down on the topmost gallery, feeling as if his arms had been
torn off. He sucked a painful breath. Tiffany lay beside him, unmoving.

‘Uuuuuuuhhhhhhh.’

‘Woooo!’ Yusuf danced above them. ‘Tens out of ten all round, my friends!’

He helped them up. Tiffany seemed not to know where she was. Ben patted at himself, sure he was about to fall into two bits and wondering why it hadn’t happened yet.

‘Right,’ he croaked, when he had the strength. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

‘Hang on,’ said Yusuf. ‘Tiffany, you didn’t come here by yourself? Where’s Mrs Powell?’

Tiffany hesitated. Ben saw in Yusuf’s face the same horrible thought that he’d just had. When Tiffany spoke it didn’t sound like her voice.

‘I’ll tell you later,’ she whispered. ‘Let’s just go.’

‘Okay.’ Ben shook off his sudden paralysis. ‘Back the way we came in?’

He pushed Tiffany before him. Yusuf, bringing up the rear, glanced over his shoulder and let out a yell.

‘Come on!’

First Susie and then Cecile erupted out of the stairwell, Green Suits breathing down their necks. The girls released the white bundles that they carried in their arms. The dust sheets unravelled
and dozens of jars rolled out onto the walkway. Cecile and Susie sped away, leaving their pursuers to slip on the pills and fall in a tangled heap.

‘Onto the roof,’ Yusuf panted. ‘We can signal to Daniel. Maybe he can move the crane and pick us up.’

‘Crane?’ Tiffany frowned.

In single file they scaled a ladder into the water tank loft. Cecile walked up a fallen beam and climbed through the hole in the roof. She and Yusuf helped Tiffany out onto the tiles. Tiffany
gasped at the cleaner air and stood there, blinking foolishly.

‘Say that again? Daniel’s doing what?’

Ben followed them into the breezy night. It was beginning to spit with rain, cooling his rope-burnt hand. The streets of Hackney had never gleamed so beautifully.

‘Yusuf’s pulling your leg,’ he grinned. ‘What would we be doing with a crane?’

Something swung out of the darkness.

Earth dare not hurt me

death’s dart misses me

I breathe thunder

beware my wrath.

The roof tiles rucked up in a wave beneath their feet and for an instant Ben knew how it felt to be a skittle in a bowling alley. By the time he had recovered enough to be sure
he was still alive, he was lying upon damp slates, a boom ringing in his ears. A little way below him, yards from where they’d been standing, the factory’s sloping roof was carved into
a crater.

Yusuf rolled groaning on his back. Susie wobbled to her feet. Fighting dizziness, Ben looked up and saw the crane swinging its club like a giant.

‘What are they playing at? Daniel!’

‘That’s not Daniel.’ Cecile’s voice was high and scared.

The cab’s windows were steamed and rain-blurred. It was hard to make out the face of the man who now sat at the controls. Even without night vision Ben could have guessed.

‘It’s Stanford!’

Far below he saw the small figures of Olly and Daniel fleeing the crane in panic. The crane’s boom jerked to and fro like the neck of some decapitated beast, wild and unguided, steered
only by mindless rage. The wrecking ball swung around for another pass.

‘He’s trying to kill us!’ cried Yusuf. ‘Everyone, down to the ground!’

‘You want to make a fool of me?’ Above the engine’s roar and inexpert grinding of gears, Ben’s feline hearing could still pick out Stanford’s furious screams.
‘You think you’re a genius, you think you’re Einstein, you think you’re
allmächtiger Gott
… You’d be nothing without me! I own you, and I can smash
you!’

‘It’s not us he’s after.’ Ben felt a stab of delight. ‘It’s Cobb. They’ve fallen out big-time.’

‘Come out, you
feigling
, you coward!’ howled Stanford, grappling the crane’s twin joysticks. ‘Come out and face me with your fancy gun! Don’t fancy this,
do you?’

‘He’s just trying to destroy Cobb’s factory,’ said Ben.

‘The factory that we’re standing on, you mean?’ Yusuf yelled.

The steel ball walloped the wall, drowning out his last words and shaking the roof.

‘This way.’ Yusuf waved them towards the chimney. ‘There are drainpipes we can climb down.’

‘Come on, Tiffany.’ Ben took her elbow.

‘Wait!’ She hung back. ‘The cats. They’re trapped inside.’

Oh no, he didn’t need this…

‘We’ll come back,’ he promised. ‘We can rescue them later.’

‘Ben!’ She knocked his hands away. ‘He’s smashing this place to bits! They’ll be buried alive!’

She was right. Again.

‘Ben?’ Yusuf yelled.

‘I’ll follow you,’ Ben waved him on. ‘Take Tiffany. Get help.’

‘I’m not abandoning the cats,’ said Tiffany. ‘I’m going back.’

To Ben’s utter astonishment and horror she dashed for the hole in the roof.

‘
Tiffany!
’

The wrecking ball clove the air between them, forcing him to leap backwards and curl up to shield himself from flying slates. When he looked again she had gone. Had she lost her mind? Much more
of this battering and the whole decrepit building would come down. On her head. Of all the stupid, ungrateful, moronic, heroic…

‘Go on,’ he shouted to the other three. ‘You can’t help now.’

Ben drew himself up, shaking off the rain. If there was an answering shout he never heard it. His world had shrunk to the weeping wind and the great steel ball. It rocked to and fro on its wire,
gathering itself, feinting like a boxer. As if in answer, there appeared in his mind a cat’s eye, smouldering six different colours. The ball rushed out of the night, an immense, solid ghost.
Ben dodged aside, ran up the roof in its slipstream and leaped on.