Cat's Paw (26 page)

‘No,’ said Kevin. ‘If they don’t report back–’

Fisher seized Kevin’s neck and shook him like a rattle.

‘No? No?’ Spittle flew from Fisher’s teeth. ‘
NO?
’

Kevin’s eyes bulged and he plucked at the throttling hand. He might as well have tried to bend an iron bar. Giving up, he groped at Fisher’s tunic, feeling inside it, as his fellow
polecats shrank back in fright. Ben, the last one standing his ground, caught Kevin’s frantic stare. Then he was catching something else. A scrap of cloth.

Not just a scrap, though. It had shape. A ragged shirt-shape. With sudden, bottomless horror Ben knew exactly what he was holding, and what Kevin wanted him to do with it.

‘Martin!’ he called. ‘Here.’

Ben waved the rag in his face. Kevin fell coughing onto the grass as Fisher released him. In a change so sudden that it was almost more frightening than his rage, Fisher took the scrap of rag
tenderly in both hands and cuddled it to his cheek. He whined softly. Things stayed that way for a while.

The comfort rag. The rag that had belonged to the boy in the shed. Of all the hideous details in Geoff’s tale, that had been the hardest to forget. Ben watched Fisher cuddle it to his
whiskery chin. And he knew that, if he were to peek inside that frayed fold which had once been a shirt collar, he might see a label that read
2–3 years
.

Kevin climbed to his feet.

‘Thanks–’ His voice, in shreds, honked strangely. Mistaking Ben’s stunned look, he explained, ‘That thing, it’s just something he likes. Worth–’
he coughed, ‘worth remembering.’

Ben’s mind was at snapping point.
Something he likes
. All his terrible life Fisher had kept it, this moth-eaten scrap. Did he even know why? Ben couldn’t guess, he was
terrified to try, but an idea haunted him anyway. Perhaps Fisher kept it because, as threadbare as it was, it
was
a thread, a thread that led back, through the mazes of cruelty and
loneliness, to some other place and time where even memory failed, a place of warmth perhaps, of light, of childish laughter.

Fisher’s whines dwindled into silence. He folded the rag, stowed it back inside the breast of his mink-fur tunic and snuffled at the wind.

‘There is no police now.’ Moonlight turned his eyes metal. ‘
Off we go
.’

The tower block had been refitted with doors, bolted ones plated with
Danger
signs. The polecats swarmed in through ground floor windows, Fisher ripping away the covering boards.

The lobby was unrecognisable. Ben crept after Kevin through an eerie grotto, wreathed with what looked like giant cobwebs. Not fond of spiders, he flinched. Then he got a better look and his
mild heebie-jeebies turned to dread. The webby strands were cables, sprouting in clusters from every wall, twining round the pillars, rooting into tumours of polythene and black tape. He
didn’t need to understand any of this stuff to know it was bad.

‘What are these wires?’ Antonia whispered.

‘Not wires,’ said Jeep. ‘It’s shock tube. Detonating cord. Sort of like a fuse, only it works–’ he snapped his fingers, ‘that quick.’

‘Why so many of them?’ asked Ben. Jeep’s contempt showed through his mask.

‘The explosive isn’t in one place, is it? It’s distributed around the whole building. There’s shock tubes running to hundreds of charges on each of the blast floors. They
all link back to the main detonator.’

Ben trod very carefully.

‘Chicken! Look, he’s afraid of setting it off.’ Jeep sneered. ‘Only the detonator can do that. Even a flame won’t – see?’

He raised his cigarette lighter towards one of the cables. Kevin caught his wrist. ‘Jeep! We believe you.’

‘Polecats.’ Fisher’s whisper brought silence. He stood in the hollow where the lift should have been, tall as a spectre, arms half-aloft as if he was reading an invisible
newspaper.

‘Polecats. When I was in chains I found a stone. I broke the chains. I burned the one who kept me caged. Then other people came, but they caged me too. I burned the ones who kept me caged.
Now they cage you inside your very own home with their trains and their noise and their stink. But this time we cannot burn them, or break our chains with a stone. I have found another
way.’

He threw back his head and screamed. It was the scream of a child being murdered. The lift shafts hollered back until Ben feared the tower might fall at the sound of it.

‘Find it,’ cried Fisher. ‘Bring me what I need. Dig it from the walls and bring it to me.’ As his troops poured past him he added, unnecessarily, ‘It looks like raw
bread. Don’t eat it.’

In his strikingly artistic hand Fisher had drawn new sheets of instructions, with the charge-loaded walls now marked in yellow highlighter. Kevin, ever the organiser, split the gang into yet
more groups to tackle each of the blast floors. Squad A, which included Ben, was assigned to the highest. Squad D would scavenge the explosives on the ground floor while the others pillaged the
storeys in between. Following Jeep up the stairs, Ben looked around for Thomas and Hannah. Both were in Squad B. Floor nine.

Barking orders ridiculously, Jeep led his squad to the fifteenth floor and into the first apartment. City lights twinkled in empty window frames, otherwise it was as black as a coal mine. Gary
and Antonia stumbled ahead into a room that Ben guessed had once been a kitchen. The wall with the window was creepered with cables that grew from silver roots, planted in oozing foam. His
team-mates got busy with pliers, screwdrivers and Swiss Army knives, digging into the holes. Soon Antonia was dropping putty-like lumps into her bag.

Gary tossed his dreadlocks. ‘Get a move on.’

Ben started chipping with his screwdriver, filling his bag with chunks of plaster which he hoped would fool them for now. Where was Geoff? Was he even coming? What if they finished the job
before he got here? Then, as if in answer, a warm light kindled inside him. Yes. Geoff was out there somewhere. He was close by. Ben’s Oshtis catra pulsed again and he was sure – could
it be? – that he sensed someone else too. Tiffany? His tiredness melted away.

Pretending to finish this wall he entered the shell of the old living room. There he found Jeep, apparently messing around. Jeep had cut loose a snake of cable, still attached to its silver
cylinder.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Don’t talk. Work.’

‘Aren’t you s’posed to help?’ Antonia asked. ‘We’re getting blisters here.’

‘Yeah, stop skiving,’ said Gary.

‘Check it out,’ said Jeep. ‘See what shock tube can do.’ He tied the cord into a crude loop. ‘You, Ben. Gimme your hand.’

Ben folded his arms.

‘Spoilsport.’ Jeep crossed to the window, where roosting pigeons huddled out of the wind. Instantly he had one flapping by the neck, while its friends clattered into the night. He
twisted its wings one after the other and the bird stopped flapping. Shrill cries gurgled from its beak and it bobbed its head crazily back and forth, as if trying to catch Ben’s eye. Did its
stupid bird brain hold out a glimmer of hope? Whatever was happening, Ben would let it happen. He was going to stand here and watch it happen.

Jeep looped the shock tube around its plump body and took up the end with the silver cylinder attached.

‘What you doing?’ Antonia demanded.

‘All right,’ said Jeep to himself. ‘Couple of these beauties left.’

He produced one of his bangers and pushed it deep inside the silver cylinder. He twiddled the firework’s blue touch-paper. Out came his lighter.

‘Jeep, don’t.’ That was as far as Gary got. Jeep lit the banger and dropped the loop of shock tube. The pigeon struggled. What happened next was too fast for even Ben to
follow. He supposed the banger went off first. Yet between the bang and its echo came a whip-crack, the cord gave a twitch and the air was full of feathers. Then the loop was empty. An odd smell
tainted the air, like roast chicken on Bonfire Night. The shock tube itself looked undamaged, but of the pigeon there was no sign.

Jeep whooped in delight.

‘Did you see that?’ he crowed. ‘Watch the birdie! I’m going to zap something else.’

He looked at Ben. Ben stepped backwards. Then Jeep was slammed into the wall and pinned by something tall, red-haired and furious.

‘What–’ Kevin panted, ‘what did you just do?’

‘Nothing! Just seeing if a banger could set off a blasting cap. Like it said in my
Guns and Ammo
magazine.’

‘No more magazines!’ Kevin bellowed. ‘No more till you behave! Got that?’

‘But Kevin–’

‘That’s final. You could’ve blown us up. Be glad it was me that caught you.’

Jeep continued to protest while Gary and Antonia got back to work. Ben saw his chance. He slipped round the corner, then ran across the landing and down the stairs to the ninth floor. He knew
what to do. His friends were out there, Geoff, Tiffany and probably the other Cat Kin too. They would be waiting to strike. But Geoff was counting on him to make their job easier.

He found Thomas and Hannah in a room by themselves, bickering over the best way to extract plastic explosive from a borehole.

‘…barbeque tongs would be the most efficient implement…’

‘What we have is a knife, a screwdriver and pliers–’

‘Can I interrupt?’ said Ben.

Hannah flicked the hair from her eyes.

‘You’re not meant to be in this team,’ said Thomas.

‘No,’ said Ben. ‘And neither are you. None of us are meant to be here. Are we?’ He grabbed hold of them. ‘
Are we?
’

‘Leave us alone,’ said Hannah, but weakly.

Ben took a deep breath. This was such a risk.

‘You remember that guy who came to get me before? Fisher calls him the White Cat. He’s the only person Fisher’s afraid of. And he’s here now. He’s
outside.’

Thomas’s eyes widened. ‘Then we have to tell–’

‘
Think!
’ Ben shook him. ‘Look in your bag. What’s in there? What’s it for?’

Thomas shrugged.

‘You know Fisher’s plan,’ hissed Ben. ‘You helped him drill underneath the Thames. Put two and two together!’

‘It don’t matter what we think,’ said Hannah. ‘You got to do as he says.’

‘If we refused,’ said Thomas, ‘it would happen regardless. Only we’d be dead.’

‘Got no choice,’ sniffed Hannah.

Ben wrung the cloth of Thomas’s jacket in frustration. His fingers ripped the seams of the grey urban camouflage and he had one final, foolish idea. Oh well – he’d tried
everything else.

‘Yes you have.’ Summoning his Mau claws he gripped his own jacket and tore it open down the middle. Underneath was no red Superman letter ‘S’, but a pale green pattern of
whiskers on black. It would have to do.

‘The White Cat will stop Fisher. But he needs my help. And I need you.’

At last, hope in their eyes. Ben tore at the rest of his polecat gear, casting it off, feeling the freedom of his pashki kit by bouncing on his toes. From his toolbag he retrieved the object he
had hidden for so long among his bedclothes. Inking up the cat face-print he pressed the tabby markings onto his skin.

‘Tomorrow you’ll see your families again. If you help me tonight.’

‘Um,’ said Hannah.

‘You can’t expect us to make a decision so quickly–’

‘
Yes or no?
’

‘Yes,’ said Thomas and Hannah together.

‘Let’s go.’ Ben mounted the stairs.

‘Shouldn’t we be heading down?’ asked Thomas.

‘No. Up.’

‘But Kevin’s up there,’ exclaimed Hannah.

Ben set his jaw. ‘Yes.’

Kevin stopped on the stairs between the deserted twelfth and eleventh floors. A black-clad figure had occupied the landing below him. Its face was whorled with peculiar patterns.

‘Who’s there?’

‘It’s okay. It’s me.’

‘Ben?’ Kevin frowned. Hannah and Thomas moved in the shadows. ‘And the Dozy Twins? What is this?’

‘Your voice sounds rough,’ said Ben. ‘Does it hurt?’

‘Why don’t you do the talking, then?’

‘Does Fisher strangle you a lot?’

‘Get to the point.’

‘We’re not doing this,’ said Ben. ‘We are not going to drown thousands of people.’