The Great Escape (8 page)

She was just about to try and look round, when a voice said, ‘Hello? Can I help you?’ A man opened the door slightly further and peered round the side of it. He was wearing a white
lab coat and holding onto the door suspiciously, like a dressing-gowned homeowner with his door on a security chain.

‘Sorry,’ said Millie, thinking that at least after today she knew her heart contained no defects or weaknesses, because if it had, she would have died several times over. ‘I
fell into the door,’ she said, rubbing her elbow to give some conviction to the story. Luckily, she had smacked it so many times on the doors downstairs, it was already quite red.

‘Easily done,’ said the man. ‘Take more care of yourself, won’t you?’ He shut the door firmly in her face, and she picked up another bag and carried it grimly back
downstairs.

She opened it with no expectation of finding anything more than she had in the others, but this one was slightly different. On top of the shredded paper were several sheets of newspaper, folded
over. Millie sniffed – she could definitely smell something that wasn’t newsprint, and she thought it was almost certainly cat. Maybe they used newspaper to line the cages. She would
ask Max. She looked through the pages and realised it was a paper from last week, almost complete, though it appeared to be missing the middle sheet. She sighed, returned the newspaper to the bag
and retied it. The last few bags were soon done and checked, all containing exactly the same shreds as the rest. Millie had only one more idea, and that was to leave the outer doors unbolted, so
that maybe she and Max and the protesters would be able to get through one evening, and try to free the other cats. She unhooked the bolts and left the doors shut, putting a couple of bags in front
of them, so you couldn’t see the bolts. Almost immediately, the inner door opened and Elaine walked in.

‘All done?’ she asked and, without waiting for a reply, went on: ‘Good. Now, if you could just unbolt those doors, so the men can pick this lot up in the morning . .
.’

Millie stared. They left the doors open overnight? She would have no problem coming to rescue Max’s friends – they were practically being
invited
in. She went to the doors and
tried to look like she was undoing the bolts.

‘Thanks,’ said the woman, and held the inner door open for her to go back to the lobby. Millie walked past her, then watched as the woman produced two enormous keys and locked the
inside door from the corridor side. Stupid – of course they didn’t leave the building open overnight. Mille sighed inwardly one more time. Breaking the rest of the cats out wasn’t
going to be quite as easy as she’d hoped.

Millie arrived back home dying to tell Max about everything that had happened. She was sure that Arthur Shepard was the one behind the cat-napping. No, that didn’t sound
quite right. Kit-napping. That would do. She’d asked her dad and Bill where they’d gone off to, and they both muttered something about cleaning the upper floors. Millie wanted to ask
them what they’d seen up there, but realised her dad wasn’t going to say anything very much, in case she got upset about testing animals again. Too late, Millie thought grimly –
I’ve got one of their animals already. She went to the back door and opened it for Max, pretending she wanted to let some fresh air into the house. She expected to see him come darting in
immediately, but there was no sign of him. She wandered around the kitchen for a while, making a drink, finding a biscuit, looking out of the window. Still nothing. Weird. Her dad came in to boil
the kettle, and the opportunity was lost. She went up to her room and shut the door behind her, feeling at a loose end.

‘Psst,’ said a voice from under the bed.

‘Max?’

‘Of course Max. Who else would be hiding under your bed? Is this a comic opera?’ The sleek blue-grey cat sidled his way out from beneath the bed with a grace that was only slightly
marred by the large balls of dust behind his ears.

‘I don’t know,’ said Millie. ‘What’s a comic opera? Is it drawings of fat people?’

Max rolled his eyes. ‘You have no culture at all,’ he replied.

‘Never mind that. How did you get in? I’ve got so much to tell you.’

‘And I have a lot to tell you. You want to know how I got in? I got in when the people who came to search your house opened the window.’

‘
What?
You’re joking.’ Millie gaped at him.

‘I’m quite serious. Two men arrived after you had gone.’

‘How long after?’ she asked.

‘I meant to check my watch, but then I remembered. I can’t find one that looks right against my fur.’

‘Thank you.’ Millie rolled her eyes back at him.

‘Before lunchtime, definitely.’

‘How did they get in? Did they have a key?’

‘I don’t know. I was in the back garden. I didn’t see them get in, I just saw them when they went into the kitchen. The side-window of your garage is open, though, and the
brickwork beneath it looks scuffed, so I think they got in there. I watched them going up the stairs, so I jumped onto the garage roof, and then I waited outside the bathroom window. I knew they
would open a window upstairs, because it’s been so hot today. When they left the bathroom one open, I jumped in.’

‘Are you mental? What if they’d seen you?’ Millie cried.

‘I am not, as you say, mental,’ Max said stiffly. ‘I am silent and cunning. I heard them talking in your father’s room, I knew the coast was clear, I jumped in and I hid.
This is what cats are good at. One of the
many
things we are good at,’ he corrected himself.

‘But the risk was huge.’ Millie was still appalled. ‘What did they do next?’

‘They searched your dad’s room for a while, and the other bedroom. Then they tried yours. They checked for cat hair on the bed – it’s lucky I am too polite to moult.
Also, I think they were put off by all the dust. One of them kept sneezing.’

‘That’s lucky. I knew it would come in handy sooner or later – I keep telling Dad that housework is dangerous. What did they do then?’

‘Then they turned on your computer.’

‘How did that go?’

‘Badly for them.’

‘Great.’

‘They accessed your email account.’

‘My regular one?’

‘Does it have two messages in, one from your grandparents in Australia and one from your friend Claire who is in Italy on holiday?’

‘That’s the one.’

‘Yes, they checked that. They seemed a little disappointed that you didn’t have more mail.’

‘I’m a surprisingly efficient correspondent.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Did they check the Deleted Items?’

‘Apparently you have none. Just a few emails from somewhere, asking you if you’d like a special-offer DVD, whatever that might be.’

‘I empty it pretty often. I leave those ones in so it doesn’t look suspiciously empty.’

‘Suspicious to whom? Have you lived your whole life expecting something like this to happen? You are extraordinary.’

‘I told you – my dad is nuts about computer privacy. That’s why I have a Mac – they’re harder to attack with viruses.’

‘The computer can become ill?’

‘Yeah, kind of. And people can send you stuff which can get them information about your machine. They’re called Worms. Or Trojans.’

‘Oh.’ Max looked confused.

‘Anyway, my dad thinks that if you only store the things you can’t keep in your head on the computer, there’s less for someone to steal, so I delete everything I can, and keep
my vital stuff on a memory stick, which I carry ar—’

‘Please don’t take this the wrong way. I’m impressed, and yet simultaneously not interested.’

‘It’s fine. I slightly wish I’d rescued another cat.’

‘I slightly wish you had, too.’ Max looked huffy.

Millie laughed.

‘Ah, I
am
interested in one thing,’ said Max.

‘What’s that?’

‘Your father is a computer expert, yet he is cleaning windows for a job. Why is that?’

‘Oh, well . . .’ Millie looked embarrassed, as though she were giving away her dad’s secrets. ‘He lost his job about three months ago. And I thought he’d be
applying for other jobs, but he doesn’t seem to want to. Or maybe he does want to, but his friend thinks he’s lost his belief in himself. Only, we don’t have very much spare
money, because there’s only my dad and me. My mum died years ago, and my grandparents are in Australia, and they don’t even know he’s lost his job, so . . .’ She trailed
off.

‘That is nothing to be ashamed of,’ Max said. ‘He is earning money the best way he can, until the right thing comes along. I think that’s very dignified. Very
fatherly.’

‘Me too, I guess.’ Millie smiled. ‘Anyway, what happened next? I mean, today?’

‘Nothing,’ he replied. ‘They tried to check your internet history, but that didn’t seem to work at all.’

‘Yup. That’s what’s supposed to happen. Then what did they do?’

‘They gave up. They thought it had been a waste of time from the beginning. They put everything back where it was, and let themselves out of the front door.’

‘Interesting. Let me tell you what was happening to us at the same time.’

Millie told him everything, and watched the disappointment flit across his face, mirroring her own, when she explained about the locked doors, the too-attentive third-floor staff, and the
endless frustration of the fruitless rubbish search. He confirmed that the cats did indeed sit on newspaper, and made acerbic comments about the taste in reading matter of two of the lab techs. He
listened carefully as she told him the part about Arthur Shepard. But Max didn’t recognise him from her description – he had no idea who had captured him, because he’d never seen
the man’s face. And inside the laboratory, he had only seen the scientists and technicians.

‘I’m sure he’s the one in charge of this thing,’ Millie finished. ‘Let’s look him up and see what we find out.’

She googled Arthur Shepard, and tracked down his work history right up to his current employment at Vakkson. There wasn’t a huge amount of information. ‘I’ll try the library
tomorrow,’ she decided. ‘I can probably find out where he lives and stuff from there.’

‘You are a little frightening sometimes,’ said Max.

‘He started it.’

‘That’s true.’

‘I’ll check the mailbox, too – see if the protesters have got back to us.’

Millie found a new mail from the
.co.uk
protester, whom she’d decided she liked less than the other one, and clicked on it. It was just one line:

‘That’s pretty firm,’ said Max.

‘Mmm,’ said Millie. ‘Do you get the feeling they’re freezing us out?’

‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ said the cat, sighing. They hadn’t really got their metaphors sorted yet.

‘I mean, we’re not supposed to do anything till they find out more. They’ve had two days to find stuff out, and they haven’t. Look what we’ve been doing in that
time. They just stand outside the laboratory each day and shout. What more are they going to find out, doing that?’

‘You think there is something . . .’ Max cast around for the phrase, not to be outdone, ‘something, ah,
fishy
, going on?’

‘Yes,’ said Millie, trying and failing to suppress a grin. ‘That
is
what I think. Well, maybe not fishy, exactly – they might not be suspicious, but they’re
certainly no help.’

‘What should we do, then?’ he asked.

‘Ask the other ones to help us?’ she suggested.

‘The “direct action” ones? You don’t think they might be a little crazy?’

‘Maybe. Do you think helping a twelve-year-old girl and a talking cat to break into a secure laboratory to rescue some other talking cats is a job that any sane people would be likely to
agree to?’

Max shrugged. ‘That’s a fair point.’

Millie typed back to the fishy protesters:

‘And you have such an innocent face,’ said Max, shaking his head.

‘Let’s hope they fall for it,’ she muttered, hoping rather than believing that this would be the case. Then she mailed the crazy ones:

She pressed ‘Send’.

‘How can they help us?’ Max asked.

‘I hope they can help us carry out the rescue mission. We can’t do it on our own. There’s at least one security guard with at least one Alsatian patrolling the building
perimeter. The security guy told me that. The CCTV cameras are on and recording at night – they’re inside and outside the building. We definitely can’t get the cats out during the
day – there are too many people there. Actually, that’s a good question.’

‘What is?’

‘How did
you
get out during the day?’

‘I was cunning,’ Max began grandly.

‘I never doubted it. That lab tech looked like an idiot, though.’

‘Well, that certainly helped.’ Max acknowledged the helping hand of stupidity in his grand plan. ‘I had been planning it since the day I arrived. I had been chewing at the
catch on my cage every time no one could see me. It was quite loose to begin with, because the room is sealed, and the cage doors have to be easy to open and shut with one hand while you hold an
annoyed cat in the other one.’

‘How is the room sealed?’

Max thought for a second. ‘There are two doors. The second one will not open while the first one is open.’

‘Like an airlock?’ Millie asked.

Max looked quizzical.

‘In a submarine?’ she suggested.

‘Yes, exactly like that. I am a world-renowned expert on submarines, of course.’

‘You’ve seen a James Bond film,’ Millie said. ‘They all have submarines in.’

‘Really?’

‘Most of them do. The ones that don’t have spaceships in. Spaceships with airlocks.’