Catscape Page 3

  “If we do manage to lift the manhole cover,” said Fergus, “what do we do next?”

  “Just have a look,” said Murdo with a vague wave of his hand. “How can we plan when we don’t know what we’ll find?”

  “Well we need to think it through a bit further, otherwise it will be a bit of a waste of time,” explained Fergus. “For a start we’ll need a torch.” Thirty seconds later a big torch had joined their growing pile of equipment on the table.

  “Do you think …? Would we …? Would we actually go down there?” said Murdo trying to hide his rising concern with this project by asking an innocent question.

  Fergus thought this through. He was beginning to realize that the fun of planning the expedition was now reaching the point where they had to decide exactly how much they were prepared to do.

  “I think that might be a bit risky,” he said. “I think at this stage it’s just a … a … preliminary investigation.”

  “That sounds good,” said Murdo. “I like that.” He seemed relieved.

  “Although it would be a bit disappointing if the torch didn’t shine far enough and we didn’t see anything,” continued Fergus. “We’d be none the wiser. We’d be back to square one.”

  There was silence as the boys pondered the situation.

  “What if we could hear?” said Fergus thinking aloud.

  Once again Murdo sprang into action, emerging with an old and rather bulky walkman.

  “If I remember rightly this has a ‘record’ function on it,” he said, inserting a tape and attaching a tiny microphone lead to it. “Testing, testing — one, two, three,” he said rather pompously before replaying it to confirm that it was working. “Excellent,” he said adding it to the pile of equipment.

  “Problem,” said Fergus.

  “What?” said Murdo looking confused.

  “Well the lead isn’t that long,” said Fergus, “It won’t even go down as far as we can see with the torch.”

  Five minutes later the collection of equipment included a large ball of string.

  “Are we getting there?” asked Murdo. “Crowbar if it’s heavy, torch if it’s too dark, microphone if we can’t see, string if it’s too deep,” he said looking over the gear they had gathered together.

  “How exactly are we going to do this without being too obvious? We need a smokescreen,” said Fergus. “We need something that gives us a reason for hanging about on the pavement.”

  “Well, if we both take bikes then we can pretend we have a puncture. We can turn one bike upside down and be fixing it — supposedly. That should hide what we’re doing on the pavement,” said Murdo.

  “That’s probably about as good as we’ll get,” said Fergus. “There can’t be many other reasons for spending time in one place on the pavement.”

  “Okay. Finally the biggest problem as I see it,” he continued, “is how exactly do we get out at night when we’re supposed to be tucked up in our beds?”

  “That’s easy!” said Murdo.

  Ten minutes later Mrs. Fraser called Mrs. Speight. The two mothers found that that they had a good friend in common, so the conversation took forever to reach the subject of a sleepover in the caravan. However, when they finally heard Mrs. Fraser saying “Yes, Murdo does it all the time in the summer,” they knew that the crucial moment had arrived.

  “There we go, boys. That’s fine,” said Mrs. Fraser as she came off the phone. “Now, Murdo, the usual rules apply and I’ll just explain them to Fergus so that he knows too. It’s lights out when I say so, and lights out does not mean torches under the blankets. The door is locked by you and that’s you in there for the night, okay?”

  “Does it get any easier than that?” said Murdo back in the caravan. Fergus had to agree that the planning for the evening’s expedition was going remarkably well, and things continued to go smoothly — at least, at first.

  Fergus went back home for tea and to collect a few things for his night away, including his bike. The boys then spent the first part of the evening in the caravan getting Murdo’s rucksack of equipment together. Jock dozed in his basket in the corner seemingly having had enough of the day’s events. Murdo showed Fergus how the seats in the caravan could be turned into beds, and then the boys spent some time reading comics to distract themselves for an hour or two.

  “Why have you got a computer in a hundred pieces?” Fergus asked, pointing to a pile of wires, memory cards and casing sticking out of a box in the corner behind Jock’s basket.

  Murdo looked unhappy. “There’s supposed to be a function on the DataBoy that lets you transfer information from its memory to your PC. I was setting it up and thought that I would make some modifications to the hard drive but I hit a snag.” Fergus thought that “snag” looked like a bit of an understatement for the random collection of parts.

  “Have you got a computer?” asked Murdo.

  “No … I just use the one in the library sometimes but you can only get an hour at a time and there’s always someone waiting to go on after you,” said Fergus.

  Eventually Mrs. Fraser popped her head round the door and suggested it was time for bed.

  “Aw, Mum!” said Murdo putting on a bit of an act, since it would have seemed very odd if both boys revealed that they were delighted to have reached that stage of the evening.

  Switching off the lights as instructed, they then had the longest wait of the evening yet as the Frasers took the next hour to go to bed. Murdo twitched the curtain every few minutes to check if lights were still on in the house. Finally, after what seemed like an age, the last of the lights went off and after a few more minutes Murdo gauged that it was safe to go.

  “Let’s synchronize watches,” he said putting on the rucksack in the dark and pressing the light on his DataBoy. “I make it 23.14.”

  With these final preparations complete, the boys headed for the door. Jock sprang to his feet in anticipation. “No, Jock, you stay here,” said Murdo in a firm whisper. Jock growled and barked twice. “No, Jock, not now,” said Murdo looking despairingly at Fergus. “We might have to take him or he’ll just start barking and Mum will know that something’s up.” Fergus nodded his agreement.

  So Jock joined the boys as they slipped out of the Incident Room, pushed their bikes to the pavement and sped off. The Edinburgh summer night was clear and, with a full moon, it seemed more dark blue than black. In only a few minutes they were at the bottom of Comely Bank Avenue, had set their bikes up as planned and were crouched down as if involved in some essential bike maintenance. The road was quiet and with the plan starting so well, both boys were more excited than nervous. Even Jock seemed to have captured the mood, sniffing the air and pricking his ears up to be alert for any new sound.

  In no time they were using the crowbar to begin lifting the manhole cover. Unfortunately, a few minutes later, they were still at the same stage. It was not budging an inch, and the afternoon spent with a pile of books and a casserole lid began to seem like a long and irrelevant time ago.

  “Push harder,” said Murdo. Fergus had by now turned brighter than the brightest red as he put every effort into leaning on the crowbar to try and prise the cover upwards.

  “Can’t … do … an-n-ny … more,” he squeezed out through gritted teeth. Murdo was hopping around behind him in agitation, giving what he obviously thought were helpful hints. Jock hopped around behind Murdo making what he obviously thought were encouraging panting noises.

  “It’ssssss.s..s … s-no good,” said Fergus collapsing on to the pavement beside the manhole cover. Jock sniffed at the crowbar suspiciously and looked expectantly at Fergus, as did Murdo. Murdo might have been big, but he didn’t consider himself to be strong and he looked very doubtful at the challenge offered by the manhole cover and the crowbar.

  Fergus steeled himself for one last attempt and this time felt the manhole cover start to shift. “I think … I think …” he puffed between his teeth.

  Jock panted ever more quickly and as Fergus s
aid “I think …” for the third time, the cover lifted a fraction. He yanked the crowbar to one side, just far enough to bring the cover down leaving a small opening.

  Murdo set to work speedily, delving into his rucksack and pulling out the torch, but he soon found that the gap wasn’t wide enough and the torch’s beam wasn’t strong enough, to enable them to see anything other than the first few feet of stone under the road surface. He switched to the next option of the walkman, microphone and string. Pressing the record button he fed the equipment through the gap they had created and lowered it down. “We’ll let it run for a few minutes. If there’s anything going on, we should be able to pick it up on this,” he said tying the string round a rucksack strap and leaving the walkman dangling a few feet underground.

  Feeling pleased that they would get something out of the evening’s work after all, the boys were able to rest for a minute or two as the tiny tape recorder did its job. There were only a couple of cars passing by, and the drivers seemed oblivious to the boys on the pavement, huddled around upturned bikes. No one else seemed to be out and so the movement that Murdo saw out of the corner of his eye caught his attention immediately.

  “Look over there,” he whispered. “Is that a dog?”

  Fergus looked over to the shadowy figure of an animal.

  “It’s a fox,” said Fergus, “It comes round here quite a bit at night scavenging food from the rubbish.”

  Distracted from their task, the boys watched the fox sniffing around at a bin bag that had been left on the pavement. Through the silence of the night they could hear the rattle of a can falling to the ground. Suddenly the silence was completely broken by furious barking. Jock, who had been patiently waiting as Fergus and Murdo had struggled with the manhole cover, had decided that the fox presented some form of danger to them all, and had taken matters into his own paws. By the time the boys realized what was happening, he was whizzing across the road on a collision course with the fox. Sensing that its evening meal was about to be interrupted the fox turned with a curious high-pitched bark, arched its back and stood snarling at Jock who was now speeding towards it like a canine missile. The fearless Jock stopped a few metres short of the fox, utterly convinced that he was saving the boys from some sort of terrible fate.

  “Jock, be quiet,” said Murdo sharply, but far too late considering that the night-time peace had been disrupted for almost half a minute already. Murdo grabbed his bike and crossed the road to try and break up the stand-off between Jock and the fox.

  Sensing trouble as the noise showed no signs of stopping, Fergus quickly started gathering together the equipment when suddenly he was bathed in light. He whirled around to find an old lady peering through a brightly-lit window, which overlooked the pavement. He could see her scowling face clearly, although it seemed that she was having difficulty making out what was happening.

  Jock’s frenzied barking was making it clear that something out of the ordinary was taking place on Comely Bank Avenue. Breaking out into a panicky sweat, Fergus thought fleetingly that Murdo might let him off with this haphazard way of packing the rucksack given the pressure of being caught.

  Murdo was still urging Jock to be quiet, but the little dog was barking as if his life and the lives of the boys depended on it. The fox was beginning to move away, but the fact that he was taking his time about it was making Jock even angrier and Murdo could do nothing to quieten his normally obedient dog.

  Fergus strained to shove the manhole cover back into place. He knew that the only thing to do now was to get away from the scene as quickly as possible without a trace and without a noise.

  “CLANG!” went the manhole cover as it dropped back into place. Fergus winced. He had added a fitting finale to the din of the last few minutes and had also closed the cover on the microphone lead chopping it in half, leaving him with the walkman and a cut wire and the rest lost below ground.

  “What is going on? I’m going to call the police!” said a shrill voice behind him.

  Fergus froze, sensing that the trouble was only just beginning. Looking around he saw that the old lady was now at her front door looking scared and angry at the same time.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” she said cautiously, beginning to come down her front path. Fergus looked around for support from Murdo and Jock but they were almost out of sight on the other side of the street. Jock’s barking was finally subsiding as the fox had merged back into the shadows, and so Fergus was left looking like the source of the chaos.

  “We …” said Fergus feebly, beginning to explain and realizing that there wasn’t a “we.” There was only him.

  “What were you doing at that manhole cover?” said the woman, before Fergus could go any further. “That’s breaking and entering.”

  Fergus looked down, almost surprised to find a crowbar and a bulging rucksack at his feet.

  “We were just trying to see if there was anything unusual underneath it,” he said, choosing his words carefully, but realizing that this vague answer was unsatisfactory.

  “We? Who is we?” said the old lady glaring at him. “The only unusual thing is that you appear to be trying to get inside a manhole cover outside my flat. Now that is unusual, would you not agree?”

  There was a horrible silence as Fergus shuffled his feet and struggled to know what to say. Before he could stop himself he suddenly blurted out, “I stood on this cover and my watch went backwards and I want to know why!” As soon as he said it he knew it sounded ridiculous.

  The woman’s loud, angry voice changed to a scarier, steelier, quieter one. “I might be old but I’m not stupid,” she said. “I recognize you, young man. I know where you live and I shall speak to your mother about this. Now kindly pick up all of your things and leave me in peace.”

  She stood with her arms folded and an expression that said that she had heard and said enough.

  “I’m sorry to have bothered you,” Fergus mumbled. Struggling to close the rucksack, he picked up his bike and began to head back up Comely Bank Avenue, feeling more embarrassed than he had ever done in his life.

  As he trudged up the hill, Murdo emerged from the shadows looking slightly sheepish, knowing that Fergus had taken the brunt of the old woman’s anger. Jock meanwhile trotted beside Murdo panting happily and looking up at the boys as if wanting to be congratulated on winning a famous victory.

  “What did she say?” asked Murdo tentatively, but Fergus couldn’t speak. Right now he didn’t really care if his watch went forwards or backwards. He just wanted to go to bed, fall asleep and wake up thinking that this had all been a bad dream.

  4. The Morning After the Night Before

  What should have been a fun sleepover at the caravan became a long and sleepless night for Fergus. It wasn’t the fact that he was in the unfamiliar surroundings of the caravan, it was the old lady’s words ringing in his head that kept him awake. “I know where you live and I shall speak to your mother about this.” He lay looking out at the full moon with his mind in turmoil. How much trouble could he get into, in one go? He decided that he would probably set a new record — being out at night without permission, trying to break into a manhole cover, disturbing the neighbours — he could hear it all now. He scrunched his eyes closed and squirmed in bed wishing he could turn the clock back. It seemed a bit ironic that the whole problem had arisen because his watch had gone backwards. Fergus was convinced without a shadow of a doubt that he would be grounded for months, and almost certainly banned from seeing Murdo again.

  As if mirroring Fergus’s mood, the next day was wet and gloomy. After breakfast in the Fraser’s kitchen, the boys headed back to Comely Bank Avenue. Jock padded damply alongside.

  “Did you have fun?” asked Mrs. Speight as the boys hung up their dripping jackets.

  “Yeah it was great,” said Fergus sounding as upbeat as he could. “We saw a fox,” he added trying to inject some colour into the story. Jock licked his lips as if the word “fox” had reminded him of his
dramatic encounter.

  The boys made their excuses and spent the morning in Fergus’s room looking through old annuals that Fergus had collected. Neither of them had the appetite to talk about cats and watches or anything remotely suggesting a mystery that needed to be solved. As the morning dragged on Murdo stood up, stretched and went to the window.

  “Still wet,” he said peering out through the rain-spattered pane at a car swishing by with its windscreen wipers flapping. Fergus joined him at the window, grimacing at the soggy summer scene.

  “Looks like you’ve got a visitor,” said Murdo nodding at a large flowery umbrella with a pair of legs sticking out from below. The figure stopped on the pavement before turning into number 81. Fergus peered more closely but couldn’t see enough to make out who it was. Then just before it reached the door, the umbrella was pulled to one side and given a brisk shake which sent off a shower of droplets.

  “Oh no,” said Fergus turning pale. “We really are in trouble.”

  Murdo looked more closely and saw the old lady from the previous night. The boys looked at each other and both swallowed hard.

  “Maybe she’s just … collecting for something?” Murdo said trying to be positive.

  “Like for her collection of small boys’ heads?” said Fergus, burying his head in his hands and groaning.

  Before they could say any more, the doorbell rang. Fergus groaned again. Murdo moved to the bedroom door and opened it a crack to try and make out what was happening. He shrank back as Mrs. Speight came along the hall towards the front door. Fergus joined him, straining to hear what was said as the front door opened, but all that they could make out was a muffled exchange of voices. It was only as Mrs. Speight headed back into the hall that they were able to hear properly.

  “Well, you’d better come in then,” was the first sentence that they both picked up clearly. At that, Fergus let out another groan. Murdo gave him a consoling pat on the shoulder.