Catscape (6 page)

Fergus turned back to find Jessie at the door with a drill in her hand and a pencil tucked behind her ear. Despite wearing
overalls Fergus noticed that she still had her pink cardigan on. He didn’t have to say anything as the expression on his face clearly asked, “What on earth are you doing?!”

“Just putting up a shelf,” she said by way of explanation.

“Well, I’m just letting you know that we’re tracking a neighbour’s cat to see if that gives us any new leads,” said Fergus.

“Good thinking. Keep me posted and give me a call if there’s anything I can help with,” Jessie said cheerily.

“Quick, Fergus,” shouted Murdo in the distance. “She’s getting away!”

The Siamese had suddenly picked up speed and seconds later she shot across the road, dodging a moped and two cars, and completely ignoring the red man on the pedestrian crossing. The boys came to an abrupt halt at the edge of the pavement, weighing up the traffic rather more carefully than Sasha had done, and deciding that the cat was more of a risk-taker than they were. They craned their necks around the passing cars to try to see her. She seemed to have slowed to a saunter again on the far side of road as if she were toying with the boys.

“I’ve heard of playing cat and mouse but this is ridiculous,” said Fergus, as they finally got a green man to cross the road and were able to continue their pursuit of the mischievous cat who was now heading for the nearby park.

“It should be nice and easy to keep a track of her here,” said Murdo confidently, “Lots of open spaces.” As if to deliberately prove him wrong, Sasha leapt up on a high wall running along one side of the park, walked along a section of it, looked back at the boys and then jumped down the other side disappearing completely from view. Fergus closed his eyes slowly and shook his head in disbelief. The day looked like being over before it had even begun.

“This will
not
stop us!” said Murdo with a sudden shout of determination. “Quick, Fergus, let me get up on your shoulders! We need to see where she’s gone.”

“Er … no disrespect, but wouldn’t it be easier the other way around?” asked Fergus, weighing up the options and deciding that he did not want to be underneath Murdo.

Murdo mumbled a bit and squatted down saying, “Come on then! Hurry up! There’s no time to waste, she could be getting away!”

Fergus climbed gingerly on to Murdo’s shoulders and began to straighten up, feeling his way up the wall as Murdo puffed and panted and tried to stand up. Fergus eventually managed to get his hands onto the top, although this was more to do with how light he was rather than how strong Murdo was. It was a very high wall and in order to see over it, Fergus had to haul himself up the last few inches, finishing with his elbows on top of the wall and his feet dangling just above Murdo’s shoulders. He peered into a well-kept garden.

“Oi, what are you doing?” said a man emerging from a greenhouse. “Right, this is the last time. Marjory, call the police!”

“Wh … What?!” said Fergus.

“Every week, kids like you come climbing over our walls and chucking stones at my greenhouse. The police told us just to call them, so that’s exactly what I’m going to do … Marjory!” He was bawling in the direction of the house and Fergus could see movement behind one of the windows.

“But I was just, just …” started Fergus.

“There is
no
reason for doing whatever you are doing,” said the man striding towards Fergus and a nearby gate in the wall.

“Murdo, get me down from here,” Fergus shouted, trying to connect his dangling feet with Murdo’s shoulders. He was having trouble making contact and bent his head down so that he could see what he was doing. One glance explained everything. Not only were Murdo’s shoulders not there — none of Murdo was. Fergus felt anger and embarrassment flash across his face knowing that he had been stranded.

“Right you. Get down from there!” The man’s voice was behind him now. He hadn’t wasted any time in reaching Fergus, who guessed that “Marjory” was already on the phone to the nearby police station.

“Come on, get down!” said the man.

“Er, I can’t,” said Fergus waggling his legs to show that they were a long way off the ground. The man grabbed his legs roughly and “helped” him down from the wall.

“How did you get up there?” snapped the man.

“My friend …” Fergus’s sentence tailed off.

“Scarpered has he?” said the man, “Well at least I’ve got one of you. Right … name.” The man had whipped out a notebook from his back pocket, and Fergus couldn’t stop himself thinking that this could be a glimpse of what Murdo would be like in forty years time — notebook and pen at the ready.

“Fergus Speight,” said Fergus mournfully.

“So, what do you think you were doing trying to get into my garden?” demanded the man.

“Well, I wasn’t really, I was just trying to see where a cat had gone,” replied Fergus.

“Oh, I see,” said the man his voice loaded with sarcasm. “You were just taking it for a walk were you?”

“Something like that,” said Fergus weakly.

For the next few minutes Fergus was faced with a barrage of questions about where he lived, who he lived with and just what exactly he had been up to on top of the garden wall. Throughout the interrogation the man licked the tip of his pencil before officiously writing each answer in his notebook. Fergus was just beginning to get used to the idea that he had been caught in the act, when he glimpsed a police car pulling up and a policewoman and a policeman getting out. He felt his legs go wobbly.

“Ah, good,” said the man snapping shut his notebook.

“Officer, my name is Marshall and it was my wife that called
the station. I have apprehended the culprit,” he bellowed at the approaching police.

“Hallo there,” said the policewoman as she reached them. “What have you been up to then?” she said directly to Fergus.

“I was trying to find a cat. It had jumped up on the wall and then disappeared.”

“A likely story! Officer, I ask you!” said Mr. Marshall, addressing the policeman and ignoring the policewoman.

“Yes sir, if you’ll just let me talk to the boy for a minute,” said the policewoman. “Right then … my name is Gill Hall. I’m the Community Police Officer. What’s your name?”

PC Gill Hall patiently asked Fergus where he lived, what he had been doing and how exactly he had got up on to the wall. When she asked “Where’s your friend now?” Fergus was tempted to shout, “I don’t know and he’s not really my friend any more!”

Fergus found that he was having difficulty explaining why he was following a cat. He thought that it might test the officer’s patience to start talking about the mysterious disappearance of forty-four cats. Suddenly there was a shout behind him. “Fergus, there you are. Have you had any luck? Have you found him?”

It was Jessie looking rather flushed from running in overalls and a cardigan. Beside her was a red-faced Murdo, equally unused to running. “I brought the cavalry!” he said.

“Officer, if there’s a problem here it’s my fault,” said Jessie. “I asked the boys to look for my cat, Jasper, and they were enthusiastically doing exactly what I asked them. Please accept my apologies.”

“What kind of cat was it?” said Mr. Marshall suspiciously.

“A Siamese,” said Murdo as quickly as he could, knowing that Jessie might start to describe Jasper.

“I didn’t ask you!” snapped Mr. Marshall.

“I appreciate that you are upset,” said Jessie. “However, there
is no need to be so impolite.”

“I think we have a bit of a misunderstanding here,” said Gill Hall. “Boys, I would recommend that if you are following a cat and it goes into someone’s garden that you ring their bell to ask permission to go any further. No more climbing on walls. This is private property after all.”

“You mean that’s it!” said Mr. Marshall, his face turning from bright red to a deep maroon. “Aren’t you going to charge him or, or take him away?”

“Mr. Marshall, I appreciate your concern. However on this occasion it’s just some over-enthusiasm and the boys were trying to do a genuine good deed.”

Mr. Marshall made a rather peculiar strangled noise and began to go purple. Fergus was sure he would have preferred to see him and Murdo behind bars for their behaviour and the way he was looking at Jessie suggested that he would be happy to see her join them. Gill Hall brought the incident to a close in a diplomatic way, leaving everyone with a note of her telephone number should they ever need it. She was both amused and impressed as Murdo immediately entered it into the memory function of his DataBoy.

“Thanks, Jessie, you were brilliant,” said Fergus a few minutes later as they headed back to Comely Bank Avenue.

“Not at all, boys. But you will have to be more careful,” said Jessie. “We need to work out a more trouble-free way of proceeding with the case.”

“YOO HOO! Fergus! YOO HOO! Jessica!” Fergus and Jessie both winced at the sudden piercing cry behind them. “Do you know Beryl Scrimgeour too?” asked Fergus. Jessie nodded looking slightly weary as she turned and mustered a smile at the approaching vision in blue.

“Go now,” hissed Fergus to Murdo. “Save yourself before it’s too late! I’ll call you!” Murdo looked slightly confused but didn’t stay around for an explanation and he began to jog away
in as athletic a manner as his bulky frame allowed.

“HALLO FERGUS, JESSICA, how are you both? Ah Jessica, I see you have been busy as usual,” she said acknowledging Jessie’s overalls. “I must say that the job you did hanging my mirror has been absolutely first rate. Jessica, you must come round soon so that I can thank you properly. We could spend the afternoon catching up. It’s been a while since we had a good chat.”

Fergus noted that Jessie seemed to gather herself together before giving her biggest smile. “That would be lovely, Beryl. I will call you soon. Now I am going to be very rude because I know that Fergus’s mother is expecting him home and I don’t want her to get concerned.” Fergus nodded seriously beside her. “Meanwhile I have to change because I’m due elsewhere in twenty minutes, so do forgive us both for rushing off.”

Much to Fergus’s amazement Mrs. Scrimgeour miraculously began to back off. “Oh absolutely, of course, but do pop in soon, Jessica — I really must repay you in some way. FERGUS, DO SEND MY GREETINGS TO YOUR MOTHER!” she bawled after them as Jessie and Fergus walked away with a final wave at the disappearing figure in blue.

“It’s rather unkind of me but I have thought about nailing her lips together,” said Jessie when they were just out of earshot. Fergus smiled, still marvelling at Jessie’s skills in completing the shortest conversation that he had ever been involved in with Beryl Scrimgeour.

Although it was only mid-morning Fergus had just about had enough of their investigations for the day. Sasha was long gone and with her any possibility of carrying on their day’s tracking. The much-planned expedition had achieved absolutely nothing.

“How did you get on?” asked Mrs. Speight as Fergus arrived back at number 81.

“She lost us pretty quickly. I think she’s done that sort of thing before,” said Fergus.

“Well cats are quite independent, aren’t they? They’re pretty definite about what they like and don’t like.”

“Mmm, I suppose so,” said Fergus wondering at the same time if his mother’s observation might have some link with the disappearance of forty-four cats.

Early the next morning Fergus’s mum found that Sasha was back next door as usual, having used the catflap to get back into the flat. “She said that she was being followed by a couple of boys yesterday but managed to shake them off,” said Mrs. Speight. “Ha ha, very funny,” said Fergus quietly pleased that Sasha was safe and sound.

When the phone went just after breakfast time and Fergus’s mum spent the first few minutes in cheerful conversation, Fergus realized that it was Jessie she was speaking to. When she finally passed it to him, Jessie’s instructions were quite clear. “I’d like you and Murdo to come down this morning. I’ve got my hands on something that I think you might find interesting.”

Jessie had left an air of mystery about what exactly she had “got her hands on,” so as the boys headed down the hill in the mid-morning sun with Jock padding alongside, they speculated on what it might be. Murdo suggested that she might have bought a new piece of software for her computer before they had even had a chance to get the hang of the old stuff. Fergus speculated that she might want to show them a new karate move or that, knowing Jessie, there was even an outside chance that she had dug a tunnel from the middle of her living room into the manhole outside. Whatever it was, the boys agreed that with Jessie anything was possible.

Minutes later they were being led along the hall in Jessie’s flat. “Sit down boys,” she said pointing to the chairs at the kitchen table in a no-nonsense manner. The table was bare except for a long cardboard tube. The boys now knew Jessie well enough to tell that she meant business this morning. She hadn’t even put
the kettle on, let alone given them a sniff of her home baking. As they dutifully took their seats, Jessie began to take two long rolls of paper out of the cardboard tube. “These are most revealing, most revealing,” said Jessie as she did so. She unrolled the large pieces of paper on the table in front of them and pinned down the corners with jars of jam, honey and pickle from the worktop behind her. “There!” she said grandly as she placed the last jar triumphantly and stood back. “What do you make of that?”

Murdo and Fergus leaned in closer and looked at the large plan in front of them. They then quickly glanced at each other in ways that said, “What is it?” and “I don’t know, you tell me!”

Even Jock looked quizzically from Murdo to Fergus and whined.

Fergus looked up at Jessie with what he hoped was an encouraging smile and then looked at the plan, sensing that Jessie was waiting for them both to agree that the paper covered in lines and symbols was in fact “most revealing.”

“I’m sorry, Jessie,” said Murdo finally, “But what are we looking at?”

Jessie looked a bit taken aback, looked at the plans and looked at the boys.

“It’s where we want to see! No more lifting manhole covers in the dark!” she said.

The boys looked at her blankly.

“Underground,” she said, “We can see underground!”

Jessie went on to explain what the plans showed. The first one with boxes and straight lines was an overhead view of all of the numbered properties on Raeburn Place and the streets nearby up to Comely Bank Avenue. The second plan, which Jessie concentrated on more, showed a side view of the buildings on Raeburn Place but more interestingly went on down the page to show what was below street level. As the boys absorbed the detail of arches and lines drawn on the plan, both realized that they were looking at passageways and cellars underneath the
shops and beyond, reaching almost as far as Jessie’s flat. As Jessie enthused about the plans, Fergus spotted the small title box in one corner of the plan that stated in neat script “Raeburn Place Vaults 1927” and nudged Murdo to show him.

“Where did you get these, Jessie?” asked Murdo.

“My husband, Stan, used to work at the Council. One of his colleagues is still there, and has kept in touch with me since Stan died. He’s in the Planning Department now and I asked him how you would go about finding out what a particular manhole was covering. He just asked me which manhole cover and came up with this.”

“So which shops are above each of these cellars then? And which are closest to our manhole cover?” asked Fergus as he continued to stare at the plans.

Jessie pulled up a chair. “I walk past them everyday but I couldn’t be certain which ones are exactly where, especially since some of them come and go in such a short space of time. I was thinking that you two could nip out and make a list of the current shops at this end of Raeburn Place and then we can add them into the plan.” Jessie reached for two notebooks and pens from beside her phone. “What do you think?”

Fergus and Murdo readily agreed and decided to split the task by each taking one side of the street. When Jessie announced that she could bake rock buns in the half an hour that it would take the boys to get their lists, Murdo disappeared in a flash, Jock scampering at his heels and for once Fergus almost managed to keep up with him.

“The Copper Kettle Café, Crockett’s Watches and Clocks, Stein’s the Fishmonger, Geraldine’s Gift Shop, Curlz Hairdressers,” read Fergus. “Wright’s Travel Agent, Double-Quick Dry Cleaners, Pete’s Pizzas,” read Murdo as Jessie wrote the names on to the boxes that depicted the shops.

In ten minutes the Raeburn Place shops were all named and the plan now showed that the shop, whose cellar seemed to be underneath the manhole cover, was called Capital Computing.

“That’s where I bought my computer. It’s quite a new place,” said Jessie. “They were a very nice bunch of lads, I must say.”

“So why would standing on a manhole cover above the cellar of a computer shop make your watch go backwards?” asked Fergus bracing himself as he noticed Murdo’s eyes widening.

“Well …” began Murdo, “maybe they have some
massive
computer down there giving off some
huge
electrical charge that gives off
billions
of positive and negative electrons and stuff like that is buzzing around and sucking time into some spiralling vortex, which is spinning underground but creates this subterranean force that transmits through the ground to affect any clock or watch within a two mile radius and …”

“Have you quite finished, Murdo?” said Jessie with a smile, trying to interrupt him in the nicest way possible but leaving him looking slightly put out.

“Murdo, you have a tremendous and vivid imagination,” she said pleasantly. Murdo looked slightly “put back in again” and gave a little smile.

“I need a new printer cartridge, so my suggestion is that we all go round there, right now and ask them about their cellars,” continued Jessie.

A while later, after Murdo had insisted on “being tidy” and finishing the last of the rock buns, the unlikely trio trooped around the corner to Capital Computing leaving Jock sitting
patiently outside the shop. Fergus was really enjoying himself. He would never have felt brave enough to take direct action like this, but he enjoyed being alongside Jessie who seemed to be an expert at taking the bull by the horns.

A young man with fair hair was stacking shelves as they went in. “Hallo, Mrs. Jenkins,” he said brightly as they entered. “How’s life in technoland?”

“Pretty good, Warren, thanks,” said Jessie. “Those extra megs of memory you gave me seem to have made all the difference to the speed. Are there any other upgrades I should think about?”

Fergus and Murdo looked at each other with expressions that said, “What
is
she like?” Warren launched into a complex answer to Jessie’s question, which left the boys’ heads spinning with new vocabulary as they waited to see how Jessie would bring the conversation round to their real reason for being in the shop. Finally Warren drew his gobbledygook to a close by cheerily asking, “Anyway what can we do for you today, Mrs. J?”

“I need a new printer cartridge,” she replied.

“No problem,” said Warren turning to the shelf behind him and scanning the small boxes before picking one out. “Is this all you’re after today?” he said waving the box and heading for the till.

“That’s all, thank you, Warren, although we do have one slightly unusual query,” said Jessie as she reached for her purse. “The boys and I are doing some local history research and we’ve been finding out about the construction of the shops on Raeburn Place and the cellars underneath them. We reckon that your cellars stretch up towards where I live, don’t they?”

“You could be right, but I’m not really sure,” said Warren as he began keying in the price for Jessie’s new cartridge. “These cellars, or the vaults as they’re called, were quite the thing when they were built, but the ones underneath here don’t belong to this shop any more, they’re all sealed off. One of the previous owners sold our vaults to another shop in the street fifty or sixty
years ago, I think. We’ve only got the storerooms on ground level and no access to the vaults below the street any more.”

Jessie glanced at the boys, “Really, how interesting. Do you know who bought them?”

“Couldn’t tell you, Mrs. J,” said Warren, “but I think it was big local news at the time for some reason. It’s certainly one of the shops in this stretch that owns them, but when we bought this place last year the deeds were quite clear that the ownership of the vaults had been transferred way back. They’ve not been part of this shop for years.”

Back at Jessie’s, Murdo summed up their progress. “So we know that there are some vaults below the manhole cover but we don’t know who owns them. This is a bit of a dead end. We’re not really any further forward to knowing what’s down there that would make our watches go backwards.”

Over by the window Jessie had gone very quiet. “It’s very frustrating,” she said, “Stan would have known all about those vaults. He lived round here all his life and knew all the local stories. We’d be so much further on if he was here. I do feel at a loss at times.”

“Can’t we use your computer to try and find out a bit more, Jessie?” asked Fergus tentatively.

Jessie seemed to snap back to her usual self once again. “Fergus, you are absolutely right,” she said. “There’s no point in sitting around and getting all maudlin.”

So, with Jock settled in a corner of the room chewing on an old toy of Jasper’s and with the boys sitting close by at either shoulder, Jessie switched on her computer and quickly went on to the internet. With her fingers in a flurry, she typed the words “Edinburgh Raeburn Place vaults local history” into the search box, and within seconds was scanning a list of results. The most promising one was a site describing itself as “Edinburgh’s Local
History Archive.” Within that site there was an option to click on different areas of the city. Choosing “Comely Bank” led Jessie to say “Most revealing, most revealing,” for the second time that day. This time the boys could see why. There was silence as all three read what had appeared on the screen.

The website that Jessie had accessed provided old newspaper articles, and the one that had come up first had the headline, “Plans Agreed for Shops on Pond.” Dated 1895, the article noted that, “As part of the extension of the Comely Bank residential community this bold engineering project will involve draining the pond and building up the resulting hole to street level through the creation of a set of vaulted cellars. The final stage of construction will involve the building of a new street of shops above the vaults which will serve the growing community of Comely Bank. It will be named Raeburn Place, after the famous artist, Sir Henry Raeburn.”

“Well, who would have thought that I live on top of an old pond?” said Jessie.

“Just think,” said Murdo, “If they hadn’t built all this we would have had a great place to play!”

“Yes, but you wouldn’t have had any rock buns,” noted Jessie.

“Hmm, fair point,” said Murdo looking suddenly serious again.

Jessie clicked on another page, which read, “Council Leader Opens New Street.” The article was dated 1898 and had the sub-heading, “Vaults Hailed an Engineering Success.” There was a photo of a rather serious-looking group of bearded men in long coats beside a row of shops. The sign for Raeburn Place could just be seen above the line of their top hats. Fergus pointed out another familiar name to the others. One of the shops just visible in the corner of the picture was Crockett’s Watches and Clocks.

The article described the opening of the new shopping street and the “engineering success” of the headline was the creation of the underground vaults supporting the street and the shops
above. Alongside the article and the photo there was even a diagram similar to one of Jessie’s plans, showing a side-on view of the street with its line of shops and then underneath the road, three tiers of archways, one on top of the other.

“It’s just amazing that we are on top of all that,” said Fergus.

“Does it say who owns those vaults?” asked Murdo leaning in so close to the screen that Fergus and Jessie were squeezed out.

“Well, according to the article,” read Jessie, “it looks like the shops each owned the vaults below their unit. I suppose whether they used it or not depended on their business and their need for storage space.”

“So why would there be manhole covers leading down to the vaults?” asked Fergus.

“There’s your explanation,” said Jessie, pointing to another paragraph in the article. Murdo read aloud, “Designers have responded to public concern that the draining of the pond would not be fully successful. The potential for the vaults filling with water and being a safety risk for anyone working below ground level has led to the creation of a series of quick access points to street level.”

“Now,” said Jessie, “what we need to find is something about the ownership of the vaults. Let’s see what else we have here.”