Bitter End Part 38

'Yes, well we don't take in lost animals, miss. You'd have to take it to the council offices. They have a system for dealing with them there.'

This was news to Fizz and it didn't fit in at all well with her plans. In fact, it looked like she'd made a complete pig's a.r.s.e of things. 'But the council offices aren't open on a Sat.u.r.day, are they?' she complained, hanging on in the belief that if you kept on talking you'd say the right thing sooner or later or, alternatively, you'd at least give the guy time to change his mind. 'See ... I remember when our cat wandered away. I was only five and it really upset me. I cried myself to sleep every night till it came back. I'd really love to keep ... er ... Sooty, but I'd just hate it if I was upsetting another kid like that.'

'Yes, well you see, miss,' the sergeant said, with a now-I've-seen-everything look directed at his buddy who'd been reading a bunch of forms behind him, 'we don't have any place to keep a cat in the station here. Why don't you wait till Monday and--'

'Er . . . hang on a minute.' The guy behind him came forward to the counter and gave his partner a lingering sort of glance that conveyed nothing to Fizz but caused the sergeant to narrow his eyes a trifle. 'Let's have a look.' 233. He brought his eye close to the openweave panel on top of the basket and examined the soporific Pooky. 'Uh-huh.

Would you mind holding on a minute, miss?'

Both he and his buddy walked to the back of the office and, after a brief exchange of mutters, the sergeant made a phone call. It took him about five minutes, which Fizz pa.s.sed in fingering an unfamiliar object in her coat pocket, and then he came back to the counter and picked up the basket. 'That's all right, miss. We can take care of this for you. Just leave your phone number and if we can't find the owner we'll see the cat is returned to you.'

Fizz was flushed with success. It looked as if she had managed to s.n.a.t.c.h a bull's-eye from the jaws of a pig's a.r.s.e. She wasn't up for identifying herself too precisely but she gave a false name and the phone number of her next door neighbour, Mrs Auld, claiming it was her work number in case they recognised the code.

Outside, she found Buchanan awaiting her reappearance with a set face.

That took a long time,' he said tensely. 'I thought you'd be just in and out again.'

'Kemo Sabe, Rome was not built in a day.'

Buchanan studied her expression. 'You look extraordinarily pleased with yourself. I take it this means you have reason to believe--'

'G.o.d! You sound like you're dictating your words to a stonemason sometimes, you know that, Buchanan? Yes! I am pleased with myself. I reckon they'd been told to keep an eye out for a black cat. What am I -a genius or what?

I'm telling you, rosebud, this is going to be our lucky, lucky day. We simply cannot lose. There is a phalanx of angels at our shoulder. Our strength is as the strength of ten because our hearts are pure.'

'G.o.d,' Buchanan said widening his hot blue eyes in awe.

Ts it really going to work?'

'Can't fail,' Fizz a.s.sured him, awarding herself another Yorkie bar. All we have to do is wait.' 234. They pulled across the road and parked close to the start of a side street from where they could observe both the main entrance and the side door of the police station and there they waited and watched. Three hours, four Yorkie bars and two cans of Sprite later they were still waiting and watching. n.o.body with a cat basket went either in or out.

It wasn't too tedious because they took turns to walk up and down the street, a few paces one way and a few paces the other. Fizz did a bit of window-shopping, phoned Mrs Auld to let her know to expect a phone call from the Hawick police, and visited the public loo. Buchanan jogged down their side street and back again, replenished their food supply, and bought a newspaper.

'She won't come herself for the cat,' Buchanan said, on his return from his third period of R&R. 'She'll send the chap that Giles spotted at Chirnside, or somebody else.

And anyway, whoever comes for the cat, if they know it by sight they'll take one look at Pooky and realise he's not Jet.

They could have been and gone hours ago.'

That's true,' Fizz admitted, having worked that out way back when the plan had first occurred to her. But she'd done a lot of thinking since then. 'Poppy won't come, I'm with you on that, but I reckon n.o.body but the owner could be sure that Pooky isn't Jet, not after Jet had presumably put in a week or two living rough and probably starving most of the time. They'd have to take him for Poppy to identify before they could be sure. I reckon the only thing we have to worry about is that Jet may have had some identifying mark, like a torn ear or something obvious like that. Otherwise, we're in with a shout. And I still feel lucky.'

'Good for you,' Buchanan said, clicking back his seat a couple of notches. 'Keep it up, then, and give me a nudge if anything happens. I'm going to grab a little shut-eye in case this takes all night.'

Fizz, who had been about to commandeer that privilege for herself, could only resolve not to underestimate him in 235. future and console herself with the last Yorkie bar. It was deadly boring just sitting there without even Buchanan to talk to. She couldn't go for a walk to ease the monotony, she was fed up listening to the radio, and by the time things started to move she was beginning to feel herself in imminent danger of getting deep-vein thrombosis.

The first thing she noticed was a black car that pulled into the restricted parking slots just outside the side door of the station. The driver was tall and slim, about thirty-five, and knew where he was going. Fizz nudged Buchanan.

'What?'

'See that black car?'

'Where?'

'At the side door. Is it a Ford?'

'Why?'

Fizz scowled at him. If you say "When?" next, Buchanan, I'll sock you in the mouth. The word we got at the hospital, Giles and I, was that Poppy had been picked up there by a guy in a black Ford Ka. They said he was in his thirties, which isn't a bad description of the guy who just marched in at the side door like he owned the place.'

Buchanan yawned. 'Likely to be a policeman, then,' he said. 'Were you expecting a policeman to come and identify Poppy's cat?'

'No, I can't say I was.' Fizz was staring so unblinkingly at the side door that her eyes were starting to water. 'But it doesn't throw me. Anything's possible. Just as long as he's not shacking up with her twenty-four hours a day, otherwise it'll be the devil's own job to get near enough to her for a chat.'

It was about ten minutes before the guy reappeared and the sight of the cat basket he was carrying made Fizz want to dance a salsa. He slid it into the back, with less gentleness than Buchanan felt should go unremarked, and started to back out.

'Okay, genius, here we go,' Buchanan said and slotted the Saab, as to the manner born, into the stream of traffic 236. three cars behind what was now identifiable as a Ford Ka.

Fizz was on a real high. She was convinced she was on a run. She felt so empowered she could probably heal scrofula with her touch. They were on their way to Poppy's hideaway and Poppy had to be the person who knew what was what. Obviously. Otherwise, why was it so important to keep her hidden away? 237.

Chapter Twenty.

The rain had started again with a vengeance, and Buchanan

had great difficulty keeping the Ford in sight while, at the

same time, keeping at least two cars between it and himself. He hadn't driven through Hawick before and the driver of the Ford Ka was either just as unfamiliar with the traffic systems as he, or he was taking a circuitous route to his destination in the hope of throwing off any pursuit.

This uncertainty made Buchanan even more jittery than he already was and, in spite of Fizz's stream of helpful suggestions, he took every precaution he could against being spotted, even to the point of losing sight of his quarry for harrowing minutes at a time while traversing a parallel route.

He had ground his teeth to stubs -so Fizz a.s.sured him by the time they saw the Ford stop at a terrace house on the outskirts of Greenlaw. They had to drive straight past the end of the road but Buchanan swung a U-turn and zapped back again in time to see the cat basket and its lanky custodian moving up the path towards the door.

There was only about thirty or forty feet between the doorway and the hedge that Fizz, having leapt out on their first pa.s.s, was peering through, and as Buchanan joined her the caller lifted a fist and rapped on the window beside the door. Two soft raps, three sharp, and one soft.

'Did you see that?' Fizz said, with a giggle, when the door had closed behind the guy. 'A coded knock! You wouldn't believe it if you read it in a book, would you?' 239. Fizz wasn't given to giggling but Buchanan suspected she was, if not hysterical, a fraction over-excited. 'A sensible precaution, I'd call it,' he whispered. 'Did you see who opened the door to him?'

'No. But I thought I heard a woman's voice -kind of high-pitched. I imagine that's what Poppy would sound like if she thought she was getting her cat back.'

Buchanan hoped she was right. The whole escapade had progressed much further that he had ever antic.i.p.ated.

From the outset, he had rated their hopes of success somewhere between point one per cent and zero, but he had felt obliged, out of sheer culpability, to give Fizz all the help she needed, no matter what. And now, in spite of all the pitfalls they could have encountered, here they were on Poppy Ford's doorstep. Fizz had to be right: there were angels at their shoulders.

When the guy emerged from the doorway, some fifteen minutes later, he was still carrying the cat basket. Pooky was off on another adventure and Buchanan's heart bled to see him go.

They waited till the policeman's car was out of sight and then zapped round the corner and up Poppy's garden path.

Fizz, who was ahead by a couple of paces, tapped on the window: two soft, three sharp, one soft, and then ducked down below the level of the window.

'You didn't need to do that, surely?' Buchanan said, and had to bend down to catch her reply which was, in any case, inaudible behind the clatter of the downpour.

The curtain moved briefly, as he stood up, but in a manner so cursory that it would have been impossible for the person inside to say whether the figure outside in the half darkness and the pouring rain was really the previous caller or not. A moment later, Buchanan heard the sound of a chain being disengaged and locks being unfastened.

'Did you forget--' said the pale face that floated out of the gloom, and then she screamed.

'Don't be afraid!' Buchanan cried, lacerated by the 240. sound, but Fizz stepped around him and stuck a boot in the door the woman was frantically trying to slam shut.

Suddenly all three of them were in a shadowy hallway, with the door closed behind them and Fizz holding Poppy firmly by the wrists as she said, 'It's all right, Poppy. We're lawyers. We're here to help you.'