Shiftling Read online

  “We can ask Scotty when he comes out,” I suggested, not really wanting to think about dead cats any more than I had to.

  “Yeah, that’ll be my first question, how many of the old bastard’s cats are dead and how many of them are still alive,” Spider said with something approaching glee. He was one weird kid.

  “I think I know what he does with them,” a voice said.

  I looked around to see Spider’s younger brother, Mikey. He was only ten and tried to tag along with us all the time. We sent him away so many times I’d lost count, but he was one persistent kid. And poor old Spider got grief from his mother because of it, but not once did he try to convince us to let Mikey stay. I guess he didn’t want him around any more than the rest of us did.

  “Oh yeah? Come on then, Mikey, what does he do with them? Boil them in a big cauldron and make soup? No,” Spider said. “I’ve got it! He sells them to the Chinese takeaway, doesn’t he?”

  Mikey shook his head, then pointed across the road to the Batters.

  “What, he just dumps them out there?” I asked. I don’t know. For some reason I couldn’t believe a guy who loved his cats when they were alive would just leave them out to be eaten by birds or whatever when they were dead. It didn’t seem right. But I saw that Mikey was shaking his head.

  “No, there’s an old air shaft.”

  “Yeah, we know,” said Spider. “But it’s all padlocked up. No way in. We tried to open it once.” He shrugged.

  “Harrison’s got the key.” He held his hand apart to show it must have measured a foot or more. “I saw him open it up and drop a cat down.”

  “And when did you see him do that?” Spider asked, sounding every bit like his disapproving big brother.

  “I was taking Tinker out for a walk last week,” Mikey said.

  “You know you’re not supposed to take him over there,” said Spider and I knew he was right. I had heard their mother giving them a hard time for letting the little terrier run off over the Batters. The dog was every bit as inquisitive as the rest of his family. He’d get his nose into some hole or other, and over there they were more likely to be the dens of rats than they were rabbits, and Tinker’d come home covered in muck, or worse.

  Mikey shrugged. “Still saw him open the vent and drop the cat down there,” he said, defiantly.

  “Are you sure it was a cat?”

  Mikey sniffed. “’Course I am. After he’d gone, me and Tinker went to have a look. We couldn’t see anything, but Tinker was sniffing at the grass around the grate and going crazy. Harrison had put the cat down while he opened the vent and Tinker could still smell it.” He looked at Spider for support. “You know that sound he makes when he can small a cat’s been in the garden?”

  Spider nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Where would Harrison have gotten a key from?” asked Gazza.

  “Well, his house was the old mine manger’s place,” I said. “Maybe they left it behind.”

  Gazza shrugged. “He was born in there, wasn’t he?” That’s what we’d heard, but stories had a way of becoming more detailed the more creative they got. “Maybe his father was the manager?”

  “He’s lived there all his life?” Mikey asked, trying to wrap his head around the idea.

  “Guess so.”

  “Then how many cats do you think he has dropped down there?”

  I’m sure there’s some kind of mathematical formula for working something like that out, like the inverse proportional rule, or something, where you factor in how old Harrison is against how many cats he had, converting fatalities into something like compound interest. Of course that kinda fudged a lot of stuff, like whether Old Man H. had always run Catvarna, and just how many kitties actually found their heaven here?

  There were only two ways of finding out.

  We could ask Harrison himself, which, let’s face it, no one was going to do.

  Or…

  We could open the grate over the vent and take a look down there.

  Not that I thought we’d ever get as far as that.

  But once it was out there, all sorts of plans were being hatched, taking into account the practicalities like how many torches we’d need, when was the best time to do it, how long a piece of rope we’d need, and the big one, just how in hell we were going to open the grate without Old Man H.’s key.

  But before we had any concrete plans, we saw the door open and realized Scotty was coming out.

  “What’s the deal, Scotty?” Gazza asked before he was halfway down the drive. “Wax on, wax off?” He did his best Karate Kid impression. We all laughed at him. It was only then that I realized that where there should have been wheels there were none. The car was jacked up on bricks.

  “He said we could tidy up his front garden if we liked.”

  “Seriously?” I’m pretty sure every one of us had expected Harrison to tell Scotty where to get off. I certainly hadn’t expected him to say yes.

  The garden was a mess.

  Not only was the grass overgrown with weeds, the hedge needed trimming and there were broken bottles, newspaper, pieces of cardboard and lengths of wood littering it.

  “How much?” asked Gazza, ever practical.

  “Nothing,” Scotty said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

  * * *

  A couple of us worked on Harrison’s garden.

  We didn’t have gloves, which made picking through the broken glass and other rubbish interesting. It was backbreaking work. And the sun didn’t help. After an hour, I was dying of thirst but Old Man H. didn’t materialize with a nice refreshing glass of lemonade, or ice-cold water, or a nice refreshing anything else. He pulled the curtains tighter so we couldn’t accidentally see inside.

  It was hardly surprising that the rest of the gang bitched and moaned at the idea of doing all that work for nothing. What was surprising was that Gazza stormed off after demanding his share of the kitty.

  There was no argument, no dispute over the money or how much he was owed. Scotty just handed him an equal share of the cash and that was it. It wasn’t even a fight. He just held his hand out and waited while Scotty counted out the cash. Then he put on the headphones from his fake Walkman and walked away.

  Actually, it was kind of ceremonial.

  While everyone else was watching him as he marched away, cutting across the Batters, I was looking at Scotty. Normally he would get angry when there was any kind of falling out, but not this time. Come to think of it, it was as though some of the fight in him was missing. That or he had simply accepted what had happened as an inevitability.

  Once Gazza was out of sight, no one mentioned his name again that day.

  And, weirdly, I think we all got more satisfaction from the job we were doing for the old man, despite the lack of cash, than we had from any of the other jobs we’d done that week. Those other jobs would have all got done anyway, eventually. More often than not, I think people were just finding work for us to do. Not Old Man H. With his garden we were putting something right and we knew he would never have done it.

  But there was still the question of the cats.

  Someone mentioned it to Scotty—Nate or Ferret, I think—not long after we had started work on the garden, and Mikey had taken him across the Batters to show him. The rest of us had watched from a safe distance while they crouched down and examined the grate. Scotty tugged at it as we had all done at one time or another, but it was like trying to pull the sword from the stone. He wasn’t the rightful king. None of us were. No one was saying anything, but it was pretty obvious we were all thinking the same thing: How the hell are we going to get this thing open?

  We worked on, laughing and joking as we cleared up the rubbish, either filling black plastic bags with the stuff or carrying it over the road to toss it onto to the ever-growing morass of debris littering the Batters. I felt like Stig of the Dump as I toiled away with the sun slowly moving across the sky. Not before time, it began to sink in the west. The sounds of
metal on metal from the funfair and the shouts of obscenities as thumbs were caught by hammers and backs were strained under the heavy weights were intermingled with our own cries for very similar reasons. And for a few hours it was almost as though we were one with the people from the fair. Bonded in suffrage.

  By the time the sun was low in the sky, the sounds of machinery being assembled had been replaced by the loud bass of competing music as the rides whirred into life and the carnies began testing them.

  “I think we are done here,” said Scotty, taking a look at our handiwork. “I’ll go and let Harrison know we’ve finished. Who knows, maybe the old codger’ll come up with a tip after all.”

  “Yeah, it’s not like we don’t work for nothing every day of the week,” Spider grumbled halfheartedly. Ferret laughed at him, slapping Spider across the back. We all joined in, except Scotty. I remember that. Scotty remained strangely silent. Like he wasn’t part of the gang anymore.

  “Best if we meet up back here later, say seven o’clock?” We all knew it would still be light and that it would not be the best time to be at the fair, but we also knew our parents—most of them, anyway—would insist on us being home by nine, so at least seven gave us some time to spend our hard-earned cash.

  I watched as Scotty stepped through the doorway once more and caught a final glimpse of his eyes as he took a single glance over his shoulder, my way.

  He didn’t knock on the door. I remember that. He didn’t call out for Old Man Harrison either, he just stepped inside.

  At the time it didn’t feel particularly weird, just a little strange, something nagging away at me. Later, after everything that happened, it didn’t just seem weird, it seemed bloody weird.

  * * *

  It was a nagging feeling there was something wrong with the way Scotty went back into Old Man Harrison’s house that made me go back there. We had all headed off in ones and twos, each of us taking the shortest route home, whether that was across the Batters, skirting farmland or taking the path along the road.

  The fairground had fallen silent, the lull before the storm as the workers had all taken a break at the same time. The sight of Harrison’s garden as I approached surprised me. While we had been working on it I had not fully realized the significance of the improvements we were making. Once we had walked away, apart from the moment I looked into Scotty’s eyes, no one had looked back at our handiwork from a distance. The now-tidy garden had transformed the whole of the property, suddenly making it look more like a home than a semi-derelict house. As I drew closer though, I saw that Scotty was coming back out of the house. He did not see me at first and seemed intent on examining something in his hand. I guessed the hope Harrison might give us a tip had come true. The chances were if it had, Scotty was now examining a twenty-pence piece. Such riches…

  He looked up when I called his name and his fingers clasped suddenly around the object he held in his hand.

  “Nothin’,” he said, but as I reached him he held out his hand. The bravado that had previously been a constant part of his persona had melted away and his hand trembled slightly as his fingers relaxed and opened to reveal a key. Not a house key or one from a padlock, this one barely fit in his hand and looked heavy. I didn’t have to ask him—I knew somehow this was the key to the grille in the Batters.

  “And he just gave it to you?” I asked, but Scotty said nothing. He just slipped the key into his pocket and walked past me. At first I thought he was going to cross straight over to the Batters, but I was wrong. After only a few yards he stopped and turned back to me.

  “It can wait until tomorrow. If we are going to take a look down there, then we may as well leave it until daylight.”

  “We will need torches. We might even need a rope if we want to get down there. Are you sure the key will open it though?”

  “Only one way to find out, I suppose. What do you think?”

  There it was again, the turning to me for advice or at least affirmation that what he was thinking was right. This time at least it was just the two of us. I nodded and we headed off toward the Batters side-by-side in silence. The debris from Harrison’s garden had been tipped alongside countless other heaps of grass cuttings and hedge trimmings the council refused to collect. Farther in, the old prams and builders’ rubble created a more unsightly scar in the land.

  Scotty retrieved the key from his pocket and turned it over and over in his hand as if hoping to find something new on it. “I think there’s something down there,” he said.

  “Yeah, I know,” I said. “Dead cats.”

  He let out a single laugh, though it sounded nervous. “But why are there dead cats down there? Why did Harrison throw them down there? Were they already dead or still alive when he did it? I think he has been feeding something.”

  “You think he’s been throwing dead cats down there to feed some sort of pet?”

  Scotty shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

  “Yeah, but not tonight though, and not when there’s just the two of us. We check to make sure that the key opens the grille, and then we lock it again. We tell the others and we come back tomorrow.”

  “Of course. I don’t want to say anything to the others until we are sure this will open it.” He handed me the key. I was reluctant to take it from him. It felt like an almost symbolic handing over of more than just a lump of metal.

  The sun was sinking fast, but I knew it would linger low in the sky for quite a while yet. There was enough time or us to go over there, open up the grille and if there was any kind of ladder, one of us could check it out. But we both knew that would be stupid. “Just check the lock, right?” I asked, and he nodded, saying nothing more.

  And that’s all we did, more or less. It took a couple of minutes to find the grille, the change in light seeming to play tricks with our sense of direction, but eventually we found it. Although the key was badly rusted, it was clear the business end had been cleaned and had the faint sheen of oil. It slipped easily into the lock and turned with very little effort, a spring clicking the mechanism open with a sudden snap after a full turn.

  I started to lift it, just to make sure it would, but Scotty stopped me, pressing down on the grille.

  “Lock it,” he said, and I’m sure I heard a sound coming from below; a sudden scraping and scurrying that sent a shiver up my spine.

  “Rats?” I suggested, but Scotty didn’t reply at first.

  “Come on. Let’s get out of this place—it stinks of dead things.”

  I couldn’t smell anything out of the ordinary but the thought of dead cats being feasted on by rats only feet below me was enough to make me turn the key back and pull it from the lock. I needed no incentive to scramble back to my feet and follow my friend. I couldn’t stop myself from imagining them when I was a safe distance away from the entrance to their lair where tiny feet scurried in the dark and sharp teeth tore at whatever it could find. I had to look back because I knew. In my heart of hearts I knew one of us would end up going down there. And as I looked at Scotty’s retreating back, I felt the guilt of the thought that had come into my mind. I hoped it wasn’t going to be me.

  2

  Present Day

  “Perhaps we should take it from the top,” said the policeman who sat across the table from me. He had offered me the opportunity for a lawyer, but I had declined, and now we had been talking for almost two hours without a break, going over the same questions again and again. I knew he was looking for inconsistencies in my story, tiny changes that would hint I was being economical with the truth. Or maybe that I was misremembering something. I had nothing to hide though, even if I was starting to feel he had already found me guilty and was gearing up to lock me up and throw away the key. Who needed the truth?

  “If you really want me to, sure, but I really don’t think there is much to say that I haven’t said five times already.”

  “So tell me about the house.”

  “The house?”

  “The house you
r friend lived in. Had he lived there long?”

  I didn’t know, I was a kid, it had been a long time ago, and told him so. He didn’t seem all that interested in believing me. I had been away for years. When I had left, he was still living with his folks, and Old Man Harrison’s place had been empty and falling into decay for years. I’d been surprised that Scotty, of all people, had bought it. Especially after what we had been though. If it had been up to me, I would have had the place torn down to make sure what we’d done back then had worked, and stayed done.

  “So when did you move away?”

  I blew out a breath. “Hard to say, exactly. I went to uni in Manchester when I was eighteen and I kept coming home but after my course finished I got a job, the trips home became less frequent. But for argument’s sake, let’s say 1989.”

  “And did you keep in touch with Mr. Nichols at all?”

  Nichols? It caught me out for a moment. I had almost forgotten Scotty’s last name. “I used to see him when I came home but we sort of drifted apart. I made new friends.”

  “He didn’t leave the area then?”

  “No. He went to the local technical college. Did a course in plumbing and went to work for his dad.”

  The policeman nodded but said nothing more. Instead, he turned pages in the file that lay on the desk in front of him.

  “So, why have you come back?”

  “To see my mother…” The annoyance I had felt at having to repeat myself over and over about having found Scotty’s body was starting to turn to anger. “Look, how much longer is this going to take? She’s going to be worried about me.” It seemed like a stupid thing to say.

  “Shouldn’t be too long now. Just crossing the i’s and dotting the t’s. Need to be sure we haven’t missed anything. I’m sure you can appreciate that. Murder is a serious matter.”

  “Murder!” I couldn’t keep the word in, it just sort of leapt onto my tongue and forced its way out of my mouth before I had the chance to stop it. “You never said anything about murder.”