In Search of the Blue Tiger (15 page)

Before I can wave a hello, Father, breathing heavy fumes of stale whiskey and cigarettes, grabs me by the arm and frogmarches me out of the house. As I leave I see Dilip half-raising a goodbye hand. Goodbye, Dilip, I think. I doubt they'll be any more awkward walks down the laneway with you and your grandmother.

Back at home in my bedroom, the world being turned upside-down downstairs, I tell Blue Monkey of the day's events. As if he doesn't know. Never once do I let on that I saw him at the upstairs window at Dilip's house, his winnings long since collected from the betting office in the High Street. I might not have Dilip for a friend, but I know Blue Monkey will never let me down.

‘The pure and warm heart feels the Father like a sweet scent in the evening air, like the presence of a friend in the dark twilight room, like a melody entering within and sweetening the soul.' Gilfillan

Father is not long back from sea. He often spends several days in bed after the first major drinking bout down by the quays. But last night he had a fist fight with the Harbour Master and wrecked the lounge bar of the Seaman's Rest in a triumphant encore. So he's hibernating and secretly licking his ego, and his cracked jawbone.

The Mother is hiding somewhere else in the house, deep in the all too familiar shame of it all, what with the Dilip interlude and now this. On top of everything, police charges might be pending, or so I heard.

After expressing her disgust, the Great Aunt is well out of sight, somewhere in the recesses of the coach-house. So, under the cover of dark, it's easy for me and Stigir to slip out the kitchen door, pop through the hole in the garden fence and scurry off down the lane towards town. No one will be looking for us, they can't even find themselves.

Through the thick glass of the fish-shop window the moonlight strokes the silvery scales of the sea bass, trout and salmon. The single swordfish lies prostrate on a funereal bed of parsley, the magnificent barbs of its sword silenced. As with every night, the town's cats, like so many small children at a toyshop at Christmas, press their noses against the cold glass, transfixed by the wonders on display. Just out of reach. Tantalising. Bewitching. One ear twitches. A whisker is caught by the passing breeze. Shades of greens and greys, hazels and blues, are focused on the plump silvery meat lying in rows, like dead soldiers.

Stigir barks to let them know he is near.

‘Quiet, Stigir,' I say. ‘It's night-time. No one must hear us.'

Stigir looks up at me. He understands, but he is excited by this adventure. This detective work. I need him with me, to be a witness. For collaboration. A stray cat runs across our path. Stigir strains at the leash, but says nothing. I ruffle his fur and pat his head.

‘Good dog, good boy.'

The sea is calm tonight. The moon has taken care of that. A small boat bobbles on the gentle swell. A solitary wave slaps the seawall to keep it awake. All else is silent.

‘We will wait, Stigir. We will be patient, like real detectives.'

It is cold, but so it should be, as we take up our position in the shelter by the Harbour Master's office. Stigir jumps on to the bench next to me. I can feel the warmth and comfort of his body next to mine. So we begin our vigil. To collect evidence. The lights in the fish shop window are out. But it is the window above that holds my attention. The light is on, and through the net curtains I can make out the silhouette of Mr Fishcutter. He knots a tie around his neck and then combs his hair. I fancy the curtain flickers, but it is a trick of the night. I blink my eyes.

I reach into my pocket and pick out the crumpled note I copied from Mr Fishcutter's postcard to Mrs April. The postcard showed a picture of Wells Cathedral, sketched in ink and watercolour. It had been pushed behind the clock on the kitchen mantelpiece. One afternoon, after a game of chess, Mrs April asked me into the kitchen for a glass of lemonade. Then the coalman knocked at the door. While Mrs April was busy counting sacks of coal and paying up, I took my chance to look around the room. And there was the postcard. I could hear the avalanche being tipped into the coal hole and knew I only had a minute or so. I felt like a prospector striking gold.

In large handwriting the message read:
Be with you at your house, nine o'clock, Tuesday night, xxx.

I put two and two together and made Mr Fishcutter.

The light goes off in the upstairs room of the fishmonger's shop. Presently, the front door opens and he steps out into the street, the speckled band around his neck. He looks up and down the way, maybe out of habit more than necessity, then turns the corner and heads up towards town. We are about to leave our hiding place to follow in his footsteps when the door to the shop opens again. Out into the street come Perch and Carp. Quietly, carefully, they close the door behind them and hurry off in the direction of their father.

I look at Stigir, who is awaiting the command to follow the scent.

‘Curiouser and curiouser,' I say to him in a Sherlock Holmes kind of way.

Like true detectives, we adapt to changing circumstances. We follow a hunch and take the shortcut to Mrs April's house. We set off across the cricket green, go through the cemetery and head for the old haunted bridge over the railway track. From there we will be able to see down Mrs April's street before anyone sees us.

Standing midway along the solid metal bridge we pretend to be trainspotters waiting for the evening coastal steam train to thunder by. I keep one eye on the track, one up the road. Stigir shudders as the ghost of the headless woman, long since decapitated by the passing freight train, brushes by us on her nightly patrol. Then we see him, Mr Fishcutter, turning the corner at the top of the road. He walks purposefully up to Mrs April's door. The door opens as if by magic and he disappears inside.

Just as he enters the house I spot the Twins. They are halfway up the road, on the opposite side, partly hidden beneath a hawthorn tree. I watch them watching the shadows in Mrs April's house. In the distance the steam train approaches. I look up the track and see the train take the bend following the swoop of the sands at the far end of the bay. It gets closer, the clickety-clack of its wheels and the plume of its smoke holding my attention. Suddenly it is upon us, all clatter and noise and smoke and steam. It sucks past us like a hurricane, pulling us momentarily away from our world and into its orbit.

As the smoke clears and the train becomes a distant clamour, I realise we are not alone. There at the end of the bridge, as if arisen from the mist, stand the Twins. They say nothing. They simply stand there. They wear identical duffel coats with large wooden toggles as buttons. Their heads are hooded and I can barely make out the contours of their faces. I turn and look through the open metal-work of the bridge to the lines of train track below in the hope another train will hurtle by and suck me away. When I glance up again they are descending the steps of the bridge. I watch them as they walk back up the road. Once more they take up their position under the hawthorn tree opposite the house, staring up at the window of the librarian who teaches me about books and chess.

Be careful, be careful, be careful, be careful, be careful, beware, beware, beware, beware, beware, beware, beware, be were? Be where, be somewhere else, Mrs April.

You are being stalked by a creature of the night. I know these things. Mr Fishcutter is a were-wolf. We will do our best to protect you, though the enemy is strong. We know what these men can do at night. When they change. When the switch takes place and the beast takes over. We will save you from those things creeping in the night. Me and Stigir and Blue Monkey will gather all our strength and wisdom to ward off this evil.

Stigir and me had thought of getting a new scrapbook to record all our findings, all our detective work. But the Mother and Great Aunt might wonder about a new scrapbook, so we decide against it. We work out a plan. It will be better to start from the back of the
Cutty Sark
scrapbook; that way no one will suspect. The first rule of the good detective: take no chances. Besides, I only have half-a-crown left in my savings tin, hidden far away under the bed. I never know when I might need it: for a rainy day, or a full-blown storm.

So this is how it will be. Mr Fishcutter and Mrs April at the back of the scrapbook, all the wild people from Tidetown and the wonderful animals at the front. Moving towards each other like the
Cutty Sark
and the Indian Ocean. That gives me an idea. I'll call him Cutty Sark and Mrs April can be Indian Ocean. A secret code. I tell no one but Stigir. Someone else has to know the code, in case I forget it. Stigir can be trusted with anything. So can Blue Monkey, who I'll tell later when everyone else is asleep. But I can't tell the Twins. Something tells me to be wary of them. I'll be the Lonesome Rover and Stigir wants to be Tenacious Terrier. Anyone else will just have to be who they are.

So we sharpen a pencil on my penknife, turn the book over and upside down, and begin with the first piece of evidence.

The kiss of the suspects.

Log date: 1

Cutty Sark (CS) and Indian Ocean (IO) spotted in the alleyway. Kissing. Lonesome Rover explores the caves. Tenacious Terrier stays in the kennel.

I draw a picture, like a map, to show where everyone was. I sketch an oblong for Mrs April's house. Inside the perimeter I write LR for Lonesome Rover. Two parallel lines are for the alleyway. I write IO and CS with the C of the CS overlapping the O. That's to show they were kissing. I then draw a dotted line (to show it's not to scale) and put TT inside a triangle to show the kennel (which Stigir would like, but doesn't have). (The Father keeps promising to build one, but hasn't yet.) I date the map. Every little bit of evidence may be of help.

Log date: 2

Lonesome Rover and Tenacious Terrier head off to the fishmonger shop for cod roe. The Father is back from the sea and has been drinking whiskey again. He comes down to breakfast with a clean white shirt and a shaven face. The Father gives the Lonesome Rover a ten-shilling note to go to Cutty Sark's shop. He says raw cod roe is the most nutritious of all foods. He seems to wink. Does he know something? As we leave he is reading the paper, drinking from a big mug of tea and eating hunks of bread and dripping like they have gone out of fashion. The Mother smiles as we pass by. Is she involved as well? She is holding a duster, which I've never seen before. Is this a sign? The household is eerily normal. Even the Great Aunt is sitting quietly, staring out of the window. It is very unnerving and unsettling, this peace and pretence at normality. You never can trust adults, but we'll just have to take our chances.

At the fishmonger's shop, Cutty Sark is chopping up eels. Each segment takes on a life of its own, wriggling, unaware its number's up. The Lonesome Rover says something like this, recorded as remembered:

LR: My Dad has stopped drinking whiskey. He says he needs raw cod roe as it's the only food for the stomach, stout and whiskey being brain food.

CS: (looks surprised – is he suspicious?)

LR: So he sent me. I'm on my way with my dog to the library to see if they have some more books for my project.

CS: (looks more surprised, but goes on chopping eels into little bits)

LR: We hope Mrs April is going to be there. (Heart pounds to the beat of the chopping).

CS: Does your father like a whole roe or slices?

LR: Whole.

CS wraps a whole roe, its shimmering film, thin blue veins and all, in a sheet of newspaper (the
Daily Post).

LR: So we're off to the library now. To see if Mrs April is there. To get some new books.

CS. Good. Goodbye.

Later at the library it must be Indian Ocean's day off as the man from the children's library is doubling up. We don't stay. Anyway, the cod roe juice is seeping through the newspaper and making my coat smell.

Back at base the Father eats the cod roe raw, as if he's never been taught to eat properly. He holds it in his hand and talks to me as he eats.

‘Body food,' he says, ‘all the minerals and vitamins you'll ever need.'

The little eggs stick to his tongue like mouth ulcers. He scrapes them off with his front teeth and down the gullet they go.

Log date: 3

Cryptic message on postcard sets time and place for secret rendezvous. Remember to research Wells Cathedral for any hidden meaning.

Cutty Sark leaves dry dock at 2040 and arrives at bay in Indian Ocean at 2100, just before the 2102 steam train. Surprise meeting with other clippers following in his wake.

The Father stands in the corridor, his hand on the door. Peering through the slit between the door and frame he sees his son lying face down on his bed, writing and talking to himself. The Father strains to hear the words his son is saying, but the whispers elude him. He wants to push the door open, to be in the room with his son, to tell him what it means to be a man. But something holds him back. As it has always done.