The Case of the Missing Cats (2 page)

‘Oh, I am so sorry,' she had said as she opened the door.

Dirk had awoken with a start. ‘Er, Mrs Klingerflim. I . . . I can explain,' he had said, ducking behind the desk.

‘No need, Mr Dilly. After all, your rent is only two days late. I just wanted to remind you in case you'd forgotten,' said the sweet old lady.

‘My rent? Oh my rent . . .' he had replied. Then, testing the water, he had stood up again and said, ‘I meant to apologise for my appearance.'

She looked him up and down and said, ‘I think you look fine, Mr Dilly. Very smart. My Ivor never looked smart in his life. On our wedding day, the vicar threw him out of the church. He thought he was a tramp who had come in for the wine!'

Blind as a bat. And as mad as a badger. Since then Mrs K often popped in, always with some story about her dead husband, Ivor, and her children, who were grown up now and never visited. The old girl liked the company and Dirk was always careful not to let his scaly skin accidentally brush against her.

* * *

Dirk took his usual route south, leaping from roof to roof, ever grateful that dragons cast shadows upwards. Still, he had to be careful, particularly in South London, where the buildings were lower to the ground. The consequences of being seen were unthinkable. But he was quick and humans were slow. He had been doing this job long enough to know that he could avoid being seen as long as he stayed alert.

He arrived at Elliot Drive. It was the kind of quiet suburban area that human families liked to live in. Half of its inhabitants would be crammed into overflowing trains on their way home from boring office jobs, wondering what was for dinner. The other half would be at home cooking dinner, thinking about how nice it would be to have a job to get them out of the house.

He ran across a row of terraced houses, jumping the chimneys like they were hurdles, then somersaulted across the quiet road and landed on number forty-three. He curled himself around a chimney, pulled out his pad, flicked it open and checked his notes.

Female Cat - black - white paws - white face, black smudge
Answers to name ‘Willow'

* * *

He watched a tabby stroll across a garden proudly. Another, this one ginger, darted from a cat flap, chasing an imaginary mouse. Dirk raised his head, seeing a black cat stretching on the warmth of a car bonnet, but its paws were black, too, and its face wasn't white.

And then he saw just about the last thing he had ever expected to see. At first he noticed the smoke coming from a chimney three streets away, just above where the black cat was rolling on the car. But looking more closely he saw that the smoke wasn't coming from the house. Curled around the chimney, was a red-backed, green-bellied Mountain Dragon lying quietly on the roof. It was like looking in a mirror. He couldn't believe it. Was it lost? Did it know the punishment for being seen by a human? What was it doing here?

Suddenly, the other dragon swooped down from the rooftop and then back up again. It jumped to another building and then another and so on, travelling much in the same way as Dirk did.

The black cat, that seconds ago had been lying so contentedly and happily in the sun, was gone. That's what the dragon was doing there. It was stealing cats.

The next question, of course, was why?

Dirk took chase. The other Mountain Dragon obviously wasn't expecting to be followed, so Dirk was able to stay close behind, but every now and then it would pause on a rooftop, waiting for someone to pass, and he would have to stop dead in his tracks to avoid being seen.

Until that moment he knew of only one other dragon living in the area, but he dwelt far below the surface and would never be seen jumping around on rooftops in broad daylight.

On the whole, dragons were solitary creatures living in isolation high up in the mountains, deep within the oceans or far beneath the surface of the
earth. There were no dragon towns or cities. Living in London, Dirk marvelled at so many humans wanting to cram themselves into such a small space. It was no wonder they were so unpleasant to each other most of the time.

But despite the greed, deceit and corruption that Dirk uncovered daily, he loved the city with its historic buildings, bright lights, constant noise and variety of smells – some great, like popcorn or fast food, some bad, like car-exhaust fumes or fish markets on hot days. He had been there so long that it was now as much a part of him as his own wings.

Dirk had followed the mystery dragon all the way to the River Thames and was now heading eastward, where the roofs were higher and wider, the trees fewer and the buildings greyer.

And then it vanished. One minute it was on top of an old warehouse in the middle of a particularly grim-looking industrial estate. The next, it had disappeared from sight.

Cautiously he approached the spot where the other dragon had stood. He landed lightly on the rooftop and scanned it for clues. On the flat roof was a dirty skylight that looked down into the warehouse below. He wiped the dirt away with one paw, being
careful not to scratch the glass with his razor-sharp talons, and peered in.

In the warehouse below were five large wooden crates. Four of them had the words
DO NOT OPEN
printed in red on the top. The fifth crate, in the middle of the room read,
HANDLE WITH CARE
.

A bell rang and a door opened at the side of the building. A short, fat man entered, and walked to the middle crate.

‘Blimey,' he said, straining to lift it. ‘It's like tryin' to lift a flippin' lead-lined elephant. Lend us an 'and, will you?'

‘A hand?' replied a second man, entering the building.

He was taller than the first, with the merest wisp of hair carefully combed across his otherwise bald head. ‘May I remind you that you are supposed to be the muscles of this operation?'

‘Can't you just take one corner?'

‘No, I cannot. As I have explained to you some thirty-eight times now, I am unable to participate in any physical activity on account of a rare condition that I concocted in Africa. That is why I am the brains.'

‘I think I wanna be the brains for a change. Maybe
we could job share,' panted the fat man.

‘Sadly, my friend, that would require you being in possession of the aforementioned grey matter to which you have previously referred,' said the tall man.

‘Eh?'

‘You're too thick. Now come on!'

‘Honestly, I'm gonna give meself an 'ernia if I keep on like this. Why can't we get a forklift truck?'

‘What would I use a forklift truck for?'

‘Movin' the boxes.'

‘I see, so I could drive in, lift up the boxes using my forklift truck, move them hither and thither and I wouldn't even have to disturb you from your beauty sleep.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Then what would I need you for?'

‘Oh . . . I didn't think of that.'

‘Which is why I do the thinking.'

‘I could make the tea.'

A bell rang, making Dirk jump. He looked around but couldn't see any sign of danger. The bell rang for ten seconds and then stopped. He put his ear back to the roof.

‘Come on, let's go,' said the taller man. ‘Leave that.' The short, fat man put the crate down and said,
‘Why do we have to leave every time that bell goes off?'

‘While I'm the brains, leave the whys to me. OK?'

‘Look, I ain't grumbling. I'm glad to have a break. It's just that every time that blinking bell . . .'

The rest of his words were cut off by the bell, which rang again. By the time it had finished the two men had left the building.

Dirk looked up and saw, just in time, another dragon approaching. This one was light grey and in place of ears had two gills. It was a Sea Dragon. But this was no time to get out his
I Spy Book of Dragons
. It was coming this way, bounding across the roofs towards him.

Quick as a flash he leapt in the air and somersaulted backwards over the edge of the building. Grabbing wildly, he caught hold of a gutter by the tip of his claws. With a loud CLANK the Sea Dragon landed on the roof. Dirk held his breath. Had he been seen? He could hear the other dragon pacing on the roof centimetres away from him. Was he trying to work out where he had gone?

The plastic gutter creaked unhappily. Clearly it wasn't designed to support the weight of a dragon, even one in as good shape as Dirk. He looked down.
Directly below him was a mass of barbed wire on top of the high fence that separated the yard beside the warehouse from the main road. The two men were walking across the yard towards an old caravan.

‘I mean, every time that bell goes off, we have to evacuate. It's a bit odd, if you ask me,' the fat man was saying.

‘No one would, or indeed should, ask you. And I am certain that no one did. Now, I believe you mentioned tea.'

Dirk could smell the other dragon's sulphurous breath. He heard the soft miaow of a cat.

The guttering had completely come away from the building now and, rather than holding on to it, Dirk was flapping his wings, hovering mid-air, holding it up, desperately trying to stop it from falling. But there was too much of it. It was going to fall, and when it did it would attract the attention of the two idiotic men and that would draw their eyes to him. There was only one thing for it. He had to get back on the roof. Better to confront a dragon than be seen by humans.

Here goes
, he thought.

One . . .

Two . . .

Three . . .

In one swift movement he let go of the gutter, somersaulted up on to the roof and landed on his hind legs, claws drawn, ready to fight.

There was no one there. The dragon had gone. The drainpipe clattered noisily to the ground. He edged back to the glass and looked down into the warehouse. Nothing. Just the five crates. The dragon was nowhere in sight. He could hear the two men come out of the caravan.

‘What's happenin'?' said one.

‘This place is falling apart,' replied the other. ‘Now where's my tea?'

Dirk was shaken. There was something very odd going on. And whatever it was, it was far bigger than one lost cat. That was for sure.

Back in the safety of his office, Dirk sat behind his desk, picked up a remote control and switched on the old television that sat on a filing cabinet on the other side of the room. Dirk loved his TV. It was from watching late-night movies that he had first got the idea of becoming a detective. He flicked through the channels. There was nothing on. A woman on a shopping channel held up an apparently revolutionary new duster. ‘Look around your room,' she squeaked annoyingly. ‘Can you see all that dust?'

Dirk glanced at the piles of old newspapers and files from previous cases. ‘I can't even see the floor,' he replied, switching it off.

Cats
, he thought.
Why cats
? In spite of what humans have written throughout history, dragons are and always have been vegetarians. Humans saw the big teeth, the sharp claws and the ability to breathe fire and assumed they were carnivores like themselves. In fact, eating meat was agony to dragons. It made their blood boil, like being cooked from the inside. If a dragon ate enough, its blood would turn to gas and it would die. Dirk didn't like the sound of this at all, so tended to stick to cans of baked beans and self-toasted bread.

This investigation was going to be far more involved than he had previously thought. He picked up the phone and dialled his client's number. A deep male voice answered the phone.

‘Malcolm Bigsby, MP. Hello,' it boomed.

‘Hi, can I speak to Holly?'

‘Who?' barked the man.

There was a click as another phone was picked up and a girl's voice said, ‘Dad, it's for me.'

‘Oh yes. That Holly. Right, sorry.'

Another click indicated the first phone had been put down.