The First of Nine Read online

  Each house had a gate recessed into the back wall. The rolling pin must have rolled down the hill and come to rest against a gate.

  Theodore trotted down the alley, inspecting each gateway in turn. He was almost at the bottom when he spotted the rolling pin lying flush against a gate.

  With his front paws he rolled it back out into the middle of the alley and then up the hill towards home. Murderers always miss something, he reflected, as he patted the rolling pin up the hill.

  The rolling pin was still dotted with flour. He noted some specks of dark red. Theodore smiled to himself. He had all the proof he needed. Emily surely would be able to put two and two together.

  He arrived at his back gate. He rolled the rolling pin up against it. He miaowed. He could hear Emily’s hairdryer whirring from upstairs. He miaowed again.

  He heard a backdoor open down the alley. A loose pane of glass rattled in its frame as the door closed. It was Wendy’s backdoor.

  The hair dryer stopped. Theodore miaowed.

  He heard steps on the stairs. A moment later the kitchen door was opened. At the same time the bolt of Wendy’s back gate was pulled back.

  Murderers always returned to the scene of the crime, Theodore remembered, his front paws still holding the rolling pin up against his gate.

  He pulled the rolling pin back towards him, then against the gate as hard as he could.

  He heard steps coming towards him from inside his yard. He heard steps coming towards him from down the hill.

  ‘Is that you Theodore?’ he heard Emily say.

  He miaowed back. Let me in.

  ‘Why can’t you just jump over the wall?’ she said. ‘You usually do.’

  The bolt was pulled back and the gate swung open.

  Theodore pushed the rolling pin into the safety of his yard, then followed after.

  ‘What’s this?’ Emily asked, picking up the rolling pin.

  ‘It’s mine,’ Wendy Morris said.

  Theodore looked on as Emily handed the rolling pin to Wendy.

  ‘I’ve been looking for it all over,’ Wendy said.

  ‘I just opened my gate and there it was,’ Emily said, smiling nervously.

  ‘I heard him miaowing in the alley,’ Wendy went on. ‘And when I came out to see what the matter was, I saw him with it.’

  ‘He’s always bringing things in.’

  ‘Yes,’ Wendy said, smiling. ‘I suppose he is.’

  Emily thought of the pigeon feathers Theodore had dropped on her pillow. ‘Well, I’m glad Theodore managed to find your rolling pin,’ she said.

  ‘Goodness knows how it came to be in the back alley,’ Wendy said.

  Emily noticed that Wendy had had her hair dyed red and had lost several pounds since she had last seen her.

  ‘Are you managing all right?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m coping,’ Wendy said. ‘What else do you do?’

  ‘If I can do anything?’

  Emily felt Theodore rubbing against her calves. She remembered that she still had to paint her toenails. ‘Well, I’m glad you got your rolling pin back.’

  Wendy said, ‘I would have been lost without it.’ She bent down and reached out to pat Theodore.

  Theodore backed away and hissed up at her.

  ‘Theodore!’ Emily said.

  ‘Not to worry,’ Wendy said. ‘I’d better be off. I’ve got a pie in the oven.’

  Emily stood in the gateway and watched as Wendy marched back down the hill, rolling pin in hand. She shut the gate, scooped Theodore up and pressed him to her.

  ‘What am I going to do with you?’ she said. ‘Stealing people’s rolling pins… Whatever next?’

  She carried him upstairs and placed him on the bed while she painted her toenails.

  ◆◆◆

  Jonathan returned with two plastic bags. One contained two bottles of Pinot Grigio from the little supermarket round the corner. The other was from the Lucky Twin takeaway.

  ‘What have you got there?’ Emily asked.

  ‘Some wine and a Chinese,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘Crispy duck?’

  ‘Crispy duck for you.’

  ‘You know I’m trying to cut down on Chinese food,’ Emily said, grinning.

  ‘Well, I didn’t fancy going into town now,’ Jonathan said. ‘So I thought I’d pick up a takeaway while I was passing. I thought I’d go for the fish and chip special…’

  As they ate the Chinese takeaway, drank the Italian wine and watched an American film, Emily asked Jonathan if he had buried the cat.

  Jonathan said that he hadn’t. He had intended to, but on his way home he’d passed a green wheelie bin left conveniently next to the footpath and had dropped the dead cat inside.

  ‘You put the cat in a wheelie bin?’

  Emily, who was on her second glass of wine, began to giggle.

  ‘It was dead,’ Jonathan said. ‘I don’t see that it really matters.’

  ‘Was it empty… the wheelie bin?’ Emily asked, laughing.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it’s going to be a fortnight until it gets buried now.’

  Jonathan laughed too. He had a drink of wine and then picked at his fish. The batter was almost orange. He took a forkful of the white meat from under the batter and chewed. It didn’t taste of fish. Chicken maybe, but definitely not fish.

  Theodore rubbed against his legs. A small pool of drool had begun to form on the laminate floor. Jonathan handed him a chunk of fish/chicken.

  ‘I think I’ve found the way to your cat’s heart,’ he told Emily, watching Theodore wolf down the morsel.

  ‘Yes,’ Emily said nodding, her mouth full of duck. ‘He seems to like that special fish.’

  Jonathan handed him another chunk, then another. Theodore purred, chewing on the fish, his mouth agape, drool sliding down his chin.

  Theodore was woken in the night by his stomach. It growled angrily.

  He got to his paws, jumped down onto the floor and headed for the door. His intention was to get out to the yard and his litter tray as fast as possible and relieve himself of whatever foul mixture was brewing inside.

  The door had been pulled too though, and before Theodore could nose it open, his bottom spurted out a jet of diarrhoea.

  He spun round in surprise, sending a line of brownish orange across the bookcase, splattering the broken spines of a dozen Sidney Sheldons. Once started, Theodore had no option but to let his lower body continue. A lower shelf of well-thumbed James Pattersons met the same fate.

  When it was over, Theodore surveyed the damage. Three shelves of books were ruined. He imagined Emily the next morning shoving her paperback library into bin liners, cursing the unwitting feline literary critic.

  He turned around and something caught his eye. In the corner, by the foot of the sofa, Jonathan’s dinner plate had been left until the morning. On the plate, the crispy fish shell pulsed orange in the darkness.

  Surprise Pie

  Saturday morning, as Emily and Jonathan lay in bed, there was a knock at the door.

  ‘Can you get that?’ Emily said. ‘I’m expecting a parcel.’

  Jonathan got out of bed and hurried downstairs, Theodore following at his heels. When he opened the front door, there was no parcel but a woman with short dark hair standing on the doorstep.

  Theodore eyed her from behind Jonathan’s. It was the woman who had almost run him over. Arthur’s owner and Ahmet’s lover Diane.

  ‘Can I help?’ Jonathan asked, rubbing his eyes.

  ‘You haven’t seen a black cat, have you?’ Diane asked. ‘He hasn’t had his breakfast this morning. He never misses his breakfast. And he didn’t come home last night. I think something might have happened to him… He answers to Arthur… I was wondering if you could check your shed. Make sure he hasn’t got in.’

  Jonathan’s brain had yet to awake fully. Rather than telling Diane that he hadn’t seen her cat and promising to check the shed, he told her the truth.

  ‘
I’m afraid your cat’s dead,’ he said.

  ‘Dead?’ Diane opened her mouth to show a piece of white chewing gum.

  ‘Yes. I found him in the allotments. I think he’d been hit…’

  ‘Hit? Hit by a car?’

  Jonathan paused. His head pounded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘He’d been hit by a car. He must have dragged himself into the allotments.’

  He didn’t tell her about Theodore leading him to the compost heap or the bin liner in which he’d been buried.

  Instead he said, ‘Yes, he’d been hit by a car. I didn’t want to leave him there in the allotments, so I brought him back here.’

  Diane began to cry. She wiped tears from her reddened cheeks. She chewed vigorously on her chewing gum, taking it all in.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said.

  ‘I went and buried him,’ Jonathan went on. Lying was easy, he thought, once you got going. ‘In my garden…’

  ‘That was thoughtful,’ she said, sniffing. ‘Can I see?’

  ‘He’s not here,’ Jonathan said. ‘You see I don’t live here… This is my girlfriend’s house. She doesn’t have a garden. So I took the cat back to my house and buried him there… Under a tree.’

  ‘Under a tree?’ Diane said. A tear ran down her cheek at this minor detail. She blew her nose noisily.

  They stood staring at each a minute.

  ‘Could I visit his grave?’

  Jonathan looked down at his tartan pyjama bottoms and wrinkled Ramones t-shirt. He noted a dried smear of grease across his chest. He felt Theodore’s tail against his ankle. He wanted to scratch the place but restrained himself. ‘I’m not really dressed at the moment,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps later then?’ Diane said, wiping a tear from her cheek. ‘I believe closure is important.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Jonathan said warily. ‘Closure… of course.’

  ‘This afternoon?’

  ‘I’ll write down my address.’

  He left Diane at the front door while he went inside and scribbled his address on a scrap of paper.

  ‘Say two o’clock,’ he said, handing over his address.

  ‘See you at two,’ Diane said, smiling, her eyes red lined and bleary.

  Jonathan shut the front door and, passing the door to the front room, he stopped. There was a horrible smell coming from behind the door. He pushed the door open and saw the bookcase. He closed the door and went into the kitchen. He made himself a coffee and a tea for Emily.

  When he returned upstairs, Theodore had stolen his side of the bed. He lifted him up, placed him at the bottom of the bed and climbed back in.

  He explained to Emily that a woman called Diane was going to go to his house to pay her respects at her cat’s grave.

  ‘But you put it in a wheelie bin,’ Emily said, sitting up and slurping her tea.

  ‘I think it was that woman who nearly ran Theo over that time,’ Jonathan said.

  ‘She did say that she had a cat,’ Emily said. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘I’ll sort something out,’ Jonathan said. ‘And your cat has had an accident on your books. I reckon it was that fish that disagreed with him.’

  ◆◆◆

  Mid-morning, after Emily had disposed of her ruined books, wiped clean the ones which were salvageable and disinfected the bookcase, there was another knock on the door. This time Emily got it. It was the parcel that she’d been expecting. ‘Theo!’ she called. ‘I have a present for you.’

  Theodore jumped down from the chest in the front room and went through to the dining room.

  Emily had opened the package by the time Theodore arrived on the scene. He jumped up onto the dining room table.

  Inside the package there was a tracking device. She fixed it to Theodore’s purple collar.

  Jonathan put down his newspaper and began reading the instructions.

  Soon he had managed to set the handset to recognize the tracker. ‘I don’t know why you feel the need for this,’ he said. ‘It’s not as if he’s always disappearing.’

  ‘I want to know where he gets to,’ Emily said. ‘He’s always going off these days. Didn’t he take you on a trip to the allotments yesterday? And there’s cats going missing around here...’

  She pressed a button on the handset and the pendant sitting on the crown of Theodore’s chest began to flash red.

  ‘I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to Theo,’ she said.

  ◆◆◆

  After Jonathan had gone back to his own house to shower, get changed and prepare Arthur’s grave, there was another knock at the Emily’s door.

  This time it was Wendy. Her carrot red hair was tied back. She’d coated her lips with red lipstick that morning and was wearing blue jeans and a baggy red blouse. In her hands she held out a pie.

  She handed it to Emily, saying with a smile: ‘A little thank you for finding my rolling pin.’

  Emily took the pie and said, ‘Thank you… But you really didn’t need to.’

  ‘I still cook for two,’ Wendy said. ‘And now’s there’s just the one of me. I have a freezer full of food that I’m never going to get through!’

  ‘It looks tasty,’ Emily said. ‘We’ll have it for dinner tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll be off then.’

  ‘Thanks again.’

  Emily carried the pie through to the kitchen and slid it onto an empty shelf in the fridge. She closed the door and then realized she had not asked what was in the pie.

  Oh, well, she thought. It’ll be a surprise… A surprise pie!

  Fake Funeral

  Shortly after two o’clock that afternoon, there was a knock at the front door of No.8 Carsen Terrace. When Jonathan opened it, there was Diane in a black blouse and skirt. She held a posy of yellow pansies. She chewed mechanically on a piece of gum.

  Jonathan suddenly felt underdressed for the occasion in his white t-shirt and jeans. He invited her in and told her to go through to the yard.

  ‘Quite the bachelor’s den you’ve got here,’ she commented, as she walked through the front room.

  Jonathan glanced about the room. He noticed the pizza box lying on the sofa, the remains of a pepperoni pizza peeping out.

  ‘Not quite,’ he said, wishing he’d tidied up.

  He followed her through to the back door, noticing her black skirt stopped short of her knees.

  In the yard there was a small garden area against the back wall. A red-leaved dwarf sycamore grew in the corner. A rectangle of soil under the sycamore had been recently turned over. As an added touch, Jonathan had tied two lollipop sticks into a cross using green twine and planted it at one end of the turned over patch.

  Diane removed her gum from her mouth and held it between thumb and forefinger. She stood before the mock grave, her back to Jonathan. She bent down and placed the pansies onto the recently turned over soil. ‘I will miss you, dear Arthur,’ she said.

  Jonathan backed away. ‘Maybe I should leave you alone for a minute,’ he said.

  She turned to face him.

  Charcoal rivulets of mascara had streaked down her cheeks. Her bleary eyes looked into his. ‘It’s just so horrible,’ she said. ‘I just can’t believe that Arthur’s there. Under the ground… In the soil.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I just can’t believe that he’s dead and never coming back.’

  ‘He’s definitely dead and not coming back,’ Jonathan said.

  Diane cried harder.

  Jonathan approached. He put his arms around her, and Diane turned and sobbed onto his chest.

  He looked over at the back windows of the houses opposite. He felt Diane’s face pressing against him, her hot tears piercing his thin cotton t-shirt, her hot breath against his chest. Her breasts pushed against his abdomen through her thin silk blouse. He felt her hands wrapping around his lower back. Her hands slipped down. He took a step backwards and she took a step forwards.

  ‘Diane,’ he said.

  ‘Yes?’
r />   She looked up at him, her eyes glazed, her mouth parted.

  ‘I don’t think this is really appropriate,’ Jonathan said.

  He felt her hands squeezing his bottom, her body pushing against him.

  ‘I have a girlfriend,’ he said.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But I’m not going to tell.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Jonathan said, trying to pull away.

  ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ Diane said. ‘I was the one who nearly ran over your cat. Then you find my cat run over. That’s some coincidence, isn’t it?’

  ‘A coincidence, I suppose.’

  ‘We are connected,’ Diane said, pushing into him. ‘Don’t you see we are connected?’

  ‘I just don’t find you attractive,’ Jonathan said.

  Diane took a step backwards. ‘She’s just a silly girl,’ Diane said. ‘Driving around in her bloody Beetle. You can do better than that.’

  Jonathan shook his head. ‘I think you should say goodbye to your cat and leave.’

  ‘I thought you were different,’ Diane said. ‘But you’re just boring.’

  ‘Let yourself out when you’ve done with your closure,’ Jonathan said.

  He turned and walked back into his house.

  His t-shirt was sodden with Diane’s tears and smudged with mascara and lipstick. He pulled it over his head and fed it into the washing machine. He turned and locked the door before going to have his second shower of the day.

  Theodore peered down at Diane from between the branches of the little sycamore tree.

  Although Jonathan had replaced the insoles in his boots following their first encounter, Theodore’s scent had impregnated the boots, and every time he had walked from his house to Emily’s and back again, he had reinforced the trail which Theodore had followed that afternoon across South Bank.

  Diane stood in front of the mock grave. She dabbed at her face with the cuffs of her blouse.

  She thought of Ahmet. She was still angry with him for telling the police about them.

  She looked down at her cat’s grave once more. Then she took a step towards the gate.

  Something grey caught her eye. She looked up and saw a pair of green eyes looking down at her from between the leafy limbs of the sycamore. She took a step towards the tree and made out a grey cat sitting on a branch.