Fiona and Fergus returned as promised an hour later. Bex had arrived by then as well, and was engaged in a heated debate with Jazz over the takeaway she had brought with her. (According to Jazz, takeaway is not takeaway unless you get to go to the place yourself, see the menu with your own eyes and choose it in person. She was not impressed that Bex had made the selection without consulting her.)
I couldn’t help smiling to myself as Bex tried in vain to explain that she hadn’t known Jazz was eating with us. I knew Jazz was being rude, but there was something reassuring about seeing my friend being her usual confident self.
‘You so cannot have a curry without poppadoms!’ Jazz said, her face contorted in outrage.
‘OK, so next time I’ll get poppadoms,’ said Bex wearily.
‘And you’ve not got that rank naan bread with raisins in? Urgh!’ Jazz went on.
I left them battling it out and went to open the door. Fergus and Fiona were in the middle of an animated conversation with a man dressed in baggy combat trousers and an outsized brown jumper with frayed sleeves and holes in the elbows.
‘Hi,’ I said shyly.
Fiona looked up. ‘Ah, Bertie. This is Nev Greenshield. From the Naturewatch team.’
‘Hi,’ said Nev. He was so tall I was worried I might get a stiff neck from looking up at him. He was really skinny too: all arms and legs like a daddy-long-legs. Maybe he wore such baggy clothes to hide how thin he was. He smiled warmly. I was going to like Nev, I decided. He seemed like a real gentle giant.
‘Come in,’ I said, stepping aside. ‘I’ll get Dad.’
Nev had to stoop to avoid banging his head on the door frame. Fiona followed him and I stood there, waiting.
Fiona looked puzzled. ‘You can shut the door now, Bertie. It’s just us.’
‘Oh, I, er . . . I thought you might want to bring all the equipment in,’ I said, glancing out to see if they’d left any bags on the path.
Nev held up a black bag a bit like a bulky laptop case. ‘All in here,’ he said.
Jazz had joined us, still muttering about Bex having ‘no idea’ how to order a takeaway. She took one look at Nev and his little black bag and said, ‘Is that it?’
I had to admit, it didn’t look very impressive.
Fiona let out a tinkling laugh. ‘Don’t look so disappointed, dear. Nev knows what he’s doing, I can assure you.’
Jazz curled her lip in disgust. ‘Sure,’ she said, hands on hips.
Fergus rolled his eyes. ‘Jazz, she’s right. Nev does know what he’s doing.’
‘This is all I normally use in the field,’ Nev explained, thankfully unfazed by Jazz. ‘I’ll unpack and talk you through it, shall I?’
Dad finally emerged. ‘Ah! You must be Nev – pleasure to meet you. I’m Nigel.’ He beamed and held out his hand. Nev took it and pumped it up and down energetically. ‘Come through into the kitchen. We’re just sorting out some supper. There’s plenty for everyone.’
We followed Dad into the kitchen, where Bex was laying out foil dishes of steaming food. She looked rather alarmed at the number of people who were crowding into the room, but did a quick headcount and went to get plates. Fergus and I busied ourselves sorting out drinks while Jazz pestered Nev with questions about life as a cameraman. Fiona finished off most of Nev’s sentences for him. Poor guy, I thought, looking over at him. Working with Fiona must be even worse than working with that bonkers bird-watching guy on the telly, the one with the beard as big as a golden eagle’s nest and the temper like a wasps’ nest.
Dad stepped in and offered some food round, prising Jazz away from Nev.
‘I’ll have something in a minute if that’s OK,’ Nev said. ‘Let’s get the gear sorted first.’
I was quite happy to leave the mayhem in the kitchen and go with Nev into the utility room.
‘That’s the cat flap – what’s left of it!’ I showed him the plastic door hanging limply from its frame.
‘OK,’ said Nev, checking out the room. ‘I reckon if I fix the camera to the top of that cupboard and angle it at the cat flap . . .’ He started fiddling around, moving things out of the way, stepping back to look through the lens, making adjustments, pressing buttons, and so on.
‘Are you all right in here for a bit?’ I asked. Nev nodded, not looking up from his gadgets.
I went to my room to find my kitten. I needed to tell her what was going on.
‘Jaffsie!’
I scanned the room.
‘Jaffa? Where are you?’ Oh no, she hadn’t gone and done one of her famous escapology routines, had she?
But then I heard a squeaking noise from across the landing. I tracked it down to Dad’s study.
‘Jaffa?’
My cheeky little cat was curled up on Dad’s desk on top of a pile of papers: a cute, furry paperweight.
‘What are you doing in here?’ I admonished. ‘I shut you into my room to keep you safe.’
‘Borin’ in Bertie’s room all the time!’ she mewed pitifully. ‘Bertie’s door was open a teeny-tiny bit, so me did get one little paw in the gap, and me did puuuush and puuuush and use all of me’s strength and muscles and me did get out,’ she explained proudly.
I sighed and shook my head.
She gave an exaggerated yawn in response, showing every one of her brilliant white teeth. Then she stretched back on to her hind legs, extending her front paws and flexing her little claws, rumpling a couple of the sheets of paper as she did so. As always, her gorgeousness made me tingle all over with love for her and I quickly pushed aside any feelings of irritation. I took a step towards her to pick her up for a snuggle, and she purred.
‘Who is those noisy people downstairs? Me was havin’ a lovely dream until they came,’ she said, rubbing her head against my outstretched hand. ‘Me was in a soft green place and there was mousies runnin’ everywhere and me was chasin’ them and bein’ very brave.’
I giggled. ‘You are very brave, little Jaffsie,’ I crooned. ‘But soon you won’t have to be brave any more. Fergus and his mum are here with a nice man called Nev. He is setting up a camera so that when the big bad nasty thing comes back, we’ll record it all and find out what it is.’
Jaffa stiffened. ‘No!’ she squeaked.
‘What’s the matter now?’ I was really fed up. Here I was, doing everything I could think of to solve the problem of her being bullied, and not only was she being no help at all, she was positively trying to stop my plans.
‘Me did tell you, me is not allowed for you to know who Big Bo— who the big baddie is,’ she whined.
I had had enough of this. I set her down rather roughly on the desk and snapped, ‘Well, you’re just going to have to trust me on this.’ Then I turned and walked out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind me. She was not going to escape a second time.
Downstairs, Nev had finished setting up his equipment and he was tucking into some food while everyone else sat round the table, drinking coffee and chatting.
‘Oh, there you are, love,’ said Dad, smiling. ‘Come and look at this.’
I grabbed some of the ‘rank’ naan bread (which I personally thought was lush) and followed Dad into the utility room. He beamed and pointed gleefully at a camera fixed to the top of the broom cupboard. ‘Nifty, eh?’ he said. ‘And that’s not the best bit,’ he continued, taking me by the elbow and steering me back into the kitchen.
Nev was over by the kettle, looking at a laptop.
‘Check out what’s onscreen,’ said Dad, pointing at the computer.
I went over to Nev and saw that he was looking at a picture of our utility room.
‘Isn’t that great?’ Dad said. ‘Our own home security system.’
Nev tapped a few keys and suddenly the image zoomed in on the cat flap. It was like watching something out of a spy movie, and I had to admit I was impressed.
‘I’ll go in there and you keep watching,’ Dad said. He skipped out of the room like a small boy with a new toy, grinning excitedly.
I watched the screen and suddenly Dad appeared, waving and saying, ‘Hello! Can you see me? Can you hear me?’
‘I can hear you anyway, Dad. You’re only next door,’ I said scathingly.
But he was right, it was pretty cool. Then something occurred to me. ‘What if the intruder is too fast for us to see what it is?’ I asked Nev.
‘No problem,’ he said, tapping the keys again. The image of Dad slowed right down as though he were walking on the moon. ‘Slow-motion playback,’ Nev said carelessly. ‘It does it all, this little baby.’
If this lot didn’t nail our mystery marauder, I thought, nothing would.
‘You could also leave it something tempting to stop it in its tracks,’ Nev suggested, with a twinkle in his eye. ‘It’s what I do when I want to lure badgers or foxes out of their holes so I can get a decent amount of footage,’ he explained.
‘Of course!’ Dad said, snapping his fingers. ‘Cat food – that’s what the beast has been breaking in for all this time, isn’t it?’
Nev shook his head. ‘I was thinking of something totally irresistible, if you know what I mean.’
‘Prawns,’ said Fiona.
Typical, I thought. The very treat she had used to lure Jaffa away from me!
Bex chipped in: ‘Great idea, Fiona. I know my Sparky would need to be dragged away snarling and biting if anyone tried to get between him and a plate of prawns.’
Dad looked at one of the takeaway dishes. ‘Would prawn biryani work?’ he asked doubtfully.
‘Perfect,’ said Bex.
‘Hold on a minute,’ I cut in, waving my hands to get their attention. ‘Could someone please explain why we want to give a tasty treat to this horrible creature who has been bullying my Jaffsie?’
‘We want to get a good long look at whatever it is, don’t we?’ said Nev. ‘If you leave it something tasty to eat, it’ll stay still long enough for us to get lots of lovely images of it. Then you can find out what it is you’re dealing with. If it’s a fox, say, then you know you’ve probably got to keep Jaffa in for a few days while you lure the fox out of your garden. You could tempt it away from the house by leaving food by the back fence so it doesn’t need to come in and take Jaffa’s,’ he explained.
Nev certainly sounded as though he knew what he was talking about, and for the first time in ages I felt reassured. I went to get some food and enjoy a nice normal evening with my friends while Nev laid the bait . . .
Well, at least the meal went without a hitch. Jazz was on sparkling form, chatting away to Fiona about the programme she was currently producing, and Dad and Bex seemed to have a lot to talk to Nev about. So that left me and Fergus. He offered to clear the plates and I grabbed the opportunity of a quiet word with him, jumping up to gather the empty foil dishes.
We took everything over to the sink.
‘Awesome party!’ Fergus joked, nodding at the noisy group around the table. ‘Good to see Jazz on form too.’
‘Yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask you – about the audition. You sure you didn’t know anything about it?’ I pressed, keeping my voice low so that Jazz wouldn’t hear me.
Fergus shook his head. ‘I already told you, there were no auditions for anything yesterday. The hall was closed. We weren’t even allowed to have band practice. The teachers wanted to chuck us out on time cos it was Friday. Anyway, I’ve been with Kezia loads this week and she never said anything about putting on a show or holding auditions, and she would have said something to Rashid, wouldn’t she? He’s been involved in all the discos and shows and stuff for the past two years.’
I flicked my eyes in Jazz’s direction and saw she was staring at me, mouthing, ‘What?’
‘OK,’ I said quickly to Fergus. ‘We can’t talk about this now. I’ll call you tomorrow—’
CRASH!
A commotion in the utility room made us all jump out of our skins. Jazz screamed, and a plate slipped from my soapy fingers and smashed on the floor.
‘What the . . . ?’ Dad flung his chair back and whizzed over to the door.
Nev nipped in front of Dad and barred the way. ‘We could have a situation in there,’ he said dramatically. He nodded in the direction of the laptop which lay forgotten on the kitchen work surface.
On the screen there was a very clear close-up of the back end of the intruder enjoying its prawn curry with relish. It was guzzling the food without stopping, one hundred and ten per cent focused on what it was doing.
‘It’s huge!’ breathed Jazz, her eyes wide in amazement.
‘What is it?’ Dad said, horrified.
‘Impossible to tell from this angle,’ said Nev.
All we could see was a large furry bottom filling the screen. It looked as though the animal was black and white, or possibly grey and white, but as the camera had been set on night vision, so there was no colour, we couldn’t be sure.
‘Could it . . . It couldn’t be a badger, could it?’ I whispered. Poor Jaffsie! No wonder she had been terrified.
‘Only one thing for it,’ said Nev. He pulled back his shoulders and, locking his hands, stretched them away from his body, making the knuckles crack. ‘I’m going in.’