Lulu’s hand was trembling on the tiller and she was finding it hard to breathe. The Blue Moon was about three hundred yards ahead of The Lark, chugging along at three miles an hour. Lulu wasn’t worried about losing her quarry: there was only one way he could go. It was Conrad she was worried about. Had something happened? Was he trapped? She was fairly sure that the man hadn’t discovered that he was on board because he had only been inside for a few seconds to drop off his purchases. Would Conrad be able to jump out while the boat was moving? Could he swim? His swimming ability had never come up in conversation.
She kept her left hand on the tiller and used her right to open her Canal app. There were no branches ahead of her, it was a straight run through Altrincham and Sale and then on to Manchester city centre. It would be dark in about half an hour. Boats could drive at night – they were all equipped with headlights – but canal etiquette held that boats didn’t drive after 8 p.m. so as not to disturb those who were already asleep. The thing was, of course, that a man who was happy to steal cherished heirlooms from a widowed old lady probably wouldn’t care much about upsetting other canal users.
She had thought about phoning the police, but they would probably regard cat-napping as even less serious than burglary. And how could she explain the fact that she had watched the man drive his boat away, knowing that Conrad was on board? All she could do was follow the Blue Moon and hope that she would find some way of getting Conrad back.
The Blue Moon slowed and Lulu eased back on the throttle. Following a narrowboat wasn’t on a par with tailing a car – some days you’d spend hours with the same boats in front of you and behind you. With a four mile an hour maximum speed, there wasn’t much overtaking going on. Still, she didn’t want to get too close. She didn’t want to attract attention.
The Blue Moon was definitely slowing. She checked the app again and saw that they were coming up to a canalside pub. Lulu said a silent prayer that he was planning to stop there. A pub would be perfect, especially if he stayed for a drink or a meal.
Lulu pulled the throttle back to tickover. The Blue Moon was getting ready to stop. She steered over to the bank, grabbed her centre line and stepped off The Lark. She pulled back on the line and eased the boat against the bank, then realized that she had forgotten her spike and mallet. ‘Rookie mistake,’ she muttered to herself. She jumped back on the rear deck, opened the hatch and took out the mallet and two spikes.
By the time she had stepped back onto the towpath, the bow of The Lark had swung out into the middle of the canal and she hauled on the centre line to bring it back. She kept looking over at the Blue Moon. The man had moored his boat and was bent over the hatch, presumably padlocking the chain.
She bent down and hammered in a spike, then attached the line. When she looked up, the man was off the boat and walking purposefully along the towpath. Lulu hammered in a second spike and tied the bowline to it. She climbed back onto The Lark and peered at the man. The sun had almost sunk behind the horizon and it was hard to pick him out against the hawthorn hedge that ran alongside the towpath. She pulled out her phone and checked the app again. He was definitely heading in the direction of the pub.
She opened the hatch in the bench seat and took out her toolbox. She grabbed a bolt-cutter that looked as if it would be more than a match for the padlock. She grimaced. If she cut off the padlock, he’d know that someone had been in his boat. She hurried down into the saloon, pulled open one of the kitchen drawers and took out a small leather wallet with a zip down the side.
By the time she was back on the towpath, there was no sign of the man and she hurried towards the Blue Moon. There were three narrowboats between The Lark and the Blue Moon, all with their lights off. She stayed to the left, keeping clear of their lines.
When she reached the Blue Moon, she crept over to the sliding window. It was closed. She tried to push it open but it was securely locked. She put her hand up against the glass and peered inside, but there was no sign of Conrad. She turned and peered down the towpath. If the man returned while she was at the back of the boat, she wouldn’t see him coming and he would catch her red-handed. She took a deep breath and stepped onto the rear deck. There was still enough light to see by. It was a cheap brass padlock and she was sure that the cutters would slice right through the shackle, but she wanted to get inside without him knowing, so she shoved the cutters in her pocket and unzipped the leather case. Inside were more than a dozen metal picks. She took one out and carefully inserted it into the locking mechanism. She wiggled the pick around, trying to feel the tumblers and push them into place. It had been a while since she had picked a lock and she wasn’t sure if she would be up to it, but in less than thirty seconds the mechanism clicked and the shackle was ejected. She smiled. ‘You’ve still got it,’ she whispered to herself.
She removed the chain from the door handles and pulled the doors open. ‘Conrad, are you there?’ she whispered.
‘Of course I’m here,’ he said frostily. ‘I’m locked in. Where else would I be?’
‘Come on, quickly, before he comes back.’
‘There’s something you have to see here.’
‘Can’t you bring it with you?’
Conrad sighed. ‘I suppose I could, if I had opposable thumbs. Come on, you need to see this.’
‘Okay, okay.’ Lulu peered around the side of the boat. The towpath was empty. She felt her way down the steps into the galley. Conrad was sitting on the sofa. There was a damp smell mingled with the aroma of stale pizza and old socks that made Lulu shudder. ‘How could anyone live like this?’ she said.
Conrad stood up and gestured with his chin at a black Nike backpack at the side of the sofa. ‘Look at that,’ he said.
Lulu bent down. The backpack was open and she immediately saw the two figurines inside. ‘You found them!’ she said.
‘They would be hard to miss,’ said Conrad. ‘It’s not as if he was hiding them, is it? But there’s other stuff in there, too.’
Lulu carefully took out the figurines. There were several framed miniatures in the backpack. They looked Victorian. Another frame contained four Penny Black stamps. There were three pieces of intricately carved scrimshaw – she couldn’t tell if they were bone or ivory – and wrapped in a handkerchief were half a dozen rings and a gold charm bracelet. ‘Jessie isn’t the only one he’s stolen from,’ whispered Lulu.
‘We should show this to the police,’ said Conrad.
‘Well, yes, but then we’d have to explain how we got on board,’ said Lulu. ‘Let’s just take the figurines and go. We can report him to the police anonymously and let them deal with it.’
They heard footsteps on the towpath and both froze. Lulu’s heart was pounding furiously. She looked at Conrad. He was staring at the sliding window, his ears twitching.
The footsteps approached the narrowboat and then a shadow flicked across the window. Lulu held her breath. If it was the man, they were trapped – unless they could make their way to the bow and get off that way. She started to move along the boat towards the bow but Conrad looked at her. ‘It’s okay,’ he whispered. ‘It’s not him.’
‘How can you tell?’
‘This man is much bigger. And he’s walking a dog.’
‘You can hear that?’
Conrad sighed. ‘I’m a cat, Lulu. I can hear frequencies up to sixty-four thousand hertz, which is about three times higher than you humans.’ His ears continued to swivel around independently of each other as the footsteps moved alongside the narrowboat. Lulu heard a dog panting, and then she flinched at a series of short, excited barks. ‘He can smell me,’ whispered Conrad. The dog continued to bark and they heard the man chastising it. The barking faded as the man took the dog away from the boat. ‘All mouth and no trousers,’ said Conrad.
‘Excuse me?’
‘Dogs,’ said Conrad. ‘All that barking, all that aggression. Yet I’ve never met a dog that didn’t run away howling if you give them a good box on the nose.’
‘I never had you down as a fighter,’ whispered Lulu.
‘Only if my back is against the wall,’ said Conrad. He tilted his head to one side. ‘They’ve gone.’
Lulu gathered up the two figurines and put them in the pockets of her fleece. ‘Come on,’ she whispered.
She headed along the galley and up the steps. She stopped at the doors. In the distance she could see a big man with a German shepherd on a lead. She looked the other way. The towpath was clear. She stepped onto the rear deck and picked up the chain and padlock. Conrad jumped up onto the bench seat. ‘You picked the lock?’ he said.
‘I did, yes.’
‘How on earth did you acquire that skill?’
Lulu closed the doors and wound the chain through the handles. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘Oh, I love long stories.’
Lulu laughed and padlocked the chain. She rattled it to check that it was secure, then stepped off the boat onto the towpath. She bent down so that Conrad could jump onto her shoulders, and then headed back to The Lark. ‘It was years ago, when I was a DC.’
‘A DC?’
‘A detective constable. I was given a housebreaking case, one of the first where I was lead investigator. A man had broken into a house and found the owner unconscious on the floor. He’d done the decent thing and phoned for an ambulance, but he used his own mobile. I was given his name and address and told to bring him in for questioning. I was a bit nervous because the DC I was with was even less experienced than I was, but the guy was as nice as pie. He was Scottish, Willie McBride. He was old enough to be my dad and he happily agreed to go back to the station. He actually asked me how the old lady was, so it was obviously him who had made the call.’
‘And how was she? The old lady?’
‘She was fine. Well, not fine, obviously, as she’d had a heart attack, but she was on the mend and according to the doctors if Willie hadn’t called for an ambulance, she’d have died. Anyway, we get to the car, a Ford Fiesta from the station pool. I’d been so caught up in what I was going to say that I’d left the keys inside. I felt like such an idiot.’
They reached The Lark and Lulu climbed on board.
‘Willie was laughing, but then he went back inside his house and came out with this long piece of metal; he had the door open in seconds. He said it was the first time he’d broken into a police car. And that was the start of a wonderful friendship, as they say. I put in a good word for him and the Crown Prosecution Service agreed not to press charges. He was so grateful that he said if ever I needed a locksmith, to give him a call. Well, I kid you not, the very next day I locked myself out of my flat. I called Willie and he came around and let me in. I made him coffee and he gave me a crash course in lock picking. And a few days later a package arrived for me at the police station – my very own lock-picking kit.’
‘And you’re a bit of a Raffles, now, are you?’
Lulu laughed. ‘Far from it. But I can manage a bog-standard padlock and on a good day I can open a Yale. My party trick used to be opening handcuffs with a paper clip.’ She looked at her watch. It was a little after six-thirty. ‘We should move on, just in case he spots that the figurines have gone.’
‘Aye, aye, captain,’ said Conrad.