Chapter 15

THEY LEFT QUIETLY, slipping down the side of Marmalade’s great crumbling house and into the front garden, as overgrown as the back had been. None of the streetlights worked, so the road outside was too dark for Carlos to fly. He perched on Dog’s arm and directed her, confidently telling her left, right or straight. His voice was quiet but he seemed to know what to do, and Dog was happy to follow.

She felt hopeful. Her head felt like a clean drinking bowl, washed out and clear, not full of confusing mucky bits. They were going to get on a big boat – that’s what stowing away was – and they would be a very long way away from Uncle and the black, black box. They were going to the place that had been Carlos’s home, and live under a tree.

But getting on the boat would be difficult and dangerous. She would have to concentrate hard. So she pushed away the wondering that was deeper inside – about the people in the photograph and whether she too had been hatched in a forest by a river and somehow been stolen away.

Carlos’s directions seemed to be leading them towards more noise and bustle and light. Dog tried to keep calm but she grew very anxious. Every footstep, every voice could be Uncle ready and waiting; every car could be carrying him closer to them.

They wound their way down steep roads and back alleys, and then into wide cobbled streets between tall stone buildings. The air smelled different here. It reminded Dog of the cuttlefish bones she sometimes gave the budgies, and the weed that grew in the goldfish tanks.

The three friends scuttled along in the shadows, running from one darkened doorway to the next. At the end of the cobbled streets, the shadows ran out. The stone and concrete became sea, and the side of the Marilyn stretched up into the dark and mist of the night. Piles of huge crates and boxes stood on the dock beside it, moved about by forklift trucks and cranes; powerful lamps sliced the night into stripes of shadow and brightness. Men shouted and vehicles beeped. It looked like a total muddle.

Just as Dog was taking in this scene, the sirens that she had thought they had escaped hours ago began again. Police cars screeched to a stop in the street where they were hiding, and policemen began probing the dark doorways with torches, dogs and shouting.

They flattened themselves against the wall. They were trapped between the busy dock and the police, who were getting closer and closer. Carlos was silent. Dog could feel him hesitating. Her heart raced faster and faster as the voices of the police and the barking of their dogs came nearer. She couldn’t stand it for another moment. Without waiting for Carlos’s instructions, she ran, darting in amongst the chaos of the cranes and crates and busy men, using all the tricks she’d learned from years of staying invisible.

Just as the police cars arrived on the dockside, Dog found a slit in a large empty crate, and with Carlos clutched in her arms and Esme on her shoulder, she slipped inside. They crouched in the darkest corner and waited.

“Good!” whispered Carlos. “Clever! Very!”

Outside, a man with a headlamp and a bright orange waistcoat shouted up to the crane driver, telling him which crate to grab in the machine’s jaws. “This one next, Steve. Ready? Up!” His voice was so loud that it sounded above the clatter and shouting all around. Each time he slapped a crate, it was scooped up and disappeared into the dark body of the ship.

Peeping back through the slit in the crate, Dog could see the policemen moving amongst the dockers, getting closer and closer. At last one officer was standing right by their crate, talking to Orange Waistcoat Man. Dog could have reached through the slit and knocked his helmet off with her hand. Orange Waistcoat Man cupped his ear to try and hear what the policeman was saying, but it was too noisy, so he led the policeman away, to find somewhere quiet. Dog realized she had been holding her breath. She let it out shakily.

Carlos spoke. “Phew,” he whispered. “Very.”

Esme hid her nose in the straw in the corner of the crate, but Dog and Carlos peered out again. The police were starting to look inside the crates – poking their big torches through the slats and shining the beam around! Their only chance now was if their crate was loaded before the policemen arrived.

Dog guessed what Carlos would do just in time to get her fingers in her ears.

“HUUUUP! This one next, Steve. Ready? Up!” he shouted through the slit. He was certainly as loud as Orange Waistcoat Man, and even managed to copy the sound of the man’s big flat hand slapping the wooden side of the crate.

At once, the crane’s claws fixed on them, and up they went, so fast that Dog felt as if her stomach had been left somewhere much closer to the ground. For a moment the dock, crisscrossed with lights and dotted with policemen, was laid out below them like a toy. Then they were swooping down onto the deck of the boat, bumping onto a forklift truck and swirling down a long ramp into the hold. Esme and Carlos, their claws like hooks, managed to cling to the sides, but Dog rolled around like a peanut in a jar.

At last they were set down. Dog picked herself up, feeling bruised and giddy, and peered around in the gloom. They had got away from the police, but in the corner of the crate, with wild staring eyes and the biggest, shiniest knife Dog had ever seen, was a fourth stowaway.