Not Just a Witch

Chapter Eleven

Daniel never quarrelled with Sumi. She was so gentle and so sensible that he wouldn’t have known how to begin. But after Ralph Ticker was changed, they came as close to quarrelling as they had ever done.

‘Well, I still don’t think it’s right,’ she said. ‘I think it’s dangerous changing people into animals and I don’t think Heckie should do it.’

They were in her parents’ grocery shop, parcelling up black-eyed beans, and Daniel was so cross he let the beans spill from his shovel way past the correct weight.

‘I suppose you think it’s right to torture four thousand chickens and then plan to murder them in cold blood.’

‘No, I don’t. You know I don’t. But he could have been sent to prison and—’

‘He couldn’t,’ said Daniel angrily. ‘The RSPCA kept trying and all he got was a measly fine. And anyway, I don’t see that it’s so terrible being an unusual fish. Being an ordinary fish might be, but he isn’t. People have been coming from all over the country to find out what he is, and I should think it’s very exciting.’

This was true. The fish that Heckie had left in a tank by the West Gate of the zoo labelled: ANOTHER PRESENT FROM A WELL WISHER had really brought the scientists running.

Sumi didn’t say any more. She knew how Daniel felt about Heckie, and she knew why. If you had a mother who had written seven books about The Meaning of Meaning and had no time for you, you might well turn to a warm-hearted witch for the love you didn’t get at home.

And quite soon they had something more to worry them than whether Ralph Ticker did, or did not, like being an unusual fish.

Although she was so busy Doing Good, Heckie never forgot her pet shop. Since she knew so much about animals, all the rabbits and guinea pigs she sold were healthy, so she made quite a lot of money. At first she had kept this money in her mattress, but she was worried that the mice who lived there would nibble it and this would be bad for them.

‘Mice have very tender stomachs,’ she told the children. ‘Not everyone knows that, but it’s true.’

So she went to the bank and signed a lot of papers and after that, every Friday afternoon, she paid in her takings.

Heckie liked going to the bank. She enjoyed chatting with the other shopkeepers and the people in the queue. It made her feel ordinary and that is a thing that witches do not often feel.

On the particular Friday when something unexpected happened at the bank, Heckie found herself standing beside a tall and very distinguished-looking man with a Roman nose, dark eyes set very close together, and a little beard like goats have. He wore a black coat with a fur collar and carried an ivory cane, and Heckie thought she had never seen anyone more handsome. She didn’t approve of the fur collar, but there was always the hope that the raccoon it was made of had died in his sleep, and no one is perfect. So she gave him a beaming smile, showing all her large and sticking out teeth, and when he got to the counter, she listened carefully as the clerk said: ‘Good morning, Mr Knacksap,’ and thought what an unusual name Knacksap was and how well it suited him.

Mr Knacksap wasn’t putting money into the bank, he was taking it out, and as she waited, she squinted over his shoulder at his cheque-book and saw that his initial was L. Did that stand for Lucien or Lancelot or Lovelace? Such an elegant man was sure to have an unusual name.

Mr Knacksap took his money and Heckie smiled at him again, but he didn’t smile back. Then it was her turn. She had just put her paying-in book down on the counter, when the door burst open and a masked man rushed into the bank, waving a sawn-off shotgun.

‘Everybody on the floor!’ he shouted to the people in the queue.

Everybody got down at once, even Heckie who had become very excited. She had seen bank robbers on the telly, but never in real life. This one looked a bit thin and she thought he might have a hungry wife and children at home, or perhaps he was going to give the money to the poor like Robin Hood.

‘Anyone who moves, gets it,’ the robber went on, and strode to the counter. Outside, Heckie could see a van parked alongside the kerb, and a fierce-looking man inside. The getaway car! Really, it was just like the telly!

Mr Knacksap, lying on the floor beside Heckie, did not seem to be excited at all. He looked quite green and his beautiful bowler hat had rolled away. Heckie wanted to comfort him, but she thought it was best to keep quiet till the robber had gone.

‘Come on, hand it over. The lot! And hurry!’ barked the robber.

Heckie squinted up and saw a little fat cashier run up to the grille with wads of bank-notes, and start pushing them through. ‘Don’t shoot!’ he kept saying, ‘Don’t shoot!’ The other cashiers were huddled together at the back — all except one girl. A very young girl with long blonde hair who looked as though she had only just left school. She was edging her way carefully forward to where the alarm bell was. She had almost reached it…

The next second there was a blast from the shotgun, a scream… and the blonde girl fell across her desk with blood streaming from her shoulder.

Up to now, Heckie had just been interested. Of course it was wrong to rob banks, but after all if there was one thing banks had plenty of, it was money.

But now she lost her temper. Her eyes narrowed, her knuckle throbbed, she kicked off her shoe. The robber, meanwhile, had turned away from the counter. He felt in his pocket and lobbed a metal canister on to the floor where the people were lying. It was a smoke bomb, and as the choking fumes spread through the room, he made for the door.

At least he started off. But a hand had fastened round his ankle… a hand like a steel trap. He raised his gun, ready to shoot… but he didn’t seem to have arms any more… he didn’t seem to have… anything.

No one else saw. As they groped and struggled to the exit, they thought that the robber had escaped. But Mr Knacksap, lying beside Heckie, had seen. He had seen the robber’s shape become dim… become wavery… shrink almost to nothing. And then reform in the shape of a small brown mouse which scampered over to the wall panelling — and was gone!

Mr Knacksap’s Christian name was not Lancelot or Lucien, it was Lionel, and the raccoon on his collar had not died in its sleep because Mr Knacksap was a furrier. He owned a shop in Market Square where he sold fur coats and he had a workshop in the basement and a store-room where he kept the skins of dead animals ready to be made up into coats or sold to other furriers at a profit.

The shop was called Knacksap and Knacksap, but the first Knacksap, who had been Mr Knacksap’s father, was now dead. The old man had been a good craftsman and had made very beautiful coats which ladies had paid good money for, because in those days people did not think it was cruel to kill an animal simply for its skin and there were not so many other ways of keeping warm. But his son, Lionel Knacksap, was not a good craftsman. His coats were badly made, and at the time he took over, people were beginning to ask annoying questions before they bought fur coats. They wanted to know how the animals had been killed — had they suffered at all, and were they rare; because if so they didn’t want to wear them.

So Mr Knacksap found himself getting poorer and poorer, and as he was a man who had expensive tastes, he didn’t like this at all. In the basement he had kept two ladies who made coats for him. Now he sacked them and started doing business with very dubious people. These were men who came at night and talked to him in the shop with the shutters closed and they wanted him to get skins for them that were no longer allowed to be sold in England: the skins of Sumatran tigers or jaguars from the Amazon — beautiful animals that were almost extinct. They were willing to pay thousands of pounds for pelts like that because there were always vain or ridiculous people who would do anything to lie on a tiger skin or wear a coat like no other in the world. But it wasn’t easy to get hold of such skins. Mr Knacksap was finding it very hard to supply his customers and he had been getting into debt.

And then he saw Heckie fasten her hands round the bank robber’s ankle and realized that he had been lying next to a very powerful witch. A witch who could change people into animals. But any animal? Mr Knacksap meant to find out.