Free Not Just a Witch by Eva Ibbotson

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