Chapter 1-2
631 Words
“No,” Francis protested. “I don’t want to go to hospital. I’m fine.” The paramedic was taping a dressing over his cut. “I have to stay here.”
“Is this about the cats?” Dez asked. When the police and paramedics had shown up, he’d let them in and had given them an account of what he’d witnessed. He knew one of the officers, vaguely. The other, a probationer, he’d never met. Now, both of them looked at him with an annoying amount of curiosity.
“I don’t want people going into the cat room and letting them escape,” Francis said.
“You really do need to go to the hospital, Mr. Green,” the paramedic said as she packed away her gear. “You probably have a concussion. I’m sure your cat will be fine.”
“Cats,” he clarified. “There are ten of them. For the café.”
She looked baffled.
“Go to the hospital,” Dez said. “I’ll stay here and make sure the cats are okay.” He could easily imagine one of the uniforms blundering in and letting the moggies escape. Freaked out as they were, who knows where they’d run? And they were probably all exclusively indoor cats.
Francis looked at him, eyes still unfocused. “You? Well, I suppose…Don’t let them out of that room, please.”
“I promise.” The caterwauling had died down to an occasional plaintive meow.
As the paramedics got Francis on their casualty chair, Dez hurried into the bedroom, grabbed a coat hanging behind the door, a pair of shoes from under the bed, and the phone. In the living room, he saw a wallet and keys in a basket by the front door. He took the wallet and followed the paramedics and their patient downstairs to the ambulance, standing half on the curb. A couple of people were hanging about to stare at the show, but it was too late for revelers from the night before and too early for morning workers. As the paramedics put Francis in the ambulance, Dez handed him the coat, shoes, wallet, and phone. With those, he could get himself home when they released him.
“You want me to call anyone for you?” Dez asked. “Your parents?”
Francis shook his head, winced, and waved a hand instead. “No, don’t. No point in scaring them. Just…take care of the cats till I get back, please.”
“No problem.”
Dez closed the door and the ambulance’s siren and blue light came on. It pulled away from the curb and raced down the road. Dez glanced around. The few looky-loos stared back at him, so he was glad he’d taken the time after the paramedics and police had arrived to return to his flat and put on shoes, sweats, and a hoody. He went back inside.
In Francis’ living room, he found the probationer pointing out a couple of magazines on the coffee table. Attitude and Gay Times. She looked at Dez as if wondering whether he’d been here with Francis when the burglar arrived.
The other copper, Smithson, Dez now recalled meeting three times before on joint operations. “Think this was a domestic, not an intruder?” he asked Dez. “Some bloke he picked up?”
For f**k’s sake.
“Who just happened to be going equipped?” Dez asked, nodding at the burglar’s tool bag.
“Maybe he had plans for later,” Smithson said.
“The door from the hallway is forced,” Dez pointed out. “It was an intruder.”
“Well, we’ve got your initial statement. You can come to the station now to give a full statement if you want.”
Dez suppressed a shudder. “Not tonight. Send someone ‘round tomorrow.”
Smithson’s face fell. Maybe he’d wanted to be seen around the station with the man the newspapers called “Hero Cop.” Tough luck.
“Are you done here?” Dez asked.
“Aye. I don’t have to tell you not to handle the door or that bag,” he said. “SOCO will be later this morning. Don’t let Green touch anything either if he comes back from the hospital before then.”
“I’ll tell Mr. Green. What about the street door? Was that forced?”
Smithson nodded. “We’ll secure it for the time being. It’ll need a locksmith after SOCO finishes with it.”
“Looks like I’m on guard duty then.”
“Cat-sitting,” Smithson said, smirking, nodding at the door, which Dez noticed bore a plaque with a design of several cats frolicking.
Great.
- Writer
