The Kill Call

tortoiseshell or a ginger tom? It was the personality that mattered, the question of whether you were compatible. And you wouldn’t discover that with a cat until you’d worked on the relationship for a while.
    So standing here in the animal rescue centre, being asked to make a choice, seemed suddenly too daunting. It was an impossible challenge, surely?
    But, in the end, it proved to be very simple. The question was resolved for Cooper beyond doubt by the time he got halfway down the first row of cages. There, he found a small, furry bundle clinging to the mesh, two bright green eyes fixed determinedly on his, and a tiny paw reaching desperately for his sleeve until claws hooked in and drew him closer. He barely noticed the colour of the fur in the intensity of the moment of communication. A pink mouth opened in an almost silent cry as the young cat spoke to him.
    And somehow, Cooper knew exactly what he was being told. He didn’t have to choose a cat, after all. His cat had chosen him.
       
    Dorothy Shelley was waiting for him when he arrived home in Welbeck Street. Cooper never really understood how his landlady knew everything that was going on. But he certainly wasn’t going to be able to keep a new cat secret from her. He could see her grey-haired figure in a faded blue cardigan, hovering by the window of number 6 as he pulled his Toyota towards the kerb.
    ‘She’s lovely,’ said Mrs Shelley, peering into the pet carrier before Cooper even got to the door of his flat. ‘She is a “she”, isn’t she?’
    ‘Yes, this time,’ said Cooper, with a laugh. He remembered that his landlady had not been too expert at assessing the gender of a cat in the past.
    ‘Have you decided what you’re going to call her?’
    He looked at the bright green eyes, huge and anxious, set in a face marked with perfect tabby tiger stripes.
    ‘Not yet. It’s going to take some thinking about.’
    As he went inside his flat, Cooper reflected that he might have to take some time over that decision. It wasn’t something to be rushed into. A name had to match a personality. And you didn’t really understand another person’s character until you’d got to know them properly. Sometimes, you could know a person for quite a while, and never understand them at all.

40
     
     
    Monday
    Fry didn’t know why she had such a bad feeling as she walked up to Superintendent Branagh’s office first thing on Monday morning. Often, an urgent summons meant you were in trouble, but she was confident that she hadn’t put a foot wrong this week. She had obtained a good result, hadn’t she?
    So it ought to be good news – a commendation, or a bit of praise, at least. It had been known, even from Branagh. Perhaps she was going to apologize for having been wrong about Fry’s record. That would be a turn-up for the books, all right. Like Count Dracula turning vegetarian.
    Fry entered the corridor from the top of the stairs and saw the superintendent’s office door ahead. Actually, praise from Branagh was definitely her due. She should go in expecting it as her right, not nervously approaching the feet of an angry god.
    But, no matter how she rationalized it, she still had a bad feeling.
    ‘Come in,’ called Branagh at her knock.
    Fry entered cautiously, and glanced around the room. She realized straight away that she’d been right to be uneasy. The atmosphere in the superintendent’s office was tense, the silence that met her arrival too unnatural. Branagh’s two visitors were immediately recognizable as police officers, though they wore civilian clothes. Detectives, then? Were they from another division, or headquarters staff? Strange that they didn’t look familiar, either the man or the younger woman who now stood to greet her.
    ‘DS Fry. Thank you for coming up to see us.’
    ‘Sir.’
    Fry held out her hand automatically to take his, feeling in no doubt from the start that she was addressing a more senior officer. He wasn’t much above her own age, his hair just starting to recede a little from his forehead, grey eyes observing her sharply from behind tiny, frameless glasses.
    Then he smiled, and Fry hesitated, wanting to let her hand drop, but feeling it still clutched awkwardly in his.
    ‘It’s been a long time, Diane,’ he said.
    And then she recognized him. They’d been in uniform on the same shift years ago, but he’d got his stripes really early. Too early, some had said. But he’d been ambitious, with the