Master? Who did she think she was kidding?

“And where is he, I’d like to know? It’s gone half-seven and him not here yet when he said he wanted to eat then?” Back to the kitchen she marched, muttering.

Mungo knew something was up with that cat carrier, something unpleasant for someone. Oh, not him. Although he wondered sometimes how he’d lasted so long around Harry without getting cuffed or kicked or worse, then told himself not to be modest. But the point was that Harry would no more take a cat to the cat hospital than he’d adopt a disabled orangutan. And much less would he transport Schrödinger himself. So what was going on?

Mungo looked up and saw Shoe coming down the stairs, looking pleased as punch, then giving Mungo an evil look and going into the music room to inspect the kittens. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. One missing. She dashed into the living room, went from one hiding spot to another, found Elfin the coal scuttle, and dragged him out. She then carried him into the music room, dropped him in the drawer, and swayed over to her favorite spot beneath the little sofa near the bureau, where she promptly went into one of her comas.

Mungo stared from Schrödinger back to the carrier, back and forth, back and forth, working it out. Then he loped back to the desk and told Morris to come out.

Something’s going on.

What? said Morris.

I think-He looked at Morris’s blue collar, and the penny dropped. Take that off! Morris looked puzzled, so Mungo hit at it, then bit the end and pulled it free from the Velcro tab. Then he rushed into the music room, stealthily made his way to the sofa, stopped to see that Schrödinger was indeed asleep, and dropped the collar near the cat’s head. Schrödinger wouldn’t wake if it were a hand grenade, pin pulled. Mungo turned and hurried to the bureau, grabbed up Elf again, and trotted across the hall and into the living room just as the door opened.

Mrs. Tobias apparently heard Harry’s approach too and came like a little warhorse from the kitchen, talking all the while. “So there you are, Mr. Johnson, just let me tell you what that cat…” Her voice dropped to a quieter wrangle out in the hall.

Mungo dropped Elf. Act really mad, he whispered to Morris. Why?

Just do it, just do it!

As Elf ran off, passing Harry and Mrs. Tobias, Morris hissed and clawed at the air around Mungo’s head.

Mungo could hear him telling Mrs. Tobias he’d be having dinner out anyway, so it hardly mattered. Here was Harry saying to Morris, “So you ate my dinner, did you?” He said to Mungo, “For God’s sakes, can’t you leave that damned kitten alone?”

But he didn’t seem really bothered by it all. He grinned wolfishly.

Oh, how Mungo longed to grin back. Wolfishly.

Mrs. Tobias, in her brown wool coat-too hot for this weather, but she wore it year in and year out-sailed through the living room. She didn’t glance at Morris, not minding and not knowing there was another black cat sprawled beneath the sofa in the music room.

“I’ll be off, then, Mr. Johnson.”

Oh, do be, thought Mungo. All he was waiting for was the next act.

When that act came, it involved a good bit of effing and blinding. Harry was having a hard time of it.

Eventually Harry left, cat carrier in tow. Mungo hopped up to the window seat beside Morris. They watched Harry in the arc of light cast by the sconce beside the door as he descended the stair, and then in the blurry light of the streetlamp. He opened the car door and stowed the carrier before getting in the car himself.

They watched.

Then, pleased, they looked at each other with what would have been smiles had God seen fit to give them to dogs and cats.

Never mind, their minds hummed along as one.

38

The glossy-haired, raven-haired young woman in short skirt and high heels stood outside the Snow Hill police station (almost just around the corner from the spot where Kate Banks was murdered, and didn’t that ever give a chill!). She was chewing gum (which she would toss out before she met her client, who hated chewing gum) and wondered why she should volunteer her information to police. What had the Bill ever done for her or her friends, except as good as call them whores? Looking up at the black word “Police” painted on the soft lantern light, she debated the wisdom of going in.

She wouldn’t even have thought of coming except it had been Kate, and she’d quite liked Kate. She was a good person, always ready to do you a lunch or a loan or whatever help you needed. Yes, you could count on Kate.

At first it hadn’t made sense, and then it had. There was nobody that would’ve taken a blind bit of notice, except herself. And the sodding cops were of course on the completely wrong end of the stick, barking up the wrong tree, hadn’t a clue that just because it was an escort service, that didn’t mean it had to be sex and nothing but.

She turned away as two of these police came out of the door and gave her a look. God, she thought, a girl can’t even stop a bit before she’s accosted.

“Hello, sunshine,” said one, cuter than the other.

The other said, “Time to move it along, love.”

Fuck you. That’s what she wanted to say. Just fuck you and the horse you came in on. You want to keep running around this murder with your pants down, go ahead, arseholes.

Standing there, leering, they quite put her off. But not being one to back away immediately from any uncomfortable situation, she reached into a slim shoulder bag made of silvery disks that lapped over each other like fish scales. She removed her compact and opened it. She didn’t need to study herself, her eyes or lips or stylish haircut that cost a fortune; she just wanted to assert her right to stand on a city street.

The two uniforms stood there with their big bland smiles and looked at her as if no matter how good she looked, she’d never get invited to the party.

If only they knew. If only they knew that with what she knew, well, she could be a career changer for them, move them right up to captain or inspector or something. If they knew what she knew, she’d be at that party pronto; she’d be ushered in, sat down, and served a glass of Champs straightaway.

She checked her watch-small, platinum, a face circled by some kind of stone she didn’t know, except to know they weren’t diamonds. A gift from one of her clients.

She couldn’t stop here, nor did she want to, with these two buffoons with their truncheons and guns and grins and City of London police insignia on their uniforms, thinking they were special or better than the Met.

Yet there was something-a conscience?-a little brightness in her she couldn’t put out that had her taking a step toward the station door before the two seemed to form a wall against her entry. But she thought of Kate, the best among them she knew, who worked days as a stenotypist and was happy doing just that. Kate hadn’t liked being with King’s Road Companions, but she’d wanted the money to put aside for the future and to take care of an old lady, not even family but a godmother or someone. Whoever paid any attention to godparents, anyway? Well, that was Kate. Kate had loved the very ordinariness of her steno job, liked having to catch the tube every morning, liked being jolted and crushed before erupting into the “antic air” (as she called it) of Piccadilly. Kate had loved almost the dullness of the job. Who could love the dullness of things? she wondered. But if you liked it, did the dullness then shine? She stopped at that thought, thinking she must have a little philosophy in her.

The two coppers still stood there, leering.

So she turned and walked away into the night. The days of the Smoke were long gone, and she wasn’t old enough to have seen it anyway, but there was still the heavy mist that slid in from the river, which wasn’t far off.